1. Nathan Bernacki

    Nathan Bernacki New Member

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    Does it make sense for a world inspired by the Dreamtime to look similar to our world?

    Discussion in 'Setting Development' started by Nathan Bernacki, Aug 3, 2022.

    I've explained my story at some length before, but I'll just give the notes.

    The setting for my world is based on the Dreamtime. According to Aboriginal Australians, the Dreamtime was the period of time that followed the creation of the world. Each tribe has it's own different beliefs, customs and stories set around the Dreamtime. For most Australians, the most popular representation of the Dreamtime is the Rainbow Serpent. According to the story, the Serpent created human beings and animals by travelling across a flat Earth. The Serpent then created rules which humanity was supposed to live and it eventually retreated into the sky. That is according to one variation of the story.

    For most Aborigines, the most predominant aspect of the Dreamtime is that everything has a soul and that the land contains spirits in different forms. In my story, this aspect is represented by things like reincarnation, talking animals and things like trees being used in the course of reproduction.

    Some other Dreamtime stories include stories about how kangaroos got their pouches, how birds got their colours, etc.

    I've approached this story by giving the Dreamtime the 'Harry Potter treatment'. It's similar to our world, but the magic is in the background and ignored by most people. My story is set in a world that looks similar to the 20th Century with technology such as cars and planes and even similar historical events such as a World War I parallel.

    But I keep asking myself if that makes sense given what I am adapting. I want to give the concept the respect it deserves, but I don't want to give the impression that I'm being lazy with it with the 'magic VS science' conflict I have underpinning the story.

    I have my own ideas for how to make the lore work, but I would like some advice. Does it make sense for a world created by a magic serpent and with talking animals to have technology inspired by the 20th Century? Even if I somehow ensure it makes sense, is a 20th Century style setting too cliche?

    Feel free to pick apart my setting.
     
  2. evild4ve

    evild4ve Critique is stranger than fiction Supporter Contributor

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    I'm aware there are often sensitivity issues with using the Dreamtime - to do with the culture's own storytelling being crowded out by appropriative reinterpretations.
    Giving the concept the respect it deserves might include leaving it alone. That's an open question.
    The lore might not need to be made to work by writers, it might be that writers need to research it and learn to tell the stories that go with the setting.
    And to research something like this adequately we might need to join the community whose lore it is.

    The OP doesn't say if he's an Aboriginal Australian though. If he is, he might find my desire for caution tedious.

    Structurally, if the Dreamtime is just acting as an otherworld (rather than as the setting for the traditional stories that are supposed to be set there), then I'd suggest there's a huge difference between using an otherworld like Tír na nÓg and the Dreaming.
    Tír na nÓg's owners' descendants have been through a lot but are for the most part still alive, and well, and politically empowered. Their culture continued and survived, and having converted to Christianity their otherworld's importance to their cultural identity is historic rather than current.
    Which isn't to say we can do whatever we like with Tír na nÓg, but the potential to upset people if we accidentally misrepresented some aspect of the ancient Celtic afterlife is greatly lessened.

    This shocked me on Wikipedia: the official census in Australia does not include traditional Aboriginal beliefs as a religion. But if there's a population for whom the Dreaming matters probably they don't need the hassle of having to correct writers' stories.
    It's easy to give Heaven the Harry Potter treatment. But what about Jannah? See where that leads.

    Also from Wikipedia, one of the meanings of the Aboriginal word altjira might be eternal / uncreated. If so, the 20th Century might not be able to feature there.
     
  3. Xoic

    Xoic Prognosticator of Arcana Ridiculosum Contributor Blogerator

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    Animism (the belief that everything has a soul) and shamanism feature into every paleolithic religion. In our earliest societies we worshiped nature and didn't see ourselves as separate from it in any way. I would recommend studying the accounts of several such belief systems and taking the common features without using specific names from any particular one.
     
  4. Nathan Bernacki

    Nathan Bernacki New Member

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    I am not an Aboriginal. I am of full European descent, but I appreciate your desire for caution. I'm not sure if I can leave it alone, since I've had this idea for a couple of years now.

    That's probably because the Dreamtime is not a religion in the traditional sense. Aborigines do not have churches, books or anything we associate with Western religions. Aborigines also do not worship the spirits of the Dreamtime, but they're still respected. As for those whom the Dreaming still matters, there are still prominent Aborigines who tell the new generations, both Aborigine and non-Aborigine, about the Dreaming. A lot of what they discuss is what's driving my interest in doing this story.


