BAGADJIMBIRI

[Aboriginal] The two brother gods to whom the Karadjeri of northwestern Australia attribute the creation of the world. Prior to the rising of the two brothers as dingos from the ground, there was nothing. The Bagadjimbiri made waterholes; from a toadstool and a fungus they formed genital organs for the first sexless people, and they instituted the ritual of circumcision. After the two brothers had assumed the shape of two giant men reaching up to the sky, they got into a quarrel with a cat-man called Ngariman, whom they had annoyed with their laughter. Ngariman and his relatives killed the two brothers with spears, but the enraged Dilga, their mother, and the earth goddess, caused her milk to flow underground to the place of the murder, where it revived the victims and drowned the killers. Bagadjimbiri were reborn, but after some time decided to pass away, their bodies turning into water snakes and their spirits rising into the sky as great clouds