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Dreamtime 2
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Sequel to Dreamtime 1
"A walkabout is when Aborigines undertake a spiritual journey to a belonging place to renew their relationship with their Dreaming and the Landscape." (Ref. 5) In Dreamtime -1, there are first some personal dreams, then a couple of Aborigine resources and after that I began writing Dream Analysis, walking through the text just written in the opposite direction, beginning at the end, to arrive at the beginning in the end of the ride. |
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We met Ouroboros several times in history, and in this website. The meeting of the beginning with the end. Strange enough the system to catch a dream, to remember the content of it on awakening, works best when I remember the last piece of it, at the frontier between dreaming and daily dreamtime. Then I walk back into misty memory to find the scene just before the finale. Going several times up an down through the last two episodes, to reinforce registration into medium term memory, is the best way to pick the tree. Then a third cluster of interacting symbols - the last minus two act in the play - appears into mind, and so on, until the beginning of the dream vanishes somewhere in forgotten darkness. The whole cycle takes only some minutes, but is absolutely necessary in most cases to remember the dream afterwards. The same for previous page, I wrote some dreams, and then in a sort of dreamlike free association tour in Collective Unconscious Web, or Collection of Available Publications, wove a sequel to the dreams series, ending up where I feel everything has been found to fuel the borderline of the actual running fire in my mind. Dreamtime timeless now reached the bottom of O (Ouroboros) and arrives at the tail of the tale, being a wriggling movement propelling the beast further into consciousness. Here, with texts, pictures and some sounds, awareness results in an ever growing ability to speak about, look at and listen to personal mindscapes, rooted into the past and, certainly now with the WWW, into multi minded history actually available. The circle is closed. Now, at the beginning of part two of the page, we are about halfway the tale, and it would be interesting to look at the two beasts touching each other's tail with the snout, in the picture at the top of the page, blown out of the didgeridoo. There are two lizard like animals in the ring instead of one, with a bird in the middle instead of nothing. The two lizards, in my interpretation, are dreamtime and dreaming, daytime and the night respectively to put it simple. In the dreamtime timeless time, where I am awake, the words and pictures come into my mind as if I have the intention to produce them in the order they finally are produced are visualized on the actual page. The production of the sentences takes some minutes or more. The writing of the page takes several days : from 10-04-2004 (Dream 1) to 21-04-2004 (walkabout dream) today, when I write this line. The recollection of some words to make a sentence out of nothing but the intention to say something goes very fast, like the bird picking the seeds fallen on the ground under the tree. The bird in the picture above. Every day some seeds fall out of the tree, and every day a piece of text can be written. The sentences also can be seen as the small twinkles in the fire running through my mind while trying to get to the purpose I aim : to relate aborigine social structure with the organization in my head. Of course the seeds have to grow back on the tree, and this takes place at night by dreaming dreams. Parallel to the text I write (Dreamtime) from the beginning until now, I wrote down a series of dreams on the next page : Walkabout, from 14th to 21st of April exactly. It is the encounter of being confronted with being out of seeds and the feedback coming out of night that makes it possible for the bird to pick for an other time. Every 24 hours the O circles round. In the course of the days, an even slower phenomenon takes place : the big contours of the fire running about, the walkabout through mindscape, giving inspiration and energy for the evolving story. It is surprising to reed myself what I write, because I never know it beforehand. It is like writing, publishing and reading all at once, walking my own personal walkabout, backed up by unconscious feedback, from myself en from the web. Real time talking with somebody else, with direct interaction, is comparable, but not the same at all. But that's an other story. At the moment we renew the relationship with dreamtime and landscape, looking for interesting important places rooted in the past. |
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Walking back in a fresh dream to remember its contents is an excellent system to collect dreams, but I forgot to mention an important detail. It is favorable to wake up out of the dream, and stay lain in the dreaming position for a while. It seems easy enough, but that is not simple at all. I generally turn on my other side while or just before awakening, whereupon the the idea of having had a dream slowly comes up. It feels like bumping onto a sort of resisting substance, preventing the dream to become conscious in my daytime mind. This resistance reminds me of Australian landowners disliking their aborigine workers to go walkabout. Resistance is an analytical concept too, but that again is an other story, about my forgetting to mention the dreaming position detail. |
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"Clan members regularly
move camp and go on cultural journeys for taking care and for
corroborees, initiations, and other cyclical, ritualized ceremonies
of the Dreamtime.