    I'm not sure where to start in that regard. I don't think I've heard anyone compare the Dreamtime to other belief systems in the world. I have thought about combining the Rainbow Serpent and Quetzalcoatl from the Aztec pantheon, but the only things they have in common are they are both snakes and in some versions of the Dreaming, the Rainbow Serpent is respected for it's wisdom. Aside from that, they are completely different creatures.
     
  5. Xoic

    Xoic Prognosticator of Arcana Ridiculosum Contributor Blogerator

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    Last edited: Aug 3, 2022
  6. Xoic

    Xoic Prognosticator of Arcana Ridiculosum Contributor Blogerator

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    Their church was Nature itself. Their ceremonies were performed in clearings. And they were pre-literate, so they definitely didn't have books. They remembered things through poetry, song and ritual.
     
  7. Nathan Bernacki

    Nathan Bernacki New Member

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    Yes, I know. In Australia, you still sometimes see Aborigines performing ancient ceremonies either on their own land or at special events.
     
  8. Xoic

    Xoic Prognosticator of Arcana Ridiculosum Contributor Blogerator

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    I was responding to the fact that you said they didn't have churches. They definitely did, theirs just weren't indoors. They lived most of their lives in nature, not secluded away from it as we do. But that doesn't mean it wasn't a religion. Note it's included in the History of Religion. In fact I think it's fair to say all of nature was their church. They were immersed in pure religion all the time, as opposed to only on Sundays for two hours.
     
    Last edited: Aug 3, 2022
  9. Xoic

    Xoic Prognosticator of Arcana Ridiculosum Contributor Blogerator

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    The history of religion basically is a movement from pure and permanent religious awe in the face of indomitable Nature, which they sought to appease and honor through all the rituals, toward a gradual separation from nature and a loss of religion. To be honest I think they had far more religion than later societies. They lived completely immersed in it all the time. Religion is an attempt to quell and appease (and honor) nature so it doesn't wipe us out. It's a constant spell designed to make it take pity on us rather than shrug its shoulders and destroy our civilization. As we moved away from primitivism we became more self-aware, began to see ourselves as separate from nature, and to master our environment. With that came our modern arrogance and disregard of nature and religion, and all the modern neuroses and psychoses that characterise our times.
     
  10. Xoic

    Xoic Prognosticator of Arcana Ridiculosum Contributor Blogerator

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    Here's a quote about how Eliade understands religion:

    The Sacred and the Profane

    For Eliade, religion is at bottom a matter of experiencing the sacred, which Eliade thinks of as being essentially synonymous with the divine or numinous. There are “two modes of being in the world:” the sacred mode and the profane mode. In the profane mode, things and actions don’t point to anything beyond themselves, whereas in the sacred mode, some things have – and virtually anything potentially has – the capacity to become the basis for a “communion” with the numinous.[1]

    People experience the sacred through a “hierophany,” an “act of manifestation of the sacred.”[2] Certain stones or trees, for example, might be experienced as conduits of divine presence and power. But, Eliade cautions, “The sacred tree, the sacred stone are not adored as stone or tree; they are worshipped precisely because they are hierophanies, because they show something that is no longer stone or tree but the sacred, the [wholly other].”[3]
    Source
     
  11. Xoic

    Xoic Prognosticator of Arcana Ridiculosum Contributor Blogerator

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    Here's a nice page about Shamanism in the ancient Norse religion and world: Shamanism @ Norse Mythology for Smart People

    Lots of stuff I never knew before. I had no idea Odin's name meant The Master of Ecstasy or The Furious, or that he himself was the consummate Shaman-god.
     
  12. Not the Territory

    Not the Territory Contributor Contributor Contest Winner 2023

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    I think it would be fairly unique. Trying to respect aborigines while transposing a tribal concept into an industrial setting is confusing to me, though. Those things are fairly at odds with each other. There tends to be a cultural resentment there, and the 19-20th centuries were wrought with unethical industry (as opposed to the relatively responsible industry we have today... uh, your mileage may vary). Don't get me wrong, it could work, but you'd want a purposeful angle there which I do not suspect exists at the outset.

    It sounds to me that you like Dreamtime, and you like the 20th century setting. I like yogurt and I like hotsauce, but unless I have a thematic reason to, I'm not going to put those together. To put it a third way, does the combination of those elements have anything to do with what you want to say as a writer? Is there an intentional contrast there? Your best bet may be to take the elements you like and put them in your industrial fantasy world. So, maybe opt for inspiration rather than adaptation.

    Also I don't understand why Dreamtime would have historical events... Dreamtime predates history, no? Isn't Dreamtime before time? Natives/primitives tended to have a different sense of time as well (another thing that goes against the hard, sun-ignorant clocks of industry).
     
    Last edited: Aug 4, 2022

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