ONt: 14.0px Arial;">ONg>DREAMINGONg>

ONt: 14.0px Arial;">ONg>A VIRTUAL AND ACTUAL TIME-SPACEONg>

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ONt: 12.0px Arial;">ONg>A matrix of possibilitiesONg>

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ONt: 12.0px Arial;">The Warlpiri, like their neighbours, use the word ONg>JukurrpaONg> to denote the Ancestral totemic Beings, the myths that tell of their journeys and associated itineraries. The ONg>DreamingONg> is not a simple mythical Golden Age annihilating time, in which Aborigines would be fixed in a repetitive cycle. Rather, it is a space-time, a kind of permanence in movement, that integrates innovatiONs by means of a pre-existing logical processes.

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ONt: 12.0px Arial;">InnovatiONs, which take the form of new rituals, new geographical landmarks and new systems of alliance, are part and parcel of the reproductiON of society. CONsequently, Dreaming brings about a dynamic process in the group, making it possible to maintain both an irreducible specificatiON and a cONtinuously renewed link between mythical and ritual elements and society. This is why Aborigines themselves cONsider the Dreaming to be their Law. It is a matter, not of a set of rules, but of an active process of forging social identity.

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ONt: 12.0px Arial;">The Dreaming is a programme — not a stock of remembered models for organising society, but a matrix of combinatory possibilities.

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ONt: 12.0px Arial;">Excerpt from ONg>Barbara GlowczewskiONg>, 1989.

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ONt: 12.0px Arial;">ONg>The memory of the earthONg>

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ONt: 12.0px Arial;">All the sacred sites that Aboriginal people protect today are for them the traces, tracks or metamorphosis of the bodies of Ancestral Beings. These travellers with ONg>hybrid formsONg> wandered ON the earth before the humans, and they live for ever in what Australians now call the Dreamtime or the ONg>DreamingONg>. These expressiONs are often not well understood and are mistaken for a mythical time which would refer to an original past of the world. But with Aboriginal myths, ONe can see that they are not so much stories about the origin of things, as statements about a movement of transformatiONs. These transformatiONs, far from being restricted to an ancient mythical past, cONstitute in fact an eternal dynamic which, for the Aborigines, cONtinues to act in the present the Ancestral Beings are not just simple mythical ancestors; they are active principles who participate in the becoming of things.

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ONt: 12.0px Arial;">Aborigines do not live out of time or ignore the difference between past, present and future. Their perspective is different; it is closer to current astrophysical cONcepts in which time is a variatiON of space. Indeed, Dreamtime or Dreaming is a parallel time-space linked to life ON earth in a relatiON of feedback.

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ONt: 12.0px Arial;">Dreaming is not ONly a parallel dimensiON. It is also the source of ONg>LawONg> for humans since it cONtains all the words and images from the eternal Beings. Aboriginal people talk about the Dreamings in the plural to designate these Beings, the names or totems they inherit from them, and the mythical stories which tell of their journeys and are re-enacted in their ONg>ritualsONg>.

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ONt: 12.0px Arial;">In the case of the central and western desert tribes, these Dreamings are also ONg>geographical itineraries or trailsONg> which mark the events of the totemic Beings from site to site in this sense the Dreaming is the Law decreed by the earth. The English word 'dreaming' translates different indigenous cONcepts from different languages, such as the cONcept Jukurrpa, used by several desert groups, and which means ‘dream’ in Warlpiri.

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ONt: 12.0px Arial;">The cONfusiON between the cONcept of Dreaming and the dream experience has given rise to many misunderstandings, for example, the false notiON that Aborigines do not differentiate between dreams and life. It is true that they do not draw the same line between so-called reality and dream, because dreams do not refer to the realm of the imaginary. In fact, people's dreams are read as a search for signs in the real world. People interpret dreams to guide themselves in everyday life, to read messages from the Ancestral Beings, to see and hear ritual innovatiONs which take the form of new designs or sONgs, which are said to have been ‘forgotten’ and ‘found back’.

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ONt: 12.0px Arial;">The Dreaming is thus a living memory that is collective and cosmological as well as persONal. The dream has its own dimensiON and seems to maintain an active relatiON with the tangible world. Human acts are part of a ‘philosophy’ which states not a predestinatiON, or an eternal repetitiON, but the rules of a game in which men and women are caught their freedom cONsists in playing different games which shape and transform their individual and collective life. In this sense, the Law of the Dreaming is a game whose rules are not immutable but can be modified within some limits.

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ONt: 12.0px Arial;">Excerpt from ONg>Barbara GlowczewskiONg>, 1988.

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ONt: 12.0px Arial;">ONg>A permanence in motiONONg>

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ONt: 12.0px Arial;">Unlike the creatiON myths of other cultures, including Genesis, Australian myths are not about creatiON or the origin of things, but about making or transforming potential life and forms into real ONes.

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ONt: 12.0px Arial;">In many cases the totemic species are described not in the process of acquiring their actual features, but ONly as having been named by the heroes. Instead of being cONcerned by questiONs of the origins and ends of things, Australian Aborigines are cONcerned with metamorphoses and reproducibility.

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ONt: 12.0px Arial;">From the Aboriginal point of view, named things and sites reveal the active presence of the Ancestral Beings, while man's associatiON with these names and places reproduces the social order independently of the passing generatiONs. In the final analysis, the power to name and localise does not belONg either to mythic beings or to humans, but to something which existed before them and coexists with them, even though ONly the Beings can designate it. It is a permanence in motiON, ONg>JukurrpaONg>, the Dreaming, represented by eternal heroes capable of turning their bodies into earthly matter, making themselves into unattainable images of a process of ONg>transformatiONONg>.

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ONt: 12.0px Arial;">Excerpt from ONg>Barbara GlowczewskiONg>, 1988, 1991.

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ONt: 12.0px Arial;">ONg>Spirit-childrenONg>

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ONt: 12.0px Arial;">When people dream, their ONg>pirlirrpaONg> leaves the body to travel in the time-space of different Dreamings and meet the Eternal Ancestors who are embodied in the ONg>sacred sitesONg>. The dreamers can receive from them revelatiONs about the Dreaming-name and cONceptiON-place of a child to be born. Warlpiri people say that everybody embodies a ONg>KurruwalpaONg>, that is, a spirit-child who waits in a specific place to be born since the time he or she was dropped there by the Dreaming Ancestors. When a persON passes by the tree, the rock or the waterhole where a Kurruwalpa lives, the spirit can choose that persON as his or her future mother or father. Warlpiri people say that Kurruwalpa are ngampurrpa, ‘desirous’ of life. It is believed that at death Kurruwalpa return to their place and wait to be reborn again. Women and men Elders talk about the activities of their own preborn Kurruwalpa as of themselves. Most parents can recount dreams revealing the future Kurruwalpa identity of a sON, a daughter or another relative (ONg>Barbara NakamarraONg>, ONg>May NapaljarriONg>, ONg>Betty NungarrayiONg>).

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ONt: 12.0px Arial;">Men and women can also dream of old and new sONgs, designs and dances coming from different totemic Beings ONg>FireONg>, ONg>YamONg>, ONg>StONe CurlewONg>, ONg>PossumONg>, ONg>EmuONg> and Rain.