Rainbow Serpent or Rainbow Snake is a common deity often seen as a creator god, known by numerous names in different Australian Aboriginal languages by the many different Aboriginal peoples.
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29 Facts About Rainbow Serpent
2.
The Rainbow Serpent is one of the most common and well-known Aboriginal stories and is of great importance to Aboriginal society.
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3.
Rainbow Serpent Festival is an annual festival of music, arts and culture in Victoria.
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4.
Rainbow Serpent is known by different names by the many different Aboriginal cultures.
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5.
Likewise, the rainbow quartz crystal and certain seashells are associated with the Rainbow Serpent, and are used in rituals involving the rainbow serpent.
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6.
The Rainbow Serpent came from beneath the ground and created huge ridges, mountains, and gorges as it pushed upward.
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7.
The Rainbow Serpent is understood to be of immense proportions and inhabits deep permanent waterholes and is in control of life's most precious resource, water.
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8.
In some cultures, the Rainbow Serpent is considered to be the ultimate creator of everything in the universe.
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9.
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.
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10.
Some commentators have suggested that the Rainbow Serpent is a phallic symbol, which fits its connection with fertility myths and rituals.
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11.
Rainbow Serpent is sometimes ascribed with a having crest or a mane or on its head, or being bearded as well.
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12.
In some stories, the Rainbow Serpent is associated with a bat, sometimes called a "flying fox" in Australian English, engaged in a rivalry over a woman.
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13.
The Rainbow Serpent has been identified with, or considered to be related to, the bunyip, a fearful, water-hole dwelling creature in Australian mythology.
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14.
Rainbow Serpent is sometimes associated with human blood, especially circulation and the menstrual cycle, and considered a healer.
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15.
Thunder and lightning are said to stem from when the Rainbow Serpent is angry, and the Serpent can even cause powerful rainstorms and cyclones.
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16.
Stories about the Rainbow Serpent have been passed down from generation to generation.
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17.
The Rainbow Serpent's mythology is closely linked to land, water, life, social relationships, and fertility.
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18.
The Rainbow Serpent often takes part in transitions from adolescence to adulthood for young men and swallows them to vomit them up later.
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19.
One prominent Rainbow Serpent myth is the story of the Wawalag or Wagilag sisters, from the Yolngu people of Arnhem Land.
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20.
The Rainbow Serpent enters, a symbolic representation of a snake entering a hole, and eats them and their children.
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21.
Now, the Rainbow Serpent speaks in their voices and teaches sacred rituals to the people living there.
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22.
Wollunqua is the Warumungu people's version of the Rainbow Serpent, telling of an enormous snake which emerged from a watering hole called Kadjinara in the Murchison Ranges, Northern Territory.
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23.
Some Aboriginal peoples in the Kimberley region believe that it was the Rainbow Serpent who deposited spirit-children throughout pools in which women become impregnated when they wade in the water.
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24.
Carpet snake is considered a form that the Rainbow Serpent can take by the Walmadjari people in northern Western Australia.
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25.
The myth of the Wawalag sisters of Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory marks the importance of the female menstruation process and led to the establishment of the Kunapipi blood ritual of the goddess, in which the Indigenous Australians allegorically recreate the Rainbow Serpent eating the Wawalag sisters through dance and pantomime, and can be regarded as a fertility ritual.
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26.
Some rock art has been discovered in which the Rainbow Serpent was drawn mouth open and tongue out to represent the vaginal opening and streaming menstrual blood.
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27.
Rainbow Serpent is identified as a healer and can pass on its properties as a healer to humans through a ritual.
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28.
The Rainbow Serpent has appeared as an antagonistic character in the novel Eyes of the Rainbow Serpent.
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29.
Politically, for example, the Rainbow Serpent was adopted as the symbol of an anti-uranium mining campaign in Australia, using the notion that the mining would disturb the Serpent and cause it to seek revenge as a metaphor for environmental destruction.
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