Gadjari

Warlpiri · deity · Warlpiri traditional religion; continuing · deity

Gadjari, in modern Warlpiri Kajirri, is the ancestral Mother, the Old Woman for whom the great second-stage male initiation cult is named. Meggitt's monograph documents the Gadjari as the presiding fertility being of the northern and central-desert cult, associated across the wider region with the Rainbow Serpent and the Kunapipi Mother of Arnhem Land. Among the Warlpiri her presence is oblique: the secret episodes performed in her cult belong to the male Mamandabari pair, and the Mother herself stands some distance from the action, treated almost as a presiding deity rather than a character within the songs. Her cult is understood to have travelled south from Arnhem Land through Wave Hill and Lajamanu into the Tanami.

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