Black Spirituality Religion : THE DOGON

SAMURAI36

Well-Known Member
BANNED
Mar 3, 2005
4,762
244
Bay Area
It has been stated in another thread:

The Dogon simply have a memory detailing those days. The Dogon don’t worship the Nummo and believe in One Supreme Being called Amma, they are monotheist.

This is false, through and through.

#1, the DOGON are not "monotheist", even by Biblical standards.

Here is info:

http://www.uiowa.edu/~africart/toc/people/Dogon.html

Dogon religion is defined primarily through the worshiping of the ancestors and the spirits whom they encountered as they moved across the Western Sudan. The Awa society is responsible for carrying out the rituals, which allow the deceased to leave the world of the living and enter the world of the dead. Public rites include funerary rites (bago bundo) and the dama ceremony, which marks the end of the mourning period. Awa society members are also responsible for planning the sigui ceremonies, which commence every sixty years to hand on the function of the dead initiates to the new recruits. All of these rites involve masking traditions and are carried out only by initiated males who have learned the techniques needed to impersonate the supernaturals. The leader of the Awa society is the olaburu who is a master of the language of the bush (sigi so). The society is divided in accordance with age-grades, ignoring traditional lineage and hierarchical ordering within the village.

This is not "monotheist" by any standard, let alone the DOGON's.

http://www.zyama.com/dogon/pics..htm

In the Dogon pantheon Amma appears as the original creator of all the forces of the universe and of his descendant Lebe, the god of plant rebirth. The first Dogon primordial ancestors, called Nommo, were bisexual water gods. They were created in heaven by the creator god Amma and descended from heaven to earth in an ark. The Nommo founded the eight Dogon lineages and introduced weaving, smithing, and agriculture to their human descendants.

Again, none of this is "monotheist". By monotheistic definition, any religion that has a "pantheon" at the core of its theology is not monotheist.

AMMA is to their theology, what AMEN is to the Kemetic theology. Both are cosmological, and not monotheist in design and function.

There is further info, about the SIRIAN MYSTERY non-sense:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dogon#Controversy

Controversy

A number of researchers investigating the Dogon have reported apparent knowledge that has subsequently become embroiled in controversy. From 1931 to 1956, two French anthropologist Marcel Griaule and Germaine Dieterlen spent 25 years with the Dogon, during which time they were initiated into the tribe.[3] Griaule and Dieterlen reported that the Dogon appeared to know of the companions star, Sirius B, the rings of Saturn, and the Moons of Jupiter, which are usually considered invisible to the unaided eye;[4] In 1852 American missionary D.T. Stoddart wrote a letter to astronomer John Herschel that ".. at twighlight, Jupiter's satellites could be seen with the naked eye and the elongated shape of Saturn also."[5]

All this info comes from white people, nearly 50 years ago. We all know the mindset of the White man back then, especially as it relates to anything from an African perspective, so why are we taking this info at face value?

Further:

Robert Temple
Robert Temple, in his 1975 book The Sirius Mystery, devoted a central role to the Dogon to support his theory on ancient astronauts. Temple claimed that while interviewing the Dogon he found that they had information on Sirius and its companion star, Sirius B which they also incorporated into their rituals. Since Sirius B is invisible without a telescope, and the Dogon did not have telescopes or other astronomical technology, Temple had argued that the only way they could have obtained the information on Sirius B was by contact with an advanced civilization. Therefore, Temple concluded that aliens from the Sirius star system personally visited the Dogons and made them familiar with the operation of their astronomical home.

All these "conclusions", from a white man who has no knowledge whatsoever of African Theology. Again, what makes him the expert?


Astronomer Carl Sagan dealt with the issue in his book Broca's Brain (1979), stating that there are many problems with Temple's hypothesis. As an example Sagan mentions that the Dogon seem to have no knowledge of another planet beyond Saturn which has rings, which would suggest that their knowledge is more likely from European, and not extra-terrestrial sources.
Another astronomer, Ian Ridpath, points out in an article in the Skeptical Inquirer (1978), "The whole Dogon legend of Sirius and its companions is riddled with ambiguities, contradictions, and downright errors, at least if we try to interpret it literally".[8] Ridpath stated that while the information that the Dogon probably gained from Europeans to some extent resembles the facts about Sirius, the presumed original Dogon knowledge on the planet is very far from the facts.


