... II. The Framework ...

values paradoxes

Songlines and Navigation Star Structures

Songlines are one of the oldest know maps of our world. They are one-dimensional verbal maps. In his 1987 book, The Songlines, British novelist and travel writer, Bruce Chatwin describes these ancient religious Songlines as:
    “. . . the labyrinth of invisible pathways which meander all over Australia and are known to Europeans as 'Dreaming-tracks' or 'Songlines'; to the Aboriginals as the 'Footprints of the Ancestors' or the 'Way of the Law'. Aboriginal Creation myths tell of the legendary totemic being who wandered over the continent in the Dreamtime, singing out the name of everything that crossed their path - birds, animals, plants, rocks, waterholes- and so singing the world into existence.”2.71
 In the Australian Aborigine religion the Dreamtime, or The Dreaming, includes four components:
  1. The beginning of all things;
  2. the life and influence of the ancestors;
  3. the way of life and death; and
  4. the source of power in life.
In the Dreamtime all four of these aspects exist at once. Aborigines call Dreamtime the all-at-once time because they experience it as the past, present, and future co-existing. Dreamtime is met when the tribal members live according to tribal rules and traditions and is initiated through rituals and the hearing of tribal myths. These rituals include learning and repeating the Songlines, which are also represented as art (see
Figure 24). According to the Aborigines, every person has a part to
Figure 24. Topsy Nabanardi Australian Aboriginal Song Line Painting.
them that exists eternally. This eternal part existed before the life of the individual begins, and continues to exist when the life of the individual ends. In both the before and after life this spirit-child exists in the timeless place known as Dreamtime. The Dreamtime is the central theme in Australian Aboriginal mythology, which some estimate has existed for 50,000 years or more.2.72

timedex infinite grid

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