Alcheringa

The Alcheringa

The traditional Lore of the Yoocum-Yoocum Moiety is Matristic Rainbow Serpent Culture. Commencing from the Alcheringa it is the marriage of the fresh waters and the salt waters. Alcheringa is indelibly linked to the Rainbow Serpent — the water serpent — fertility cult of the Old-World tribal culture of Australia. It is the most ancient of the continent’s cultures. It is a Matristic culture — not matriarchal, not patriarchal.

It is the Dreamtime Matristic waterlore. The word Alcheringa is a Yugambeh word and features in Australian geospatial land records to describe a most sacred waterfall. It means Beginning — of the Dreamtime. It is from the Women’s Waterlore and intrinsically connected to the Grandmother Rainbow Serpent and her Seven Daughters — also known as the Seven Sisters — who use magic digging sticks to dig the fresh water springs.

Sung Backwards Through the Stars

The song of creation commences on the continent’s most easterly geographical sites and then travels right across Australia, following the stars. But the sea levels change throughout time, and so the ancient Lore sites move here on earth. But the stars remain the same, and so the Higher Lore NEVER changes.

As above, so below — the creation Lores of Grandmother Rainbow Serpent and the Seven Sisters can be read every evening, across the night sky, like a book — and corresponding terrestrial sites can be visited and rituals performed to commemorate the creation of life on earth. Because the stars rise on the east of the Australian continent, and the stars themselves are the storyboard, the story is sung backwards — from east to west — from the beginning, the Alcheringa, sung way back — way, way, way, way, way back — 3.6 billion years back to the time when the very first land emerged from the primordial waters — “Tjookapa Tcheringa” — when the primordial sea covered all of the planet. For no human force can ever dream of wielding the power to halt the stars.

Life Began in the Waters

Life on earth began in the tepid primordial waters. Even human life begins in the tepid waters of the mother’s womb. We are after all a water planet, with 70% of earth wet. Commencing in the Alcheringa — the beginning — the women’s waterlore songline rites celebrate the union of the salt water and the fresh waters in the ancestral lands of the Yoocum Yoocum Moiety of the most easterly landscape on the East Coast of the Australian continent.

Alcheringa Island

27.6102° S, 153.3554° E · Quandamooka, Moreton Bay

Today the little enchanted Island of Alcheringa sits protected inside the salt waters of the Quandamooka — the ancestral name for Moreton Bay. Alcheringa Island is the most easterly volcanic plug from the Tweed Wollumbin Volcano eruption of 23 million years ago. Colonial surveyors gazetted it as Macleay Island, named for a colonial secretary from the 1820s — but to the Yoocum Yoocum it has always been Alcheringa, and it is very sacred to the Rainbow Serpent Waterlore. Pre-invasion, the resident tribes of the Quandamooka were physically linked to the cultural block of the great Yoocum Yoocum Moiety which spanned the most easterly landscape of Northern NSW and South-Eastern Queensland.

That was before the state borders were installed to divide the Moiety and conquer the Matristic Rainbow Serpent Lore. However, the geological regions of the Yoocum Yoocum estate can still be identified in the rocks and the waters.

Alcheringa Waterfall

28.271390° S, 153.168415° E · Lamington Plateau, Wollumbin Caldera

Alcheringa Waterfall is located on the Lamington Plateau — the remnant rim of the Wollumbin Caldera — in the terrestrial landscape of the Seven Sisters. To the people, Alcheringa Falls symbolises a sacred fountainhead of knowledge, a gift from the Sky Ancestors. Hydrologically, Alcheringa Waterfall is the headwaters of the Albert River, which flows into the Logan River, carving and creating the landscape until it spills out into the salt waters of the Quandamooka — Moreton Bay — one of the richest marine environments on the planet, a birthplace of oceanic life.

Every day the Rainbow Serpent’s Creation Song celebrating the union of the salt and the fresh waters begins from the highest terrestrial freshwater waterfall of the Wollumbin Caldera, flowing down to merge with the salt waters of the Quandamooka surrounding Alcheringa Island.

The Sacred Marriage

In the Quandamooka, the fresh water marries the salt water surrounding the magical Alcheringa Island — metaphoric Birthplace of Creation and the meeting place of the hot and cold waters of the northern and southern Gulf Stream currents — where the Whales annually migrate to birth their young in the east of the continent and the “fish-of-all-nations” merge together. The Lore then travels west across Australia, across the vault of heaven — traveling west through the stars — mirrored below by the terrestrial ritual sites. As above, so below — traveling together to the west, to sail over the central desert — “Tcheringa” — where the first whales went into the ancient water of the inland seas — the ancient Eromanga Sea. From the central desert the creation song travels on, further west to the Northwest Kimberley — “Tjookapa Tcheringa” — metaphorically traveling back in time, but in the present tense of Dreamtime, to revere the oldest land on our planet from the Dreamtime past.

Way back west to the sacred place where, over 3.6 billion years ago, the first forms building the first land emerged from the warm primordial seas, and life on earth began. Today the rich waters flowing along the western coast of Australia are known as the Leeuwin Current — the western birthplace of the Whales. These majestic beings are an important part of the creation song of the Seven Sisters Dreaming, and they continue singing their own creation songs.

The Spirit Dogs and the Guardian Boulders

At certain times of the year, two distinct Anubis-like dogs appear in the evening sky — one faces east, one faces west — on either side of the Matristic culture’s Skinlore star formation. A huge galactic pentagram formation — a metaphoric galactic waterbag — cyclically links each planet of our tiny solar system back to the centre of the Milky Way Galaxy, teaching us about our direct lineage back to the Alcheringa — the Beginning — of our universe. The spirit dogs are very sacred. Their appearance tells the people when to start the initiations. And here, in Yoocum Yoocum country, situated on either side of Alcheringa Waterfall in the Wiangaree — the Seven Sisters lands — are two boulders. Two guardian formations who share the same names as the two celestial guardian dogs. As above, so below. Together they guard the sacred Lores of the Alcheringa fountainhead — sacred waterbag from the Dreamtime — and source of the biological sea which links all life.

Simply. Beautifully. And Forever.

The Yoocum Yoocum terrestrial sacred sites — the djurebil — associated with the Alcheringa demonstrate through geology and hydrology the marriage of the fresh water and the salt waters through metaphor. Using nature’s Macrocosm to symbolise the Microcosmic “marriage” of cellular increase — the serpentine DNA union of masculine to feminine, positive to negative — the very metaphoric building blocks which combine to form life on earth. Simply. Beautifully. And forever.