dogon dream

Foetus, dogon mask, mobile phone, grace jones

Before the world was created, there was a God called Amma who had the appearance of an egg. Amma created four male and four female creatures. The males are: Nommo Die, Nommo Titiyayne, O Nommo and Ogo and were created in the form of fish. But Ogo rebelled before he was fully finished, as he wanted to make the creation his own. O Nommo was sacrificed to pay back the error of his twin Ogo and came down to earth in the ark that carried men’s ancestors and all living beings. Ogo, rebelling against Amma, detached himself from Amma’s placenta, ripping part of it away, and came down to earth with the ark.

In leaving Amma’s womb prematurely, he did not wait for the full gestation of his twin. He found himself weak and alone because Amma had transformed the piece of placenta torn out by Ogo, into our earth and the moon. Ogo, displeased with the earth, unfit for cultivation, went back up to the sky to interrupt Amma’s work and to retrieve the remains of his placenta. But Amma, wanting to put this piece of placenta out of Ogo’s reach, transformed it into our sun. Next, Amma transformed Ogo into a four legged creature, a pale fox that from that moment on would be the instrument of chaos in the universe. In accepting the opposition of the fox, and the chaos that he brought to the universe, Amma allowed psychological dualism and individualization to be created. In order to reorganize the universe that had been disturbed by the fox, Amma decided to sacrifice her twin brother O Nommo. His blood served to purify the earth and his body, cut into pieces, allowed the stars, the animals and the plants to appear. After this purification of the universe, O Nommo was brought back to life and sent back to earth by Amma, to give birth to humans and to reorganize life on earth. Amma had made men immortal, but following the chaos brought by the fox to the earth, death appeared. The ark in which Ogo had come down to earth became uncultivated land, and that of O Nommo the symbol for cultivated land. After all the beings had descended from the ark, O Nommo (or Nommo) returned to  his fish like form and went to live in the great expanse of water (the oceans) that had been born of the first rainfall. It is in the water that Nommo reveals to man the words woven through his teeth.

The Dogan religion is made up of the belief in Amma, distant and immaterial God, but which is realized through institutions and ongoing actions towards the ancestors:

1° The cult of the immortal totemic ancestors.

2° The Lebe cult, a great ancestor who died and was brought back to life in the form of a snake. Lebe is the great ancestor whose sons gave birth to the four tribes: Dyon, Dommo, Ono and Arou.

3° The mask cult, mortal ancestors.