The Firm and the Formless: Religion and Identity in Aboriginal Australia

by Hans Mol

This volume is woven around the idea that wholeness (the firm) and fragmentation (risking formlessness) alternate in human affairs. This theme is applied to the history and the present condition of Australian Aboriginals. Their religion is seen as a way to bolster a precarious identity and to affirm order in an existence which would otherwise become formless. It deals with totemism as a form of ordering a variety of often conflicting identities. The...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1554585562
• ISBN13: 9781554585564
• Release Date: December 1982
• Publisher: Wilfrid Laurier University Press
• Length: 112 Pages