The Rainbow Serpent or Rainbow Snake is a common deity often seen as the creator God, known by numerous names in different Australian Aboriginal languages by the many different Aboriginal peoples. It is a common motif in the art and religion of many Aboriginal Australian peoples. Much like the archetypal mother goddess, the Rainbow Serpent creates land and diversity for the Aboriginal people, but when disturbed can bring great chaos.[1]
There are many names and stories associated with the serpent, all of which communicate the significance and power of this being within Aboriginal mythology, which includes the worldview commonly referred to as The Dreaming. The serpent is viewed as a giver of life through its association with water, but can be a destructive force if angry. The Rainbow Serpent is one of the most common and well-known Aboriginal stories and is of great importance to Aboriginal society.[2] [3]
Not all of the myths in this family describe the ancestral being as a snake. Of those that do, not all of them draw a connection with a rainbow. However, a link with water or rain is typical. When the rainbow is seen in the sky, it is said to be the Rainbow Serpent moving from one waterhole to another, and this divine concept explained why some waterholes never dried up when drought struck.
The Rainbow Serpent Festival is an annual festival of music, arts and culture in Victoria.[4]
The Rainbow Serpent is known by different names by the many different Aboriginal cultures.
Yurlunggur is the name of the "rainbow serpent" according to the Murngin (Yolngu) in north-eastern Arnhemland,[5] also styled Yurlungur, Yulunggur, Jurlungur, Julunggur or Julunggul.[6] The Yurlunggur was considered "the great father".
The serpent is called Witij/Wititj by the Galpu clan of the Dhangu people, one of Yolngu peoples.[7]
Kanmare is the name of the great water serpent in Queensland among the Pitapita people of the Boulia District; it is apparently a giant carpet snake, and recorded under the name Cunmurra further south. The same snake is called Tulloun among the Mitakoodi (Maithakari). Two mythical Kooremah of the Mycoolon (Maikulan) tribe of Queensland, are cosmic carpet snakes 40 miles long, residing in watery realm of the dead, or on the pathway leading to it; this is probably equivalent to the rainbow snake also.
Other names include:
Though the concept of the Rainbow Serpent has existed for a very long time in Aboriginal Australian cultures, it was introduced to the wider world through the work of anthropologists. In fact, the name Rainbow Serpent or Rainbow Snake appears to have been coined in English by Alfred Radcliffe-Brown, an anthropologist who noticed the same concept going under different names among various Aboriginal Australian cultures, and called it "the rainbow-serpent myth of Australia." It has been suggested that this name implies that there is only one Rainbow Serpent, when the concept actually varies quite a bit from one Aboriginal culture to another, and should be properly called the Rainbow Serpent myths of Australia.
It has also been suggested that the Serpent's position as the most prominent creator God in the Australian tradition has largely been the creation of non-Aboriginal anthropologists. Another error of the same kind is the way in which Western-educated people, with a cultural stereotype of Greco-Roman or Norse myths, tell the Aboriginal stories in the past tense. For the Indigenous people of Australia, the stories are everywhenpast, present and future.[10]
Robert Blust has documented beliefs about the rainbow in tribal societies around the world that closely resemble the Rainbow Serpent myth of Australia.[11] [12] Rather than supporting the long-standing academic supposition that this belief complex is peculiar to one continent, the ethnographic record shows that it is a culture universal.
The rainbow serpent is in the first instance, the rainbow itself. It is said to inhabit particular waterholes, springs etc., because such bodies of water can exhibit spectral colors by diffracting light, according to one explanation. Likewise, the rainbow quartz crystal and certain seashells are also associated with the Rainbow Serpent, and are used in rituals involving the rainbow serpent. The underlying reasons are likewise explainable, since quartz acts as a prism to diffract light into different colours, while the mother of pearl exhibits an iridescence of colours.
The Dreaming (or Dreamtime or Tjukurrpa or Jukurrpa[13]) stories tell of the great spirits and totems during creation, in animal and human form that moulded the barren and featureless earth. The Rainbow Serpent came from beneath the ground and created huge ridges, mountains, and gorges as it pushed upward. The Rainbow Serpent is understood to be of immense proportions and inhabits deep permanent waterholes[14] and is in control of life's most precious resource, water. In some cultures, the Rainbow Serpent is considered to be the ultimate creator of everything in the universe.
In some cultures, the Rainbow Serpent is male; in others, female; in yet others, the gender is ambiguous or the Rainbow Serpent is hermaphroditic or bigender, thus an androgynous entity. Some commentators have suggested that the Rainbow Serpent is a phallic symbol,[15] which fits its connection with fertility myths and rituals. When the Serpent is characterized as female or bigender, it is sometimes depicted with breasts, as in the case of the Kunmanggur serpent. Other times, the Serpent has no particular gender.
The serpent is sometimes ascribed with a having crest or a mane or on its head, or being bearded as well.
While it is single-headed, the Yurlunggur of Arnhem land may possess a double-body.
In some stories, the Serpent is associated with a large fruit bat, sometimes called a "flying fox" in Australian English, engaged in a rivalry over a woman. Some scholars have identified other creatures, such as a bird, crocodile, dingo, or lizard, as taking the role of the Serpent in stories. In all cases, these animals are also associated with water. The Rainbow Serpent has also been identified with, or considered to be related to, the bunyip, a fearful, water-hole dwelling creature in Australian mythology.
Unlike many other deities, the Rainbow Serpent does not have a human form and remains in the form of animal. While each culture has a different interpretation on gender and which animal the deity is, it is nonetheless, always an animal.