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Aboriginal Religion Summary

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Aboriginal Religions Analysis
Aboriginal people believe that the dreaming stories give meaning to life. It is through their dreamings that Aboriginal people experience wholeness and the holiness of all aspects of life. Aboriginals are born into the dreaming and learn through initiation rituals what life means to them. The dreamtime is about the stories of their past and how everything in their lives has been tied together. Traditional aboriginals believe that the sky always existed and the earth was the home of their mythical ancestors; they believe the earth was covered in eternal darkness because the sun and moon were sleeping underneath the earth’s crust with the mythical ancestors. They believe time began when their mythical ancestors awoke …show more content…

Rules of behaviour, handed down from the spirits, often called their law. A variety of specialists in healing, spiritual harming and rituals include some of the beliefs. Aboriginals believe that it is morally wrong to take more than you need. Instead of believing in one God which they can’t see, aboriginals believe in many gods or deities that are in a recognizable form such as a landscape feature, an image in a rock or plant or animal form
Popular and well known sacred stories are the dreamtime stories, which are the equivalent of the Christian creation story which tells us how aboriginal people believe the universe was created. The dreamtime stories give purpose to life and these stories offer everyday guidance to aboriginal’s belief in many gods which are in the forms of land and animal features.
There are no set sacred symbols in the aboriginal religion, however, these are some of the many symbols that represent the aboriginal …show more content…

This is of enormous value in the kinship system as it structures people’s relationships, obligations and behaviours towards each other and in future this can help people decide who looks after the children when their parents die.
The main religious rituals for aboriginals include: Rites of passage, rituals celebrating the ancestral spirit-beings, rituals of reconciliation and healing and harming rituals. Burial practices are also major rituals which differ from one aboriginal tribe to another. A well-known burial ritual is when the dead body is wrapped in wood and left to rot, the clan of the dead person dance and sing to help the spirit leave the person so that later it can be reborn. Once the flesh has rotted off the body, a relative will carry some of the bones with them for about a year to show their sorrow.
Harming and healing is one of the religious experiences for aboriginals. The harming is usually performed for the good of the community and punishment of wrongdoers, rather than as an isolated act of malice. Aboriginal spirituality is linked to the belief that the land owns the people, and that the people have to respect the

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