Kunapipi- Aboriginal Australian GodDeity"The Old Woman"
Also known as: Gunabibi, Kunapippi, Gadjeri, and Mumuna
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Description
The Old Woman whose name means "womb," venerated across northern Australia as the earth itself. In the great ceremonies bearing her name, young men enter a sacred pit representing her uterus and emerge reborn as adults, consumed by the mother and brought forth again.
Mythology & Lore
The Old Woman
Kunapipi is known across a broad sweep of northern Australia, from Arnhem Land westward. Her name means "womb." She is also called Gadjeri, "old woman," a word that carries authority rather than frailty. She does not walk across the land as other Dreamtime beings do. She is the land: the ground itself, the soil that grows things, the country that holds the living.
In one Mara tradition, recorded by R.M. Berndt, Kunapipi appears as Mumuna, who lives at her camp with her daughters, the Munga-munga. These spirit women go out and entice men back to the camp. When the men arrive, Mumuna swallows them. They do not stay swallowed. From inside her body they are born again.
The Pit
The great initiation ceremonies bearing Kunapipi's name center on a sacred pit or enclosure dug into the ground. Berndt documented these rites in Kunapipi (1951). The pit is the mother's uterus. Boys enter it. They are consumed, held inside the earth, gestated. When they come out, they are men.
The ceremony spread from Arnhem Land across tribal and linguistic boundaries. Women hold specific roles in the rites. The core stays the same wherever it is performed: the pit as her body, the boys going in, the men coming out. Everything that transforms a boy into a man passes through the Old Woman first.
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