P R E F A C E
In one of the chaos of rocks the most amazing of Africa, has a population of farmer-warriors who was one of the last of the French domain to lose its independence.
For most whites in West Africa, the Dogon are dangerous men, if not the most backward of the Federation. Ilspassent to practice human sacrifice and even to defend themselves better against all the outside influences that they live a difficult country. Some writers have told their small fears when supposedly daring excursions. From these legends and the pretext of revolts often due to misunderstandings, it has sometimes taken in exile of entire villages.
In short, the Dogon represent one of the finest examples of primitive savage and this opinion is shared by some black Muslims who, intellectually, are not better equipped than whites to appreciate those of their fellow faithful to ancestral traditions. Only officials who have assumed the heavy task of administering these men have learned to love them.
The author of this book and its many teammates attend the Dogon past fifteen years. They published the work of these men who are now the people's best-known French Sudan: The Souls of the Dogon (G. Dieterlen, 1941), The Currency (S. OF GANAY 1941), Masks (M. Griaule, 1938) have brought to scholarly evidence that blacks lived on complex ideas, but ordered, on systems of institutions and rituals where nothing is left to chance or whim. This work, already ten years ago, drew attention to developments concerning the "vital force" that sociologists we have enjoyed half a century. They demonstrated the importance of the concept of person, itself linked to that of society, universe, god.
In doing so, the Dogon ontology opened horizons for ethnologists and placed the issue on a larger plan.
Also recently (1945), a sensational book on Bantu Philosophy (RP TEMPEL) analysis of comparable concepts and posed the question of whether one should "pay to Bantu thought a philosophical system."
By effects of perseverance and method, fifteen years after the first steps in the rocks of the cliffs of Bandiagara, this question can be answered regarding the Dogon: these men live on a cosmogony, metaphysics, religion which put them at the height of ancient people and of Christology itself would study with profit.
This doctrine, a venerable man was entrusted to the author. Ogotemmeli, Ogol of-the-Bottom, Hunter became blind by accident, was his infirmity have been long and careful instruction. In exceptional intelligence, a skill still visible despite his physical condition, a wisdom whose prestige extended throughout the country, he had realized the importance of ethnological whites and he had waited for fifteen years the opportunity to reveal his knowledge. He no doubt that these white people were already aware of the institutions, customs and rites the most important.
In October 1946, he sent home the author and, for thirty three days of memorable interviews took place, exposing the backbone of a world system whose knowledge thoroughly revolutionize perceptions about the mentality black as primitive mentality in general.
One is tempted to believe that this is an esoteric doctrine. Some have even suggested, at first glance and without waiting for clarification, there was speculation that individual secondary interest. These are also the same people who see fit to spend a life on the ideas of Plato apparently personal or Julian of Halicarnassus.
Although it is known as a whole, as old and some insiders, this is not esoteric doctrine as each man reached the age may possess.
On the other hand, totemic priests of all ages know the parts that correspond to their specialty. Moreover, the rites covering this body of beliefs are practiced by the whole people.
Certainly, these people did not always profound knowledge of his actions and his prayers, but in this it resembles all peoples. It can not be accused of esoteric Christian dogma of transubstantiation pretext that the man in the street and did not know that word that gleams on the thing.
A reservation of the same kind could be made about the explanatory value and representative of this doctrine on the black mentality in general. One could argue that what is true for the Dogon is not worth for other people of Sudan.
To this, the author and his teammates respond with confidence: Bambara thinking based on a metaphysical as orderly, as rich and whose basic principles are similar to those used by the Dogon. The work of Ms. G. Dieterlen and Madame de Ganay in providing testimony. It is even Bozo fishermen Niger, Kouroumba, farmers from the center of the Loop, the enigmatic Blacksmiths same regions, in which the investigations are just beginning.
So it's not here an unusual system of thought, but the first example of a sequel that will be long.
In so doing, the author wants to achieve two goals: first, to place before a non-specialist public, and without the usual scientific apparatus, a work that scholars use to only reserve, and secondly pay tribute to the first Black West Federation who have revealed to the world a White cosmogony as rich as that of Hesiod, a poet of a dead world, metaphysics and offering the advantage of projecting a thousand rites and gestures on a scene moves a multitude of living men.
The Ogol
p.7 The sun had suddenly risen from the Gondo plain and terraces overlooking the Ogol-the-bottom. The birds were silent, giving him the floor. In the courtyard of the caravanserai what all Sudanese camp, the last few minutes of peace flowed. Around a flat which was left forgotten, the day before, some food, donkey hoof marks indicated the visits of the night. Four balls of dung, net as examples, could have been collected for the collections of the Museum (Department of Mammalogy): they were not yet at this hour, a center of attraction of dung beetles.
A large gray rock-rose, tilted, forming a low table in the courtyard of service to the cracked earth in cubic building that backs to the rising sun, yawned all openings on the Dolo valley.
