African Art

of breath or vital fluid, has no other role than to animate the material
part and to communicate life and movement to it; it is a principle
without an individuality or personality of its own, which is eternal in
the sense that it is anterior to the body that it animates for the time
being and will survive it to go and animate another, and so on until
the end of time. Like matter, it is infinitely divisible and can disso-
ciate itself into various elements each of which suffices, alone or
combined with another element coming from elsewhere, to animate
a given body. When a man dies, it is that the vital breath has
abandoned its carnal envelope in order immediately to create a
new life either in a human or animal foetus in gestation or in a
germinating plant. Of course, this sort of fluid, without personality,
without intelligence, without will, that may be compared to an
electric current, is not the object of any cult. It is, if you will, a spirit,
but only in the etymological sense of the word (spiritus: “breath”).

The second principle is very different: born with the body which
harbours it and at the same time, it constitutes the veritable personality
of the being to whom it communicates its thought, its will and the force
to act; the vital breath permits the members of a man or an animal to
move, it permits the sap of a tree to circulate in its veins, but this
movement and this circulation cannot be accomplished if they are not
ordered by the spirit. If it happens that one day the control of the vital
breath escapes from the spirit and that, as a consequence, this breath
leaves its envelope and death follows, it is because another spirit
which is stronger has neutralised the first: that is why all death is
attributed by the Negroes not to material causes, which for them are
only secondary and immediate causes, but to the psychic influence
of an evil-minded spirit, the only real and first cause of death.

After the decease of a being, only his spirit lives, and it lives such as
it was during the lifetime of this being with the same personality, the
same character, the same affections, and the same hatreds. Only it
no longer has the vital breath to command nor the carnal envelope
limiting its fancy and so it becomes even more powerful, being no
longer hampered in its action by the necessity of directing the life of
the body and for guiding itself, in a way, by the vital breath. Also, it
is then deified, and it is here that we must find the origin of the cult of
the dead, or of the manes of ancestors. If every animate being – man,

animal or plant – possesses the two principles of which we have just

spoken, inanimate beings – the defunct, dead animals or plants, solid

minerals, liquids or gases – are naturally deprived of the vital breath,

which has no importance whatever from the religious point of view.

However, each one is endowed with an individual spirit, intelligent

and active, all the more efficient and redoubtable, as I have just said,

because it does not have to occupy itself with the inert body which is

only its material representation and to which it is not bound by the

obligation to control the play of the absent vital breath. This body,

moreover, can disintegrate, as is the case with corpses, and the spirit

is not held to make of it its constant dwelling place.

Whether it is the spirit of a deceased person or of a mountain, a

block of stone, a gulf, a river, the heavens, the rain, the wind, the

land, and especially a particular piece of land, the parcel of

ground one inhabits and from which one gains a living, for the

Negroes it is always the same kind of spirit, it is always a principle

that is invisible but which sees everything, which takes account of

all, is sensitive, can be offended unintentionally, equally irascible

and capable of causing hard expiation for even involuntary

offences that have been done to it, but feeble and vain as man who

created it in his own image, letting itself be moved and cajoled by

prayers and offerings or influenced by propitiatory sacrifices.

Such is the foundation of the animist religion current among the

Negroes from the Sahara to the Cape of Good Hope. It includes

in the same cult innumerable spirits of ancestors of man and not

less innumerable spirits of the phenomena of nature, all promoted

to the ranks of divinities.

PPrriieessttss

All divinities have their priests who are the patriarchs for the cult

of the ancestors, the “masters of the ground” for the cult of the

land and the waters, and a particular clergy, initiated in a sort of

school into the more or less secret rites of certain more specialised

cults. There are also temples, which are sometimes huts, where

the remains or bones of the dead are preserved, or else objects

consecrated to the cult of special divinities, very often trees or

pieces of wood, frequently rocks of bizarre form or grottos of a

mysterious aspect. They have their altars, which may be a sort of

bench of dried clay, a wooden post or a clay cone supporting a

vase of offerings, the stump of a tree, a turned-over urn, a stone

plate, a copper basin placed on a kind of pyramid, etc. They

have their materials of worship, statuettes representing the

deceased, diverse objects having belonged to them, baskets

filled with bones, libation vases, knives for sacrifices, little bells or

rattles intended to invoke the spirit or to convoke the worshippers,

sacred tambourines, and above all wooden masks which take the

form of monstrous animal heads and which are worn by the

Mask face (Dan).
Ivory Coast.
Wood, horn, chain, height: 25 cm.
Private collection.

“Charged” artefact, used for magical purposes.