{"id":11329,"date":"2020-02-22T11:20:22","date_gmt":"2020-02-22T18:20:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=11329"},"modified":"2020-02-22T11:20:22","modified_gmt":"2020-02-22T18:20:22","slug":"the-most-paleo-pagan-tale-ever-told","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=11329","title":{"rendered":"The Most Paleo-Pagan Tale Ever Told?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Thanks to the Witches’ Voice Facebook page<\/a> and other sources, I have been hearing about an ancient Australian story, of “an ancestral creator-being transformed into the fiery volcano, Budj Bim<\/a>. Almost 40,000 years later, new scientific evidence suggests this long-shared legend of the Dreaming<\/a> could be much more than a myth.”<\/p>\n

New mineral-dating measurements<\/a> conducted by Australian scientists highlight the possibility that the traditional telling of Budj Bim’s origins may be an actual account of two historic volcanic eruptions that took place in the region about 37,000 years ago \u2013 which, if true, might make this the oldest story ever told on Earth.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Pretty impressive. Read the whole thing here.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Thanks to the Witches’ Voice Facebook page and other sources, I have been hearing about an ancient Australian story, of “an ancestral creator-being transformed into the fiery volcano, Budj Bim. Almost 40,000 years later, new scientific evidence suggests this long-shared legend of the Dreaming could be much more than a myth.” New mineral-dating measurements conducted […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[19,377],"class_list":["post-11329","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-australia","tag-indigenous-religion"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-2WJ","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":6787,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=6787","url_meta":{"origin":11329,"position":0},"title":"The Myth of Halloween Sadism","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"October 16, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Myth in the popular sense, that is to say, an urban legend, says sociologist Joel Best, who has been studying the razor-blade-in-the-apple and similar stories for decades. Visit his website and click the tab for \"Halloween Sadism.\" Halloween sadism is best seen as a contemporary legend (sometimes called an urban\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Halloween\"","block_context":{"text":"Halloween","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=halloween"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":690,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=690","url_meta":{"origin":11329,"position":1},"title":"Graham Harvey speaks on Animism","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"July 19, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Pagan scholar Graham Harvey is just back from convention-ing in Australia, where among other things he did this interview on animism on Australian Broadcasting Corp. radio. Listen online or download the 23-megabyte mp3 file. Capsule description:The oldest living religion, Animism, has a new advocate in pagan expert, Graham Harvey. But\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4038,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=4038","url_meta":{"origin":11329,"position":2},"title":"“The Occult Experience” of 1985","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"April 8, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"A friend pointed me to the Vimeo page where you can see The Occult Experience (95 min.), an Australian television documentary from 1985, researched and co-produced by Nevill Drury, on witchcraftandprimitivepeopleandsatanismandexorcismandallkindsofspookystuff. Watching it was hard, because I kept turning away after encountering such portentous statements as \"The search for supernatural\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Australia\"","block_context":{"text":"Australia","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=australia"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1639,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1639","url_meta":{"origin":11329,"position":3},"title":"In which I am not the expert after all","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"May 25, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"A few days ago, a university student in Australia copied me on an email to an American Heathen reconstructionist: Hail! I sent the following to [name] seeking advice; perhaps you could offer some advice as well? It was about wishing to set up an Australian branch of the group, but\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Paganism\"","block_context":{"text":"Paganism","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=paganism"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":14146,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=14146","url_meta":{"origin":11329,"position":4},"title":"All Those Witches: Caroline Tully Sorts Them Out","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"November 4, 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"\/ Caroline Tully, Pomegranate associate editor and long-time denizen of the Australian Pagan scene, gots onto an Australian podcast,The Briefing, as Witch-with-a-PhD to sort of in a very short time the difference between Wiccan witches, Etsy witches, and the rest of the social media witch-fauna. Released on Halloween 2025, of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Australia\"","block_context":{"text":"Australia","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=australia"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":664,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=664","url_meta":{"origin":11329,"position":5},"title":"A Pagan's perspective on The\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"May 22, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"A Pagan's perspective on The Da Vinci CodeThe most interesting thing about this article in an Australian newspaper is that a Pagan was asked to join the \"panel of religious experts.\"The most serious problem according to the panel - a theologian, Catholic film critic, Opus Dei priest and a pagan\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11329","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11329"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11329\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11330,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11329\/revisions\/11330"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11329"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11329"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11329"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}