Australian Folk Religions

Australian folk religions must be considered as aboriginal religions, which have been in existence since there were aboriginals. The aboriginals having no written text in their culture relied totally on the spoken word.

Aboriginals believe there is a God or Gods, who created people and their environment during a creation period at the beginning of time.

The aboriginal generally believe in a number of Gods or deities, the image of such often seen in some recognized tangible form. This form could be a landscape feature, a rock or plant or animal.

Aboriginals to not practice animism or believe that the other forms actually possess a soul, although they do believe in a form of reincarnation and that plants or animals could have once been people.

There is no one deity that the many tribes of Australia believe in but an overlap of beliefs, as there is an overlap of language between the tribes.

Deities have many varied roles in Aboriginal society but may fall into three main categories.

Creation Beings which were and are involved in the creation of the people and the world.

Ancestral Beings who are considered as the direct ancestors of the people living today and who teach how to hunt and collect food to survive.