An individual can also go on walkabout. Western Arrente country showing three dreaming tracks (songlines). (Ref. 8) |
 (22-04-2004) |
Herbert Basedow in 1925 noted that: (Ref. 9) It is common practice . . . among the tribes of Australia, for one individual to carry on conversation with another by singing the words. When, for instance, it is the intention of the person engaged in conversation to make the matter as little noticeable as possible, or when they want to impart information to each other without attracting the attention of a third party, they clothe their words in song. And the same is also done when a third party is criticised. (Ref. 9) |
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There they are, the kids in my head, the department holders, guards of the clusters of symbols related to the original firstlings installed in my brains, owners of the stones singing the song of uncontaminated primal AHA-experiences. Perhaps I should name them from now on the origines. Then we find an excellent metaphor covering human mind and history when we, being a collection of origine totems (groups and/or individuals), encounter engraved churinga memories on walkabout along songlines, when we undergo the creative process of living. The metaphor holds for the individual mind, but as well for a group of interacting people, the brains being the center of coordinated intentionality of a category or totem. The totems however being well organized and strongly rooted in aborigine country, are of questionable quality in our ever changing modern times. Let's dig up some other parallel stories, to illustrate our two parallel pages (Dreamtime and Walkabout, writing awake and dreaming asleep). |
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First we read the bible, the passage on the adulteress : ... "The Law Moses commanded us to stone such a women, what do you say?" Instead of answering, Jesus wrote in the sand and it is unknown what that might have been. When they persisted for an answer, Jesus gave them the words : "Let he that is without sin cast the first stone." Then he continued writing in the sand |
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With a little bit of imagination I draw something in the sand while telling the story. Jesus, I heard, was a kind of gnostic, perhaps an analyst before the term existed, having lots of clients with depressions and all the DSM-IV disorders of Jericho, coming to Him for a consultation. Having the problem in my room, I, if I were Jesus, should try to identify me with the person talking first. He has something with the law, and is the injured party, angry at the woman having such openly visible black hole in the middle of her organization (concentric circles at the left). The offended man has a black hole too, but nobody has seen it yet. The analyst thinks : "What the heart thinks, the tongue speaks", so perhaps the man projects (horizontal lines between the two persons) his blackness into the soul of the woman to get rid of it. The stones of the law lay there ready to ban the evil out of the world. The three small circles on top of the picture will be thrown by the man on the head of the woman. But now the woman speaks without words about her being poor and having lots of kids to feed, and her husband drinking everything he can get, and then this friendly man who gave her things and so, and that she never has been loved by her surly father. The analyst feels the counterattack, the readiness to blow the dark stuff back to the dirty beast in front of her, to get rid of it. The stones beneath are going to be thrown by the woman into the bottom of the man. The analyst, eager to make things visible, has no other choice but suggesting that the killing should start right now, but, of course, they first have to find out who will be killed by whom. Then they go home after a while, and the analysts makes some notes not to forget the names of his clients - you never know they come back. The drawing in the sand (or the words perhaps) were just showing the tracks of the walkabout in the head of Jesus, listening and thinking about a good enough answer. But people were so impatient to hear the verdict, longing to shoot the sins out of the world, hoping to get rid of the black attraction pole in their own mind, that after all they forgot to listen to what had been seen under the hood. Therefore they don't remember the picture in the sand, and could not get the answer either. |
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First we had a story about a man telling a story and writing in the sand in the meanwhile. Now we have a parallel story about a man writing in the sand, to further explain what he is telling. Like the teacher explaining the hike of the Goths. We arrive at the Roman era, always explained as the Goths being the wild barbarians attacking the civilized Christian world. Primitive parts of nomadic tribes running away from the grinding poverty and cold in the north of Europe, threatening good people, jealous of their fine clothes and jewels and household goods. I never heard it was the Romans who gradually suffocated the freedom of movement of the nomads, soothing them with gold and modern conveniences. |