Not no mountain loomed in any horizon, except perhaps in the East by standing on a terrace, we could see the spur dominating the discrete Ninou scree Banani.
It was well embedded in a sea of frozen sandstones in turmoil, with its long sandy valleys and hollows of the waves flattened rocks reflecting light. It was protected by layers of country, dry, face and body tured by the hundredweight of sand running down the air.
In the darkness open to every wind of wings of the building without doors or windows, tiny unrest began early morning. Four Europeans lying under mosquito nets coffin exchanged jeers ordinary. Side yard, in the flood rose from yellow-pink light, a drowned p.8de sun appeared between the two pilasters of the wall. He paused a moment to contemplate the interior scenes organized by the night and saw the bowl, the traces of an ass, he also lives, upside down in the dust barrier mats defending the kitchen. Finally his glance rested on the kitchen window, and noted the disorder of millet stalks intended to repel cats.
Mênyou was a soft-Black Ogol of the High who served with affection the four foreigners, known him since long. He stifled a curse, his arms dangling white frock with wide sleeves, and advanced towards disaster.
The movement was organized. The server Apourali had exchanged greetings with his colleague endless. Other Dogon arrived, crowding the court: women, children back to care of eyes and a girl wounded in the head. Naked toddlers, belly forward, settled for the show along a day. On the walls, on the central hill, on the steps of the house, informants, interpreters were waiting position. In groups, they came to the call of their name. And this scene repeated all the others, those of yesterday and the day before, all those who for fifteen years, every stay white, animated Ogol southernmost spur-of-High.
In a remote corner of the veranda, took over a European survey on the eve of an obscure sacrifice offered in a fault I gorges. He had the day before, buried in the craters and caves of sandstone, had followed the cornices weir, had reached the ruins where there was a smell of tan and bats. An old Dogon met piecemeal, delivering a truth dismantled, gradually abandoning their positions, pushing a few lies, or laughing sheepishly, crouched against the wall, clinging to its mysteries. His Phrygian cap, a land of
Siena, fell over one ear, hiding his face faded black, lips thin, thin nose, eyes without eyelashes.
In the north gallery, the gestures were more vivid. A young European orchestrated a chorus of four Dogon belonging to different families each speaking a dialect. The vocabulary is rich and expressive verbs in number, were nearly four actors who mimed passionate attitudes and shouted examples.
The northern part was more like a confessional, the priests of the cult of ancestors spoke sparingly with a European full of patience and stubbornness.
p.9 South Gallery finally, another white wrote under the dictation of a Bambara with bright eyes, the prayers at Komo:
- Komo! killer dead fat!
- Shroud of the living!
The four cardinal points were so full of the usual rumors, bursts passengers, detents every day.
However, a small new advanced toward the building on the embankment off a hand between two fields of millet top. She was in the brains of the honest Gana, son of Hogon, the oldest man Ogol, so the religious leader. Gana was holding a stick between his lips rubs mouth he took in hand to greet the knowledge. His pants wide bottom, put his tunic loose in a note stems burnt bread.
The path to hitting rock Ogol-du-Haut, he climbed. He followed a line that had a thousand feet on the polished sandstone.
Having welcomed in the wings, he entered the court and finally emerges to the White. He smiled and approached her ears of her little skull
- A hunter wants to see you.
- Is he ill?
Typically these are patients who ask such a thing, among blacks. In all other cases, see a white has no interest.
- No! he wants to sell you an amulet.
- Which?
- An amulet that you ordered ten years ago, against the bullets.
- I do not remember this ...
The white bit his lip. He suddenly understood the unusual approach. He said: "Good! "Continued the interview with the priest and sent Gana to seek the object.
Gana, rubs mouth to mouth, "said the slick runway, jumped off the rock Ogol-du-Haut, crossed the million, was lost in the tangle of Ogol-the Netherlands, entered a yard and spoke to whisper to a door wide open. A hand emerged from the shadows lean to lean leather trapezoidal, covered with clotted blood. Gana refit in reverse the same way, came to the White.
- And the formula? Did you form?
- What formula?
- Manufacture and use! Go get it!
- P.10 I know, gave the priest when Gana back was turned.
And he recited the White incontinent who wrote it.
Gana and his seventeen years knew what to expect on stories between adults. He jumped even the rock Ogol-du-Haut, but this time he remained standing stiffly on the track after removing highly rubs his mouth: a thorn had entered his foot. He returned limping, the court found in the maze of alleyways and sat on the threshold black, he spoke at length, by removing a thorn from his toe. A low voice answered him, he listened with deference. Then he went on the road with a slight sigh, and found himself on the veranda in front of the White alone. Rubs off his mouth, he recited the formula, forgetting that his interlocutor three verses, reading his notes, he recited. In astonishment, Gana left hanging for a moment the jaw.
- But who is this old hunter? he was asked.
He misunderstood and thought they wanted to know the man's motto:
- Vize, he said, Vize karandiang!
