Wandjina

The Cloud Spirits

Domain: Rain, Clouds & Fertility
Alignment: Lawful Neutral
Element: Water
Relics of Power: Halo of Lightning and Rain

Speak with Wandjina

The full Codex

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.

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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.

At a glance

Wandjina (consistently written as Wanjina in modern Indigenous orthographies) refers to the collective supreme creator ancestors, cloud spirits, and masters of seasonal monsoonal rain and biotic fertility in the cosmology of the Worrorra, Ngarinyin (Ungarinyin), and Wunambal peoples of the northwest Kimberley region in Western Australia. During the primordial epoch known as Lalai (the Dreaming or Creation period), the Wandjina journeyed across land and sea country, shaping mountain ranges, river valleys, estuaries, and offshore islands, while decreeing social organization and ritual responsibilities for each clan estate. Upon completing their creative deeds, each Wandjina entered sandstone rock shelters while the stone was still soft and malleable, leaving their body imprint and spiritual shadow eternally affixed to the rock walls, while their living essence plunged into deep freshwater pools or ascended into the sky. The most iconic hallmark of Wandjina iconography is their mouthless depiction: according to Kimberley elders, omitting the mouth prevents catastrophic, uninterrupted deluges that would drown the entire continent if their oral powers were unleashed. The Wandjina operate in profound theological complement with Wunggurr (or Ungud), the subterranean Rainbow Snake of deep permanent waterholes, uniting celestial monsoonal rains with the terrestrial generative forces of the earth. The periodic ritual retouching and repainting of these rock shelters by initiated clan descendants remains a sacred, living obligation required to activate the wet season and ensure the seasonal renewal of flora and fauna.

6 min read · Reviewed on September 29, 2026 · How we research

Sacred symbols

The mouthless face, the halo of lightning, the clouds and the monsoon

Family

Parents

Wallanganda (the supreme celestial Wandjina leader identified with the Milky Way)

Wandjina

Genealogy according to Ian M. Crawford, The Art of the Wandjina (1968); A. P. Elkin, The Australian Aborigines (1938); David Mowaljarlai & Jutta Malnic, Yorro Yorro (1993); Valda Blundell & Donny Woolagoodja, Keeping the Wanjinas Fresh (2005)

Sources and further reading

Primary sources

Grey, Sir George, Journals of Two Expeditions of Discovery in North-West and Western Australia, During the Years 1837, 38, and 39. translation: London: T. and W. Boone, 1841. read
Elkin, Adolphus Peter, The Rainbow-Serpent Myth in North-West Australia. translation: Oceania 1(3), pp. 349–352, 1930. read
Elkin, Adolphus Peter, The Australian Aborigines: How to Understand Them. translation: Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1938. read
Crawford, Ian M., The Art of the Wandjina: Aboriginal Cave Paintings in Kimberley, Western Australia. translation: Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1968. read
Lommel, Andreas, The Unambal: A Tribe in Northwest Australia (Die Unambal: ein Stamm in Nordwest-Australien). translation: Hamburg: Museum für Völkerkunde, 1952. read

Studies

Mowaljarlai, David & Malnic, Jutta, Yorro Yorro: Everything Standing Up Alive: Spirit of the Kimberley. Broome: Magabala Books, 1993. open
Blundell, Valda & Woolagoodja, Donny, Keeping the Wanjinas Fresh: Sam Woolagoodja and the enduring power of Lalai. Fremantle: Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 2005. open
Porr, Martin & Bell, Hannah R., Country and Relational Ontology in the Kimberley, Northwest Australia: Implications for Understanding and Representing Archaeological Evidence. Cambridge Archaeological Journal, 28(3), pp. 395–409, 2018. open
Ward, Graeme K., Mowaljarlai, David & Vinnicombe, Patricia, What are Wandjina? In The Archaeology of Rock Art in Western Arnhem Land, Australia. Canberra: ANU Press, 2011. open

Name and epithets

The collective teonym and vernacular noun Wandjina (Wanjina in current Indigenous community spelling) belongs to the Worrorran language family, encompassing the Worrorra, Ngarinyin, and Wunambal Gaambera idioms spoken a…

In the ancient sources

Journals of Two Expeditions of Discovery in North-West and Western Australia, 1841. Sir George Grey documents the earliest European encounter with Wandjina rock art shelters near the Glenelg River in March 1838.

The myths

The Torment of Dumby the Sacred Owl and the Great Deluge. According to the central narrative documented by Ian Crawford in 1968 and recounted by Ngarinyin law elders in Yorro Yorro, two young boys captured Dumby (or Tum…

Worship and archaeology

The religious veneration of the Wandjina is anchored in the ritual repainting and retouching of painted rock panels in the sandstone shelters of the Kimberley.

How the god was depicted

Wandjina figurative art follows a distinct, highly formalized visual canon across the Kimberley rock shelters. Rendered against a white pipe-clay background, the figures feature large oval heads encircled by radiant hor…

What scholars debate

. Historical and archaeological research has dismantled nineteenth-century colonial diffusionist speculations regarding Wandjina origins.

After antiquity

In contemporary Australia, the spiritual and cultural heritage of the Wandjina serves as the bedrock of land ownership claims and cultural pride for the Wanjina-Wunggurr community.

Did you know?

The appropriation and unauthorized reproduction of Wandjina imagery outside traditional Kimberley custodianship has sparked major legal disputes and public debates in Australia.

Codex relic

Halo of Lightning and Rain. The halo of lightning and clouds that rings their mouthless faces, from which the storm and the monsoon pour forth.

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