The Religions Book

48

T

he Dogon people live in

the Bandiagara plateau

in Mali, West Africa, where

they practice a traditional animist

religion: for them, all things are

endowed with spiritual power.

Fundamental to Dogon religious

belief is that humankind is the

seed of the universe, and that the

human form echoes both the first

moment of creation and the entire

created universe. Every Dogon

village is therefore laid out in the

shape of a human body, and is

regarded as a living person.

Sacred and symbolic space

A Dogon village is arranged lying

north to south, with the blacksmith,

or forge, at its head and shrines

at its feet. This layout reflects the

belief that the creator god, Amma,

made the world from clay in the

form of a woman lying in this

position. Everything in the village

has an anthropomorphic, or human,

equivalent. The women’s menstrual

huts, to the east and west, are

the hands. The family homesteads

are the chest. Each of these big

homesteads is, in turn, laid out in

the plan of a male body, with the

kitchen as the head, the large

central room as the belly, the arms

IN CONTEXT

KEY BELIEVERS

Dogon

WHEN AND WHERE

From 15th century CE,

Mali, West Africa

BEFORE

From 1500 BCE Similarities

in oral myths and knowledge

of astronomy suggest that the

Dogon’s ancestral tribes may

have originated in ancient

Egypt before migrating to the

region of present-day Libya,

then Burkina Faso or Guinea.

From 10th century CE Dogon

identity evolves in West Africa

from a mixture of peoples of

earlier tribes, many of whom

have fled Islamic persecution.

AFTER

Today The Dogon people

number between 400,000

and 800,000. The majority

still practice their traditional

religion, but significant

minorities have converted

to Islam and Christianity.

as two lines of storerooms, the

chest as two jars of water, and the

penis as the entrance passage. The

building reflects the creative power

of the male–female twin ancestral

beings, the Nommo (see facing page).

The hut of the hogon, the Dogon’s

spiritual leader, is a model of the

universe. Every element of the hut’s

WE ARE IN

RHYTHM WITH

THE UNIVERSE

MAN AND THE COSMOS

Masked dancers perform the dama,

or funeral ritual. This traditional Dogon

religious ceremony is designed to

guide the souls of the deceased

safely into the afterlife.