5 sections of this entry are open to everyone: the summary, the people, the symbols, the lineage and the sources. The other 9 (Name and epithets, In the ancient sources, The myths, Worship and archaeology, How the god was depicted, What scholars debate, After antiquity, Did you know?, Codex relic) are part of the full Codex: PRO opens the whole study of all 500 deities, and without a subscription you can read one full entry a day, just like in the app.
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.
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At a glance
Marmoo is a malevolent spirit and cosmic adversary who features prominently in Dreamtime cosmogonic narratives among Aboriginal peoples of southeastern Australia, particularly within oral traditions preserved across New South Wales connected to the cycle of the Supreme Sky Father Baiame. Documented in folklore compilations by researcher A. W. Reed and retold by respected Indigenous storyteller and cultural educator Pauline McLeod, Marmoo embodies destructive envy, cosmic discord, and bitterness toward the created order. When Baiame completed fashioning the habitable world — designated in southeastern Aboriginal languages by the ancestral word Tya —, establishing flowing rivers, sweeping plains, fertile valleys, and fragrant eucalypt woodlands, Marmoo observed the magnificent landscape with burning jealousy. Unable to endure the praise and joy that Baiame's creation inspired, Marmoo retreated into hidden subterranean caves to plot with his wife. Utilizing sinister magic, he shaped hordes of crawling, burrowing, and flying insects: swarming locusts, wood-boring beetles, caterpillars, stinging flies, and worms designed to consume organic matter. Breathing life into these creatures, Marmoo unleashed the vast plague across Tya. Swarms of insects darkened the sky, settling upon the vegetation like an undulating, suffocating carpet, stripping canopies of foliage, gnawing tender bark, and turning fertile forests into a desolate, rotting wasteland. Faced with the destruction of Tya, Baiame journeyed to the hidden mountain waterfall sanctuary of Nungeena, the benevolent mother spirit of nature. Moved by Baiame's plea, Nungeena and her elemental spirits fashioned every kind of bird: waterbirds for wetlands, seabirds for coasts, owls for night, and delicate songbirds for flowers, while Nungeena herself sculpted the superb lyrebird. Baiame endowed them with sweet songs and radiant feathers, sending them forth in massive flight to devour Marmoo's pests and restore environmental balance. Thwarted, Marmoo devised a secondary deceit: he flattered the newly created birds, attempting to persuade them to spend all their days singing and displaying their plumage rather than building nests and incubating eggs, hoping they would die out. While most birds saw through his trick and flew away to nest, the vain cuckoos accepted his flattery and abandoned nest construction. When egg-laying arrived, Marmoo instructed the cuckoos to eject an egg from another bird's nest and deposit their own, creating an etiological myth for brood parasitism among Australian cuckoos.
8 min read · Reviewed on September 29, 2026 · How we research
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Sacred symbols
The insects, the plague, the shadow and the rot
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Family
Marmoo
Unions
Marmoo's wife (figure mentioned in traditional narratives from New South Wales as the confidante to whom he vented his envy against the Creator)
Genealogy according to A. W. Reed, Myths and Legends of Australia (1965, pp. 29–33); Pauline McLeod, Gadi Mirrabooka: Australian Aboriginal Tales from the Dreaming (2001, cap. 28)
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Sources and further reading
Primary sources
Reed, Alexander Wyclif (A. W. Reed), Myths and Legends of Australia (Chapter: 'The Creation of the Birds', pp. 29–33). translation: Sydney: A. H. and A. W. Reed, 1965. read
McLeod, Pauline E.; Firebrace, Francis; Barker, June & McKay, Helen F. (ed.), Gadi Mirrabooka: Australian Aboriginal Tales from the Dreaming (Chapter 28: 'Marmoo and Biamee: A Creation Story from New South Wales', pp. 85–88). translation: Westport: Libraries Unlimited / Greenwood Publishing Group, 2001. read
Parker, K. Langloh, Australian Legendary Tales: Folk-lore of the Noongahburrahs as told to the Piccaninnies. translation: London: David Nutt, 1896. read
Parker, K. Langloh, The Euahlayi Tribe: A Study of Aboriginal Life in Australia. translation: London: Archibald Constable and Company, 1905. read
Ridley, Rev. William, Kámilarói, and other Australian Languages. translation: Sydney: Thomas Richards, Government Printer, 1875. read
Studies
Lindemans, Micha F., Marmoo. Encyclopedia Mythica, 2001. open
Lindemans, Micha F., Nungeena. Encyclopedia Mythica, 2004. open
Macquire, Kelly, Dreamtime. World History Encyclopedia, 2025. open
Study.com, Australian Mythology | Gods, Legends & Folklore. Study.com, 2023. open
Bloomsbury Publishing, Gadi Mirrabooka: Australian Aboriginal Tales from the Dreaming (Overview & Catalog). Bloomsbury Academic, 2001. open
Name and epithets
The theonym Marmoo was recorded in Australian ethnographic and folklore literature from 20th-century transcriptions of Indigenous oral traditions in New South Wales.
In the ancient sources
Myths and Legends of Australia, 1965 AD. A. W. Reed's foundational compilation recording the detailed narrative of Marmoo's insect plague upon Tya, the intercession of Nungeena, and the tricking of the cuckoos.
The myths
The Conspiracy of the Envious Spirit and the Devouring Insect Plague. During the primordial era of the Dreamtime, the Supreme Spirit Baiame descended to give form, purpose, and beauty to the barren earth.
Worship and archaeology
In the cosmological framework of southeastern Australian Aboriginal societies, malevolent entities like Marmoo were never objects of worship, prayer, or ritual sacrifice.
How the god was depicted
Oral tradition portrays Marmoo through dark, destructive imagery associated with rot, swarms of crawling pests, and barren earth.
What scholars debate
. Within comparative folklore and Australian anthropological studies, the narrative of Marmoo features in discussions regarding the translation and popularization of Indigenous oral lore by non-Indigenous compilers.
After antiquity
The story of Marmoo and Biamee remains a celebrated creation narrative from New South Wales, frequently included in educational anthologies and children's collections of Dreamtime stories (notably 'Gadi Mirrabooka').
Did you know?
The myth provides a detailed etiological account of brood parasitism among Australian cuckoos (such as the pallid cuckoo and channel-billed cuckoo), highlighting the antiquity and precision of Aboriginal natural history…
Codex relic
Devouring Swarm. The plague of insects he created out of envy to destroy the life shaped by the creator.
The rest of this scroll is sealed
The legends, the myth, the cult and relics are part of the full Codex. You can open 1 full entry for free every day; to open all 500 deities with no limits and no ads, subscribe to Codex PRO.
