The Phenomenological Interpretation of the Australian Aboriginal Dreamtime Stories and Their Symbolism

In this study four Australian Aboriginal stories (Dreamtime stories) were selected for phenomenological description and empirical interpretation based on analytical psychology. The phenomenological contents were classified in accordance with the four categories suggested by Van Manen (1990/1994), namely empirical space (spatiality), empirical body (physicality), empirical time (temporality) and empirical human relations (relationality). The Aboriginal stories deal with the vitality and divinity of the earth in terms of spatiality; the extraordinariness of human beings in terms of physicality; Kairos time, which exists significantly in terms of time; and human primal desires and social taboos in terms of relationality. Furthermore, unlike stories from Western cultures, referred to as fairytales, myths, legends and sagas, the Aboriginal stories tend to encompass all four categories in one story.