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The Dogon religion is the traditional religious beliefs of the Dogon people of Mali. The Dogon religion is an ancient religion, and according to scholar Shannon Dorey, it "is the oldest known mythology in the world." Shannon went on to write that: "It existed in Africa long before humans migrated to other areas of the world. When humans left Africa for other continents, they took their religion with them. Fragments of the Dogon religion thus existed all over the world making the Dogon religion the "mitochondrial religion" of the world."

According to Robert Temple, the "Dogon are monotheistic"

Beliefs

Divinity

"Amma : Amma is the supreme creator god of the Dogon religion, whose efforts initiated the formation of the universe, the creation of matter, and the processes of biological reproduction."

"Dogon religion is complex, and is summarised by Van Beck (1988). The head of the Dogon triumvirate is Ama or Amma, the Sky God, the others being Nomo, the Water God, and Lewe or Lebe, the Earth God."

"According to Dogon beliefs, Amma, who is a likely Dogon counterpart to the Egyptian god Amen, is made up of four attached clavicles (arcs) that together form an oval called "egg in a ball." This is the same term that is applied to the figure at the center of the nummo fish drawings." (Note: John Anthony West was a proponent of the fringe Sphinx water erosion hypothesis. The creation is more a cosmic egg and chaoes than water).

"The Dogon belief that man is deeply impregnated by his natural environment gives rise to this "geographic" theory of language. Growing Growing things, particularly those from which man gets his food, are nourished by the "four elements"; millet grows from the earth, is warmed by the sun which ripens it, is fed by the water it drings and the air it breathes like any living being. When he eats millets, man assimilates the four elements and renews those in his own body. Yet these same four elements also form the "body" of his "speech"; when he eats millet, the child receives the components of his speech.

Divinity and humanity

"Sacrifices and rituals are primarily directed towards Ama, though carved figures are also produced by the Dogo, which are 'representations of the living' (ibid.:60). However, these too served as mediators with Ama–in helping to solve problems for instance. Divination is also a key feature of Dogon religion, as are masked dances."

Cosmology & cosmogony

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"Dogon mythology was created in an oral culture and its symbolic language is connected through a spherical pattern with no beginning or end. The spherical pattern of the Dogon religion is different from what we are used today, as most written literature is presented in a linear fashion with a beginning and end. By using the globular structure in its creation, the Dogon religion provides us with a metaphor for immortality. The religion focuses on immortality because the key spiritual figures, the Nummo, were immortal. According to the Dogon, when they died and were reborn, the Nummo, were could remember their previous existence."

"Amma : Amma is the supreme creator god of the Dogon religion, whose efforts initiated the formation of the universe, the creation of matter, and the processes of biological reproduction. The notion of a creator god named Amma or Amen is one that is not unique to the Dogon, but can also be found in the religious traditions of other West African and North African groups. It may be reflected in the word Amazigh, a name that is applied collectively to the hunter cultural groups who preceeded the first dynasty in Egypt. Like other important Dogon cosmological keywords, the word Amma carries with it more than one level of meaning in the Dogon language. From one perspective, it can refer to the hidden god of the Dogon, and yet, from another perspective, it can mean "to grasph, to hold firm, or to establish." Among the Dogon, Amma is thought of as the god who holds the world firmly between her or his two hands, and to speak the name Amma is to entreat her or him to continue to honld it. <=> Although commonly referred to as a male, Amma is considered to symbolize both the male and female principles as genderless or as being of dual gender. This dual aspect of Amma's character is consistent with the broader cosmological principles of duality and the pairing of opposites that are expressed symbolically in all facets of Dogon religion and culture. It is also consistent with the male and female aspects of biological reproduction that Amma symbolizes. <=>The Dogon religion is characterized as an esoteric tradition, one that involves both public and private aspects. Although Amma could be said to embody great creative potential, she or he is in fact considered by the knowledgeable Dogon priests to be small–so small as to be effectively hidden from view–although this detail of Amma's character is generally not spoken of in public among the Dogon. This perceived smallness of Amma is consonant with the instrumental role that she or he is said to play in the mythological process of the formation of matter and of biological reproduction. <=> Perhaps the first important creation of the Dogon god Amma was the unformed universe, a body that is said to have held all of the potential seeds or signs of future existence. The Dogon refer to this body as Amma's Egg and characterizes it as a conical, somewhat quadrangular structurewith a rounded point, filled with unrealized potentiality–its corners prefigure the four future cardinal points of the universe to come."

