15/03/2015
SACRED EARTH MOTHER the FEMALE THIRD of THE DREAMING
The female third of The Dreaming is The Earth Mother. A common name for her is Nungeena and along with the All Father she is for Aboriginal people the co creator and nurturer of all life on Earth. She is the Earth including all of its great diversity of different forms of nature. She is all its different energies and in most parts of Australia she is also the Moon. Every one of these different forms of her is to be respected and cared for as an equal. For example we cannot eat our 5 different personal Dreamings (totems) and we have to look after their habitat and the food that they eat. For another example initiated men can only speak with a soft tone of voice in front of the women because they are considered a special form of Earth Mother. Her main energies are; female Rainbow Serpent (sacred water), minerals and flowers but she represents the total variety of all the different individual spirits.
She is the local law of the land which is why every clan has differences in the details of their regional culture. A good example of this is the local Earth Mother in particular the birds taught us to speak and that is why we have over 250 different languages and over 500 different dialects. Regional variations in the details of; language, stories, ceremonies, way of life and sometimes even the names of the great spirits. Being every individual spirit she is full of love but very complicated and needs to be treated with great care and respect or she can become a cyclone, get the rage like an angry crocodile and go on the warpath. In one of our dreamtime stories from up north when confronted with her in cyclone form they simply; sung, danced, respected and cared for her even better than before and then she moved back out into the water and changed into a calm sea. She is change and sometimes can be very changeable but she is consistently happy whenever the men dance.
Earth Mother spirit is in the Earth and everything on it including women and men where her energy is symbolised by the left hand side of a person. She has the greatest power on Earth and was made our number one boss and teacher. Her strongest power is healing we gain by keeping in physical contact but she has many other gifts; fertility, water, fire, earth, minerals, protection from bad spirit trouble, our five senses, bush food, bush medicine, comfort, solitude (separation) and solace. Same as the All Father spirit she can be; creation, preservation or destruction. She is the differences which keeps life interesting. She provides the meaning of life which in part is; making, enjoying and looking after an infinite diversity of creation.
She is mostly symbolised by red ochre and seen and mostly depicted in painting or rock engraving as very large with; wide thighs, sacred lines across hips, long hair to her waist, breasts straight out or horizontally sideways and surrounded by symbols or depictions of her many powers. The last 3 attributes are not always shown. Her arms will be down but may be out holding the individual spirit children to be born. Her sacred creation sites are; water fall, mineral springs, deep billabong, deep plunge pool, deep grottos and deep caves. It is there where her spirit children playfully reside until a particular pregnant female life form visits. One will then jump into her body and into the baby’s body to give it their individual Dreaming (totem) and their main connection to country.
Below is one of the many images engraved in stone of our sacred Earth Mother I have encountered. She is from the Greater Mount Yengo area 2 hours’ drive northwest of Sydney. Sorry for the low resolution but I photographed her many years ago. There was once 5 sacred lines out of her head representing her great spiritual power. Her very large eyes represents that she sees all to become very wise. No mouth represents that she is observing and becoming wise by listening and not talking. The many natural mottled holes across her body represents her awesomely strong female Rainbow Serpent spirit. She has the sacred lines across her breasts and legs showing she is a major spirit of The Dreaming. Her rounded or cupped left hand carefully holds the great diversity of life in the form of spirit children. She is showing her power of fertility and creation with her breasts full with milk, straight out sideways and giving birth shown by her legs up and a baby’s head emerging.
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Dreamtime from Evan Yanna Muru