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The story of the Aborigine history of the past hundreds of years is told and written in the sand by Helmut. The picture shows Helmut's sand drawing of parallel stories - the Israelites and the settlement of western Arrente (Aranda) country. (Ref. 11)
Text corresponding to the drawing (Ref. 11) : "You remember that story, that one begin with Adam and Eve? Adam and Eve, that one living with their children. Mob of children there, all living together that way. [Here he demonstrated in a typical way parallel vertical lines of descent representing the genealogy of Adam and Eve.] Then the flood came. A lot of people die. Whole lot of people there. Noach, he save some of those people. Take them to an other place [drawing horizontal lines to an other location]. Next, those people, they become slaves. They went to Egypt [more lines representing travel and relocation]. Those Egyptian people, they were cruel. That Bible mob, they left Egypt, and they travel, travel, travel that way [drawing parallel lines again with fingers in the dust]. That mob move again, to Babylon. After that, everything mess up. They come up with a whole lot of languages. After that, everyone speak different language. The narrator paused here for quite a long time and then said, 'Relha mob, lakinha ngerra [It has been similar for the Aranda], gesturing slightly with his hand towards the country, but still looking down.
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 (24-04-2004) |
Yesterday I was looking at further data to explain reciprocal accusations and claims for love and respect. Very interesting stuff indeed. I even was wondering about the analogy between 'everything proper messed up' and the phenomenon of blooming in water after eutrophication. As the parallel dream next door explains, two stops to far, when I want to reach a topological map as a metaphor in the walkabout of the origines of my head. Western Arrente countries with "skin" system
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The "skin" system is something special, with moieties, generation lines and things like that, and I don't have the intention to make a detailed study of it. Just the outlines I want to mention. There are interacting groups of Aborigines, categorized in overlapping systems, with boundaries and idioms, specializations and responsibilities. That's the outside world, with a possible parallel story in the inner world.
Various regions of activation under four language-related conditions (Ref. 14). The brains are something special, with moieties (hemispheres), successive lines of thought and things like that, and I don't have the intention to make a detailed study of it. Just the outlines I want to mention. There are interacting groups of origines, categorized in overlapping systems, with physical boundaries and structures, specializations and responsibilities. That's the inner world, with a functional parallel history in the outer world. |
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Vesalius looked into the human body, and did not understand very much of it. We look into humans too, and don't understand much of it neither. |
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Aborigines also seem to have looked into humans, painting X-ray figures. Very strange figure indeed, with sturdy thighs and a small head. Perhaps meant as an optical illusion, from a frog's perspective, to make the man more impressive. The bones are depicted, but in other drawings the bowels too are present. As if they saw people with everything they knew, and not only what the retina captured. A little bit like little children draw headfooters, not what they see, but what they have in mind. |
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I am eager to write something about the mind, the origines in my head, the interaction between them, and the emergence of conscience. So much information and ideas come up, just like the tram in my dream, boxed up with people, and me getting stuck and two stops to far, and forgetting my school bag. |
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It is the first real crossing of the two stories. (1) Being the things I write while awake, with a purpose and will, (2) the series of dreams (walkabout page) and (3) this very moment where I have to use the manifest dream elements to get back in the direction I think I want (home). I was in search for my school bag, so let us dig it up. |
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The feeling of being boxed up amongst a babbling mess of people and a ticket controller comes very close to the last dream of the first dreamtime series (dream 5) where I get stuck in the mud right in front of a windowpane. The first year of basic school. Master Leo's territory - terrible story. He was a friendly young man, just coming from school TTC (Teacher's Training College) - in Dutch : Normaalschool = Normal School. There he had been made normal, and he patiently learnt us to write between the lines. |
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In the beginning we did not write on paper but on a slate with a slate-pencil. The rag in the picture was a sponge in our first year, a sponge in a box, wet and stinking.
