Tjurunga- Aboriginal Australian ArtifactArtifact
Also known as: Churinga and Tywerrenge
Domains
Description
Flat stones or wooden boards inscribed with concentric circles, meandering lines, and sacred designs that are not representations of ancestral beings but the beings themselves, transmuted into forms that weather all time. Each tjurunga holds the vital essence of a Dreamtime ancestor, kept hidden in secret storehouses and revealed only to the initiated.
Mythology & Lore
The Ancestor Made Stone
The Arrernte word tywerrenge means "sacred" or "precious," and the objects it names, flat oval-shaped stones or polished wooden boards, are exactly that. Each tjurunga embodies a specific Dreamtime ancestor. Not a depiction, not a symbol: the ancestor's body undergoes a transmutation into something that will weather all the assaults of time. The stone or wood holds mura, the vital essence that sustains the totemic species, the sacred sites, and the human lineages connected to that ancestor. To hold a tjurunga is to hold the ancestor in one's hands.
The incised designs on the surface, concentric circles and meandering lines and U shapes, encode the ancestor's journey during the Dreamtime. Each circle marks a camp or waterhole, each line a path traveled. The designs map the Dreaming track and carry the ancestor's power.
Hidden and Revealed
Tjurunga are kept in secret storehouses, carefully hidden places in the landscape known only to senior initiated men. Women, children, and the uninitiated are prohibited from seeing them. The path to possessing a personal tjurunga is long: men of the Arrernte groups undergo years of initiation and probation before they earn the right.
In ceremony, tjurunga are swung as bullroarers, their sound the voice of the ancestor calling across the landscape. They are pressed against the body, held during chanting, built into ceremonial poles. Each use activates the mura within.
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