That is to say: Spreader! Retractor terrible
First day
Ogotemmeli
Ogol-the Netherlands, as every Dogon village, piling houses and granaries. Terraces of clay and straw conical roofs alternated. A squeeze in its lanes of light and shadow, between the truncated pyramids, prisms, cubes or cylinders of granaries and houses, rectangular frames, altars red or white umbilical hernia, one felt lost in a dwarf puzzle. Everything was cracked under the rain and heat, the walls are mud cracks like the skins of pachyderms. Above the walls of courtyards, were seen beneath the foundations of barns, chickens, dogs, yellow and sometimes large turtles, symbols of the Patriarchs. At a bend in the lane, we arrived at a door carved p.11 ax and that even new, would not obstruct the entry of land made of towers and pediment of logs. Door as wide as shoulders, with the grain of the wood carved by the winter rains, rolling, and nodes opening their eyes in the waves. Drought, catchy hands, muzzles goats had narrowed the door creaking on its pivot, applied against the wall with a loud gong yard and discovered the wretched of the most amazing man of the plains and rocks, Oropa up from Nimba, and Asakarba Tintam.
The White stepped on a dunghill lean old man with no children. A facade to stall, pierced by a low door at ground floor and a drop panel in the floor, stood in the middle of the yard, hiding the main building. On the pediment opened ten holes swallow, eight cones topped with flat stones adorned the edge. Right and left lined up like large dice, six barns, two turned back, belonging to a neighbor. Of the four buildings, one was empty and the other dislocated, the third cut in way like a fruit bitten. One lived, half-full of grains.
In front, between the main building and lofts, a low house closed court, concealing the slight hum of life. On the right, in a small open pit, duvets turned indefinitely, driven by a vortex without violence.
The man who accompanied the White threw formulas hello. Immediately a voice that sounded distinctly the words replied:
- God will take you! God takes you!
- Hi! how is your body?
The voice slowly approached. The inner shadow came from the hands of friction on the walls and wooden frames. A stick groping the walls, pottery rang hollow tiny chicks went out one by one from the pet door, pushed by advancing a great life.
Finally, a brown coat appeared, pulled at the seams, frayed from use as a flag wars of yesteryear, then head bowed under the architrave and the man stood up to his full height, turning his face toward the indescribable abroad:
- Hi to those who thirst! he said.
Thick lips spoke the purest language of Sanga. We saw it. Lived alone. The rest were folded like, especially since the very first words, her head was bent towards the earth p.12. The cheeks, cheekbones, forehead, eyelids were one and the same ravages and were folded a hundred wrinkles that gave them a painful grimace, like a face flooded with too much light or who would receive persistently a hail of stones. They were within the scope of a discharge point blank and his eyes were dead.
As the two visitors came from outside and they were supposed to have worked in the heat, man, leaning on his stick, they finally said:
- Hi! Fatigue hello! Hello sunshine!
The longer this first day, was the choice of place, space narrow, stone interviews. Front of the house inhabited by leaving the same old Ogotemmeli inside, even pushing her head toward him and speaking to confession as we could, he said, to draw the ears of eternal women. On the other side of the house facade, in the cramped courtyard windswept north, it could be watched by children hidden in the attic in ruins. Remained the court itself, with its manure misery, his hollow stone, his ashes and his calamitous indented wall in the center, height curious.
Ogotemmeli hesitated again, there was a lot to say about the inconvenience of the court for conversations between grown men. Le Blanc opened his mouth to approve and insisted even on the walls of indiscretion on the folly of men and, naturally, on the inconceivable curiosity of women, their unquenchable thirst for news. He was interested in all these precautions seemed disproportionate with a simple sale of amulet.
Ogotemmeli finally sat on the threshold of the lower door of the great facade, he withdrew into himself, his face bent toward the ground, and crossing his hands above his head, elbows on knees, he waited .
The White gradually included the sale of the amulet was a pretext. There was no mention in the interviews that followed and the underlying reason for the gesture of the old man would never be discovered.
But various details, it appeared later in qu'Ogotemmêli wanted to give the stranger, whose first stay in the country p.13 fifteen years back and he trusted the education he had himself even received from his grandfather, then his father.
Ogotemmeli expected. He himself was perplexed when he provoked this man before he could see. Not that it was for him a stranger: for fifteen years he had heard of these groups of whites who came under his sleeping on the hard and ride in the cliffs to study the customs.
He even followed their work since the beginning because it was closely linked with the old Ambibê Babadyé, great dignitary of the Masks, their informant record, died recently. On several occasions over the past fifteen years, Ambibê had come to ask advice and information. Through his words, and according to reports from each other, he had made a fair idea of the intentions of the speaker who was going to hard in the search.
But the case was unique. How to instruct a white man? How to walk-with things, rituals, beliefs? And besides, it had already dismantled the White Masks, he knew the secret language, and had traveled the country in all directions and for some institutions as far as he knew him. So?
