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Jennifer Isaacs - Australian Aboriginal - Rain making
Identifier
003024
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
A corroboree is a ceremonial meeting of Aboriginal Australians. The word was coined by the European settlers of Australia in imitation of the Aboriginal word caribberie. At a corroboree, Aborigines interact with the Dreamtime [spiritual world] through dance, music and costume. They also decorate their bodies - "Their bodies painted in different ways, and they wore various adornments, which were not used every day."
Many of the ceremonies are sacred, and people from outside a community are not permitted to participate or watch.
The following is a description of a rain making ceremony
A description of the experience
Australian Dreaming 40,000 years of Aboriginal History – Jennifer Isaacs
The people gathered on the bare banks and held a corrobee for [their Ancestor spirit] who took a coolamon and showed some of the old men how to call rain. For hours the hard ground rumbled under the stamping feet, while the fine dust rose up through the clapping boomerangs clouding the camps, before the dancers flung themselves to sleep around the dimming camp fires.
Slowly the dust clouds drifted higher and higher into the night sky where they ringed the moon, who filled them with rain. The exhausted dancers were awakened by big heavy drops of rain which thudded onto their stiff dusty bodies and thumped into the soft powdered earth