The aboriginal people of Queensland worship Anjea as a fertility goddess. She is animistic in character, although the internet felt no need to elaborate on that for some reason. It was her job to form infants from mud and place them into the womb of the mother. As may be seen by her tendency to use mud, she was also associated with the earth.

Although many other sources refer to Anjea as being female, the Golden Bough (which I've only seen online at http://www.sacred-texts.com/pag/frazer/gb00303.htm; if this copy's incorrect in some way, I'd appreciate being informed) relates a tale in which Anjea is male, although he performs much the same function as the female. Anjea is there mentioned as specifically belonging to the natives of the Pennefather River in Queensland. There, it is believed that a piece of a newborn baby's spirit remains in the afterbirth. The grandmother of the newborn takes the afterbirth away and buries it in the sand, presumably near the aforementioned river. She then marks the spot by building a sort of diminutive teepee out of twigs or sticks. When Anjea happens upon this marker, he takes the piece of spirit inside and squirrels it away somewhere in the wilderness, such as a hollow log or in a lagoon. He generally leaves it there for quite some time until he decides to put that piece of spirit into another newborn, which he makes out of mud and puts in mothers' wombs. People are thus born repeatedly in some senses.

In Wiccan belief, Anjea are apparently tree spirits of some sort, also involved in fertility rituals.

Additional Sources:
http://www.cybercomm.net/~grandpa/australia.html
http://www.pantheon.org/articles/a/anjea.html
http://www.open-sesame.com/fertility.html
http://www3.sympatico.ca/untangle/AusNZconcord.html

Log in or register to write something here or to contact authors.