Bunjil

The Eagle Creator

Domain: Creation, Sky & Law
Alignment: Lawful Good
Element: Air
Relics of Power: Wings of the Wedge-Tailed Eagle

Speak with Bunjil

The People

People

Aboriginal Australians

Region

Australia

Period

65,000 years ago – present

The ancestral beings of the Dreamtime are revered by Aboriginal Australians, possibly the oldest continuous culture on Earth. These beings are believed to have created the landscape, the laws, and life during the Dreaming. Their stories are kept in rock paintings, songs, and rituals passed down over tens of millennia.

At corroborees, songs and body-painted dances re-enact the journeys of the Dreaming ancestors. The songlines, singing tracks, map the sacred land from memory, and places like Uluru remain living sanctuaries under the care of their traditional custodians.

The Sacred Scrolls

Bunjil is the creator being in the form of a wedge-tailed eagle, venerated by the Kulin peoples of present-day Victoria, in southeastern Australia. In the Dreamtime, he created the mountains, the rivers, the plants and the animals, and shaped the first men from clay. With his work complete, he rose to the sky on his wings and became a star, from which he watches over the law he established. As The Eagle Creator, this deity occupies a position of supreme prestige in the aborigenes pantheon. Their domains over Creation, Sky & Law reflect ancestral cosmic order maintained across millennia. In classical iconography, they are depicted with an aura of unshakeable majesty and sacred attributes that inspired reverence in emperors and peasants alike. Their influence extended beyond earthly boundaries, governing fates and harmony between the visible and invisible worlds. For ancient devotees, contemplating their essence was to understand the very fundamental forces of nature and human existence.

Sacred Symbols

The wedge-tailed eagle, the molded clay, the wind and the star

Divine Lineage

He has two wives and six sons; his brother is Waa, the crow, his cunning opposite.

The Legendary Myth

Kulin tradition says that Bunjil made two men of clay, covered them with bark and leaves and danced around them until he gave them life with his breath.

Legends & Deeds

A celebrated secondary legend preserved in the oral traditions of the aborigenes recounts the journey when Bunjil intervened directly in the lives of mortals.

Cult & Worship

Historically, the cult of Bunjil occupied a central place in the religious and architectural calendar of antiquity.

Relics of Power

The great wings with which he ascends to the heavens and becomes a star, watching from there over the land he shaped.

Did You Know?

Bunjil is today an important cultural symbol in the state of Victoria, and the rock shelter known as 'Bunjil's Shelter' holds a rare painting of him accompanied by two dingoes.