The White pulled him embarrassment:
- When you broke your shotgun to the face, whereupon you were pulling?
- On a porcupine.
The White wanted a bias in coming to the business of hunting, the rules concerning the animal world, and thence in totemism.
- It was an accident, "said the old man. But it was also the last warning. Divination told me that I had to stop hunting if I wanted to keep my children. Hunting, which is a work of death, attracts death. I had twenty-one children. I still have five.
The great drama of the mortality rose black, and also depth discussion of these men, helpless before death, clinging to their beliefs, like all men of the earth, beliefs and explain that console, but do not avoid the event.
At this level of evil personality of Ogotemmeli appeared in itself and in its relations with supernatural powers p.14. From the age of fifteen he was initiated into the mysteries of religion by his grandfather. His father had continued his investigation after the death of her grandfather. It seemed that these "lessons" had been given for over twenty years and that the family was Ogotemmeli those where these things were not taken lightly.
Without doubt he had Ogotemmeli demonstrated very early, an alert mind and a great address. Until his blindness, he was the prodigious hunter who, though blind since childhood due to smallpox, returned hands full while others still struggled in the grooves. He planned his technique in his intimate knowledge of nature, animals, men and gods. After his accident, he learned more. Folded on itself, its altars and heard every word he had become one of the most powerful spirits of the Cliffs.
In fact, his name and his motto was known of the plateau and talus. "The smaller the kid said! "It was said, and consultants flocked to his door every day and at night.
As Phrygian caps raised themselves behind walls and that women, by far, were the signs, he had to leave and make room for customers. But contact was made and talks were organized by tacit agreement, on a kind of program and at convenient times.
Second day
The first word and the skirt of fiber
Ogotemmeli sat down on his doorstep, cleared his snuffbox of rigid skin on his tongue and put a yellow dust:
- Tobacco, he said, gives the right spirit.
And he began to break the world system.
Because he had to start at the dawn of things.
Ogotemmeli rejected as irrelevant detail! Training has fourteen solar talking about the people, land flat and circular arranged in a stack. He would treat the solar system as useful. He consented to take into account the star p.15 jouassent although a secondary role:
- It is true, he said that in the course of time women reach for the stars to give to their children. They pierced the time and made a running fire of these tops to show themselves how the world worked. But this is just a game
The stars came from ground balls launched into space by the god Amma, one god. He created the sun and moon using a technique more complicated, which was not the first men known but is the first documented among God pottery. The sun is in a sense, a white pottery made in the once and for all, surrounded by a spiral of copper eight laps. The moon has the same form and copper is white. It is heated by district. In their motion, the explanations come later. For now, it was necessary to trace the outline of a scene and getting the actors.
However, Ogotemmeli wanted to give an idea of the magnitude of the sun.
- Some, he says, consider it as big as the camp, which would make it thirty cubits. It is actually bigger. It goes beyond the surface Township Sanga.
And after some hesitation, he added:
- It is perhaps even greater.
As for the size of the moon, he refused to dwell on it. It never gave them. The moon had a role means. We'll talk. He said however that if blacks were creatures of light extracted in the sun, it was the moonlight which had been created white people, hence their larval appearance.
So saying Ogotemmeli spat his tobacco. He had nothing against whites. He did not say either that he complained. He left them to their fate, in the northern lands.
The God Amma has therefore taken a bead of clay, he shook his hand and threw it as he had done for the stars. Clay spreads, wins the north is up, stretches south is down, although everything is horizontal.
- The land is lying but the North is up.
It extends from east to west, dividing its members as a fetus in the womb. It is a body, that is to say a thing whose members are separated by a central mass.
p.16 And this body is female, oriented north-south, laid flat, facing the sky. An anthill is her sex, her clitoris a termite mound. Amma, who is alone and wants to unite with this creature, approached her.
It was then that the first disorder of the universe.
Ogotemmeli was silent. Hands clasped above his head, he felt the sounds from various courts and terraces. It was originally disasters, the crucial blunder of God.
- If you hear me, I have a beef fine!
When God draws near, the nest stands, bar passage and shows his masculinity. It is the equal sex abroad, the union will not occur.
Yet God is omnipotent. It kills the nest and joins the rebel land excised. But the original incident would mark forever the course of things: faulty union was born, instead of the twin set, a unique being, Thos aureus, jackal, symbol of the difficulties of God.
Ogotemmeli spoke more low. There was no question of the ears of women. Other eardrums, immaterial, could thrill to these words significant. White and black assistant, Sergeant Koguem, were leaning towards the old man as with terrible plots.
But as they reached the beneficial actions of God, the tone became normal again.
God had other relationships with his wife and this time nothing came to disturb their union, because circumcision was done away with the first cause of disorder. Water divine seed, entered thus in the land and the generation continued the regular cycle of gémelliparité. Two things are modeled.
- God created them like water. They were green, shaped and snake person. Head kidney they were human, the bottom was a snake.
