WANDJINA. Australian Aborigines traditionally believed that a person's spirit existed before entering the human life-cycle and that it survived after bodily death. Life-spirits were identified as originating in a number of mythological beings, of which those called wandjina were important in central and northern Kimberley, with the mythical snake Ungud and other animal spirits playing less significant parts.

Identification of a person's life-spirit, or conception totem, was revealed to his or her father or to another senior male of the group during a dream. Dream communication with the mythological beings played a significant role in Aboriginal religion, for although the events of the creation period, or lalai, were generally known, the present state of the beings was of ongoing significance, and that could be revealed only through the dreaming process. The father-to-be was entitled to identify the origin of a life-spirit, but in other circumstances, a specialist, or...