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A bakelite box is seen in the picture, perhaps with an orange sponge-like flat round pom-pom, half worn out in the middle. On seeing the reading book, in the background, I still get the shivers.
The high scraping squeak the pencils sometimes made, gave me the shivers too, as if the tiny hairs on by back raised in horror. "I read and I write", neatly between two parallel horizontal lines, with an extra line under and above to delimit the tails of L and F and so. Parallel stories.
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There we were, in the classroom. The light always came from the left. In some classrooms there were also windows on the right side, looking onto the corridor, allowing the headmaster to look inside with his inspecting eyes. No introspection of course, no no, just the expecting glance of finding decent pupils and normal teachers, not dreaming away through the windows. Parallel to the text I write here, the dreams on page walkabout, I am reading a novel written by William Lambe : Inapatua. (Ref. 21). Some parts give me the feeling of reading my own history. Irritcha (the writer of the book) is an Aborigine, who has been picked up out of his tribe by a white family, to be made normal at school and so. At age 18, he decides to go walkabout in order to meet his relatives. Illuta is a girl of his original people, promised to Irritch by the family. In part One 1, chapter 3 : walkabout, I found some striking lines : "...Illuta was in disgrace over the dog. The fish (she catched) were a
peace offering to her much aggrieved aunt, One-eyed Peggy. Illuta’s widowed
aunt had been given two pups by an irate station owner whose pedigreed bitch had
been served by a dingo. No verbal agreement was reached but for twelve months
Illuta raised the female pup and her aunt the male. Then the aunt’s pup made
the fatal error of jumping for a kangaroo’s throat. The dog was promptly slit
from throat to tail with one slash of the razor sharp hind claw. The little
arm-like front legs of the roo contemptuously threw the body aside. ...Three days before I arrived One-eyed Peggy decided to settle the matter.
She went to Illuta’s campfire wildly swinging her stick and screaming abuse at
her about keeping the bitch. Illuta parried the blow at her legs with insolent
ease and crashed her own stick down on her aunt’s head with a crack which
could be heard all over the camp. The blow would have smashed a white man’s
skull like an eggshell but Abunda have thicker heads. On the second day after
the fight Illuta’s aunt started to recover from concussion, her good eye began
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The directness of the interaction can only be found between children, here (Belgium) in our civilized normality. Children playing aunt and niece, say, or children having a real argument where it comes to blows. The genetic installation works completely perfect in the sense that nobody has to be learnt to fight, bite, shout or cry. We do it by instinct. Further on in life, when we are normalized, real arguments are always in the air, and sometimes the blows turn up through the polite polish, and politic police is asked to reestablish order. |
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"The Nulla Nulla is one of the most deadly weapons, whether used at close quarters or thrown. The shape may vary between tribes but is usually between half to one metre in length and can be used as a club or throwing stick. The handle tapers to a sharp point near the handgrip, towards the other end the handle widens into a bulb. Like the Boomerang, a Nulla Nulla could light a fire using the same method of spinning it quickly with downward pressure in the surface crack of a dry log and a spark was made. Nulla Nulla was basically a throwing stick." (Ref. 22) I was between 3 and 4 years old there, and I remember the stick very well. My father let me have it, because I found it and I wanted it, and my mother let me have it, because my father wanted it like that. At the end of the ride, far before reaching 'home' again, I had to throw it away, because my mother wanted it like that, and my father did not say the contrary, because my mother was the boss at home. So there went my Nulla. I remember the strange situation because I wanted a stick as a symbol for my power, as a weapon, certainly not as a walking stick - although I did as if I walked with it like an old man - to comfort my mother perhaps. I felt the thin protection of my father - available for a moment - until the verdict of my mother blew it away. The picture is taken on the dike, subject in lots of my dreams, with the surf on the right side. The windows in the houses were on the left, just like in a classroom, but for a moment I was at the other side of the desk, so to say. Walking in the dreamtime. |
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Breaking Camp
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"...Her bare feet made only a slight impression on the
baked earth and dead grass but occasionally there would be a softness in the
dust and Illuta would deliberately leave the full imprint of her foot. Keen eyes
could tell that each footstep was precisely inside the mark of a shoe. It was
not a little girl’s game. From then on, whenever she saw my tracks, Illuta
would walk in them for a short distance. The entire tribe – with the exception
of myself – knew Illuta had accepted the man to whom she was promised. The
double tracks were also a warning to other women to stay clear of her man..."