Journalist and skeptic James Oberg collected claims that have appeared concerning Dogon mythology in his 1982 book.[9] According to Oberg, the Dogon's astronomical information resembles the knowledge and speculations of European astronomical knowledge of the late 1920's. The Dogon could have gotten their astronomical knowledge, including the information on Sirius, from European visitors before their mythology was recorded in the 1930s. Oberg also points out that the Dogons were not an isolated tribe, thus it was not even necessary for outsiders to inform the Dogon about Sirius, they could very well have acquired such knowledge abroad, passing it on to their tribe later. In this way, by the time Temple visited the Dogon in the 1970s, they had had a great deal of contact with the western world and had time to incorporate Sirius B into their religion.

None of this verifies any concept of "advanced civilization" from the DOGON's POV. In fact, much of this wreaks of the White man, in every conceivable aspect: the assimiliation of the white man's theological views into our own.

If we are going to study the DOGON, then let us do so from their eyes, and their words (unfortunately, they have not written a single book or piece of literature on their theology), rather than the white man's.

PEACE
 
Regarding MASTER OF SPEECH, much of this info can be found on this woman's website:

http://www.themasterofspeech.com/nommo.html


Here, she gives an exerpt from one of the chapters from the book of the very same name.....At the end, she sites the following as "sources":

2Griaule. p.20.
3Griaule. p.20.
4Griaule. p.20.
5Griaule. p.20.

All she has done, for the most part is use the very same "scholars" from the 50's that were mentioned earlier, and attempt to expound on the so-called "Dogon Theology", as it is merged with UFO-ism.


Regarding the book "Conversations":

From the very same Amazon link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/0195198212/?tag=destee0b-20

A classic but problematic work of anthropology, February 15, 2003
Reviewer: rudiger (Hoople, ND) - See all my reviews

French ethnologist Marcel Griaule led numerous research expeditions throughout Africa from the 1930s until his death in 1956. He carried out his best-known research on the Dogon people of Mali. "CONVERSATIONS WITH OGOTEMMELI" is presented as a series of 33 encounters with Ogotemmeli, an elderly Dogon sage, who explains his people's creation myth and understanding of the universe.
Griaule's text offers us Ogotemmeli's words with comparatively little comment and even less explanation. We read of gods and water spirits, immortal ancestor figures and blacksmiths descending to earth on rainbows. Griaule asks questions and relates his own interpretation of the story but only rarely. Near the end he wonders whether there is more than a superficial resemblance between Dogon cosmology and the signs of the Zodiac. Otherwise, the book consists of elaborately rendered folklore, "straight from the horse's mouth" so to speak.

The problem with this text is that Griaule gives us nothing with which to evaluate what his elderly informant is telling him . As renowned anthropologist Jack Goody wrote of this English translation in 1967, "What are we to make of this rich and indigestible fare?" There is no way to judge the significance of this myth based on this book alone, and subsequent research has thrown much of what Ogotemmeli tells us into doubt: the question is not whether the old man really said all this to Griaule (he probably did), but whether what he told him was really at the heart of Dogon culture. The fact that other anthropologists working among the Dogon have failed to find evidence of a coherent creation myth, despite spending years in the field and mastering the language (neither of which Griaule had done), should make us ask what this book really represents.

As for the question of Dogon cosmology as evidence of alien visitation--see Mr. West's review below--look not in "CONVERSATIONS WITH OGOTEMMELI," which contains nothing on the subject, but rather in "THE PALE FOX" (by Marcel Griaule and Germaine Dieterlen). This later work contains information about the star Sirius etc. etc., and has also been cast into doubt by later ethnography among the Dogon . No one (other than Griaule) has ever found anything to suggest that the Dogon knew that Sirius was a double star, let alone that they knew it before Europeans discovered the fact. Read Walter van Beek's restudy of the Dogon in Current Anthropology (1991) and the following responses to it to get a sense of where other fieldworkers stand on the issue. But maybe they're all a part of The Conspiracy. For that matter maybe I am, too.


None of this gives a clear look into what the DOGON believed. Not only does it NOT establish this African Tribe as "monotheist", but it also does not establish any true interpretation of their cosmological as being "cosmic".

White "scholars" cannot agree on the subject, and in the meantime, we have no instance of Black scholars speaking up/out about the Dogon, especially not the Dogon themselves.

Therefore, if these 2 books are to be viewed as athorities on the subject of the Dogon, then it would be best to conclude that there is no athority on the subject at all.


PEACE
 
White "scholars" cannot agree on the subject, and in the meantime, we have no instance of Black scholars speaking up/out about the Dogon, especially not the Dogon themselves.
That is a lie:
It was the Dogon themselves that forced the re-publication of the book, “The Sirius Mystery” because the author had neglected to correctly include the Dogon telling him that there exists a Sirius C. The author did not include the information of Sirius C because white astronomers could not confirm or see it with their telescopes thus they were only recognizing Sirius A and B even though the Dogon was specifically informing them that there is indeed a second planet that orbits Sirius A. As a matter of fact white astronomers tried to use this against the Dogon to discredit everything they are revealing through their ancient knowledge of the stars and the Sirius System.

