Taevajumalad Austraalia rahvausundis
The Sky Gods in Australian Folk Belief

Summary/Abstract: The article on Australian sky gods focuses on material from Southeast Australia. Little is known on aborigines of this region as they were destroyed already by the end of the 19th century. In the first part of the chapter I will present an overview of Australian sky gods from the viewpoint of different authors. The second part discusses extant fragments of myths. Though material on Southeast Australian sky gods is almost completely lost, we might agree that the heavenly Supreme Being is inherent of the Australian tradition. It has not been borrowed directly from the Europeans, although the concept contains numerous borrowed motifs, and researchers and recorders have probably embellished it with assumptions that originally have not been a part of the tradition. Certainly, we cannot speak of aborigines as monotheist people. At the same time we cannot be certain whether they were henotheists in a sense. Researchers have centred their studies only on anthropomorphous sky creatures, but the extant material suggests the existence of a huge number of chthonic beings in shapes of animals, plants, and humans, which in literature are referred to as totem ancestors. Due to inadequate and unfeasible information the analysis of the Southeast Australian material remains marginal. Some of the most recent authors, C. H. Berndt and R. M. Berndt have pointed out the same. The material is attributed some significance in terms of religious history, as many celebrated religion historians in the late 19th and 20th century have based their arguments on this information (among them W. Schmidt, A. Lang, É. Durkheim and many others).

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