Religions
Dogon Religion
Polytheistic (Animist)
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Origin 1400 to 1500
The traditional religion of the Dogon people of the Bandiagara escarpment in Mali, a living tradition centred on the creator god Amma, the primordial Nommo who order the world, and the veneration of ancestors expressed in masking, altar and rite. Amma, of dual or unfixed gender, creates the cosmos and, after a first failed union with the earth, brings forth the amphibious Nommo, who bring speech, agriculture and the pattern of society. Dogon religious life is famous for its sculpture, its granary-shrines and its dama funeral masks. Much of what is repeated in Western writing derives from the mid-twentieth-century reports of the French ethnographers Marcel Griaule and Germaine Dieterlen, whose account, especially the claim of a secret Dogon knowledge of the star Sirius, later anthropologists have sharply questioned and which should be treated as contested.
Facts
About This Record
Coverage NoteThis page is shorter than many others in the atlas, and that is a record artifact, not a judgment of how much Dogon Religion matters. Much of what Dogon Religion holds is kept in restricted custody, passed on through oral transmission among initiated or authorised practitioners, or both, in the way its restricted tradition note above already sets out, so there is less that outside, publishable sources can responsibly say. A short entry here does not mean Dogon Religion matters less than a tradition with a long one; it means the atlas can currently say only what it has been permitted to say. If you can point toward documented material the community has authorised for outside use, sign in and open a dispute on this page naming the source; it will be reviewed. 3 Belief
TheologyHenotheistic: a supreme being above served lesser divinities 2 Its own record names the creator god Amma alongside the veneration of ancestors and the Nommo spirits. TheologyIts own record states religious life is expressed "in masking, altar and rite" centred on "the veneration of ancestors." Status
Status TodayLiving tradition, practised today 1 Origins
Origin Period Origin PeriodDogon settlement of the Bandiagara escarpment dates from about the 15th century CE 1 Place of OriginThe Bandiagara escarpment, in Mali 1 Cultural Restriction
Restricted TraditionDogon religion has been especially subject to outside retelling, most notably Griaule's account and the associated Sirius claim, and the atlas is careful not to add to that pattern by elaborating its practice for a personalised reading. 3 Learn More
Amma, the Nommo, and the Ritual Year
The Dogon of the Bandiagara escarpment in Mali maintain a living religion centred on the creator Amma, the primordial Nommo who order creation, and a rich cycle of ritual and masking. Its most celebrated observances are public and well documented: the great Sigui ceremony, held roughly once every sixty years and moving in sequence along the villages of the escarpment, renewing the world and marking the passage of generations; and the dama, the collective funeral rite at which the carved masks, including the towering sirige mask, are danced to lead the souls of the dead away and restore the balance the deaths disturbed.
The dramatic cliff-side villages and cultural landscape of the Bandiagara escarpment were inscribed by UNESCO as a World Heritage site in 1989, recognised for both their architecture and their living tradition. The religion is practised today alongside Islam and Christianity in the region, and is described here in the present tense.
Two Portraits: Griaule's Dogon and the Restudy
No account of Dogon religion can avoid the problem of its sources. The tradition became world-famous through the French anthropologist Marcel Griaule and his colleague Germaine Dieterlen, whose books, above all Dieu d'eau (1948), described an extraordinarily elaborate secret cosmology of numbered pairs, cosmic eggs and symbolic correspondences. That portrait shaped the Dogon's international image and even, controversially, a claim that they held ancient knowledge of the invisible companion star Sirius B. It has since been seriously contested: the anthropologist Walter van Beek, after long fieldwork, reported (1991) that he could not find the deep esoteric system Griaule described, and argued that much of it arose from the interview relationship itself. The responsible position is to present the detailed Griaule cosmology, and especially the Sirius claim, as contested ethnography rather than established fact, while recognising the Dogon's own continuing veneration of Amma and their public ritual life as securely attested.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Associated With
The claim that Dogon tradition knew of this star is the reason it appears in esoteric literature at all.
Objects and Practices of This Tradition
Sites grouped for the Dogon tradition.
West African deities: the Dogon figures, headed by the creator Amma and the primordial Nommo, named in the group article.
Regions Where This Is Principal
Dogon, Cultures Dogon Religion is the religious tradition of the Dogon and is named for them.
Studied By
His decades of Dogon fieldwork, above all the Ogotemmeli conversations of Dieu d'eau (1948), are the source of record for most published accounts of Dogon religion; the accuracy of the esoteric corpus is debated.
Worship Of
Sources
1. Dogon Restudied: A Field Evaluation of the Work of Marcel Griaule
Walter E. A. van Beek, Current Anthropology 32(2), 1991On Dogon religion and the contested Griaule ethnographyView the Source 2. The Oxford Dictionary of World Religions
John Bowker (ed.), Oxford University Press, 1997s.v. "Dogon"View the Source Encyclopedia of Religion
Mircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.), Macmillan Reference, 2005s.v. "Dogon Religion"View the Source Cliff of Bandiagara (Land of the Dogons), UNESCO World Heritage List
UNESCO World Heritage Centre, UNESCO, 1989The Bandiagara escarpment as a living cultural landscape (UNESCO)View the Source Dieu d'eau: entretiens avec Ogotemmeli
Marcel Griaule, Editions du Chene, 1948
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