Voices of the First Day: Awakening in the Aboriginal Dreamtime (Inner Traditions) [Paperback]

Robert Lawlor (Author)

Book Description

Series: Inner Traditions | Publication Date: November 1, 1991

Australian aboriginal people have lived in harmony with the earth for perhaps as long as 100,000 years; in their words, since the First Day. In this absorbing work, Lawlor explores the essence of their culture as a source of and guide to transforming our own world view. While not romanticizing the past or suggesting a return to the life of the hunter/gatherer, Voices of the First Day enables us to enter into the mentality of the oldest continuous culture on earth and gain insight into our own relationship with the earth and to each other.

This book offers an opportunity to suspend our values, prejudices, and Eurocentrism and step into the Dreaming to discover:

• A people who rejected agriculture, architecture, writing, clothing, and the subjugation of animals

• A lifestyle of hunting and gathering that provided abundant food of unsurpassed nutritional value

• Initiatic and ritual practices that hold the origins of all esoteric, yogic, magical, and shamanistic traditions

• A sexual and emotional life that afforded diversity and fluidity as well as marital and social stability

• A people who valued kinship, community, and the law of the Dreamtime as their greatest "possessions."

• Language whose richness of structure and vocabulary reveals new worlds of perception and comprehension.

• A people balanced between the Dreaming and the perceivable world, in harmony with all species and living each day as the First Day.

Voices of the First Day is illustrated throughout with more than 100 extraordinary photographs, bark paintings, line drawings and engravings. Many of these photographs are among the earliest ever made of the Aboriginal people and are shown here for the first time. 

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Customs and beliefs of the Australian Aborigines have long fascinated social scientists. Placing little value on material possessions or the concept of linear time, the Aborigines possess a complex social, religious, and ceremonial system focused on preserving and maintaining their ancestral lands. In the tradition of armchair anthropologists, Lawlor attempts to enter the Aboriginal mind, taking as sources early ethnological accounts, conversations with Aborigines reviving ancestral beliefs, and insights from his study of ancient religions. He believes the Aborigines possess an archaic consciousness vital to the survival of the planet, a view of human life held by ancient hunter-gatherer societies but lost with the emergence of advanced technology. Avoiding anthropological jargon, Lawlor presents a survey of Aboriginal belief and way of life, enhanced by illustrations of Aboriginal art and early photographs of Aboriginal ceremonies. Bibliographic sources, though not seen, appear to be extensive. Recommended for large collections.
- Lucille Boone, San Jose P.L., Cal.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Scientific American

The best of what the Aboriginals have let outsiders know about their ecological and shamanic practices, origin myths and kinship rituals, social and spiritual practices. The illustrations are spectacular, more than 150 color and duotone illustrations include some of the earliest photographs of Aboriginal people, shown here for the first time.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 432 pages
• Publisher: Inner Traditions; 2nd Printing edition (November 1, 1991)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0892813555
• ISBN-13: 978-0892813551
• Product Dimensions: 9.9 x 7.9 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.9 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #350,917 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

52 of 59 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Voices still haunting me..., December 31, 2003

By 

K. Caldwell (Harpers Ferry, WV) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Voices of the First Day: Awakening in the Aboriginal Dreamtime (Inner Traditions) (Paperback)

This is the single finest book, leading to a slew of other great books (biblio) one could ask for regarding humanity on this earth. I was surprised to read the negative reviews above, but thats typical of the Humanist dogma we've all been steeped in for so long - people don't even have the patience or capacity to try and understand anything beyond their McMac and what FOX tells them: 10,000 Years of Progess and Civilization Good; naked humans living on earth for 2 Million years Bad. (and by the way...Mutant Message was formed almost entirely after Lawlor's work, not the other way around, not to mention that M.M. did not ring true to me). Lawlor takes the modern ego to the hoop and 360 dunks it.

A prime reason you know this work is great (not perfect) is that Lawlor essentially destroys the idealism he wrote naively of in his grossly idealised "Sacred Geometry" - Though containing truths about Egypt, it's as soaked in the fallacy that Egypt was little more than sacred, peaceful people living fully with nature, floating from temple to temple in robes with all the knowledge of the universe - as if the Egyptians did not cut all the timber, drain all the wetlands, overgraze all the grasslands, put 1000's of plants and animals into extinction, mine out all the precious minerals, enslave all known peoples, and blast a desert out of what was once a lush subtropical region. He dumps much of this with "Voices" in finding the earth and its peoples who never - and still don't - do such nonsense.

Not a single day has passed since 1991 when I read this book, that I've not been influenced by the ideas of this book - it has completely altered the course of my and my wife's life in a way that has allowed us both greater capacity to live in an with nature (and she's a skeptical anthropologist / socialist type - now incorporatse Lawlors work in her classes). My botanical / wildlife background was great and fulfilling, but this book helped me blow the conceptual lid off of my relationship with the natural world,as well as liberate most of the conceptual fallacies about teh greatness of modern life I'd been suckled on (which you'd likely be suspect of to even finish this book.)

