Essays

Mother Right From New Guinea to Tierra del Fuego, the myth that women once ruled is told about the men’s secret bullroarers, flutes and masks. Mapped across 116 peoples.From New Guinea to Tierra del Fuego, the myth that women once ruled is told about… Read the essay → The Original Spin: Where the Bullroarer Began A century of scholars traced the bullroarer cult to one root. The oldest bullroarers, the women, the myth and the routes all point to Ice Age Europe.A century of scholars traced the bullroarer cult to one root. Read the essay → Nggwal: The Cult That Crossed Sahul Nggwal in New Guinea and Djanggawul in Australia belong to the same historically diffused Sahul bullroarer complex.Nggwal in New Guinea and Djanggawul in Australia belong to the same historically… Read the essay → Burnt and Bald Around the world a monster swallows a hero who comes out scalded and bald. The bullroarer rites swallow boys and return them singed, shorn and whitened.Around the world a monster swallows a hero who comes out scalded and bald. Read the essay →

A series in three essays

The Edge of Death

The first initiation took boys to the edge of death. These essays follow what became of that ordeal. In some places it was cut down to a mock death, in others to circumcision, and in others it became human sacrifice.

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Initiates Used To Die

The Bridegroom of Blood

You Were the Sacrifice

The Bullroarer and the Harvest On five continents the same tabooed instrument is sounded over the crops, and farming itself began in at least eleven places within a few millennia. Two coincidences that large are easier to believe as one.On five continents the same tabooed instrument is sounded over the crops… Read the essay → The Mother of All In New Guinea and northern Australia, a two-sexed or serpent Mother holds all life inside her, and the bullroarer carries her voice.In New Guinea and northern Australia, a two-sexed or serpent Mother holds all life… Read the essay → The Ritual That Made a Mind Bullroarer initiation fits Tom Froese’s ritualised mind hypothesis: a technology for cultivating the symbolic self and transmitting it across generations.Bullroarer initiation fits Tom Froese’s ritualised mind hypothesis: a technology… Read the essay → Snake Venom Is an Entheogen The scholar who helped coin the word entheogen says serpents were milked for ecstasy. Venom acts on the brain, is sold in dens, and is drunk by living mystics.The scholar who helped coin the word entheogen says serpents were milked… Read the essay → The European Roots of the Primordial Matriarchy Shared myths of women’s former sacred authority fit Ice Age Europe better than Africa as a cultural homeland.Shared myths of women’s former sacred authority fit Ice Age Europe better than… Read the essay → Dionysus in Australia Wiradjuri men told women that a being killed their sons, cut them up, burnt them to ashes and remade them. It follows the Orphic myth of Zagreus step for step.Wiradjuri men told women that a being killed their sons, cut them up, burnt them… Read the essay → The First One Didn’t Work In Australia, New Guinea and West Africa the first bullroarer failed, or the first initiation killed. The rite people keep is the second attempt.In Australia, New Guinea and West Africa the first bullroarer failed, or the first… Read the essay → They Killed the Monster and Kept Its Voice In Australia, New Guinea and the Amazon, the being that ate the boys is killed, and the sacred instrument comes out of its body and speaks with its voice.In Australia, New Guinea and the Amazon, the being that ate the boys is killed… Read the essay → The Rainbow Serpent: Dreaming, Water and Initiation Australia’s Rainbow Serpent traditions: living waters, the Dreaming, ancestral sisters, and the bullroarer’s place in initiation.Australia’s Rainbow Serpent traditions: living waters, the Dreaming, ancestral… Read the essay → Two Roarers People everywhere found that a roaring board calls the weather. The roarer hidden from women, voiced by a serpent and set over the crops travelled as one package.People everywhere found that a roaring board calls the weather. Read the essay → I Swallow Everything Across Africa the bullroarer's roar is a mouth. It eats the crying child, swallows the boys, takes the dead, and among the Dogon it says: I swallow everything.Across Africa the bullroarer's roar is a mouth. Read the essay → Recognised Every Ice Age bullroarer entered science beside a living one, Australian or Basque. A century of scholars who agreed on nothing else saw the same object.Every Ice Age bullroarer entered science beside a living one, Australian or Basque. Read the essay → The Name of the Canoe In New Guinea and Australia a people's bullroarer is cut from what the people came out of and bears its name: the canoe Inaru, the orei palm, Tundun.In New Guinea and Australia a people's bullroarer is cut from what the people came… Read the essay → The Scholars Who Saw a God Become a Toy The bullroarer's fall from sacred instrument to child's toy was stated in print by the scholars who handled the toys, in six languages and on four continents.The bullroarer's fall from sacred instrument to child's toy was stated in print… Read the essay → The Bullroarer and the Flood Across Australia and New Guinea, strikingly similar myths bind the bullroarer to catastrophic water, ancestral law and the making of the world.Across Australia and New Guinea, strikingly similar myths bind the bullroarer… Read the essay → What Travels When the Bullroarer Doesn’t? Bullroarers are fragments of one ancient complex: a spirit voiced by roarer and flute, embodied in a mask, and a myth that women owned it first.Bullroarers are fragments of one ancient complex: a spirit voiced by roarer… Read the essay → The God the Smith Made West African iron bullroarers and the gods Ogun and Gu reveal the smith as a maker of divine presence. Prometheus and Hephaestus illuminate the power of the human hand.West African iron bullroarers and the gods Ogun and Gu reveal the smith as a maker… Read the essay → The Bullroarer in the Coalsack From the Kimberley to Eucla, close to two thousand kilometres, the dark patch beside the Southern Cross is a bullroarer.From the Kimberley to Eucla, close to two thousand kilometres, the dark patch… Read the essay → Killing the Voice Why some sacred bullroarers are destroyed after one rite while named, ancestral, lineage, and office-bearing instruments are stored and handed on.Why some sacred bullroarers are destroyed after one rite while named, ancestral… Read the essay →