The eyes were rendered as red men and their forked tongue like that of reptiles. The arms, flexible, have no joints. Their whole body was green and smooth, gliding like a water surface, garnished with short hair and green vegetation and germination announcement.
These spirits, called Nommo, were thus two homogeneous products p.17 of God, of divine essence like him, no adventures designed and developed according to standards in the matrix land. Their destiny took them to heaven where they received instructions from their father. Not that God had to teach them the Word, the essential thing to all beings, as in the universal system: the couple was born complete and perfect, for its eight members, the figure was eight, symbol of the word.
He also had the essence of God, for it was made of her seed, which is both the medium, form and matter of vital force in the world source of movement and persistence in being. And this force is water. The couple is present in any water, there is water, the seas, borders, streams, storms, one drinks the spoonful.
Ogotemmeli uses the terms "water" and "Nommo".
- If this is thanks to the Nommo, he said, could not even create the earth because the earth was and is steeped in water (by the Nommo) that she received life.
- What is life in the land? asked White.
- The lifeblood of the earth is water. God hath kneaded the ground with water. Similarly, it makes the blood with water. Even in the stone is that force, as moisture is in everything.
But if the Nommo is water, it also produces copper. In overcast seen materialize the sun on the horizon haze, these rays, excrement geniuses are copper and are light. They are also water, because they bear the humidity in his earthly journey upward. The couple excretes the light because it is too light.
Ogotemmeli sought, in recent times, things in the dust. He eventually collect several small stones. With a quick movement he threw them in the yard, over its two counterparts which did not even look down. The projectile fell in place just where did sing a few seconds before, the cock of Hogon.
- This cock is a storm. It destroys the conversations.
And like the beast sing again on the other side of the wall Ogotemmeli Koguem delegated to him lay a wood. Koguem income, he asked if the cook had left the boundaries of the district TABD.
- It is within the scope of Hogon said Koguem, and I do monitor by four children.
- P.18 Good, Ogotemmeli said with a chuckle, he uses his rest: I was told it would be eaten at the next Beer-of-Twins.
He returned to the case of Genie Nommo, the Nommo, as he said more commonly, because this pair of twins was the perfect union, the ideal unit.
The Nommo from heaven, saw his mother, the earth, naked and speechless, which was probably the result of the first incident in dealings with the God Amma. It had to end this mess. The Nommo came down to Earth, bringing fiber from plants already established in the celestial regions. He broke ten handfuls corresponding to ten fingers and stranded five for five in front and put the place back. Even today, these masked men are accessories that hang up their feet thick tendrils.
But the role of this garment was not just modesty. It presented the world's first land act of universal order and the sign that spiral is projected onto a plane as a broken line serpentine.
The fibers, in fact, fell in hanks, symbol tornadoes, meandering streams, eddies of water and wind, the swaying motion of reptiles. They also reminded the spirals to eight rounds of cocksucking sun humidity. They were themselves a path of sips of water because the plants celestial chill caught. They were full of the essence of Nommo, they were the Nommo himself in motion, as indicated by the wavy line which may extend to infinity.
But the Nommo, when he speaks, like any emits a mist of warm carrier verb, verb itself. And that cloud of sound, like all water moves on a helical line. The twists of the garment were therefore a path of choice for speech that genius would be to the Earth. This chant his hands by bringing them to his lips as he wove, so his word is wet with coiled braids moist spiritual revelation penetrated technical education.
For these fibers filled with water and words, the Nommo was therefore continuously present before the sex of her mother.
Well dressed Earth had a language, the first of this world, p.19 the crudest of all time. Basic sentence structure, verb rare vocabulary without grace. The words were poorly differentiated blasts, yet bearing strength. As it stands, the floor without shades suited the great works of beginnings.
In the middle of a word, Ogotemmeli shrieked: he replied to the currency started hunting in the notch of the wall by the side of conservative Akoundyo, priest of women died in childbirth and stillbirths.
Akoundyo had first spat aside, his eyes riveted on the group of men. He was wearing a Phrygian cap garnet, enclosing the ears, with a peak in ureus found on the root of the nose, known as "the wind blows." Protruding cheekbones, teeth shining, he recited the congratulations that the old man sent back immediately. Alternate forms reached a first level of excitement.
- God! Ogotemmeli exclaimed, God curse the one who does not love you in Ogol Netherlands!
Unrest grows in the heart of Akoundyo who reached the height of one-upmanship.
- God! finally cried the blind man, whom God curse me if I myself do not love you! The four men breathed. They joked about the thinness of the special game in the valley I. Finally Akoundyo away by declaring, in a French sharpshooter in, he would "get in the way the Office of porcupine, animal and twisted said.
They returned to the Word. His role was to organize: it was a good thing, yet it sparked the first disorder.
