Spirit-Child: The Aboriginal Experience of Pre-Birth Communication
by Elizabeth Carman and Neil Carman, Ph.D.Column Editor's Note:
The stories that we hear of pre-birth communication are typically about a woman sensing contact with her future child -- so much so, that it is difficult to keep the subject from being classified as "just" a women's issue. How fascinating, therefore, to learn of a culture where it is primarily the men who experience contact before conception. This article, excerpted from Cosmic Cradle, a forthcoming book by Elizabeth Carman and Neil Carman, Ph.D., presents stories from Aboriginal groups as reported in anthropological research. It offers a glimpse into a world imbued with very different assumptions from our own, reminding us of the plasticity of the human psyche.
Cosmic Cradle (publication scheduled for early 2000) is an extraordinary compendium of evidence for the most mysterious phase of human existence--the stage before conception. It brings together traditional accounts, little-known historic references, and interviews with contemporary Americans. This broad-based research makes it clear that the experience of pre-birth communication has been known and recorded throughout history and across cultures world-wide. More information is available online at CosmicCradle.com or email Elizabeth Carman.
Communications with the unborn may be as old as human life itself. Aboriginal peoples of Australia, a territory slightly larger than the U.S., had unique economic, political, social, and linguistic characteristics. At the same time, they shared one extraordinary belief: conceiving a child is founded in a spiritual event--a "spirit-child" selects his parents and this event enables biology to take its course. A Forrest River Aborigine, as a prime example, dreams of a spirit-child playing with his spears or with his wife's paper bark; the husband thrusts the spirit-child towards his wife and it enters by her foot. Conception then proceeds into pregnancy (except in certain cases where conception occurs several years later).
The term "spirit-child" roughly equates with the Western concept of the soul. Aside from that similarity, the Aboriginal pre-conception paradigm contrasts with science's understanding of pregnancy. The first anthropologists to hear Aboriginal pre-conception reports assumed that the spirit-child pre-empted the role of male sperm, and labeled this notion "the most elementary belief concerning the genesis of the individual."
Even more puzzling, Aborigines held their belief after learning about biological conception as an accidental collision of sperm and egg. They contended that sexual intercourse, though it may prepare the way for the child's entry into the womb, by itself is not the sole cause of conception--since a spirit-child is necessary. As elucidated by anthropologist Ashley Montagu(1):
The Aboriginal world is essentially a spiritual world, and material acts are invested with a spiritual significance... The spiritual origin of children is the fundamental belief, and among the most important stays of the social fabric. It is absurd then to think...intercourse could be the cause of a child.
A contemporary researcher who lived with the Aborigines explains the spirit-child concept(2):
The new life which has chosen to enter the woman is a complete entity who has originated at some time in the long distant past, and is immeasurably more ancient and completely independent of any living person.
Perception of spirit-children depends upon intuitive ability. Aborigines generally agree that the spirit-children are tiny, fully developed babies. Four versions follow:
Ngalia: Spirit-children have dark hair with light-colored streaks. They sit under shady trees, waiting for a compatible mother to pass by. Meanwhile they eat the gum of acacia trees, and drink morning dew.
Tiwi: Spirit-children are small dark-skinned people who are two to three inches high, but reach nine inches in maturity.
Western Australian Aborigines: Spirit-children are as small as walnuts and wander over the land, playing in pools like ordinary children.
Central Australian Arunta: A spirit-child is the germ of a complete pre-formed individual, about the size of a tiny, red, round pebble.
Messages From the Dream World
Spirit-child dreams are the catalysts that transform a spirit-child "from the world of the unborn to that of the living." [Editor's Note: And most surprisingly to our modern mind-set, such dreams are primarily the province of the men.] In a representative dream, a small dark-skinned spirit-child, two to three inches high, reveals its name and expresses a desire for birth. If the man has several wives, he chooses the most appropriate mother and describes her whereabouts to the spirit-child.
One young man's dream occurred six years prior to his son's birth. In the dream, Bos saw a pilot involved in an air battle. The enemy shot his plane down, and wounded the pilot's arm and leg. The injured spirit-child approached Bos and said, "You are my father, but I will send my sister to be born first. I must go to America to get good medicine. I will be born to you in six years. You will recognize me." Sure enough, the moment Bos saw the newborn's crooked arm and leg, he said, "This is the son I dreamed."
A man's dream is the root cause of pregnancy, according to the Unambal and Worora Aborigines. In such a pre-conception dream, the man's soul can wander around the country and meet a spirit-child, usually at a sacred water pool where the man's own soul originally "emanated." After dreaming about the spirit-child, he hands it over in a second dream to his wife. Aspiring fathers who sleep near the water pools typically dream of a rock python, a supernatural being, who comes bearing a spirit-child in its mouth as a gift. Nine months later, the father names the newborn after the water pool where he "conceived" him.
Husbands sometimes "find" a spirit-child in a dream when they are away from home. On these occasions, an Aborigine captures the spirit-child and ties it in his hair until he returns to his wife. He transfers the spirit-child to his wife by placing it near his wife or on her navel. The spirit-child enters the wife's womb, "though not necessarily at once."
Aborigines exhibit such a high level of sensitivity that they not only meet spirit-children via a subtle dream, they even find them while hunting or gathering food. They often experience omens, see fleeting images, or hear a spirit-child's voice in the wind or water calling "father." A spirit-child picks out a suitable man, sits upon his shoulder, and rides home with him after the hunt. The "father" hears the spirit-child whispering into his ear, or feels him tweaking his hair or making his muscles twitch.
