SUBSAH-024 - secondary catalog
Bwa (Bwaba)
Black Volta - San-Tominian, Mali-Burkina border - West Africa
Restricted
Dwo / aliwe / linisa French
Source term: Dwo
Dwo / Do: central Bwa divinity and initiation cult; in Capron's San account the iron rhombe is Do itself and its voice, while the cult includes initiated girls and women as well as men.
At the great sacrifices a Bwa priest carries a forged-iron blade out to the bush altar — not a wooden toy but Do himself, the divinity's own body and voice, the supreme thing the cult holds. He sounds it only rarely; lesser korozo stand in to carry Do's cry through the initiation scenes. And where most bullroarer cults bar women on pain of death, the Bwa of Mali's San country invert the rule: girls are initiated beside boys, and, as Jean Capron recorded, women have always bought Do. The gate closes only on the uninitiated child and the stranger.
Les femmes ont toujours acheté le do
Women have always bought Do.
Capron 1957 p. 120
- Object
- The supreme hierophany and voice of Do: an elliptical forged-iron plate about 30 x 10 cm on a long cord, stored in sheepskin and sounded overhead by the priest — rarely, with korozo substitutes carrying Do's cry in some initiation scenes.
- Function
- Supreme voice and hierophany of Do, binding the Bwa community; its names mean 'it cries' or 'it makes noise,' and at sacrifice its sound signals Do's acceptance. Girls and women are initiated into Do and serve it, while uninitiated children and outsiders are excluded.
- Map confidence
- medium - approximate territory centroid (mining 2026)
- Source location
Page references
Capron 1957 pp. 86, 93, 113, 120-121, 128
- Spirit voice
- Initiation rite
- Women-linked