It was not until after the publication of the first edition of the “Sirius Mystery” that a white astronomer set down and calculated the orbit of Sirius B and concluded from the orbital calculations there is indeed another unseen planetary body acting upon the orbit of Sirius B. Thus they concluded that the Dogon were correct about the existence of a Sirius C.

The Dogon are not as alienated or isolated from the world as you try to pretend, they are not a bunch of dumb Africans running around in Africa with flimsy stories to tell, they are an extremely intellectual, scientific and connected to reality type of people and probably have a greater understanding of the Universe / Amma then most African Americans or white people today.

Due to this thread and know this one that shows you are only interested in keeping us African Americans in a state of idiocy, I will no longer converse in this particular thread.
http://destee.com/forums/showpost.php?p=445298&postcount=3
 
Music Producer said:
That is a lie:
It was the Dogon themselves that forced the re-publication of the book, “The Sirius Mystery” because the author had neglected to correctly include the Dogon telling him that there exists a Sirius C. The author did not include the information of Sirius C because white astronomers could not confirm or see it with their telescopes thus they were only recognizing Sirius A and B even though the Dogon was specifically informing them that there is indeed a second planet that orbits Sirius A. As a matter of fact white astronomers tried to use this against the Dogon to discredit everything they are revealing through their ancient knowledge of the stars and the Sirius System.

Where is the proof of any of this? Saying it is a "lie" simply because you believe it to be so, does not substantiate this claim.

It was not until after the publication of the first edition of the “Sirius Mystery” that a white astronomer set down and calculated the orbit of Sirius B and concluded from the orbital calculations there is indeed another unseen planetary body acting upon the orbit of Sirius B. Thus they concluded that the Dogon were correct about the existence of a Sirius C.

Even if this is the case, this does not corroborate any connection with Dogon theology with aliens and/or UFO's.

The Dogon are not as alienated or isolated from the world as you try to pretend, they are not a bunch of dumb Africans running around in Africa with flimsy stories to tell, they are an extremely intellectual, scientific and connected to reality type of people and probably have a greater understanding of the Universe / Amma then most African Americans or white people today.

You are making a Straw Man argument. I am not questioning the DOGON, their intelligence, nor their spirituality.

Rather, what is in question here, is the White man's interpretation of such, as well as why we would take such interpretations as Gospel.

Further, if you yourself are going strictly by what is said in these white man's books, with no corroboration of perspective from the DOGON themselves (if they are so "scientific", then they should be able to write books for themselves, and not depend on the very same white people who would just as soon see them eradicated; these Africans can see all the way to the other side of the Cosmos, but they don't realize that the white man is their enemy....And thus, they spill all their divine secrets to them? :confused: ), then you are not in any position to speak on how well-developed the DOGON are.

Due to this thread and know this one that shows you are only interested in keeping us African Americans in a state of idiocy, I will no longer converse in this particular thread.
http://destee.com/forums/showpost.php?p=445298&postcount=3

You are sounding extremely petty with this. Either respond or don't.

In the meantime, the reality of the matter is that none of the books that you supplied substantiated any of the assertions that you have made here: #1) that the DOGON are monotheistic, or #2) that their cosmology (cosmology by definition is not monotheistic) corresponds to anything inter-galactic.

omowalejabali said:
The only comment I will make here is that it is true what you have stated concerning "Sirius C" and the reason why I read the "Sirius Mystery" and later created a thread explaining the nature of this "Mystery" which was not given accurate detail in the book and it was from reading sources written from testimony of the Dogon themselves that this was explained to me.

Sources, such as.....? And how is it that you are privy to these sources, when others cannot obtain them?

"Mystery" indeed.

In fact, it was my assertion tha Akhenaten had obtained this knowledge and the "Aten" actually refers to this "C" system.

Would you like to show and prove how you have reached the conclusion that "ATEN" (which means "the sun") corresponds to Sirius C?

PEACE
 

Donate

Support destee.com, the oldest, most respectful, online black community in the world - PayPal or CashApp

Latest profile posts

HODEE wrote on Etophil's profile.
Welcome to Destee
@Etophil
Destee wrote on SleezyBigSlim's profile.
Hi @SleezyBigSlim ... Welcome Welcome Welcome ... :flowers: ... please make yourself at home ... :swings:
Back
Top