Kunapipi, also spelt Gunabibi, ('womb') is a

mother goddess A mother goddess is a goddess who represents a personified deification of motherhood, fertility, creation, destruction, or the earth goddess who embodies the bounty of the earth or nature. When equated with the earth or the natural world, ...

and the patron deity of many heroes in

Australian Aboriginal mythology Australian Aboriginal religion and mythology is the sacred spirituality represented in the stories performed by Aboriginal Australians within each of the language groups across Australia in their ceremonies. Aboriginal spirituality includes ...

Story

Kunapipi gave birth to human beings as well as to most animals and plants. Now a vague, otiose, spiritual being, "the old woman" (''Kadjeri'') once emerged from the waters and travelled across the land with a band of heroes and heroines, and during the ancestral period she gave birth to men and women as well as creating the natural species. She could transform herself either into a male or female version of the

Rainbow Serpent The Rainbow Serpent or Rainbow Snake is a common deity often seen as the creator God, known by numerous names in different Australian Aboriginal languages by the many different Aboriginal peoples. It is a common motif in the art and religio ...

Origins and diffusion

The Kunapipi cult seems to have arisen among tribes in the Roper and Rose River areas. In the Alawa version she is said to have emerged from the waters. From there it is thought to have gradually spread north-east into

Arnhem Land Arnhem Land is a historical region of the Northern Territory of Australia, with the term still in use. It is located in the north-eastern corner of the territory and is around from the territory capital, Darwin. In 1623, Dutch East India Company ...

, where it existed as a complementary masculine form with Djanggawul, a female figure. According to Tony Swain, Kunapipi traditions, especially regarding her northern origins, reflect the impact of Sulawesi/Macassar influences, via contacts with trepang traders, and possibly the pre-Islamic rice mother cult, which survived down to modern times among the

Toraja The Torajans are an ethnic group indigenous to a mountainous region of South Sulawesi, Indonesia. Their population is approximately 1,100,000, of whom 450,000 live in the regency of Tana Toraja ("Land of Toraja"). Most of the population is ...

and

Bugis The Bugis people (pronounced ), also known as Buginese, are an ethnicity—the most numerous of the three major linguistic and ethnic groups of South Sulawesi (the others being Makassar and Toraja), in the south-western province of Sulawesi ...

Notes

Citations

Sources

* * Australian Aboriginal goddesses Creator goddesses Fertility goddesses Mother goddesses {{deity-stub