The Bullroarer Atlas

EXH2026-027 - ethnographic attestation

Bafia

Bafia country, middle Mbam, Cameroon - Central Africa

Restricted

Tessmann's three drawings for the Bafia: an old ancestor image (2a) and its later form (2c), each a tall V-necked figure, flanking the plain...
Tessmann's three drawings for the Bafia: an old ancestor image (2a) and its later form (2c), each a tall V-necked figure, flanking the plain V-notched Schwirrholz itself (2b), shown with the small ring and cord tied at its base — the culture documented here. G. Tessmann, "Die Bafia," Zeitschrift für Ethnologie 51 (1919), Abb. 2 Public domain Image source

(cult name: elume) German

Source term: Schwirrholz

elume — the Bafia name for the chief secret cult, whose four sacred magical implements (including the bullroarer) were revealed to initiates.

Among the Bafia of the middle Mbam in central Cameroon, the bullroarer was one of four supreme secret implements of the cult the Bafia called elume, shown to a novice only at his initiation. Gunther Tessmann, who recorded the rite during the German colonial expedition sent out in 1913, read its sound as a sign of rebirth: the whirring wood, he wrote, embodies the invisible body of the ancestor, who lives again at birth in the child. For that reason its shape copied the ancestor figures, ending in a swallow-tail between whose points the forebear's head was imagined. The other three implements were carved sticks representing the tribal father and mother and their clans, kazoo-like mirlitons made from human bones (in part replaced by leopard bones), whose voice was meant to show the bones coming back to life, and a wooden figure of a dog, the people's religious emblem of sexual intercourse. In the bullroarer's standing here Tessmann saw a further kinship with Australia.

Drittens das Schwirrholz. Seinen Ton deute ich ähnlich auch als Wiedergeburtszeichen, insofern das Schwirrholz eigentlich den unsichtbaren Körper des Vorfahren darstellt, der dann wieder bei der Geburt im Kinde auflebt.

Thirdly, the bullroarer. Its tone I likewise interpret as a sign of rebirth, in that the bullroarer actually represents the invisible body of the ancestor, who then lives again at the birth in the child.

Tessmann, "Die Urkulturen der Menschheit und ihre Entwicklung," Zeitschrift für Ethnologie 51 (1919): 144-145
Object
Swallow-tail-ended blade, the ancestor's head conceived between the tail points.
Function
One of the four supreme secret Zaubermittel of the Bafia elume cult: the bullroarer embodies the invisible body of the ancestor who lives again in the child at birth; its tone read as a sign of rebirth; shown to novices at cult initiation (Tessmann, who compares it to the Australian churinga).
Map confidence
high - Bafia town / middle Mbam
Source location
ZfE 51 pp. 144-145, Abb. 2b

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