Indeed, the jackal, disappointed and disappointing son of God, desired to possess her and put his hand on the fibers which were, that is to say about the clothes her mother. It resisted, because this was incestuous act. She plunged into her bosom, in the nest, under the guise of an ant. But the jackal followed her and there was indeed no other woman in the world to be desired. She was drilling the hole was deep enough and finally she had to admit defeat. Thus was foreshadowed the struggles of men and women ending in victory yet masculine.
Incest was of great consequence: he gave the first p.20parole the Jackal, which would allow him, for eternity, to reveal to diviners to come and God's purposes.
Moreover, it was the cause of the appearance of menstrual blood which dyed fibers. The state of the earth, become impure, inconsistent with the reign of God. It turned away from the wife and resolved directly create living beings. Having modeled a template in a wet clay, he placed on earth and from heaven, the cap of a ball thrown into space. He did the same for a man's sex: having laid on the ground, he threw a ball that ficha above.
Immediately the two bodies were organized, their life lasted; members separated from the nucleus, and the bodies appeared a human couple emerges from soil.
It then enters the stage for new tasks, the couple of Nommo and which provided that the fundamental rule of double births would be abolished and that could lead to errors comparable to those of the Jackal, born unique. For because of his loneliness as the first son of God does so.
- Born alone, said Ogotemmeli the Jackal because of it, has done more than the mouth can not say.
Engineering drawings on the ground two superimposed silhouettes, two souls, one of which was male and one female. The man lay on shadows and took them both. It was done the same for women.
Thus, every human being from the outset, was blessed with two souls of opposite sexes, or rather two principles corresponding to two different people within each. For humans, the female soul sat in the foreskin. For women, the male soul was supported by the clitoris.
But the prescience of Nommo probably showed him the disadvantages of this makeshift. The lives of men could not adapt to these twin beings, he had to decide each to be paid in sex for which he was apparently done better.
The Nommo therefore circumcised man, lining and in him all the femininity of the foreskin. But it morphed into an animal that is "neither snake nor insect, but is classified with snakes."
This animal is named heir. It would be a kind of lizard black and white as the cover of the dead. His name also means "four" female figure and "sun" female entity.
p.21 The heir symbolized the pain of circumcision and the necessity of suffering was the male also in his sex, as women.
Then the man marries his girlfriend. She later gave birth to the first two children in a series of eight that were to be the ancestors of the Dogon people. At this time, the pain of parturition was concentrated in her clitoris, which excised by an invisible hand, broke away from her and walked away, turned into a scorpion. The pocket and the sting symbolized the body, the venom is water and the blood of pain.
On returning from the scope of millet, the European wondered the meaning of all these steps and risers, all these fits and starts of mythical thought: a lack God's first creation, things get better by excision of Earth and the birth of a couple of geniuses, and ingenious engineers of the world, which provide a first floor; incest destroys the order and undermines the delivery of twins; order is restored by creation of a human couple ; the gémelliparité is replaced by a dual core (gémelliparité Why?), but this soul is a double danger: a man must be male and a female woman. Circumcision and excision still recovering things in order. (But why nay, why this scorpion?).
The answers were to come later. They were part of the huge building that the blind was gradually emerge from the mists millennia.
Above the heads of European and Koguem, bunches of millet violet stood out lead from the sky. They crossed a field of heavy ears, waved high, motionless in the breeze. When the millet is inappropriate, sparse if its ears are light, it stirs the slightest noise and blasts. The sound fields are scarce. Rather the scope of the abundance scale in the wind and indulges in silence.
Day Three
The second floor and weaving
p.22 On entering the court, it was challenging layouts. The narrow courtyard where the kites, the finest acrobats of the air could not enter the poultry. There was a hollow in the stone remains of millet beer, an island in fact, drunk by chickens, rooster and hen and chicks. And also by a dog tiger, white and yellow, sickle tail like a sword of Ethiopia. Gong at the door, all these people had dispersed, leaving room for men.
Ogotemmeli fits into the door, and began to count the eight primordial ancestors born to the couple molded by God. The four seniors were males, four females. But by virtue of a grace that was to go to them they could enrich themselves, being double and of both sexes.
Hence the progeny of the eight Dogon families.
For humanity organized itself in the last resort. Single birth, permanent calamity, would reform weakly by granting dual soul that Nommo drew near calving ground. They plastered the newborn by holding the hips over the place, hands and feet on the ground. Then the soul was bulky cropped to circumcision and mankind lurched his dark destiny.
But the thirst for heavenly perfection were not extinguished. The couple Nommo, which gradually took the place of God his father, pondering the redemptions. But it was necessary to improve the human status, conduct reforms and lessons on human plans. The Nommo feared contacts between frightening creatures carnal and pure spirits. It was understandable acts, occurred closer to the beneficiaries in their climate. He called for men, after regeneration, are attracted to the ideal as a peasant in a field bold.
The Nommo descended on Earth and then entered the nest, where they came from sex. They were thus able, among other work, defend their mother against the potential of their businesses p.23 elder, the Jackal incestuous. They also were serving their presence moist, bright and eloquent, it remained forever stained for God, but that could win in patches, the purity required for the work of life.
