dream time
Australian creation mythology
Dream time (also Dreamtime or the Dreaming) is the Aboriginal Australian concept of the mythological era when ancestral spirits created the world, its features, and its laws.
This creation period isn't simply past—it exists continuously, accessible through ritual, story, and sacred sites.
The term has been borrowed loosely to mean any timeless or mythic state of consciousness: In dream time, the boundaries between past and present dissolve.
- aboriginalIndigenous to a place
- creation storyAccount of existence's origin
- sleepRecurring unconscious repose
- visionAbility to see
- reverieAbstracted, pleasant daydream
ancestral · spirit · spirit world · creation · mythology · oral tradition · slumber · unconscious · wandering · songlines · eternal · sacred · sacred site · trance · outback · stories · desert · starlight
- Native Folklorecreation myth, creation story, thunderbird, windigo, spirit animal
- temporalityduration, past, present, future, now
- time distortionsslow motion, fast forward
- nighttimemidnight, nightfall, night sky, nighttime, starry sky
- Pacific traditionshula, lei, luau, outrigger canoe, tiki carving
dream timerecorded history
Past preserved through documentation
linear time · modern era · colonial period · Western history
dream timereality
What actually exists
physical world · physical reality · the here and now · everyday life · earthly realm
dream, time, dreams, dreamed, dreaming, dreamer, dreamers, dreamy, dreamlike