The Effect of Dreamtime on Aborigine Daily Life

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Despite the vast number of different religions in the world today, a single one stands out. This religion is the cumulative beliefs of the Australian Aborigine people, often referred to as Dreamtime. Dreamtime was a fascinating subject for the first European settlers of Australia, and for many generations after them. Children’s story books are still written about the topic. These tales portray the Dreamtime beliefs in a relatively accurate, yet extremely simplified, way. The truth is that Dreamtime is a very unique religion that is set aside from almost every other religion on the Earth. The religious traditions of the Australian Aborigines vary significantly from those of other religions in a few key ways: everything is somehow related to a deity, there is no distinction between things sacred and profane or real and imaginary, and there is a universal oneness in thought and in body; these differences show up everywhere in day-to-day life and heavily influence everything related to the Aborigines.

Although there are more facets to the religious aspects of the Australian Aborigines, the center of the beliefs is Dreamtime, which is a creation myth, a daily event, and a life-guide. The Aborigine religion mostly an animist framework, in that there is no set number of deities (Koepping 368). There are a few specific deities that are held higher than others, such as deities that created large land masses (Koepping 368). These deities created the universe in a period known as the Dreamtime, or also the Dreaming. These deities are ancestral totemic spirit being, who came to earth and made everything the way it is now (Australian Aboriginal Religion). Unlike some other beliefs, the Aborigines believe that these archetypal beings had and ...

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