In this sex, the male Nommo took the place of the excluded sex once during the excision of the clitoris nest. The female was replaced with femininity and her womb came in that of the earth.
So the couple could he proceed with the work of regeneration that it would mount, agree with God instead of God.
- The Nommo, in place of Amma, "working" the work of Amma, "said the blind.
In these times foggy changing world, men do not know death. The eight ancestors from the first human pair lived thus indefinitely. They procreated eight distinct lineages, each reproducing for itself, for they had both male and female:
- The four males and four females, because of their low (sex) were eight doubles. The four men were men and women, four women were women and men. In men, it was the man who was responsible, among women, women. They mated themselves, have knocked up every man for himself; have procreated.
But when times were of age, some obscure instinct pushed the elder to the anthill invested by the Nommo. He wore on his head, as a hairdresser and as if to protect them from the sun, the wooden bowl in which he put his food. Placing both feet into the hole in the ground, it sank slowly, like a countdown parturition.
He penetrated and whole in the ground and his head itself disappeared. But he left on the ground, as witness its passage through this world, the bowl that had been retained by the edges of the slot. It only remained on the nest one hemisphere of wood, impregnated foods and gestures of the dead, his body symbol, a symbol of his human nature as is the animal nature of the sheath that reptiles abandoned after molting .
p.24 Freed from its earthly ancestor was supported by the couple regenerator. The male took him deep in the earth, the waters of its companion matrix. He withdrew as a fetus, was reduced as a seed, reached the water quality, seed of God, essence of both geniuses.
And all this work was tense: the male accompanying the female voice that spoke to herself, speaking in his own sex. The verb entered in it, wrapped around a propeller in the matrix to eight turns. And as the helical strip of copper around the sun gives it its diurnal motion, and the spiral of the matrix verb gave the movement regenerator.
Completed in words and water, the new genius, expectorated, ascended to heaven. The eight ancestors had done in their order that transubstantiation. But when came the turn of the seventh, the transfer was marked by a significant event.
Indeed, the seventh is perfection. Though equal in quality to others, it is the sum of femininity, 4, and Masculinity, 3. It is the culmination of the series perfect symbol of total union of male and female, that is, itself, unity. And while this particular uniform has the rank of speech fluency. The entry into Earth's holding would be the prelude to changes beneficial.
In the womb, he became like the others, and water engineering. It developed as the other to the rhythm of the words pronounced by the two transformers.
- The words that the Nommo female talking to himself, "said Ogotemmeli, turned into a helix and entered her sex. Named the male helped her. These are the words a learner's seventh ancestor within the abdomen.
These words, others had them tied, by the effect of their passage in the same medium, but their rank was not their role to control or operation. So the seventh received a perfect knowledge of a verb - the second that the earth hear - clearer than the first, either, like the first, reserved to a few, but for all men. Thus, he could make progress in the world. In particular, it allowed to take precedence over the bad son of God, the jackal, the latter remained in possession, of course, the first word, he could still, through it, to disclose certain soothsayers p.25 celestial designs, but in the future order of things, it should no longer be a straggler of revelation.
This word developed the effective power of its new carrier, for him, regeneration within the Earth gradually turned into investment in this. It slowly occupied the entire volume of the body and arranged them as appropriate for his work: his lips were fused with the edge of the nest became mouth and flourishes. Teeth appointees arose. We counted seven for each lip, then ten, number of fingers, then forty, then eighty, ten per ancestor.
The appearance of these numbers indicated the future pace of growth of families to teething was a sign that the time for new teaching approaching.
But again manifested the scruples of geniuses: it was not directly to the men that gave the Seventh instruction but to the ant, avatar of the earth, familiar places.
The day came to sunlight, the Seventh Engineering sputum eighty son of cotton he divided between his upper teeth used like a comb loom. He formed the beach and odd chain. He did the same with lower teeth to be the son of peers plan. By opening and closing his jaws, genius imprinted on the chain movements imposed on it by the lists in the art. And like his whole face was participating in work, his nose ornaments were the pulley on which the last rock, the shuttle was none other than the ornament of the lower lip.
While the son crossed and unfolded, the two peaks forked tongue engineering alternately pushing the weft yarn and the band was formed out of the mouth, the breath of the second floor revealed.
Indeed, the genius spoke. As did the Nommo in the first release, it gives his word through a technique that he might be in the hands of men. He thus showed the identity of material things and spiritual forces, or rather the necessity of their cooperation.
Engineering and recited his words clogging the interstices of the fabric, they were woven into the son and were one with the band. They were the fabric itself and the fabric was the word. And that's why stuff is said himself, which means p.26 "is the word." And this word also means 7, the rank of one who spoke in weaving.
