alcheringa

1. alternativeuncountableAlternative form of Alcheringa.

   In the alcheringa original ancestors lived who were believed to be closely related to the plants and animals whose names they bore.

   1977, Percival Hadfield, The Savage and His Totem, page 56

   2 more examples

   These ancestors are so intimately associated in the native mind with the animals or plants whose name they bore that an alcheringa man of, say the kangaroo totem, may be spoken of either as a man-kangaroo or as a kangaroo-man.

   1897, Baldwin Spencer, F. J. Gillen, “An Account of the Engwurra or Fire Ceremony of Certain Central Australian Tribes”, in Proceedings of the Royal Society of Victoria - Volumes 9-10, page 24

   No, Brian Elliott's hobby-horse is not the Jindyworobaks' political links—it is his conviction that they are to be remembered and well respected for their awareness of Aboriginal myth and legend and for their understanding and symbolic poetical use of the alcheringa concept (the Dreamtime myth of the creation of geological Australia and its flora and fauna with the related religious and moral connotations of site-worship and animism) .

   1980, Meanjin - Volume 39, page 402

alternative alcheringa

1. uncountableSynonym of Dreamtime.

   Some writers tried to recreate the mythology of the aboriginals, and the Jindyworobaks in particular endeavoured, with small success, to recall Alcheringa.

   2023, T. Inglis Moore, Social Patterns in Australian Literature, page 303

   2 more examples

   Sometimes the spirit child which goes into a woman is associated with one of the sacred Churinga, numbers of which every Alcheringa individual carried about with him or her (for in those days the women were allowed to carry them just as the men were), and then, in this case, the child has no definite name, but of course it belongs to the same totem as did the individual who had carried the Churinga about in the Alcheringa; that is, if it were a kangaroo man or woman, so of course must the child be, and then the old men determine what shall be its secret or sacred name.

   1909, William Isaac Thomas, Source Book for Social Origins, page 245

   Amulet stones are traditionally carried for protection and good luck, but Alcheringa Stones have a much deeper property: that of connection to the land, the spirit of the ancestors, and the dreamtime.

   2012, Judy Hall, Crystals and Sacred Sites

   Synonyms: Dreamtime