A series in nine essays

Myths of the Great Deluge

Flood traditions read against the coasts they remember: which sea rose, which plain went under, and who was standing on the shore when it did.

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Myths That Remember Sahul

Sundaland

East Asia

South Asia

Mediterranean Near East

Doggerland

North America

South America

Where the Flood Is Not Remembered

A series in twelve essays

Twelve Drowned Worlds

The landscapes the sea took at the end of the Ice Age, one by one, and the stories told on their shores.

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Old Sahul

Before the Persian Gulf

The Gates of the Black Sea

Old Sundaland

The Lost East China Plain

Beringia

The Patagonian Shelf

Doggerland

The Great Adriatic–Po Plain

Wider Florida and the Gulf Rim

The Restless Caspian

Aegean Before the Islands

In the Beginning Was the Word The Djanggawul lawgivers in Australia are cognate with the mother tongue of Eurasia. Read the essay → Paint Yourself Dead The men who work the mystery whiten their bodies first, from Central Australia to Tierra del Fuego. A Greek lexicographer says why: so as not to be recognised.The men who work the mystery whiten their bodies first, from Central Australia… Read the essay → Always From the North The bullroarer entered Australia from New Guinea. Fieldworkers, linguists and geneticists find one direction of travel across Sahul, north to south.The bullroarer entered Australia from New Guinea. Read the essay → The God Within the Breast A live serpent and a bullroarer stand in the same rite at Walpi and in Athens. The Hopi close theirs by vomiting the Snake society's own snakebite antidote.A live serpent and a bullroarer stand in the same rite at Walpi and in Athens. Read the essay → Identical Forms From the Magdalenian caves to Central Australia the bullroarer is one instrument, the same pierced blade, the same serpent, carried and never reinvented.From the Magdalenian caves to Central Australia the bullroarer is one instrument… Read the essay → The Serpent's Voice 184 atlas records tie the bullroarer to a serpent, from the Hopi Plumed Serpent to the anaconda of the Vaupés. The roar is the snake's own voice.184 atlas records tie the bullroarer to a serpent, from the Hopi Plumed Serpent… Read the essay → The Slain God's Voice The bullroarer is a piece of a slain god's body, Murtu-murtu's flesh, Sosom's severed penis, Dyongou Sérou's tongue. To swing it is to make him speak.The bullroarer is a piece of a slain god's body, Murtu-murtu's flesh, Sosom's… Read the essay → Two Voices Across four continents the bullroarer is not one object but a pair cast as kin — a man and his wife, an elder and a younger, a deep voice answering a high one.Across four continents the bullroarer is not one object but a pair cast as kin… Read the essay → The Bullroarer at Rest: Iberia’s Slate Plaques The engraved slate plaques laid on Copper Age Iberia's dead descend from the bullroarer, the same stone, the same cord-hole, the same voice of the dead.The engraved slate plaques laid on Copper Age Iberia's dead descend… Read the essay → Swallowed by the Monster Across Australia, New Guinea, Greece, the Northwest Coast, and the Amazon, the bullroarer speaks for a monster that swallows boys and returns them as men.Across Australia, New Guinea, Greece, the Northwest Coast, and the Amazon… Read the essay → Women and the Bullroarer Wherever the bullroarer is forbidden to women on pain of death, the men's own myths say a woman made it first, from Arnhem Land to the Sepik to the Amazon.Wherever the bullroarer is forbidden to women on pain of death, the men's own myths… Read the essay → Lightning Wood In Arnhem Land and the American Southwest the bullroarer’s wood comes from the lightning, and on both continents the lightning belongs to a serpent.In Arnhem Land and the American Southwest the bullroarer’s wood comes… Read the essay → Live Snakes In New Britain, Arizona and the Greek mysteries the bullroarer sounds and the dancers take up living snakes: wound round the body, held in the teeth, waved overhead.In New Britain, Arizona and the Greek mysteries the bullroarer sounds… Read the essay → One Sahul The Nggwal name, the woman who made the first bullroarer, the swallowing monster and married blades: one cult crossed Sahul from New Guinea to Australia.The Nggwal name, the woman who made the first bullroarer, the swallowing monster… Read the essay → The God Through the Bosom A third-century BC ritual papyrus from Gurob in Egypt draws the serpent through the initiate’s robe, then lays the bullroarer and the mirror in the basket.A third-century BC ritual papyrus from Gurob in Egypt draws the serpent through… Read the essay → The Lover’s Roarer The small bullroarer kept from women is swung at night to draw one woman, from the Kimberley to Cape York; Theocritus’s Simaetha whirls a bronze one for Delphis.The small bullroarer kept from women is swung at night to draw one woman… Read the essay →

