Namarrkon (the Lightning Man)
Namarrkon (also Namarrgon), whose name is the Kunwinjku word for lightning, is the Lightning Man of western Arnhem Land. He is depicted wearing a band of lightning that joins his head, hands and feet, with stone axes fixed to his head, elbows and knees. Striking the clouds with these axes he makes the thunder, and the band about his body is the lightning. He is most active during kunumeleng, the pre-monsoon build-up, and into the wet season of kudjewk, when the great electrical storms come. From the storm-clouds Namarrkon keeps watch on the people below and acts as an enforcer of sacred law: displeased by breaches of right behaviour or ceremony, he plucks a stone axe from one of his joints and hurls it down at the offender as a lightning strike. His image is among the best known of all western Arnhem Land rock-art subjects, and he is recorded in the rock-art ethnography of George Chaloupka and in the myth collections of the Berndts.
Domains
- lightning and storms
- law and punishment
Powers
- to make thunder and lightning by striking the clouds with stone axes
- to hurl his stone axes at those who break the law
Epithets
- NamarrgonGeorge Chaloupka, Journey in Time: The 50,000 Year Story of the Australian Aboriginal Rock Art of Arnhem Land (Sydney: Reed, 1993) (secondary)
Sources
- Namarrkon, whose name means 'lightning' in Kunwinjku, is the ancestral Lightning Man of western Arnhem Land who wears a band of lightning and carries stone axes on his joints, makes thunder and lightning during the pre-monsoon storms, and hurls his axes at those who break the law.: George Chaloupka, Journey in Time: The 50,000 Year Story of the Australian Aboriginal Rock Art of Arnhem Land (Sydney: Reed, 1993) (secondary); Ronald M. Berndt & Catherine H. Berndt, The Speaking Land: Myth and Story in Aboriginal Australia (Ringwood, Vic.: Penguin, 1989) (secondary)