I have been into myth since I discovered my Dad's childhood book of Greek heroes (see previous post). I loved it but it confused me because I identified with the male heroes in the stories, not the wives and daughters. When I went looking for a more relevant mythology to replace the rather patriarchal slant of the Greek and Roman stories, I became involved with Druidism and Celtic lore. This was much more appropriate because this was my own ancestry, Scottish & Irish, but also European. My mother used to tell me about the 'Celtic pockets' in Holland and the huge mysterious forests. From my understanding, the Celts moved across continental Europe from East to West and remain concentrated in Scotland (having been also combined with other genetic material from invasions and the usual interbreeding). I resonated more with the symbolism and stories of the Celts but I was still a little confused being in Australia. The seasons in the Northern Hemisphere were all back to front and many of the animal totems didn't exist in this continent.
There has to be some argument, whether of Aboriginal descent or not, for each of us born in this country, to go looking for its stories. There is much I do not relate to in Indigenous myth because it is built on the traditional social and familial connections between its people and the land, but I have long recognised that the serpentine is a common symbol in cultures world-wide even though its meaning is fluid. We have the evil Judeo-Christian Serpent in the Garden of Eden, the lucky Dragon of the Chinese who also represents chi, the dualistic Celtic Dragon, the life force of natural cycles who may be benevolent or cruel and of course we have the Rainbow Serpent and all its variations in localised Indigenous myth.
I have been working on a small booklet to educate people about the Menang, the local Indigenous tribe. In my liason with Indigenous folk in relation to this, I have had some major realisations. The first is that these are not my stories to tell. It doesn't matter that they may be contained in a huge report that is available to the public. They belong to particular families and the ownership of these stories gives them custodial rights over certain areas of land. There is a very important distinction between non-Indigenous history (which may be typically suspect anyway) and stories that are specific to a clan or tribe. This is easy to miss and took me a few minutes to absorb. The second thing: when my Indigenous friend and I were going through the documentation to make sure that the correct terminology was being used, she stated that to her, the word myth gave the wrong impression because it intimated that the stories were about events that were a) in the past and b) not true. I suddenly got a mental picture of the beautiful photo (above) which I had seen in a magazine. The penny dropped.
The Indigenous sense of time is not linear and this is where I find a welcome resonance with my own beliefs. Time in the Celtic tradition is not only cyclical but co-existent: everything that once exists still exists now. I remember discovering this concept in a sci-fi book when I was about 15 and it seemed perfectly reasonable. It explained a lot of unexplainable phenomena, like seeing things and people that weren't supposed to be there. Now before you write me off as delusional.....take a look at the photo. The Serpent is still here and now, it still rages, meanders, takes and gives life. It created the waterways with its massive 'body' in the Dreaming and still resides over them. To really appreciate this phenomena requires a different view of time but it is a vital key in the appreciation of an Indigenous world view and the subsequent pain that the Western (read 'capitalist') orientation to life is inflicting all over the world.
The Serpent & the Dragon
