Obscure Mythology Chapter 2:

Bagadjimbiri: Creator Gods of the Aborigines.

     The second installment of Obscure Mythology (I apologize to anyone who knows about this stuff and scoffs at the idea that it is obscure, I don’t want to insult anyone’s intelligence or beliefs. If you have heard of these or know of these examples intimately I mean no offense when I call them obscure. I use it in reference to myself only.) comes from Australia and after reading it I realized once again how similar this creation theory is to so many others out there. You may also notice I chose a myth that begins with B, I decided to do one per letter of the alphabet for this series. It is really difficult picking just one and I know I will go back at a later date to give the other myths in these letters a look as well but for now I will whittle it down to a letter a chapter. Alright here is the tale of Bagadjimbiri, creator Gods of the Aboriginal tribes of Australia.

     These two brothers came up out of the earth in the form of two dingos, mated a toadstool with a fungus to produce humans and gave the gift of reproduction to the first people. The brothers grew into giants as high as the sky, but were killed in a dispute with the cat-man, Ngariman, and his tribe. The Earth-Goddess, Dilga, drowned the killers with a flood of milk from her breasts, restoring the brothers to life at the same time. When they finally died of natural causes they turned into water snakes.

Bold face type is information gleaned from The Dictionary of Mythology an A-Z of themes, myths and legends. Compiled by JA Coleman. 

It is amazing how this particular creation myth has so many aspects of other myths from around the world in it. I would imagine this story in particular is well over 20,000 years old. Passed down from generation to generation by the elders of the tribes. The Aboriginal peoples of Australia have been on the continent for at the very least 40,000 years, isolated from the rest of the world. Remember that as you reread this myth. Now I will highlight some of the crazy connections I found in this little paragraph:

The two brothers took the form of dingos. According to Roman Mythology Rome was created by two brothers who were raised by wolves, Romulus and Remus.

They turned into giants as high as the sky. Here we have reference to giants, which most ancient myths have, think of the Greek Titans,  the Sumerian Annunaki and the bibles very own Nephilim for some examples.

There is an obvious connection to the flood myth. Sure they say it was breast milk but the only thing that matters here is that a flood is referenced.

I also caught a small hint of a resurrection much like Osiris in Egypt or even Jesus of Nazareth from the bible. There are many more examples of resurrection in mythology I just referenced the two most famous. I am also not saying Jesus is only a myth, that isn’t my call to make. I encompass religion into mythology since they are basically the same thing.

The last real connection I saw to other creation myths is the fact that the two brothers were turned into water snakes when they died. Snakes make an appearance in many ancient myths and religions and the snake symbolism isn’t always a bad thing.

Those were the obvious glaring connections to other creation myths or religious beliefs I could find in that paragraph. I should note that I am only using the Mythology book as a reference here. I have noticed that these myths have been translated differently in various ways. For example while researching the Efik people yesterday the books version of the myth of Abassi was quite different from what I read on Wikipedia or other websites. I am mentioning this only for those of you who may feel compelled to do more research into any of my posts on this subject. You may Google it and get a way different version, this doesn’t mean I am making this up or the books compiler is wrong, it just means they used different references to get their data. I myself trust good old books to the internet any day. I have quite a library of reference books, encyclopedias, dictionaries, etc. I’m old fashioned when it comes to research, I’d rather dig through a musty old book then the crazy interwebs. Anyhow, back to the Bagadjimbiri brothers. I found a few other things interesting about this story like the fact that the brothers were mortal and that the world had already been created, just not humans. A lot of creation stories have humans and the Earth arriving at the same time. The other thing was how they created humans, by mating a toadstool with a fungus! There has to be some symbolism in that. I didn’t get the time to research what the toadstool or fungus may have meant to the Aborigines but I would bet there is something to it, I don’t think a toadstool mating with fungus is something someone can just make up! I wonder though, isn’t a toadstool a type of mushroom? And aren’t mushroom fungi? That was just my musings, like I said I am sure there was a reason for the two items. The brothers also give their creations a gift, reproduction. If you recall in yesterdays post Abassi also gave his creations a few gifts, his were a little more morbid than these guys, but it is interesting to see what their gift to their people was. Reproduction, was the key to survival in ancient times so it is a good gift to give humanity if you want them to continue, right? I looked into the cat man, Ngariman, in the book and it only said that he and his tribe killed the brothers and then were subsequently killed by the breast milk flood of the Earth-Goddess, so I guess that was the cat-man’s man claim to fame in their myths. The last issue I wanted to discuss was the fact that they were turned into water snakes when they died, again I am positive that water snakes have a special symbolism to at least a few Aboriginal tribes. We shall see as we continue learning about these myths that snakes are a big part of it. Some more reoccurring themes we will probably run across are the flood myth and resurrection so these are things to keep in mind as we continue down this road of research and learning. I hope you all enjoyed today’s post and I can’t wait to see what the book and the letter C can bring us the next time! Have a great day and as always: PEACE!!!!