A series in ten essays

What's in a Name?

What people call the bullroarer is never just a label. Athabaskans from Alaska to Arizona call it the wood that speaks; Arnhem Land men asked for its name gave the Mother's; the Yoruba god Orò carried his name across a language line into the Niger Delta; half the world names it for a fly, a bee or a beetle on the wing; and the Austronesian voyagers who carried it across the Pacific never let its true name travel at all.

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The Wood That Speaks

Ask for the Bullroarer

The Old One and His Wives

Orò Crosses the Water

Names That Travel

Mero-Mero

Mantiki

When the Aeroplane Came

The Voice on the Wing

The Wing and the Ghost

A series in eight essays

Is This a Bullroarer?

Many pierced blades look ready to roar. Some of them may: the world’s oldest worked jade includes thin slats, and Jōmon stone spatulas are worn at the hole where a whirled cord wears. Others turn out to belong to a Roman writing kit or a Bronze Age shaving set. These illustrated studies compare whole families of objects by form, wear and find context, and say which way each one points.

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The Jade Complex

Stone Spatulas

Grooved Jade Blades

Plain Jade Slats

Headed Jade Blades

Tanged Jade Blades

Roman Bone Rulers

Nordic Ship Razors

The Elder Brother The giant masks and carved boards of the Papuan Gulf are bullroarers grown huge. One word names roarer, mask and snake, and the roarer is the elder brother.The giant masks and carved boards of the Papuan Gulf are bullroarers grown huge. Read the essay → The Relay Wherever history catches a bullroarer cult changing hands, the whole rite moves with it, neighbour to neighbour and often for a price.Wherever history catches a bullroarer cult changing hands, the whole rite moves… Read the essay →

A series in five essays

The Stolen Voice

In the stories the men tell about their own cult, the sacred voice belonged to a woman first. These essays follow it out of her hands and into theirs: the theft in Arnhem Land, a murder on the Sepik, the palm that became the flutes of the Amazon, the nurses who taught Dionysus, and the house that swallows boys and gives back men.

