Songlines are also called Dreaming tracks by Indigenous Australians.

Songlines in the culture of Indigenous Australians

Australian's indigenous peoples conceive of all things beginning with the Dreaming or (in some Indigenous languages) Altjeringa (also called the Dreamtime), a 'once upon a time' time out of time where archetypal ancestral totemic spirit-beings formed the World. These shapeshifting spirits embodied forms of animals, plants, people, natural phenomena and/or inanimate objects and their existence is revealed by their formative journeying and the signs they deposited through the landscape. Their dreaming and journeying trails are the songlines (or "Yiri" in the Walpiri language). The signs of the Spirit Beings may be of spiritual essence, physical remains such as petrosomatoglyphs of body impressions or footprints, amongst natural and elemental simulacrae. To cite an example, the Yarralin people of the Victoria River Valley venerate the spirit Walujapi as the Dreaming Spirit of the black-headed python. Walujapi carved a snakelike track along a cliff-face and deposited an impression of her buttocks when she sat establishing camp. Both these dreaming signs are currently discernable.

Another example is that the Rainbow Serpent followed a path across Northern Australia, creating rivers and mountains as she went, and stopping at especially sacred places such as Ubirr. A song, created by her, is still sung by Indigenous Australians, and describes her journey, and the features along it. These songs may also be used for navigation, as they describe where, for example, waterholes may be found in the desert.

Another example is the Native Cat Dreaming Spirits who are said to have commenced their journey at the sea and to have moved north into the Simpson Desert, traversing as they did so the lands of the Aranda, Kaititja, Ngalia, Kukatja, Unmatjera and Ilpara. Each peoples sing the part of the Native Cat Dreaming relating to the songlines for which they are bound in a territorial relationship of reciprocity.

Songlines are an ancient cultural concept, meme and motif perpetuated through oral lore and singing and other storytelling modalites such as dance and painting. Songlines are an intricate series of song cycles that identify landmarks and subtle tracking mechanisms for navigation. These songs often evoke how the features of the land were created and named during the Dreaming. The Dreaming Spirits as they travelled across the Earth, created and named trees, rocks, waterholes, animals and other natural phenomena. Molyneaux & Vitebsky (2000, p.30) augment further: the Dreaming Spirits "...also deposited the spirits of unborn children and determined the forms of human society." Therefore, establishing tribal law and totemic paradigms.

By singing the songs in the appropriate sequence, indigenous peoples could navigate vast distances (often travelling through the deserts of Australia's interiority). The continent of Australia is a system-reticulum of songlines, some of which are of a few kilometres, whilst others traverse hundreds of kilometres through disparate terrain and lands of many different indigenous peoples ~ peoples who may speak markedly different languages and champion significantly different cultural traditions.

An interesting feature of the paths is that, as they span the lands of several different language groups, different parts of the song are said to be in those different languages. Thus the whole song can only be fully understood by a person speaking all the relevant languages.

In the Sydney region, because of the soft Sydney sandstone, valleys often end in a canyon or cliff, and so travelling along the ridge lines was much easier than travelling in the valleys. Thus the songliness tend to follow the ridge lines, and this is also where much the sacred art, such as the Sydney Rock Engravings, are located. In contrast, in many other parts of Australia, the songlines tend to follow valleys, where water may be more easily found.

To indigenous peoples, songlines also confer a title and deed to the holder or the keeper of the particular song (or Dreaming) and entails an inherent obligation and reciprocity with the land.

In his 1987 book, The Songlines British novelist and travel writer, Bruce Chatwin describes the songlines as:

''"...the labyrinth of invisible pathways which meander all over Australia and are known to Europeans as 'Dreaming-tracks' or 'Songlines'; to the Aboriginals as the 'Footprints of the Ancestors' or the 'Way of the Law'.

Aboriginal Creation myths tell of the legendary totemic being who wandered over the continent in the Dreamtime, singing out the name of everything that crossed their path- birds, animals, plants, rocks, waterholes- and so singing the world into existence."''

Songlines have been linked to aboriginal art sites in the Wollemi National Park in New South Wales^[1].

