Aharon N. Varady
The Dogon people live in sub-Saharan Africa in what is now east-central Mali. They have not always lived in the area knows as the Bandiagara. According to the Dogon tradition of the four tribal ancestors:
Because of a dispute in their Mande homeland, four brothers of supernatural origin decided to leave Mande and found a new land where their descendents might live peacefully... 1
The ecological zone in which the Dogon live is known as the Sahel, which has two seasons: a dry season from October to June and a short rainy season from June to September. In this environment of scant water and bearably arable land, the Dogon have been perseverent agriculturalists.
The perceived opposition between the dry and the wet season is reflected in a binary opposition between fertility and sterility or barrenness. The land which is not arable, the "bush," is perceived as disordered, impure, and home to supernatural forces, while the village and cultivated lands are ordered and pure. The Hogon, leader of the Lebe cult of the Dogon and of the pure men, cultivates the pure, sacred, primal field, a well-ordered field laid out like a checkerboard. According to DeMott,
The supernatural character of the Hogon is based on his symbolic association with the fecund earth, which is seen in Dogon cosmogony as being located at the center of human culture (or the center of the universe)...The Hogon performs all his ritual and political activities at the center of human culture: in his village residence, on his sacred field, and at his village Lebe altars. The Hogon is prohibited from leaving the village and entering the bush.3
Moisture, according to Ogotemmeli, is synonymous with cultivation, the spoken word, and weaving, and (as aspects of human culture) are all understood as imparting purity to the earth. The esoteric cosmology relates that when Lebe, the oldest ancestor of the eighth family representing Speech, died and was buried in the earth,4 he was swallowed by the seventh Nommo, 5 the master of Speech.
Originally, the Nommo were the twins produced by the pure union of Amma and earth after the birth of the pale fox and embody and are synonymous with pure moisture, but later, they took the eight descendents of primordial man and woman, and formed them into Nommo as well. When the seventh Nommo swallowed Lebe, he took in all of the "defiled human nature and the lapsed second word [after the third word had been introduced],"6 and vomited out the old man, whose bones had been transformed into colorful stones,7 and a liquid which carried away the impurity. This liquid carved the topography of the land and flooded hollows. When the stagnant waters were swept away by pure rains from Heaven, the pure waters "also watered the primal field, and thus made it possible for the smith to teach the art of sowing."8 The four ancestors,
...before leaving [Mande]…[each] took a symbolic emblem of fertility and continuity. In different versions, this symbol takes the form of either a duge, an amulet left them by their supernatural ancestor, Lebe Serou, or piece of the earth of Lebe Serou's tomb in which this ancestor had died and was reborn as a serpent...9
Originally, at the creation, the earth was pure. The lump flung by [Amma] was of pure clay. But the offence of the [pale fox] defiled the earth and upset the world-order. That is why the Nummo came down to reorganize it. The earth which came down from Heaven was pure earth, and wherever it was put, it imparted its purity to the spot and to all the ground that was cleared. Wherever cultivation spread, impurity receded.10
The dynamic opposition between the ordered world of Dogon habitation and cultivation and the disordered world of nature are maintained for the benefit of the community through the activity of the Dogon ritual societies. According to DeMott,
The Dogon perform rituals to restore, maintain, or vitalize the balance of supernatural[12] forces and the human community.....[they] believe that all these supernaturals contribute to the spiritual well-being and order of the human community. The loss of contact and control of any of these supernaturals results in a state of disorder or spiritual imbalance which the Dogon call puru or death. The goal of any ritual is to regain this spirit loss and restore order to the balance of the supernatural world, and thus to the human community. This results in the state which the Dogon call omo or living.13
Appendix A: On Dogon Sources
I discovered the Dogon while reading Georgio de Santillana and Hertha von Dechend controversial work Hamlet's Mill. A wonderful tome of obscure ideas and powerful syntheses, the books central thesis: that there is a scientific, astronomical language contained within the narratives and motifs of ancient mythology, structures which were common in cultures around the world. 14 The esoteric tradition of the Dogon, in particular their astronomical tradition, supported von Dechend's diffusionatry hypothesis that there was an advanced pre-historic civilization, elements of its cosmology which could be found in the tradition of the Dogon. By the time Hamlet's Mill was published in 1968, the cosmology of the Dogon had already caused a stir in anthropological, comparative literature, and astronomical circles.15
The ethnographic works which brought the Dogon and their cosmology to the attention of the academic world had been prepared by Marcel Griaule and his team of scholars and students. Griaule came to the lower Ogol region of Upper Sanga in the western sub-Sahara of Africa in 1931, the first French ethnographer to study Dogon culture using anthropological field techniques. For sixteen years the Griaule team, composed of two groups of seven specialized scholars, one in the field and the other in the city, documented and synthesized all aspects of Dogon culture in terms of their respective disciplines. Then in 1947, according to Griaule, he was approached by a man named Ogotemmeli of Lower Ogol who claimed authority from the Dogon priests of Sanga. He was prepared to initiate Griaule into their esoteric tradition. Up to that point Griaule and his colleagues, Calame-Griaule and Germaine Dieterline, had been primarily interested in material culture and techniques. Afterwards, they were absorbed in the study of Dogon symbolism, linguistics, and metaphysics.16
What was the nature of this knowledge and its transmission and what was the approach of the French team's analysis? According to Dieterline, "what the Dogon call 'deep knowledge,' [is] the esoteric learning revealed at the end of a lifetime of tribal instruction."17 The Griaule school interpreted this conceptual knowledge through the methodology of their theoretical mentor M. Mauss, by seeking "to uncover the underlying conceptual systems unifying cultural phenomena." Griaule also gave intellectual homage to Structuralism and Levi-Strauss in the beginning of Conversations with Ogotemmeli, Griaule's first account of Dogon cosmology.
