5 curious coincidences between Australian and North Americans Aboriginal cultures
I am passionate about aboriginal cultures and I believe that the modern world has a lot to learn from their most ancient and pure worldview, which was transmitted and cared for as a treasure throughout history.
In this post, I share with you a little of the research I am doing on two apparently very different cultures, but very much the same at heart, that have always inspired me for being the creators of those two spiritual and artistic harmonizing wonders, that we like so much. I have always been inspired by them for being the creators of those two spiritual and artistic harmonizing wonders that we like so much and use nowadays, which are the Dreamcatchers and the Didgeridoos.
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It could be thought that these cultures, being located in opposite latitudes, should have different worldviews, because curiously we have found a great coincidence in their vision of the world and life, which makes us think that the spiritual place where the wise men of the tribes resided, in search of knowledge, vision and healing for the community, was the same for all of them. That place where the ancestors and the "Great Spirit" resided, although they take different names in different peoples, are the same energies, the same teachings and the same worldview, with slight superficial differences, which when analyzed always lead us to the same synthesis.
And I am making this comparison between these two cultures, because I believe that it is in the synthesis, that is, in the points they have in common, where the truth for all humanity is found.
Objiwe (Chippewa)
5 curious coincidences between Australian and North Americans Aboriginal cultures
1 - They believed in a parallel "world":
Both cultures respected a parallel spiritual world to which they turned for vision. The Australians called this "world" Dreamtime. The North Americans Objibwa and Lakotas referred to it as "the great mystery", they use the famous Dreamcatcher as a means of connection with the spiritual world, the world of dreams, to which they go in search of vision, which would be knowledge.
As we have explained in other posts, the Australian Aborigines, from the area known as Arnhem Land, are the creators of the didgeridoo.
Their vision is based on the fact that "they believe in two forms of time; two parallel streams of activity. One is objective everyday activity, the other is an infinite spiritual cycle called "dream time," more real than reality itself.What happens in dream time establishes the values, symbols and laws of Aboriginal society. Some people with unusual spiritual powers were believed to have contact with dreamtime. "
2) The spiritual world was considered the world they came from, and life there is eternal:
For the Australian Aborigines, what they called the Dreamtime was reality, while the three-dimensional and transitory world in a physical body (life) was a kind of illusion. The Dreamtime was a parallel spiritual world where they really came from and where they lived eternally. It would also be that spiritual dimension where what the Ojibway American Aborigines, creators of the Dreamcatcher, called Gitche Manitou or The Great Spirit and the ancestors would reside. The Australian Aborigines believe that each person essentially exists eternally in the Reverie. This eternal part existed before the individual's life began, and continues to exist when the individual's life ends. (...) Before plants, animals and humans were created, they were souls who knew that they would acquire physical qualities.
3) Nature is considered a complete organism, alive and sacred:
(...) Aboriginal people respect the environment and want to be with Nature because Nature is their friend. Traditional Australian Indigenous peoples see all phenomena and life as part of a vast and complex reticular system of interrelationships whose traces go back to the totemic ancestral spirit beings of "The Dreaming". Similarly, the Ojibwe, like the Australians, saw themselves as just another element of nature; no more and no less than everything else on earth. They held animals and all of nature in high esteem.
4) The search for vision or wisdom:
One of the central points of the Objiwe religion was the acquisition of knowledge through dreams or visions. Entire ceremonies were dedicated to the acquisition of these dreams. Fasting or the abandonment of certain necessities for a certain period of time was a common practice used to enhance the ability to access different dreams or visions (Flett). The tribe reserved certain icons to emphasize the importance of dreams. One of the best known is the Dreamcatcher, which is an object used to catch "good" dreams. It refers to visions. Good dreams, in my understanding, are those that provide important and revealing visions for the person's present, past and future, visions that make sense of synchronicities occurring in life, events, catastrophes and the deeper inner processes of the soul. In addition, the tribe had a "dreamer set in place". A dreamer was a seer of the tribe who had access to dreams of great importance; often these dreams were prophetic and were used to predict impending dangers.
In the Objiwa culture, sweat lodges, known as temazcal, played an important role in dream production and healing. In the use of sweat lodges for dreams, water was poured over hot rocks to produce steam and all doors were closed, as in a sauna. Sometimes pine or birch bows were added to the rocks. This ritual was said to increase the occurrence of dreams, that is, to increase visions. Because when we have a problem or obstacle in life, the important thing is to look for a vision, which has the other side, the other world, our real and true Self, the Great Spirit or whatever we want to call it, to tell about this event what is its deep meaning, its origin and what is the right attitude we should take so that it disappears and we stop creating it in our lives. Our higher Self who is in contact with the "dream time" knows which is the most loving way for ourselves, but if we do not calm our mind and enter into that unlimited and eternal space, we will not be able to hear or see anything real. That is why, wisely, when the members of the community could not see clearly, they turned to the dreamer, the objiwas, and the dream evoker, the Australian Aborigines.
5 - A very deep connection with spiders and cobwebs:
We wonder why these things, like the Dreamcatchers and the Didgeridoo, are so important today, why they produce such fascination that, despite the passing of the years, these objects seem to be more and more popular. I believe, as the Dijoma Association blog says, that "our culture is undergoing a necessary shift in worldview, a shift from seeing everything as a mere lifeless mechanism to seeing it as an organism, full of life, mind, intelligence and soul." That is the ultimate message from the legend of the Dreamcatcher and the Dreamtime tales.
The Dreamcatcher has its explanation and origin in a legend, as these American communities, like the Australian ones, shared wisdom through stories that were passed down from generation to generation. In American legend the Dreamcatcher is related to the spider woman, a goddess who has left this teaching about the circle of life and the web. In ancient American traditions, the spider represents ancestral wisdom in the archetypal figure of the "Grandmother Spider"; in Australian Aboriginal tradition, the spider web serves to protect our dreams. In her book "the voices of the desert" Marlo Morgan refers in the chapter "The evocative of Dreams" to a ritual with a spider web to request a dream or vision "The author explains in the above mentioned book, that everything written in it, is a true story.
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"Spirit Woman explained her talent. Each human being is unique, and each of us is given certain characteristics that are exceptionally strong and that can become a talent. Her contribution to society was that of an evocative of dreams. We all dream, he told me. Nobody cares about remembering their dreams or learning from them, but we all dream. "Dreams are the shadow of reality," he explained. Everything that exists, what happens here, is also found in the world of dreams. All the answers are there. The special cobwebs are used in a song and dance ceremony that serve to solicit guidance from the universe through dreams. Then Spirit Woman helps the dreamer understand the message.
As I understood it, for them "dreaming" means "levels of consciousness." There is an ancient dream when it goes back to the creation of the world; there is an out-of-body dreaming like deep meditation, a dreaming while sleeping, and so on.
The tribe uses the evocators of dreams to ask them for advice in any situation. They believe they can find the answer in a dream if they need help understanding a relationship, a health issue, or the purpose of a given experience.
(...) Without using drugs to control the mind, using only breathing and concentration techniques, they are able to act consciously in the dream world".
The voices of the Desert, Marlo Morgan--------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Man does not weave the web of life, he is only one of its threads. Everything he does to the plot, he does to himself". IINDIAN HEAD SEATTLE
http://www.angeles-luz.es/espanol/svetelna_knihovna/htm/es/es_las_voces_del_desierto.htm