Barnumbirr (the Morning Star)

Barnumbirr (also Banumbirr) is the Yolngu name for the planet Venus seen as the Morning Star, and the creator-spirit she embodies. Rising before dawn over Bralgu, the island of the dead, she guided the Djang'kawu ancestors across the Arafura Sea to the mainland near Yalangbara; she then flew across the land from east to west, naming and creating the animals, plants and features of the country and laying down a songline. She is said to trail a faint rope of light behind her that keeps her from ever moving far from the sun. In the Morning Star (Banumbirr) mortuary ceremony the Yolngu use a richly decorated, feathered Morning Star Pole to send the spirits of the dead and messages along this string to the ancestors on Baralku.

Domains

• stars and planets
• death and the dead

Powers

• to guide travellers across the sea by her light before dawn
• to carry messages between the living and the dead on Baralku along her trailing string

Epithets

• BanumbirrRaymond P. Norris & Duane W. Hamacher, 'The Astronomy of Aboriginal Australia', arXiv:0906.0155 (2009) (secondary)

Relations

• guide of: Djang'kawu (the Brother)As the Morning Star she guided the Djang'kawu ancestors, including the Brother, across the Arafura Sea from Bralgu to the mainland.Raymond P. Norris & Duane W. Hamacher, 'The Astronomy of Aboriginal Australia', arXiv:0906.0155 (2009) (secondary)

Sources

• Barnumbirr is the Yolngu creator-spirit identified with the planet Venus as the Morning Star, who guided the Djang'kawu ancestors across the sea, sang the country into being from east to west, and presides over the Morning Star mortuary ceremony linking the living to the dead on Baralku.: Raymond P. Norris & Duane W. Hamacher, 'The Astronomy of Aboriginal Australia', arXiv:0906.0155 (2009) (secondary); Ronald M. Berndt, Djanggawul: An Aboriginal Religious Cult of North-Eastern Arnhem Land (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1952) (secondary)