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The Voice Was Hers

The Woman Who Made Mimi’unemb

The Palm and the Pleiades

The Women Who Taught the God

The House That Swallows Boys

The Summons Across Aboriginal Australia the bullroarer was a summons before it was a spirit voice: it called people to ceremony and made the road there safe.Across Aboriginal Australia the bullroarer was a summons before it was a spirit… Read the essay → The Yeenma Isogloss Daisy Bates recorded one bullroarer word, yeenma, across 1,350 kilometres of Western Australia. It carried the board, the initiation and the sky-story with it.Daisy Bates recorded one bullroarer word, yeenma, across 1,350 kilometres… Read the essay → A Warrant on a Cord Bullroarers carried as credentials, relayed with summonses, sounded to enforce law, and transferred to confer political office.Bullroarers carried as credentials, relayed with summonses, sounded to enforce law… Read the essay → Before the Compass At Niuheliang, Hongshan serpent bodies, female ancestors, and round-and-square ritual space prefigure the cosmic emblem of Fuxi and Nüwa.At Niuheliang, Hongshan serpent bodies, female ancestors, and round-and-square… Read the essay → The Living Double Societies that keep a child-safe bullroarer beside the restricted instrument, separated by material, name, shape, hour, and permission.Societies that keep a child-safe bullroarer beside the restricted instrument… Read the essay → How a God Becomes a Toy The European bullroarer's fall from a god's voice to a child's toy runs through five datable layers — and is re-crowned inside the Church at Holy Week.The European bullroarer's fall from a god's voice to a child's toy runs through… Read the essay → The Mechanical Scream The bullroarer's measured ~70 Hz drone sits on the peak of human auditory roughness — the scream band. It is a roughness engine: a mechanical scream.The bullroarer's measured ~70 Hz drone sits on the peak of human auditory roughness… Read the essay → The Two Gates The bullroarer keeps both doors of a life. It swallows the boy into manhood and sounds again when the soul leaves, from Bororo funerals to Mota's death-maker.The bullroarer keeps both doors of a life. It swallows the boy into manhood… Read the essay → Thunder Before the Plow The bullroarer is Ice Age old and its first work was the weather: foragers carried it into the Americas before farming existed, and farmers in both hemispheres later turned it on the crop.The bullroarer is Ice Age old and its first work was the weather: foragers carried… Read the essay → The X-Ray Style The x-ray style and the bullroarer travelled out of Ice Age Eurasia as one shamanic kit. The Raymonden bone from Chancelade is that kit in a single object.The x-ray style and the bullroarer travelled out of Ice Age Eurasia as one shamanic… Read the essay → Everywhen The Dreaming is not a lost past but the ground of what is. Initiation carries a boy into it, and the bullroarer is the ancestor's own voice and body.The Dreaming is not a lost past but the ground of what is. Read the essay → The Little People of the Bullroarer In Mali, Central Australia, New Guinea and Arizona, the bullroarer belongs to little people who came first: they owned it, they are it, or they come when it calls.In Mali, Central Australia, New Guinea and Arizona, the bullroarer belongs… Read the essay → Mars and the Snake Doctors Xerente pupils called Mars with a bullroarer and became snake specialists. Their apprenticeship joins the night sky to the work of healing.Xerente pupils called Mars with a bullroarer and became snake specialists. Read the essay →

A series in seven essays

The Seven Sisters and the First Mystery

Wherever the bullroarer sounds, the Pleiades are watching. The sisters rise, the season turns, and the boys are taken. These essays trace that pairing through Australia, New Guinea, Amazonia, Greece, and the Americas, and make the case that star, voice, and rite left the Ice Age together.

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The Seven Sisters and the Voice in the Dark

When the Sisters Call

From Ooldea to Ilahita

The Palm and the Pleiades

The Daughters of Atlas and the Roaring God

When the Stars Open the Lodge

The First Mystery

Venus and the Bull Ice Age Venus figures and bullroarers belonged to the same makers, shelters and imaginative world across Paleolithic Eurasia.Ice Age Venus figures and bullroarers belonged to the same makers, shelters… Read the essay → Grandfather and Mother The bullroarer is named for a relative, and the relative tracks the cult. A grandfather where the rite makes men, a mother of yams where it grows food.The bullroarer is named for a relative, and the relative tracks the cult. Read the essay → The Whirlwind On four unconnected continents the bull-roarer is swung to make wind because it sounds like wind. Where wind is also the soul, the roarer becomes a soul-engine.On four unconnected continents the bull-roarer is swung to make wind because it… Read the essay → This Is Your Body An Aranda elder hands a man a churinga and calls it his second body. Across the bullroarer world the roarer carries the soul in and speaks for it after death.An Aranda elder hands a man a churinga and calls it his second body. Read the essay → Buzzer vs. Bullroarer The bullroarer and the buzz disc are two different machines that travel together, in one spell, one men's house, often one name, from Theocritus to the Hopi.The bullroarer and the buzz disc are two different machines that travel together… Read the essay → The Goddess Under the Men’s House Nimm’s sacred stones entered Ekoi men’s houses while her priestesses kept mysteries of their own. A women’s goddess at the heart of male secrecy.Nimm’s sacred stones entered Ekoi men’s houses while her priestesses kept mysteries… Read the essay → A Hole Is Not a Roar A hole does not make a bullroarer. In medieval Perm a weaving tool and an ear pick, in Mazovia a touchstone, carry the hole and none of them roars.A hole does not make a bullroarer. In medieval Perm a weaving tool and an ear pick… Read the essay →