A second sample the Djanggawul Cycle, a major ritual work consisting of multiple songs in a narrative sequence, follows the wanderings of the djanggawal Brother and his two sisters, Bildjiwuraroiju & Miralaidj who came to Arnhem Land from Bralgu (Land of the Eternal Beings).
As they pass through, they people the land.
The narrative describes the ‘heavy ripeness, the swelling & bursting of a teeming life source, colours and Australain views of creation.” We read of the body of the sacred sister, heat around the clitoris, the bussing tree roots, spray & blood and a swarming sense of life emerging – not two-by-two but swarming.
Song 159
Go, take the hot stone, and heat it near her clitoris:
For the severed part is a sacred djuda ranggI. Covering up the clitoris within the mat, wherein the mat, wherin its transverse fibre, wherin its mouth, its inner peak …
Go, thepeople are dancing there, like djuda roots, like spray, moving their bodies, shaking their hair!
Carefully they beat their clapping sticks on the mauwalan point … Go, stand up! See the clanfolk beyond thetransverse fibre of the mat!
They come from the sisters womb, lifting aside the clitoris, coming out like djuda roots …
Into the scared shade, the rangga folk come dancing from the inner peak of the mat …
Only a few people will be left here: some we shall put into the course grass.
We are putting the rangga clansfolk ….
See also Sacred Union Arnhem Land Australia
Expalanatory notes
Rangga is a sacred emblem, identified with the penis of the Djanggawul brother.
Rangga folk initially emerged from the Djanggawul sisters ancestors of the Ahrnam Landers.
Mat, or ngainmara mat- conically shaped, belonging to the Djanggawul sister a symbol of the uterus.
Source Ronald M. Berndt, Djanggawul: An Aborigiginal Religious Cult of north East Arnhem Land (Philosophical Library, 1953) quoted from Technicians of the Sacred – A Range of Poetries from Africa, America, Asia, Europe & Oceania” edited by Jerome Rothenberg.
