Among the ancestral figures of Aboriginal Australia, the Rainbow Serpent is probably the best known outside the continent. It appears in stories, bark paintings, rock art and ceremonies from regions very far apart. Yet this very spread calls for caution: behind a single English label lie many different beings, each with its own name, country and story.
A modern label
The expression Rainbow Serpent was adopted by anthropologists in the first half of the twentieth century, notably by A. R. Radcliffe-Brown, who observed that in many parts of Australia there was a belief in a great serpent linked to water and to the rainbow. It was a useful shorthand for comparison, but communities speak of specific beings:
- Ngalyod among the Kunwinjku of western Arnhem Land;
- Waugal or Wagyl among the Noongar of south-western Australia, linked to the rivers and lakes of the area of present-day Perth;
- Yurlunggur in the narratives of the Yolngu of north-eastern Arnhem Land;
- many other names, in as many languages.
Lord of the waters
The most constant trait is the link with water. The serpent lives in deep pools, springs and rivers; its winding body carved out riverbeds and gorges in the rock. The rainbow that appears after rain is often understood as the serpent moving from one pool to another, or rearing up towards the sky.
On a continent where water is life and its absence is death, this figure takes on enormous importance. It is associated with the wet season, the growth of plants, and the fertility of the land and of living beings. In several communities certain pools are regarded as the serpent's home and must be approached with care: a newcomer is introduced to the place by a custodian, sometimes by calling out their name or wetting them with water from the pool, so that the serpent recognises the visitor and does not treat them as a stranger.
Creator and punisher
The Rainbow Serpent is an ambivalent being. On the one hand it shapes the landscape and brings the rain that makes country habitable. On the other it is dangerous: many stories tell of people swallowed, or of floods unleashed because someone had broken the law.
A famous example is the cycle of the Wawilak (or Wagilag) sisters among the Yolngu. Two sisters on a journey stop at the great serpent's waterhole and unintentionally pollute it. The serpent rises, raises a storm and swallows them. The story, with its many variants, underlies important ceremonies and speaks of seasons, of rules of conduct and of relations between men and women.
The recurring lesson is clear: those who respect water places and ancestral norms live in harmony with country; those who violate them risk unleashing forces they cannot control.
In rock art and on bark
In Arnhem Land there are rock paintings of great serpents, some of which rock art specialists consider very old. In bark paintings from the same region Ngalyod is often shown with a body decorated with dense cross-hatching, rarrk, which gives the image a luminous, almost shimmering quality.
These works are not mere illustrations: for the artists they make the ancestral being and its story present. This is why some images are public, while others may be seen only by initiated people.
The serpent and the land today
The figure of the ancestral serpent has also taken on contemporary significance. In the Perth region, for example, the Noongar have invoked the Waugal in debates over projects affecting rivers and lakes regarded as sacred. In such cases the ancestral narrative becomes an argument for protecting the landscape, showing that the Dreaming is not a folkloric memory but a living reference point.
A comparative glance
Anyone familiar with world traditions will notice that the water serpent appears in many cultures: from the nagas of South Asia to the Chinese rain dragons, down to the serpent biting its own tail in the Hermetic tradition. Studio Esoterico Cornelio finds these comparisons stimulating, but recalls that every symbol must first be read in its own context: the Aboriginal serpent is not an abstract archetype, it is a being that dwells in a specific pool, in a specific country, looked after by specific people.
In short
- "Rainbow Serpent" is an anthropological label for many different ancestral beings.
- It has local names such as Ngalyod, Waugal and Yurlunggur.
- It is linked to water, rain and the fertility of country.
- It is ambivalent: it creates the landscape but punishes those who break the law.
- Its images are sometimes public, sometimes restricted to the initiated.
