Koffi Djifa SEBLE

 

fot. Koffi Djifa SEBLE

“Connectivity with the Invisible”

In a culture based on oral transmission, the ability to ensure the conveyance and understanding of folk wisdom is important. The challenge lies in skillfully recreating oneself through one’s own culture, forming national and international unity around our internal traditions and cultural values, such as the heritage of our ancestors.

The “Connectivity with the Invisible” project aims to strengthen and promote our internal national identity by showcasing its mysteries, spiritual upliftment, connection with the invisible, transcendence, and perception of the spirit. This entire process emphasizes the role of the collective memory of our ancestors. Traditional societies like ours have their own practices and rituals, such as trance, dance, singing, drumming, and connection with ancestors. All voodoo ceremonies put us in direct contact with the invisible world through various initiation rituals, each specific to a particular androgynous deity. The four deities presented here, associated with the four elements (LES ABLAFO – LES KOKOUSSI – LES HEBIOSSI – LES DANSI MAMI WATA), allow us to live in symbiosis and communicate with higher beings. Our ancestors managed to harness and understand the powers of both the invisible and visible worlds through special offerings accompanied by songs meant for the public, music performed on drums, and specific dance steps unique to each convent. Songs resonating with percussion music lead to spiritual upliftment, causing the adept to fall into a trance in front of the audience. In this way, the adept (or female adept) finds themselves in two parallel worlds, visible and invisible, where they come into contact with the supernatural, sometimes transmitting messages from the afterlife. This initiatory journey begins in childhood and continues to the highest spheres of initiation, which the voodoo adept must keep to themselves and pass on to their children from generation to generation. A child born within the voodoo religion carries the memory of their bloodline. The invisible takes precedence over the visible. Consequently, the child is first and foremost a spirit. The spirit sees everything, knows everything, understands everything. Eagerly awaiting who they will become in the future (a great chief, a great priest or priestess, a great blacksmith, hunter, farmer), in short, someone great, they are to continue the path of their parents and ancestors; hence the initiation in childhood and the beads (Djonou) worn by children to awaken courage, strength, determination, intellectual powers, bravado, intellect, and most importantly, to provide protection. Beads are strongly present in African beliefs, playing a significant role at every level. They are very often used in traditional ceremonies by various voodoo adepts, particularly by Dansi (adepts of the ahido-houedo snake cult) or followers of the rainbow, the god of wealth and abundance. Beads are also worn to ward off evil spirits and bad luck. It should be noted that some beads are considered a symbol of chieftaincy and are worn exclusively by chiefs, while others are worn by voodoo adepts and are not accessible to everyone; they are passed down from generation to generation as a precious heritage. Therefore, they are an indispensable symbol for African culture: beads are a family symbol and, as such, possess the power to convey mystical and spiritual memory and unity with ancestors, as they are a bridge between the visible and invisible worlds. They are a means of communicating with the initiated members of each family, hence the need to preserve the beliefs of the ancestors. Nicolass Beuglet said: “A nation without culture is like a nation without memory. And a nation without memory ceases to be a nation.”

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