The Afterlife in Aboriginal Australia
Ideas about the afterlife were fairly similar over much of Aboriginal Australia, though the details varied between areas (Elkin, 1954: 319). There were basic similarities throughout Aboriginal Australia, though there was no single uniform belief about an afterlife. A person's actions during life had no bearing on the wellbeing of his spirit in the afterlife, there is no hell or heaven, as referring to a place where only those who were 'good' during life were allowed to enter. The uncertainty as to whether a dead person's spirit is allowed to enter the
Land of the Dead is based more on whether they display physical signs of having taken part in certain rites, such as initiation, and to whether or not the mourners have carried out the appropriate
mortuary rites correctly. The sanctions applied here are usually very vague.
One belief that seems to be universal, or at least almost universal throughout
Aboriginal Australia, is the
indestructible nature of the
human spirit, though there are occasional statements to the contrary. The spirit of a deceased person is believed to retain the individual identity of the person immediately after death, but generally this is a temporary state. The loss of personal distinctiveness, or separateness, is not seen as the destruction of the spirit. It is perceived as one approach to the concept of
immortality, regardless of whether of not reincarnation is involved
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