Posted on January 12, 2009 - by Andrew

An Australian aboriginal creation myth – Ungambikula

It was dark and there was neither life nor death. In the beginning the earth was a bare plain. Underneath the plain slept the eternal ancestors, the sun, the moon and the stars.

Eventually the eternal ancestors arose an in the Dreamtime they walked the earth. The enternal ancestors walked in many shapes and forms; some of them took the forms of kangaroos, others as lizards, others as birds, some took humanoid forms and others appeared as hybrids of human, animal or even plant.

The Ungambikula, two of the enternal ancestors, walked the earth until they found half-made human beings lying beside water holes. The half-made men where bundles of limbs, animal parts and shapes.

The Ungambikula gathered the half-made humans and used two large stone knives to carve shape and form into the bundles. They carved faces, heads, legs, bodies, arms and feet.

This is why that every man, woman and child has a connection to their totem – the animal or plant that was part of the half-human bundle they were carved from.

In Pure Spirit

What does this creation story mean to you? Are the Ungambikula more significant than other ancestors?

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