A Serpent in Dreamtime

The Aboriginal people of Australia believe in ‘Dreamtime’, a time before time, a time before knowledge. This was when the Great Spirit Ancestors emerged from the earth and created everything we know today. The Aborigines believe that the Ancestor Spirits dwell in the world today as sacred sites that they have helped create. One such spirit is the Rainbow Serpent.

In the Dreamtime, all of the earth was silent and deep in slumber. Nothing moved, nothing grew and all was quiet. The earth was flat at that time. There were no hills or mountains nor were there rivers and lakes. No grass, plants or trees grew. There was no bird, no animal and no man. The world was not yet awakened.

But it was time for beginnings. The Rainbow Serpent, lying asleep under the earth, stirred slowly. When she woke, she began to move, dragging her long, winding body all across the vast expanse of land. The winding tracks she left behind turned to ridges and valleys. Soon she grew tired and went to sleep again, curling her body. Again, the curves she made created patterns on the land. Every mark she made changed the landscape, bit by bit. The world was changing, very slowly.

Eventually she came back to the place from where she first started out. She called out to the frogs, ‘Come out!’ The frogs came out of the earth, walking very slowly for their stomachs were full of water that they had stored in their sleep. The Rainbow Serpent smiled at the sleepyheads. Seeing their swollen bellies, she tickled them playfully. When the frogs began to laugh, the water ran all over the earth to fill the tracks from the Rainbow Serpent’s wanderings. That was how lakes and rivers were formed.

When there was water, plants, trees, flowers and fruit grew. The land turned green. Now all the animals awoke and began to follow the Rainbow Serpent as she wandered across the land. Everyone was happy. Each tribe lived and gathered food with their own kind. Some lived on the rocks, some in the plains, some on trees and some others in the air.

There were many of them. The Rainbow Serpent made laws, which they were all asked to obey. Before long, some tribes became quarrelsome and began to fight with each other. The Rainbow Serpent watched sadly and sighed. ‘This will not do,’ she told them. ‘Those who do not obey my laws will be turned to stone and those who abide by them, shall be rewarded; they will be given human form.’

Those who paid no heed to her wise words, the law-breakers, were turned to stone. They became hills and mountains. Those who lived by the law were made human. To each of the newly created humans, she gave totems of animal, bird or reptile, representing their ancestry. That was how the tribes knew where they belonged: kangaroo, emu, carpet snake and many more. The Rainbow Serpent made food rules so that no one would starve. No man should eat of his own totem but was allowed to eat the others’. That way, there was food for all.

The tribes lived together in harmony in the land given to them by the Rainbow Serpent, the Mother of Life. They knew the land belonged to them and no one would take it from them. The Rainbow Serpent, like all Ancestor Spirits, went back to where she had come from but you can still see the Spirit after a rain. Look closely, she’s there—the rainbow!