Sacred Dreamtime/Sacred Cyberspace

Blog 2

Sacred Dreamtime/Sacred Cyberspace

(Dreamtime.com)

Cyberspace was seen as being a non-place and a non-space that is until Social Networking (Walker, 2010).  As soon as Cyberspace was used for a space to interact it gained spatiality.  People produce visual non-spaces of cyberspace to facilitate interaction.    Religious rituals and beliefs can be represented through art, music, film, literature and other cultural products, and can be shared through social networks (Walker, 2010).  People are spending more time online; they have begun to devise ways to fulfilling their beliefs and identities.  Mircea Eliade, a premier scholar of religion, in 1957, published a book titled, “The Sacred and the Profane,” he looks at the different ways that religious man and secular man relate to sacred time and sacred space” (Rodriquez, 2013). 

Eliade argues that by giving us, this distinction of what is “sacred” and what is “profane,” provides us with the purpose and nature of religion.  In Western culture the sacred and the profane loses some of its meaning, as we don’t have a real sense of sacred times and spaces.  Cyberspace is a different kind of space to the profane space of the physical world, therefore, according to Eliades vision, Facebook would be considered as a sacred space (Rodriquez, 2013).  Sacred space can be constructed; something can become sacred by being used in a special and ritualized way, or by being in a sacred setting.   

(Dreaming/Songline Maps, 2013).

                                                                                The Dreaming explains how everything came into existence.  The connection indigenous peoples have with the earth, the animals and the universe is a special, indescribably beautiful and sacred relationship.  The Dreaming stories can take form in a song, dance, painting and storytelling, and passes on important knowledge, cultural values and belief systems (The Dreaming, 2008).  Location is transformed into place through art and stories (Van Luyn, 2013).   The Dreamtime Chart shows complex, intelligent and spiritual system of beliefs.  An indigenous person may call his totem, or his dreaming a place from which his spirit came from, he can also explain the existence of a custom, or law of life (Stanner, 1979, p. 23).   There are some similarities, but you cannot compare an immensely, powerful, spiritually connected to sacred space and place, in Aborigine culture; thousands of years of belief systems, to the young culture of sacred Cyberspace. 

 Australian Aboriginal Dreamtime [image]. (2013). Retrieved from

           http://www.crystalinks.com/dreamtime.html


Defining the Sacred and Profane. (2013). Retrieved from
        http://www.ou.edu/cis/online/lstd2233/.../DefineWhatSacredandProfane.pdf

Dreaming/songlines maps [image]. (2013). Retrieved from http://www.aboriginalsonglines.com/image

Dreamtime stories. (n.d.). Why the stories are told. Retrieved from

           http://www.rnwebed.com.au/hsie/y/abc/dreamtime/dreamtime.htm

Religious Studies. (2010). Retrieved from http://www.academic.edu/1104299/My-sacred-space

The Dreaming. (2008). Retrieved from http://www.australia.gov.au/about-australia-australian-story/dreaming

Van Luyn, A. (Producer). (2013). stories and places [Video podcast]. Retrieved from

            http://learnjcu.jcu.edu.au/bbcswebdav/pid-1249081-dt-content-rid-973205-1/courses/13-

            BA1002-CNS-INT-SP2/BA1002-Narratives-and-Place