officiating priests during certain ceremonies when they are felt to
incarnate the divinity itself.
The altar, as well as the objects consecrated to the cult, is sprinkled
with this blood and then the feathers or hairs of the victim are
spread over it, sticking to the blood. In the modest current sacrifices,
the victim is replaced by an egg, the contents, of which plays the
part of the blood and the shell that of the feathers and hairs.
BBeelliieeff iinn aa SSuupprreemmee GGoodd
The question is not completely solved as to whether the Negroes of
Africa, aside from all Christian and Islamic influence, believe in a
Supreme Being, in a unique God. It definitely seems that this belief
is almost universal among them, but it is of a cosmological order
rather than a religious one, as mentioned above.^21 They admit that
the world and the beings it encloses, including the spirits, have been
created by a ‘Superior Being’ whose existence they recognise, but
in whom they have no interest because they would not know how to
enter into relations with him and because he himself has no interest
in the lot of his creatures, having nothing of the character of the
Providence-God of the western religions. So the ‘Supreme Being’ is
never the object of any sort of cult among the African animists, at
least if he is not identified with the Sky, a generating divinity who
fecundates the soil by means of rain, or else identified with the Earth,
a fecundated and productive divinity. I have heard several times the
pagan Negroes designate the Muslims by an expression literally
signifying “those who invoke God”. The fact that men can address
themselves to God appears to them surprising and contributes not a
little to the prestige which the Mohammedans enjoy among them.
MMaaggiicc aanndd MMaaggiicciiaannss
As I have said above, superstition reigns among the Negroes, as
among all men, but more supremely, of course, among ignorant
peoples, who are impressed to the highest degree by mystery, than
among populations which a more practical type of mentality, a more
generalised education and a more abstract religion have disembar-
rassed in part from this plague of humanity. Belief, as naive as in-
eradicable, in the power of amulets and talismans is legendary
among the Negroes. There is not one of them, whatever be his
religion, who does not wear on his body several “gris-gris”, of which
one is to preserve him from such and such an illness, a second from
the evil eye, a third from the spirit irritated by his ancestor who was
left without burial, while another should procure for him the love of
the woman he desires, or the generosity of the master whom he
serves or even, if he is an official, a rapid advancement. But here
we have manifestations of an essentially human credulity and we
can see almost the same things among ourselves.
The manufacturers of amulets, the magicians and sorcerers, have
easy prey in such an environment. Numerous fortune-tellers predict
the future and reveal hidden things, by means of processes, many
of which strangely resemble those which our own clairvoyants
employ. The magical spell, in diverse forms, is practised on a
great scale. Some people are considered to have received at birth
the power to kill or make sick at a distance, thanks to the evil spells
which they cast, sometimes unconsciously, over their enemies or
over unknown persons. These casters-of-spells are naturally very
much feared; special divinities, whose cult is made up of strange
rites, mysterious and complicated, have been invented and secret
societies have been created with a view to discovering these
sorcerers, to annihilate or at least to counterbalance their power
and, if need be, put them to death.The family religion, as we have seen, has been instituted and
functions only for the profit of the group. It does not bother about
individual interests, and the patriarch, sole possible intermediary
between the deity and the mass of the faithful, only intervenes
when the common fate of the latter is concerned. It would
especially not be proper to have recourse to it when one desires
to obtain the disappearance of a member of the family. As for the
special cults of which we have just spoken, they each have a
well-defined object and one could not, for example, address
himself to the god of thunder or to a god destined to combat the
casters-of-spells when one has to solicit the cure for cancer or to
preserve oneself from poisoned arrows. Here then magic inter-
venes, and it has taken an intense development among the
Negroes, being substituted for religion each time that the latter is
in default, that is to say, usually when it is not the interest of the
collectivity that is concerned.Such is, with its serene logic as to principle, its often bloody appli-
cations, and also with its degrading deformations, the religion to
which the Negroes of Africa are profoundly attached.D’mbashoulder mask (Baga).
Guinea.
Wood, height: 116 cm.
Private collection.Worn statues are called “shoulders masks” because they are widely held by the
dancer over his head and supported by his shoulders using a wooden frame. The
most achieved sculpture among the shoulders masks in Africa is done by the
Baga for the harvests, happy events, and ancestral worship. It represents a
woman who has breastfed and symbolises fertility.