(Ref. 21)
Unrelated to the possession of the staff, the desire for power, was the desire to 'have' a girl. It was far more erotic and sexual than every real sex I had later on in real life. The smell of girly stuff, the supple walk, the smile, everything was mysterious and attracting me like a siren. The feeling was not in the sexual organs, but in the stomach, somewhere. |
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Les sirènes (Ref. 24) Les sirènes sont des animaux mi-femmes mi-poissons . Elles sont dirigées par un Ondin qui est le roi de toutes les mers : il est mi-homme mi-poisson . Les sirènes chantent des mélodies envoûtantes . Les chants des sirènes attirent les marins imprudents et les emmènent au fond de la mer pour les manger . Il parait que Ulysse s'est enchaîné à son propre bateau pour qu'il puisse entendre les chants des sirènes sans se faire dévorer par les sirènes car il traversait l'île aux sirènes et ses marins se sont mis de la cire dans les oreilles .Les sirènes sont une légende mais il y a des animaux qui sont de la famille des siréniens et on dit qu'ils ressemblent aux sirènes mais pour moi ils n'y ressemblent pas car ils sont beaucoup plus gros . Anderson s'est inspiré de cette créature pour écrire : la petite sirène . Cette sirène est la fille du roi Triton . Elle voudrait devenir être humain pour courir et danser . Elle est amoureuse d'un prince qui a failli se noyer et qu'elle a sauvé . Anne - Charlotte [The sirens. - Sirens are animals half-woman half-fish. They are ruled by an Ondin, the king of all the seas : he is half-man half-fish. The sirens sing enchanting magic melodies. The songs of the sirens attract imprudent sailors and take them to the depth of the sea to eat them. I heard that Ulysses chained himself to his own ship, allowing him to listen to the songs of the sirens without being devoured by the sirens because they traversed the island of the sirens and the sailors had put wax into their ears. The sirens are a legend but there are animals which are family of the sirens, and it is said they look like sirens but for me they don't look like them because they are to fat. Anderson got his inspiration from it to write his story : the little siren. This siren is the daughter of king Triton. She wanted to become human to run and dance. She is in love with a prince who had to drawn himself and was saved by her. - Anne-Charlotte] |
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I should say that self-defense and sexual attraction, just like eating (and killing beasts) and drinking and other physical affairs, are primal origines, already there and active from the beginning of life. In animals it has to be fine-tuned to real life - the dog has to learn that it can't kill a kangaroo. In humans it has to be normalized all the same, but with a perverted undercurrent. If I write nicely between the two parallel lines, I am priced by the teacher, and perhaps get more attention and love from my parents, sweets and so, but, if I walk neatly between the two parallel lines chalked on the street by who knows who (the law, the church, the father, the symbolic order, people, television, publicity... ), then I am considered being a calf ready for consumption. |
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"...I had finally decided that I had been insulted enough
(by the group of youngsters) and walking
out would be a reasonable reaction, when an old man held up his hand with the
fingers extended. There was instant respectful silence. Pride and dignity seemed
to emanate from the greybeard’s leathery body as he sat, bare chested, his
feet bent under him in the dust. The ancient, half hooded eyes stared into mine. "...the Feasts of the Circumcision and of the Holy Name, both of which show the relation of the Infant Jesus to the Old Law: The Circumcision (in addition to being the first time our Lord sheds blood for mankind) formally makes the Christ child part of the Covenant, and the Holy Name (formally given to Him when He is circumcised) identifies Him with the God who revealed His Holy Name to Moses on Mount Sinai." (Ref. 25) Sounds a little bit like Dhalja inviting his brother to pass through the Lartna ceremony to become atua-kurka. It should be said that my personal view on the ceremony is a little bit clouded by my own degenerate almost-circumcision operation, which I experienced as an attempt to cut out my devilish lust when fiddling with my Willy, not as an invitation to become part of the club. |
