Wanjina- Aboriginal Australian SpiritSpirit"Cloud Spirits"

Creation in the Lalai

In the Lalai, the Ngarinyin name for the Dreamtime, the Wanjina emerged from the sea or descended from the sky to shape the Kimberley. Each Wanjina traveled across a specific part of the landscape, creating mountains, rivers, and waterholes through its actions. Some carved the dramatic gorges and escarpments of the interior. Others formed the islands and bays of the coast. The routes they traveled became songlines, sacred pathways encoding creation narratives, territorial boundaries, and ecological knowledge in ceremonial song.

After completing their creative work, each Wanjina chose a rock shelter or cave where it would come to rest. There, the Wanjina laid itself down and its spiritual essence passed into a painting on the rock surface. The physical body dissolved into the landscape, becoming a pool, a waterfall, or a rock formation. But the essential being remained present in the image on the cave wall. These paintings are not representations of the Wanjina. They are the Wanjina themselves.

Wodjin and the Great Flood

A Wanjina named Wodjin broke the sacred law that the Wanjina had established. In response, the Wanjina unleashed a great flood. The waters rose to cover the Kimberley, destroying much of what had been created.

After the floodwaters receded, the Wanjina set about restoring the world. They repainted themselves on the rock shelter walls, establishing the cycle of ceremonial repainting that continues to this day. Wodjin's transgression also explains the Wanjina's mouthlessness: their mouths were closed to prevent the kind of uncontrolled speech or action that had provoked the deluge.

The Mouthless Face

The Wanjina's appearance is unmistakable: a large round head surrounded by a halo representing lightning or the edge of a thundercloud, prominent eyes that gaze out at the viewer, and no mouth. The Worora say that if the Wanjina had mouths, it would rain forever and flood the world. Their mouthlessness keeps the rain under control. The Ngarinyin hold that the Wanjina are so powerful that if they spoke, their words would devastate creation.

The halos around their heads are the clouds from which rain falls. Their eyes are the sources of that rain. The sealed mouths hold back the deluge.

The Repainting Ceremonies

Unlike most rock art, which fades untouched, Wanjina paintings must be periodically refreshed by authorized individuals. This is not restoration. It is ceremony. Each act of repainting renews the Wanjina's power and ensures the coming of the wet season rains.

The ceremony is performed at the end of the dry season. Only specific individuals with inherited rights and ritual authority may repaint a particular Wanjina. The painter approaches the sacred site with proper ceremony and refreshes the pigments: white pipeclay for the body, red ochre for the halo, black charcoal or manganese for the eyes. Each material is drawn from the country of the Wanjina it renews. Through this act the painter reactivates the being's rain-bringing power.

Some images have been repainted dozens or hundreds of times over millennia, each layer of pigment another ceremony, another generation maintaining the ancient compact. When paintings fall into disrepair, the rains may fail and waterholes dry up. Elders recall periods when colonial disruption prevented access to sacred sites, and the deterioration of the paintings coincided with the faltering of the wet seasons.

Spirit Children and the Rainbow Serpent

The spirits of unborn children dwell in sacred sites and waterholes, waiting to be sent into the world. The Wanjina send these spirit children to enter women and be born as human beings. A man may dream of receiving a spirit child from a Wanjina, or a woman may encounter one near a waterhole. Every child's spiritual origin lies in the Wanjina's creative power.

The Wanjina share this role with the Rainbow Serpent, known as Ungud to the Worora and Wunggurr to the Ngarinyin. The Wanjina control the sky, clouds, and rain. The Rainbow Serpent dwells in the deep waterholes and controls the waters of the earth. The Serpent sends up the moisture that becomes clouds, and the Wanjina send down the rain that refills the waterholes where the serpent dwells.

Wallanganda and the Milky Way

Each Wanjina belongs to a specific territory and a specific group of people. The country contains the Wanjina's creation story: the routes it traveled, the features it made, the place where it came to rest. While Wanjina share common characteristics, each is an individual with a name, a history, and a territory.

Wallanganda's journey took him across the sky. His path established the great band of stars that stretches overhead, and his power extends from the celestial to the terrestrial, connecting sky country to earth country. Namarali shaped specific features of Ngarinyin country during the Lalai, his story preserved in the rock paintings and songlines of the territory he created. Their images still watch from the rock shelters. Their ceremonies are still performed.