Men in the Forrest River region observe spirit-children riding on the back of the legendary Rainbow Snake. The sacred spirit of fertility carries spirit-children along the rivers and lakes where potential fathers are fishing. When a spirit-child sights a man to his liking, he calls, "father." A receptive man brings the spirit-child home by securing him in his hair which is smeared with red ochre, drawn back and bound with hair string. In certain cases, a man will find a spirit-child when he "sees" a tiny snake or fish suddenly appear and disappear. Then, for some reason, he keeps the spirit-child for years fastened in his hair before transferring the spirit-child to his wife.
Spiritual Versus Biological Paternity
Daisy M. Bates, more than any other outsider, understood the Broome District Aborigines. This gentle English woman pitched her camp and lived a nomadic lifestyle with the Aborigines for nearly forty years.(3) Bates discovered something unusual about the Aborigines: paternity is the responsibility of the spirit-child rather than the father's sexual act. A man's dream determines his fatherhood rather than his sperm. So firm was the spirit-child paradigm among Broome District Aborigines that no man acknowledged paternity unless he had met the spirit-child in his sleeping hours. In one instance, a husband accepted a child born to his wife during their five-year separation, thereby ignoring the lapsed time between intercourse and birth.
An anthropologist found parallel beliefs among Tiwi Aborigines. Larry, as a case in point, accepted his wife's child as his own spiritual daughter upon returning after a two-year absence. Larry's daughter had appeared to him in a dream during the couple's separation. She touched him with a spear and asked, "Where is my mother?" Larry described how to find Dolly at Snake Bay.
One full moon night, upon Larry's return to his wife Dolly, he walked along the beach cradling his wife's infant in his arms. He was delighted with his wife and ecstatic about their newborn daughter, even though he was not the biological father. He sang to the baby about "the spirit land from which all people came and to which they return on death."
Bates cites further reports of men who denied paternity even if the couple had never been apart. In such cases, the men did not have a spirit-child dream, or dreamed of a daughter, but their wives birthed sons or vice versa. In these cases, the mother must locate the "real" father who had the spirit-child dream.
Lost Visions
Aborigines reported fewer pre-conception dreams once Western religion, rationalism, and science began to spread throughout Australia. A number of subtle factors contributed to population decline of Aborigines, as Dr. Andreas Lommel discovered.(4) As part of the Frobenius Expedition in 1938, Lommel studied modern culture's impact on Aborigines in the Kimberly Division of Northwestern Australia. The German ethnologist interviewed Ungarinyin, Worora, and Unambal Aborigines, including "civilized" Aborigines and those on the fringe of settlement, as well as the "untouched" who maintained their heritage.
To begin with, Aborigines who had been raised on missions and government stations knew little more about hunting kangaroos with spears or collecting edible roots than a typical white man. These stock boys, farm-hands, and laborers had adopted European dress and preserved only fragments of their native language. These assimilated men differed from their forefathers in another significant way. They were losing the ability to have "proper" spirit-child dreams. Birth rates were decreasing. As a result, despite excellent economic and sanitary conditions, only one-tenth of the two hundred members of the Worora in the Kunmunja Mission was under twenty, typical of a population in decline.
A missionary's advice, "Increase sexual contact with your wives," fell upon deaf ears. The Worora knew that conception depends upon a spirit-child's will to be born. The physical sex act was "more or less insignificant," even though the men had been educated about male sperm.
In Lommel's discussions with the Aborigines, the men offered one reason for fewer spirit-child dreams: "Sleep must not be too heavy." The dreamer must remain alert and sensitive, even as the body rests. When a man dreams like that, the spirit-child's name enters his heart; then, it "goes into his head" and the man becomes "fully conscious" of it. In essence, the Aborigines attributed proper dreams to a duality of consciousness event, an alert mind and resting body -- comparable to conscious dreams as defined by yogis who pursue a meditative life-style. The Aborigines began to accumulate modern stress once they left the tranquil, silent life of the bush where they had practiced sacred ceremonies and had time to contemplate and meditate.
Lommel spoke to Aborigines who hid in the back country away from white men. The lifestyle of the Unambal, as a prime case, remained unchanged. Kangaroos were abundant and economic conditions remained favorable. The government prohibited visiting adventurers, traders, and settlers from entering Unambal territory.
Nevertheless, the Unambal reported falling birth rates. And instead of spirit-child dreams, they encountered nightmares. Even though the Unambal had never seen a white man, they were irritated by the rumors and dreamed of "white men who looked pale like the spirits of the dead," devices flying overhead, and strange lighted steamboats that passed in the night. News of the approaching civilization upset their peace of mind. The Unambal no longer attained the psychological "disposition necessary for the physical act of generation." In a sense, the Aborigines were suffering from a kind of psychic shock. As Lommel put it, the spirit-child dream might well be indispensable for biological conception.
References
1. Ashley Montagu (1974) Coming Into Being Among the Australian Aborigines. London and Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, p.63.
2. James G. Cowan (1992) The Aborigine Tradition. Boston: Element Books (160 N. Washington, Boston, MA 02114.) p.25.
3. Daisy M. Bates (1940) Passing of the Aborigines: A lifetime spent among the natives of Australia. London: John Murray, p. 27.
4. Andreas Lommel (1951). Modern culture influences on the Aborigines. Oceania, 5, 21.