The mythical period of creation in Aboriginal Australian spirituality; also, any period of time devoted to dreaming or dreamlike states.
From dream + time. 'Dreamtime' is the English translation of Indigenous Australian concepts (such as the Arrernte altyerre), literally meaning the mythological era when ancestral beings created the world.
Dreamtime in Aboriginal Australian culture isn't metaphorical—it's a living spiritual reality where past, present, and future exist simultaneously, and the land itself is a map of dreams written by creation ancestors; Western anthropologists initially dismissed it as mere mythology.
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