During the performance of work, the ant came and went at the edges of the hole in the breath of genius, hearing and retaining the words. Pledged to this new direction, she communicated it to men who haunted the area and had already completed the transformation of the sex of the earth.
Until the sinking of the ancestors, they lived as excavations dug dens in the ground horizontally. When their attention was attracted by the bowls abandoned, they observed the forms of the nest they found better disposed than their holes. They imitated by opening galleries in sheltered accommodation with rain and they began to gather provisions made for picking products.
They were moving together towards a less rudimentary and when they noticed the growth of teeth around the orifice, they imitated them to build protection against wild beasts: with large fangs kneaded clay, and made them dry and encastrèrent around their entrances.
At the time of granting the second trial, the men lived so dens that were already in a kind of foreshadowing of the revelation and breast cancer in which each of them, in time, come down to regenerate. And this was also human anthill, with its occupants and rooms grain, the image of a rudimentary system of the world, much later, was sent from heaven as a wonderful attic.
These dark times future drafts had prepared men to receive advice from the ant. This, after the demonstration, had stored the cotton fibers; she had spun and before men, the son pulled the teeth of the hole, as did the engineering. As the chain went out, the men spent the weft thread by throwing right and left, the rhythm of the jaw which had resumed their movement, the band obtained was wound on a wooden outline of ensoupleau.
At the same time the ant disclose the lyrics and the men repeated. And was reconstituted on the lips of earth's climate life in motion, forces transposed breaths effective than the seventh ancestor had created.
p.27 Thus the intersections of warp and weft cinched the same words, new teaching, which became the inheritance of men and weavers passed from generation to generation, slamming the shuttle and noise sour pulley business known as "creaking of the floor."
All this was happening in daylight as spinning and weaving are diurnal labors. Working at night would weave webs of silence and shadow.
Day Four
The third floor and attic of Pure Land
Ogotemmeli did not have a clear idea of what happened in heaven after metamorphosis of the eight Nommo ancestors. While these eight, who left the earth all work done, had won the regions where there was the older couple, the author of their transformation. Admittedly, these seniors had precedence over others and they had not been for lack of immediately imposing an organization and rules of life.
But he never appeared clear why this world heavenly stirred until failure, and why these disorders led to a reorganization of the human world that had no part in these quarrels. For the eight finally descended on earth in a huge tackle symbols which took up a third and final speech necessary to the functioning of the modern world.
If we had listened Ogotemmeli with resignation, it had obtained that this evasive answer:
- The Genii falling from the sky as anger or crush.
Obviously Ogotemmeli was aware of the complication of infinite views of God or the spirits who were replacing, and it was reluctant to explain himself.
However, a modest but satisfying table was drawn to this dark period.
The couple had been in heaven Nommo eight processed. But although they were all the same essence, the seniors had p.28 rights on new generation and they top the organized in a network of rules that the worst was the separation from each other and the prohibition to attend.
Indeed, the image of human societies where the number is a factor of disturbance, the company would have gone to heaven disorder because of the number if all were combined.
Guaranteed by this rule, the new generation of Nommo had yet change his destiny by raping.
Indeed, God had given to eight one set of eight seeds for their food and where the prime ancestor was responsible. Of the eight seed, the last, Digitaria, had been publicly scorned by the recipient, under the pretext of its smallness and the inconvenience of its preparation. He even went so far as to swear that he never ate.
Arrived, however, a critical period when all the seeds came to exhaustion, but the last. The First and Second ancestors, who also had broken the forbidden separation, gathered to eat the ultimate reserve. P.29 gesture put the finishing touch to excess: in fact he spent the first fault in a break of speech. Both ancestors became thereby unclean for the world of heaven, that is to say, a gasoline incompatible with life in Heaven. They resolved to leave those areas where they felt foreign, and six others, solidarity, stood under the same provisions. In addition, they wanted to flee, taking with them everything that could be helpful to men they would find.
It was then, probably under the watchful eye of God and perhaps with his help, the first ancestor began preparations for departure.
He received a woven basket, circular aperture and square bottom, which was used to transport earth and mud necessary to build a world system which would be one of the monitors. This basket was used first as a model for other large wicker; ancestor built it in the reverse position, the bottom square of 8 cubits forming terrace, the opening of 20 cubits in diameter placed on the ground, the height was 10 cubits.
p.30 In this framework was applied to the mud of earth Celestial, and the thickness was formed from the center of each side of the square, a flight of 10 degrees oriented towards one of the cardinal points. In the sixth degree of the north staircase, a door was formed to access the interior, where eight compartments were divided into two floors.
Symbolically, the building was constructed and the following meanings:
- The circular base representing the sun;
- The terrace square reminded the sky;
- A circle in the center of the terrace, the moon appeared;
- Each step is horizontal and each female cons reversing male, all four steps of 10 degrees foreshadowed the eight dozen families from the eight ancestors.
Each staircase supported a category of people and was linked to a constellation:
- The northern staircase, corresponding to the Pleiades, men bear and fish;
