Gwion Gwion- Aboriginal Australian SpiritSpirit
Also known as: Gyorn Gyorn
Description
Slender, dynamic figures painted across the sandstone shelters of the Kimberley for perhaps eighteen thousand years. Dancers in elaborate headdresses and tasseled sashes who rarely carry weapons. They belong to an older stratum of the Dreamtime than the Wanjina who came after, though some Ngarinyin traditions hold that the Gwion Gwion were the original lawgivers.
Mythology & Lore
The Dancing Figures
Across hundreds of sandstone shelters in the western Kimberley, slender figures dance on the rock walls. They are elongated, richly detailed. They wear long conical headdresses and tasseled sashes at the waist. They move in scenes of ceremony and celebration, rarely carrying weapons, their bodies rendered in poses that suggest motion frozen mid-step.
These are the Gwion Gwion, spirit beings of the oldest stratum of the Kimberley Dreamtime, painted perhaps eighteen thousand years ago and preserved by the dry conditions of the sandstone country. They look nothing like the Wanjina paintings that came later, the broad, round-faced, mouthless figures rendered in static, frontal poses on the more recent layers of the same rock walls.
The Older Law
Among the western Kimberley peoples, the Wanjina are the senior beings who arrived and established the current sacred order. The Gwion Gwion belong to an era that preceded and gave way to them. But the Kira Kiro people of the Ngarinyin hold a different view: the Gwion Gwion were the beings who created the law in the first place, and their authority did not pass to the Wanjina. Both traditions stand. The rock walls themselves carry layered images from different eras, each visible, each claiming its place.
Relationships
- Associated with