According to Barbara DeMott, while the Griaule camp
…still pursued the search for a norm of cultural phenomena...[] in terms of conceptual aspects of Dogon culture, this search for the norm was translated into a search for the ideal construct of each phenomenon within the Dogon intellectual system...Similarly, when these scholars attempted to fulfill Griaule's second methodological requirement, the placing of field data in its cultural context, they only used the ideal conceptual order described in Dogon cosmology and mythology.18
3
DeMott, Dogon Masks, p.71. back
4
"' But not really,' said Ogotemmeli: 'only in appearance. The common people
were told that he was dead, just as they been told that
the seventh ancestor had been killed and eaten. But in reality neither
of them was dead. The old man could not die, because death did not appear
on the scene till later. The seventh ancestor could not die, because he
was a Nommo.'" back
5 whose head had been buried under the Smith after the seventh Nommo had come down from the heavens as celestial granary, serpent, and seed, enraged at his younger brother Nommo having preceded him in the order of descent. back
6 Marcell Griaule, Conversations with Ogotemmeli, (London: Oxford University Press, 1965) p.57. back
7 "The stones which all priests wear round their necks are his bones...[] the pure covenant stones." (Griaule, Ogotemmeli, p.57) back
8 ibid, p.57. back
9
DeMott, Dogon Masks, 40-41 back
10 Griaule,
Conversations, p.44. back
11 Is
the sigi so the speech the pale fox stole from his mother?
back
12 Whether the Dogon have a concept of "supernatural" is questionable. Everything beyond human control is seen to possess magical qualities and are sources of power. Hence, the objectification of the "bush" as the realm of disorder with its own manifest powers. back
13 DeMott, Dogon Masks, p.73, (citing Dieterline, "Mecanisme de l'impurete chez les Dogon," Journal de la Societe des Africantes 17:84, 1947). back
14 Among certain cultural materialists, structural analysis is derided as able to "link any number of myths from any region," (Van Beek, Current Anthropology, v32 n2 p142 f5). Some Stucturalists have challenged the cultural materialists to attempt such a feat themselves(see Luc de Heusch's "On Griaule on Trial," in Current Anthropology, v32 n4, Aug-Oct 1991). The whole debate reminds me of a criticism made by the philosopher of science, Charles Fort: "In the topography of the intelligence, knowledge could be described as ignorance accompanied by derision." back
15 A sensational aspect of Dogon cosmology is, according to Griaule, their ancient knowledge of an extremely faint white dwarf star, Sirius B, and the nature of its orbit about the star Sirius. Sirius, the brightest star in the sky, is well represented in the cosmologies of ancient cultures; Sirius B, however, has only been discovered this century with the aid of powerful telescopes. back
16 DeMott, Dogon Masks, p40. back
17 ibid, citing Germaine Dieterline (1965:xvi). back
18
ibid, pp10,11. back
19
This issue, however, may have been dealt with thoroughly in the French
literature which by far outweighs the English scholarly resources and which
I am not at present equipped to read. back
20
See Walter E.A.Van Beek "Dogon Restudied--A Field Evaluation of the Work
of Marcel Griaule." (Current Anthropology 32:2, April 1991) p.139-167.
The ecologist makes a fierce attack on Griaule's work with only the most
conservative criticism from symbolist Mary Douglas. His most cogent argument
is that Griaule's "initiation" was nothing more than a jestful performance
instigated by Griaule's overbearing personality and invasive questioning.
This "performance" was then misunderstood through the lens of the French
structuralist's intellectual agenda: to show a non-European origin for
Greek philosophy and cosmology. Griaule's daughter and living colleague
Genevieve Calame-Griaule, came to defend the project in "On the Dogon Restudied."
(Current Anthropology 32:5, Dec 1991) p.575-577. Calame-Griaule
counterattacks the ecologists own Materialist agenda as blinded to the
relevance of esoteric traditions, and discounting van Beek's criticism
as unchecked speculation. back
Bibliography
Calame-Griaule, Genevieve. "On the Dogon Restudied." Current Anthropology 32:5, Dec 1991, p.575-577.
ibid. Words and the Dogon World. Philadelphia: Ishi, 1965.
DeMott, Barbara. Dogon Masks--A Structural Study of Form and Meaning. Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1982.
Dyson, Frances. An interesting essay on the hermeneutics of the voice in Dogon and Christian cosmologies can be found at http://sysx.apana.org.au/soundsite/csa/essays_in_sound/meaning_of_voice.html
Griaule, Marcell. Conversations with Ogotemmeli--An Introduction to Dogon Religious Ideas. London: Oxford University Press, 1965.
Heusch, Luc De. "On Griaule on Trial." Current Anthropology 32:4 Aug-Oct 1991, p434-437.
de Santillana, Giorgio de and von Dechend, Hertha. Hamlet's Mill--An Essay on Myth and the Frame of Time. Boston: Gambit Inc., 1968.
Temple, Robert K. G. The Sirius Mystery. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1976.
Van Beek, Walter E. A. "Dogon Restudied--A Field
Evaluation of the Work of Marcel Griaule." Current Anthropology
32:2, April 1991, p.139-167.