He makes clear that people who live in nature are truly the masters in it and not a bunch of 'savages'. He does seem to idealize the aborigines a bit much though, but still makes clear that the concepts he presents about would equally apply to others around the world.

And to all you hard hearted skeptics out there, consider how soft we all are in this wimpy modern world where we continue to yank the rug out from under ourselves daily, replacing with an All New, Improved, Better Than Ever Wonder-Rug - Guaranteed to be better than the last!!! Lawlor challenges us on the fact that as individuals, none of us are capable of designing, creating, and maintaining any of the technologies that surround and sustain us (not to mention, be able to do anything from the past)- were we to do so, I'd bow down and swear that we were actually advanced peoples. The H/G's individually can provide all their food, water, shelter, and needs period - without need for such silly, globally complex and life destroying actions we don't even seem to know or care about that result from our way of life. I think he shows well that they are the masters of this earth, internally and externally. We're mostly just adolescents.

Lawlor blows us to bits with the fact that not 99% but 100% of human existence includes hunter / gatherers - they were here 2M, 1M, 500K, 100K, 50K, 10K years ago, 100 years ago and nearly extinct as you read this - BUT STILL HERE. Our pathetic, cancerous mess has been around in the form of agriculture of various forms for less than 10K years - and its impacts are clear. Certainly, a people who can live in Nature are stronger, smarter, and more stable than the plastic people we've become. To most people in this society - that something or someone has not changed means it has not progressed; of course, their culture is always changing, its just that we don't understand any of it to observe the changes. But the fact that they're still living much as their ancestors did even 50K years ago is evidence of a solid, stable way of life rather than the 30 second commercial zip/zap changing we come to expect and label as progress.

Lawlor has given me faith that the past 10K years will peak and be done and those humans - the meek that will inherit the earth (and I ain't one of them) - are the hunter / gatherers and that they will resume after this lame party of civility is over.

26 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Compelling, authoritative, insightful; a must to read., January 25, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Voices of the First Day: Awakening in the Aboriginal Dreamtime (Inner Traditions) (Paperback)

I read Voices when it first came out. I contacted Lawlor, and subsequently took him to the remote Kimberley region of Western Australia to meet with eminent Ngarinyin Lawman the late David Mowaljarlai and his countrymen. Robert Lawlor has written the most comprehensive, authoritative book on Aboriginal spirituality in life. It is masterful. He encouraged me to write a book on my own knowledge and experience with the Ngarinyin people. This I did. Men's Business Women's Business: The Spiritual Role of Gender in the World's Oldest Culture published by Inner Traditions International (US)was inspired by Voices of the First Day. Unlike many who write about Aboriginal culture and philosophy Robert's diligent attention to authenticity is unsurpassed. This book has my unequivocal recommendation. A modern masterpiece.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "Voices of the First Day" still speaks to me, June 21, 2008

By 

David J. Sullivan - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Voices of the First Day: Awakening in the Aboriginal Dreamtime (Inner Traditions) (Paperback)

Well well well, I fully expected to find a five star reader rating here. I guess I forgot that these types of different, forward-thinking books polarize people so much. I too have seen Aboriginals in Northern Arnhem Land as well as in the pub in Katherine, and I am sure that many Americans have seen drunken Indians wandering zig-zagged down the side of the road. We can all see what have become of these cultures since being raped, pillaged and tempted by European settlers. They stood not a chance - even the Aboriginal communities that did not want any "aid" from the Australian government were forced to take it - and became addicted to refined wheat, sugar and a new 'easy' way of life. Talk about the Sirens' calling sailors to their deaths. Alcohol has had the most devastating affect on their lives of all our influences. It is interesting to note that kava is strictly illegal in Australia: This is a easily grown root that can be crushed and drunk to produce a mellow high, and does not induce the same ill-effects to Aborigines as alcohol.

Anyways, Lawlor talks of pre-contact Aboriginal culture. If he wanted to do a book on post-contact culture, derrrrr, it would be a different book.

The book that he has written is packed with insight and the information provided within is the sort of stuff that could change your life if you just stay open to it. You may not agree with all of it but it doesn't make the rest a lot of baloney. I have just finished reading it a second time and there is just soooo much to this book. Yes it has been compared with Mutant Message (which I didn't like at all) but this is the real deal. I don't want to be too effusive but it has changed the way I perceive the world on a daily basis.

To all the nay-sayers: there must have been something in that culture to have not self-imploded after tens of thousands of years. It is always hard to loosen the grip on a static world view that we have held onto so tightly - even when it is increasingly obvious that it no longer works.