Meteors

In the oral traditions of Aboriginal Australians, meteors and meteorites are prominent. Meteors are often associated with serpents, evil magic, omens of death, and punishment for breaking laws and traditions. In Central Australia, a meteor is an omen that the spirit of someone that had died far away was returning home.  Meteors are believed to contain an evil magic called Arungquilta, which is harnessed in ceremonies to inflict harm or death upon someone that breaks a taboo, such as infidelity. Arungquilta could also be found in toadstools and mushrooms, which were believed to be fallen stars, and their consumption was forbidden. Such a taboo may have developed from the consumption of poisonous fungi that are found in the region.

Meteors are also a component of ceremonies. Two Arrernte rituals are performed to cause death using magical means. One involves chanting a spell over a bone or stick and throwing the stick as far as possible in the direction of the intended victim. Afterwards, if the individual performing the spell saw a meteor, it was believed to represent the spirit of the person they had killed. The second ritual, a small spear-like device designed to punish a man for stealing another man’s wife. The spear, endowed with Arungquilta, was thrown in the direction of the offending man’s home. The evil spirit within the spear would locate the law-breaker and kill him. This form of Arungquilta was seen “streaking across the sky like a ball of fire”. The men conducting the ritual would wait until a “thunderous boom” was heard, which signified that the spear had struck and killed the man. Another form of Arungquilta was used to punish unfaithful wives. The Arungquilta would find the woman and deprive her of her fat. The emaciated woman would die and her spirit (ulthana) appeared in the sky as a meteor. 

In Luritja traditions, meteorites are used as tools of punishment or signs of approval. The Walanari (celestial deities who were seen as protectors of good men and punishers of bad men that live in the Magellanic Clouds) cast stones to the earth as punishment for breaking taboos or as signs of approval during totemic ceremonies. Ngalia men claimed people have been killed by stones thrown by the Walanari and said the Walanari threw glowing stones on their camp the previous night after they shared sacred information with an ethnographer. The Yarrungkanyi and Warlpiri people of the Northern Territory tell how Dreaming men traveled through the sky as falling stars and landed at a place called Purrparlarla, southwest of Yuendumu, bringing the Dreaming to the people.