"According to Dogon myth, some undefined impulse caused this egg to open, allowing it to release a whirlwind that sprun silently and scattered in contents in all directions, ultimately forming all of the spiraling galaxies of star and planets. The Dogon compare these bodies to pellets of clay flung out in space. It is by a somewha more complicated process that the sun and the moon were formed, one that the Dogon equate with the art of pottery. Consequently, the Dogon priest compare the sun to a pot of clay that has been raised to a higher heat. <=> Amma is also credited by the Dogon with having created life on Earth. According to the Dogon, myth, there is a principle of twin births in the universe. However, it is said that Amma's first attempt at intercourse with the earth failed, ultimately producing only a single creature–the jackal. This failed is seen by the Dogon as a breach of order in the universe, and therefore the jackal came to be associated with the concept of disorder and the difficulties of Amma. Later, having overcome the difficulty, Amma's divine seed successfully entered and fertilized the womb of the earth and eventually produced the perfect twin pair, the Nummo.'"

"Dogon religion is complex, and is summarised by Van Beck (1988). The head of the Dogon triumvirate is Ama or Amma, the Sky God, the others being Nomo, the Water God, and Lewe or Lebe, the Earth God. Sacrifices and rituals are primarily directed towards Ama, though carved figures are also produced by the Dogo, which are 'representations of the living' (ibid.:60). However, these too served as mediators with Ama–in helping to solve problems for instance. Divination is also a key feature of Dogon religion, as are masked dances. <=> Dogon myth was initially revealed to Marcel Griaule (1965) by a Dogon elder, Ogotemmeli, and subsequently, following Griaule's death, further Dogon myth and knowledge was collected by his colleague Germaine Dieterlen (Griaule and Dieterlen 1965). The essence of these myths is recounted, for example, by De Heusch (1985:156-159) who describes them as dominated by an 'agricultural code', being a 'mythology devised by and for farmers. God created the world in the form of a minute seed animated by vibrations, and the sacrifices of a "water god" proceeded to permit its bursting forth (ibid.:159). The fundamentals of Dogon myth as revealed to Graule and his successors can be seen almost as an interpretative chain running through and underpinning much subsequent scholarship on the Dogon, with myth being seen as the primary structuring agent of Dogon thought, belief, and also, for our purposes, material culture and world–vivw. In fact, to quote Clifford (1983:123), Griaule saw Dogon culture as a 'kind of lived mythology'. <=> Hence the countryside is described as being 'organized as far as possible in accordance with the principle that the world developed in the form of a spiral' (Griaule and Dieterlen 1998: 94), meaning that, theoretically, the central point of development is formed by three ritual fields themselves assigned to the three mythical ancestors. The village is described as laid out either in a square like the first plot of land cultivated by humans, or in an oval with an opening at one end and thus symbolic of the 'world egg broken open by the swelling of the germinating cells' )ibid.: 96). Villages should also be built in pairs, linked in turn with concepts of 'twinness'. Regardless of the oval or square village plan just described, a body analogy also simultaneously underlies the village form for it is also conceived of a person lying north-south, with the smithy the head, shrines the feet, family houses the chest, and menstrual huts the hands. Whilst the house itself represents, 'a man lying on his right hand side and procreating' (ibid.: 97), his penis materially manifest as the entry via a narrow passage leading into the workroom in which the water jars and grinding stones are kept. The agricultural essence of the myth could also be further interpreted here in the metaphorical status of the liquid by-product of corn-crushing being seen as analogous with semen (ibid.)-a liquid whic is in turn poured on the ancestral shrine. In other words, almost the whole package of Dogon material culture conceptualisation has been linked with myth. But the mythic penetration goes further for it is serve, in Griaule's view, according to Van Beck (1991:140), 'as a blueprint for all facets of socienty, from the way to cultivate a field and build a house to weaving, pottery making, drumming, and smithing'."

"Like many ancient religions, the Dogon tradition include both public and private aspects. The details of Dogon cosmology present themselves first through a body of exoteric myths (fireside stories known to most Dogon tribe members) that describe in a general way the efforts of the god Amma to create the sun, the Earth, the moon, and the spiraling galaxies of stars and planets. These story lines run parallel to a more detailed set of esoteric myths (those known primarily to the Dogon priests) that lay out the hierachy of a complex cosmological system in an intricate system of symbols, signs, drawings, and keywords. The innermost details of this system are carefully sheltered from public view and are revealed only to potential initiates of the religion-candidates who have been carefully screened by the Dogon priests. Above all else, the salient quality sought in a potential initiate to the Dogon religion is that he or she demonstrates an abiding curiousity about the religion itself, a quality that is most often expressed by the persistent asking of questions. In truth, the Dogon priests are obliged by tradition to faithfully answer any orderly question posed by an initiate. Over time, this priestly obligation became the cornerstone of an instructional dynamic in which knowledge would be divulged to an initiate only after the candidate asked the appropriate question. In this way, for learning to progress between a student and a priest, it became the implied job of the student to ask the next question."

