Ghosts, Shades and Creatures of the Underworld

As an Author much of my life has been plumbing the depths in research. Having always had an interest in the paranormal and supernatural, seeing it as an 3^rd and 4^th dimension to our lives and our world, I have  always had a drive to discover more. It is a world and history that science largely ignores but which philosophy often dabbles in.

As an Aussie I was delighted to discover as a child, the realm of the Australian Spirit Creatures and that of the Underworld, often identified as the Dreaming… an area within the realm of the Dreamtime. That Australia has an Underworld comes as a shock to many despite the fact that it is the most ancient of lands. Our continent is riddled with the caverns of the Dreamtime, places etched by water, wind and volcanism such as Jenolan Caves, Undara and the vast caverns of the Oondiri Plains to name just a few.

So very little is known of Australian Lore and Legend such as that which has been bought to us by those who walked across the land in the millennia and longer before the birth of civilizations. This is truly remarkable in that they left etchings, paintings and tales nurtured within their Lore and born down through countless generations, idealism’s which were largely untainted by other religions trying to remould or destroy these oral stories and histories.

In most civilizations and dynasties the initial aim of any conquering, or even emerging group was to destroy evidence of the past. The need to scatter any remnant of religion, doctrine or law of the previous inhabitants was paramount and murder as well as mayhem was commonly done. Sometimes we find the remnant of this such as in the Mayan, the Druid and the Norse histories etc. Tales of an ancient people who usually had only an oral or pictorial history common in their time which is largely identified as pre-history. This essentially means that writing had not been invented or not widely used at the time.

Since the invention of writing, we have largely ignored the pictorial and oral histories and pre-histories unless they were reinterpreted into text. What though becomes of a history when it has not been reinterpreted?

It becomes Legend.

Despite the fact that some legends were reinterpreted (rightly or incorrectly) and these pictorial or oral histories we now have and which we uphold as religion in general, were originally also legend or a oral history. However we give so much credence to text these days that we ignore anything which escaped the remodelling of men through the written word and a scribes interpretation of it. We instead place great emphasis on this interpretation by deign of its age, ignoring often much older Legends that remain un-interpreted.

Australian Aboriginal Legend is such as this and it has only been in the most recent century that any serious interpretation has been attempted outside of the recount of campfire tales and ceremony.

We all have heard of the Rainbow Serpent, what perhaps is not understood is that this term was an invention of westernized men to describe what they found in a very ancient culture. It often comes as a shock, even to the descendants of this ancient culture to discover that it is a blanket term as well as a descriptor of an ancient form, that of the serpent, any serpent.

Of the ancient legends and tales of the Australian serpents there are many, each with individual characteristics and roles within Lore. The term Rainbow Serpent describes all of Australia’s ancient serpents in the minds of modern man completely discounting the legends and stories attached to the many cave drawings scattered across the land.

This just scratches the surface of what is truly a rich and valuable Lore, one that has many similar aspects as other Lore’s and religions of the world. They each tell of ancient tales recounted and interpreted as moral or important lessons whose meaning was to be remembered and recounted as a guide through life. Such as the tale of the serpent in the Garden of Eden, who bought knowledge to Adam and Eve in the Christian belief and in doing so corrupted their naïve existence rightly or wrongly. You can’t do wrong until you know it is wrong so despite being venerated as evil, the Serpent was in fact the first religious missionary.

That there are many other spiritual creatures, shades of men and supernatural phenomena in our world is fascinating to me and I like to take the evidence of each story or legend I find and place it within the context of the modern world as I have done with the stores of The Dreaming Series.

As I embark on the new tales of The Spirit Children, I have found even richer evidence of this ghostly and spiritual world into which I can delve.

I have always loved the tales of the Kadaitcha Men, the legends of the Oruncha and the impish creatures of the forest such as the Jongorrie who inhabit the world of the supernatural in Australia. There are so many more of these ghosts of legend, hard to grasp in our world yet so rich in stories and evidence of their existence.

I find it naïve that people chose to ignore such things, it is like choosing to ignore air, because you can only feel it but not see it. Much the same as many ignore the spiritual world or the world of the ghost and ghoul and the Underworld. It is a wonderful place to visit in tales, a delightful place to read about and when it is presented in the context of what is possible and even probable… that is truly a wonderful story to read.

To read more travel tales, or explore the world of the Australian Aboriginal Shaman told in a fictional tale and to discover other works on traveling around Aus. visit my web at http://janhawkins.com.au and check out the discounts available for my readers and friends on ‘Where to find Jans Books’.

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Related articles

• The Lore of the Dreamtime (janhawkinsau.wordpress.com)
• Black Dogs and Fairies (monstersandmagic.wordpress.com)
• Grimms’ Fairy Tales exerted a profound influence on many generations, and defined what a fairy tale is (mirror.co.uk)