Erathipa- Aboriginal Australian LocationLocation · Landmark"The Conception Stone"
Description
A sacred boulder of the Arrernte people shaped like a pregnant woman lying on her side. Inside it dwell the ratapa, spirit-children waiting to enter a passing woman and begin physical life. The place where a ratapa enters its mother determines the child's totemic identity for a lifetime.
Mythology & Lore
The Conception Stone
The boulder sits in Arrernte country near present-day Alice Springs. It is shaped like a woman heavy with child, lying on her side. Spencer and Gillen, who documented the site during their fieldwork in the 1890s, described it as one of the most important conception sites in the region.
Inside the stone live the ratapa, spirit-children who have not yet been born. In Arrernte understanding, a child exists as a spirit-being before it enters a woman's body and begins physical life. When a woman passes near Erathipa, a ratapa may leave the stone and enter her, and she conceives. Women who wanted children approached the site. Women who did not stayed away.
The place where a spirit-child entered its mother mattered. It determined the child's totemic affiliation and bound that person to the site of their conception for life. The boulder's pregnant shape was not accident but evidence: the stone looked like what it contained.
Strehlow's work among the Arrernte decades later confirmed what Spencer and Gillen had first recorded. The belief had not changed. The ratapa were still inside.
Relationships
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