A creature of immense proportions drags itself across a barren continent, carving gorges, pushing up ridges, and leaving rivers in its wake. It controls water, can swallow you whole and spit you back out as a creator of life, and is tied to the physics of light itself. This episode explores the Rainbow Serpent of Aboriginal Australian cultures, beginning with the framework of the Dreaming as an ongoing, living process rather than a finished past event. We explain how the term Rainbow Serpent was coined in 1926 by anthropologist Alfred Radcliffe-Brown as an umbrella for distinct regional entities such as Yurlungur, the Wagyl, Dhakkan, and Kanmare.

From there we look at the natural inspirations: permanent waterholes during drought, rainbows read as the serpent moving between waterholes, quartz crystals and mother of pearl held as physical man ...