Emotional intensity is appropriated when initiates are made strong by the ritual pressing of
tjurunga against the abdomen, flexibility being imparted through pounding this area with crystalline rocks to 'break it finely' and thereby 'untie the knots' that intense emotion produces (Baldwin Spencer and Francis Gillen 1966:142-3).
Gregory Forster, 'Magdalene Le Clerc',
Tjurunga, 8 (1974), pp.
Warlpiri men had been convinced of the need for the Museum, partly by fears that their
tjurunga (4) were in danger of being stolen by gold prospectors and sold as curiosities.
Stockton has the Aboriginal story of the youth who went beyond himself and changed the
tjurunga and thus in effect changed something in the past.
At every mile along the way in these early journeys, Strehlow was conjuring those nightmares as he found himself collecting tjurunga--nightmares because, as he was to write, the
tjurunga were the most treasured possessions.
Moreover, when elderly Aranda men allowed their
tjurunga to pass into Strehlow's hands in return for rations, it may not have been, as Strehlow imagined, because they were sceptical of their sons' ability to safeguard these Dreamings or in despair at what the future held, but a pragmatic recognition that the hunting and gathering economy of which the
tjurunga were such a vital part was no longer their main source of sustenance.
Aranda people have understood pepa to be analogous to their own concept of 'sacred things' (
tjurunga) as the transcribed Law of ancestral beings embodied in sacred sites and ritual objects.
This atua njaltja has always stayed around in the company of the
tjurunga: for he is the constant guardian of the
tjurunga.'
The object of the scene depicted is to establish the fact that Cowan was in the presence of an event that mirrors the popularly accepted image of Aboriginality: two scantily dressed, bearded old men squatting on a sacred site with their
Tjurunga before them, chanting and tapping out a clap-stick rhythm.
A psychoanalytic interpretation of the core of the Indigenous mythopoiea thus reveals that: the whole of his [Arrernte creator being] journey is a constant straining towards reunion--as if the whole environment represented by the
tjurunga is a mother to man (Roheim, 1945), with the path towards it presenting itself as a track made by phallic striving (Munn, 1973:194,200).
Earlier spelt as churinga (Spencer and Gillen 1899:123) and
tjurunga as in Strehlow (1970:102).
Their bodies changed themselves into rocks, trees, shrubs or
tjurunga made of stone or wood.