The Rainbow Serpent in Australian Aboriginal religion and art scholarship

Record summary

The Rainbow Serpent is a name used for related but not identical ancestral traditions documented across several Aboriginal Australian communities. Late twentieth-century studies of rock art, ritual, land and oral tradition offer material for comparing visionary imagery, sacred geography and culturally transmitted accounts of nonordinary beings. This is not a single event or proof of a transpersonal entity. A researcher should select a particular community and source, because the English label “Rainbow Serpent” compresses distinct names, stories and ceremonial contexts into one comparative category.