"According to Dogon beliefs, Amma, who is a likely Dogon counterpart to the Egyptian god Amen, is made up of four attached clavicles (arcs) that together form an oval called "egg in a ball." This is the same term that is applied to the figure at the center of the nummo fish drawings." (Note: John Anthony West was a proponent of the fringe Sphinx water erosion hypothesis. The creation is more a cosmic egg and chaoes than water).

"Creation from Water : The theme of creation from water is one that is central to both Dogon and Egyptian mythology. This aspect of creation is defined in both the egyption hieroglyphic language as Dogon cosmology by the sound "nu." The phonetic valueb "nu" forms the root of the Dogon word nummo, which the Dogon define as the perfect twin pair that emergies at the time of creation; the Dogon priests affirm that the word nummo specifically refers to water (see Conversation with Ogotemmeli). An ideographic reading of the egyptican word nu reflects this same symbolism. Budge defines the word nu as meaning "mass of water that existed in primeval times" and "deified primeval waters whence everything came." In broad terms, we can say that Egyptian hieroglyphic words affirm that the term nu refers to primeval waters of creation and that Dogon cosmology reaffirms that the concept relates to the formation of the universe and of matter." (Note: John Anthony West was a proponent of the fringe Sphinx water erosion hypothesis. The creation is more a cosmic egg and chaoes than water).

"Dogon cosmology, sharing many epistemological elements with their neighbours, the Bamana and Malinke, is based on dualities and twinning and forms the basis for Dogon divination. Here, life begins with the Nommo, the primodial twins.

"One might also consider the relationship of those diviners who use creatures as agents of the oracular messages as having a twin-like relationship with the creatures. For example, there is a mouse divination among the Baule, spider and crab divination in the Cameroons, as well as fox divination among the Dogon."

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The Dogon creation myth is somewhat similar to the Serer creation myth in sofar as the dual principles of Amma and Roog (the Serer supreme deity)—with the feminine principle of the Divine taking precedence during the initial creation, but the Divine using its masculine principle to bring order after the creation—thus their creator gods maybe regarded as androgynous gods with both feminine and masculine principles; the importance of balance in their mythology and culture; the prominence of the jackal during creation; a mythical creation based a cosmic egg and the principles of chaos; the failed first creation due to the jackal's desecration of the first placenta, and the animal being considered by both societies as a disordered animal yet respected due to its link with their respective supreme deities; and a wind–like motion or rotational movement of their respective deities around the axis of the world during the creation of celestial objects.

Bibliography

• Dorey, Shannon, The Nummo: The Truth About Human Origins : (Dogon Religion), Elemental Expressions Ltd (2013), p. 1, ISBN 9780987681386 [8] (retrieved March 1, 2020)
• Asante, Molefi Kete; Mazama, Ama; Encyclopedia of African Religion, Volume 1, SAGE (2009), pp. 40–41, ISBN 9781412936361 [9] (retrieved March 1, 2020)
• Insoll, Timothy, Archaeology, Ritual, Religion, Routledge (2004), p. 123–125, ISBN 9781134526444 [10] (retrieved March 1, 2020)
• Griaule, M., Conversations with Ogotemmêli: An Introduction to Dogon Religious Ideas (contribution: Dieterlen, Germaine, International African Institute), International African Institute (1965), ISBN 9780195198218 (Originally published in 1948 as Dieu d'Eau)
• Heusch, Luc de, Sacrifice in Africa: A Structuralist Approach, (trans. Linda O'Brien, Alice Morton), Manchester University Press (1985), ISBN 9780719017162 [11] (retrieved March 1, 2020)
• Temple, Robert, The Sirius Mystery, Random House (1999), p. 465, ISBN 9780099257448 [12] (retrieved March 1, 2020)
• Scranton, Laird , (cont. John Anthony West), Sacred Symbols of the Dogon: The Key to Advanced Science in the Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphs, Simon and Schuster (2007), pp. 151-2, ISBN 9781594777530 [13]
• Gravrand, Henry, La Civilisation Sereer - "Pangool", vol. 2. Les Nouvelles Editions Africaines du Senegal (1990), pp. 194–5, 199-203 ISBN 2-7236-1055-1
• Calame-Griaule, Geneviève, Words and the Dogon World, Institute for the Study of Human Issues (1986), p. 301, ISBN 9780915980956
• Curry, Patrick, Divination: Perspectives for a New Millennium, Routledge (2016), p. 30, ISBN 9781317149026 [14] (retrieved March 1, 2020)
• Peck, Philip M., '"Recasting Divination Research'" [in] John Pemberton III (ed.), Insight and Artistry in African Divination (Washington, DC and London: Smithsonian Institution Press (2002), pp. 25-33