New Age interpretation

Some New Age writers identify songlines with similar lines or paths elsewhere in the world. For example, Molyneaux & Vitebsky (2000) state that a particular totemic ancestral spirit being is often associated with a number of sites, "each of which serves as a landmark to denote the course of its travels". The routes of these spirits are the dreaming trails or songlines and to indigenous peoples, chart the energetic currents of the earth . Therefore, in this view, songlines may be understood as the Earth's subtle energy currents: ley lines in the United Kingdom, naga or snake lines in India, dragon lines (dragon current, or lung-mei) in China.

Lawlor (1991: p.104) states that for many indigenous peoples:

...the blood of the gods, the subtle magnetic, celestial flow, circulates in the veins of the earth. This concept underlies the extensive occult science known as geomancy, the study of ley lines, for which John Michell is the most eloquent commentator.

Lawlor (1991: p.104-105) states

A number of anthropologists and scientists have found that the Aborigines possess an acute sensitivity to magnetic and vital force flows emanating form the earth, which they refer to as songlines. Perhaps the oldest geomancy tradition, songlines are fundamental to Aboriginal initiatic knowledge and religion. Songlines are so named because they are maps written in songs, depicting mythic events at successive sites along a walking trail that winds through a region.

Some indigenous Australians applied red ochre and/or blood, both substances are considered maban, to their bodies to heighten their sensitivities to the Dreamtime and their geodesy prior to ritual dance. Archaeogeodesy is a growing discipline.

Lawlor (1991: p.105) quotes the biophysicists F. A. Brown and F. H. Barnwell who have conducted research on the biological effects of the Earth's magnetic field (and particularly how it relates with directionality and wayfinding):

There remains no reasonable doubt that living systems are extraordinarily sensitive to magnetic fields. By extremely simple experiments it is shown that highly diverse plants and animals may have their orientation modified by artificial fields of the order of strength of the geo-magnetic field...The nature of the response properties suggest that the organism is normally integrated with its geo-magnetic environment to a striking degree. ^[2]

Lawlor then builds on this with citing research conducted on homing pigeons which has pinpointed a tiny crystal in their brain. This crystal which is supersensitive to the earth's magnetic fields or geomagnetic currents, works in tandem with the birds other wayfinding propensities. As Mathrani (2002) states:

Many animals have the ability to sense the geomagnetic field and utilize it as a source of directional (compass) information. Studies have shown that salamanders and frogs use magnetic fields for orientation when they have to find a way to escape from danger, such as from predators. Other animals that have been known to migrate via the detection of the Earth's magnetic field include sparrows, pigeons, bobolinks, yellow fin tuna fish, honeybees, and bacteria. Magnetite has been found in the tissues of all these organisms.

Crystals of magnetite have been found in some bacteria (e.g., Magnetospirillum magnetotacticum) and in the brains of bees, of termites, of some birds (e.g., the pigeon), and of humans. These crystals are thought to be involved in magnetoreception, the ability to sense the polarity or the inclination of the earth's magnetic field, and to be involved in navigation. The study of biomagnetism began with the discoveries of Caltech paleoecologist Heinz Lowenstam in the 1960s.

See also

• Ethnogeology
• Ley lines

Notes

References

• Molyneaux, Brian Leigh & Piers Vitebsky (2000). Sacred Earth, Sacred Stones: Spiritual Sites And Landscapes, Ancient Alignments, Earth Energy. London, England: Duncan Baird Publishers. ISBN 1-903296-07-2.
• Lawlor, Robert (1991). Voices Of The First Day: Awakening in the Aboriginal dreamtime. Rochester, Vermont: Inner Traditions International, Ltd. ISBN 0-89281-355-5
• The Songlines, 1987, Bruce Chatwin, published by Jonathan Cape, 1987, and Vintage, 1998. ISBN 0 09 976991 3
• Footprints on Rock, 1997, Sydney: Metropolitan Local Aboriginal Land Council. ISBN 0 7313 1002 0
• Mathrani, Vandana (2002). Epic Journeys: The Great Migrations. Source: http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/bb/neuro/neuro00/web1/MathraniVand.html (accessed: Thursday, March 15, 2007)