Customer Reviews

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

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(9)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

Lawlor weaves together three strands:beliefs and customs of the Australian Aborigines, an indictment of Western civilization, and aspects of the new physics.He has penetrated Aboriginal consciousness to explain their world view from the inside.He explains why the land is sacred to them, and how keeping in contact with the Dreamtime maintained their way of life for over 100,000 years.The deeper and symbolic meanings of Aboriginal social organization and life cycle rituals are discussed.This is a book that can expand the boundaries of the mind.

I have worked and lived with Aboriginal people in The Northern Territory for the last 10 years and the stuff Lawlor writes is akin to the fiction of "mutant message down under". Beware, what is contained within these pages bears no relationship to the real thing. Only through learning language and understanding culture through this will you receive the smallest glimpses of the spiritual lives of Aboriginal people. Sacred and secret knowledge is well safeguarded through a strict system of law.
I see this FICTION is totally Robert Lawlors dreaming.

A great resource for those interesting in the culture of the Australian Aborigines, this book has a very strong focus on the religion, shamanism and spirituality which is so central to indigenous culture. Lawlor pays alot of attention to the kin relations, totems, ancestors, initiation rites and the Dreamtime. Anyone with some interest in the indigenous people of Australia should check this book out. There are only a couple of flaws with this book. One, is that it goes into great detail about traditional Aboriginal beliefs without paying attention to modern day continuation and adaptation of Aboriginal beliefs. Another is that Australia is so large and diverse that its hard to make any generalization about Aboriginal culture. However, these are only minor issues. The book itself is great.

The Aboriginal culture depicted in this book bears little resemblance to that of the people I've spent most of my life working with. Alongside his often bizarre, and unfounded, specultations on Aboriginal beliefs, origins and abilities, Lawlor almost exclusively draws on the past (and very old ethnological sources) to describe Aboriginal life and culture - apparently deciding that living, contemporary Aboriginal culture is of little interest. Aboriginal people are not stuck in the past, nor are they representatives of a past way of life that Westerners can identify with and make themselves feel better. They have (and have always had) a living changing culture, but you wouldn't know it from this book

Robert Lawlor has an incredible ability to bridge between cultures. His descriptions of Aboriginal perceptual reality made exquisitely good sense to my rational mind and at the same time relaxed its rigidity and stretched it. Voices of the First Day had the effect of evoking what I felt like I already knew and always had known but had merely forgotten. For me it was the book of a decade, one of my half-dozen of most treasured volumes.

One of Australia's greatest anthropologists, William Stanner, urged people who are inspired by indigenous cultures to "...avoid banal projection and subjectivism. ("White Man Got No Dreaming", 1979). Lawlor does both and more. He is an armchair anthropologist who has never lived among indigenous Australians and spins a tale that has little bearing on the real world of indigenous culture. "Bulldust" is the Australian epithet for such radical departures from the truth. If you want to really grapple with indigenous Australian spirituality there are better texts by scholars who have actually lived with aborigines. Amazon readers should try Zohl De Istar's "Holding Yawalwu" as a case in point. It provides an account of her subject that combines insights into the "law" (spirituality) with the mostly rugged and raw day-to-day lives of indigenous Australians.

I have had my copy for thirteen years now, and, since the first time I read it, I have called it my Bible. This book has helped me to summon up lost teachings of my own souls journey, and has helped me to find my truth.
As far as the people who gave it poor reviews, I guess they don't connect to the true, raw wisdom that Lawlor has to offer.