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In the mist of the clouds, I descry initiation rites with mutilations symbolizing death and resurrection, the end of childhood liberty and the becoming part of the community. "Most of the initiation rituals in Aboriginal society follow a pattern of death and rebirth. For example, a novice dies to the profane world of childhood and irresponsible innocence, the world of ignorance, and prepares himself for rebirth as a spiritual being, much as Christians receive a new soul at First Holy Communion. The tribe understands this death literally and mourns over the novices as the dead are mourned (Eliade, 1973). The Aborigine sees life in death and is exposed to it throughout his lifetime in the initiation processes that allow an internal experience of the journey from life to the realm of the dead." (Ref. 27) |
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"The link between the living members of the tribe and the spirits of their ancestors is the shaman, known as the Karadji. While in a lucid-dream the Karadji is chosen by the spirits to be their representative to the world of the living. Godwin describes the initiation process (from the Arunta tribe of northern Australia) that the shaman must go through. Spirits “throw an invisible lance which transfixing him through neck and tongue, and another which pierces his head through ear to ear. His dream-corpse is then given new internal organs and crystals are embedded in his wrists and third eye, which will later become the source of all his magical powers.” The relationship between the different planes of existence is shown in Figure 2.
Godwin also mentions similarities between the Aborigine initiation ritual and the process for which the Iban shaman in Indonesia is chosen. The Iban shaman, also initiated in a lucid-dream state, “has his head cut open by spirits who take out and wash his brain so that he can see things clearly. They sprinkle his eyes with gold dust so that he can see a person’s soul and attach hooks to his fingertips so that he can catch any wandering souls.” "(Ref. 28) |
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"The American society denies death and views it as a threat to life. The Aborigine, on the other hand, understands the spiritual reality of death and its necessity. To the Aborigine, it is impossible to understand how to exist in this life without knowing how to exist in death and therefore it is once again apparent that the society's views on death are reflected by their views of life. The world only has meaning to the degree that Death and the Unborn have meaning. To deny or distort the purpose and meaning of one is to deny the same for all (van Beek, 1975)." (Ref. 27) As far as I can see and understand, initiation rites have something to do with the awareness of personal death and introduction into some sort of covenant, community, clan, society, which is seen as eternal and universal. The reconciliation between consciousness being alive and the loss of it when dead. Or, the coming out of the realm of innocence as a child - on the primitive animal-like level, into the becoming part of a higher order network of mankind where privileges and freedom are restricted, dreams normalized. I have the nasty feeling of missing the clue, having been introduced into an empty community as a child, initiated with a feast wherein they forgot me being the reason for the bacchanal, eventually to become part of the struggle for personal consumption. Sorry for the fart, but it had to be said, because I think where I personally have gone through in youth, and revived with all possible facets in the long years of psychoanalysis, is a quite normal example of people getting into trouble in our nice modern society - and there are quite a lot of them. |
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Past sentences are like firing a gun in the living-room, aiming at the banana-plant and seeing the bullet ricocheting for a while alongside my ears (dream 14-04-2004/1), after which we can return to calmer waters for a while - down there in the void. |
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"Dreams express as sensory metaphor. For metaphor
to elicit nuance it must be fresh, not dead; it must shock the mind into wonder
by opening up a gap, an abyss, a void. |
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There. So everybody can see why I got interested in dreaming from the beginning, because it enables me to connect with, and be part of, the larger unity of dreamtime. In fact, and also because I hate being cut off pieces of my body, I think that dream-work is a good candidate to replace the continuous 'wild' initiation process, allowing an internal experience of the journey from life to the realm of the dead and the unborn. Working with dreams like here opens up a continuous process of creation, eventually revealing the unborn - the not yet created. With my encounter with the greengrocer's nothingness, or connectedness, I have to end my walk in dreamtime, and enter into the realm of what is coming. |
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Copyright © 2004 A. Syberg Site Last update 21.01.2007 |
