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The Dogon creation myth is the creation mythology of the Dogon people of Mali, West Africa.

Cosmology & cosmogony
"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 God Amma' was there in the beginning before anything else existed and sat upon nothingness. The only thing that existed was "Amma's egg in a ball," that is, four clavicles joined together in one ball. The four clavicles are also associated with four elements, the four directions and the ''yu"

"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.

"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 Conversations 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."

"The religious beliefs of the Dogon were first documented in studivs conducted during the 1930sm 1940s, and 1950s by French anthropoligists Marcel Griaule and Germaine Dieterlen.  These studies resulted in a number of primary works, including a diary of Griaule's religious intructions by a Dogon priest titled Dieu D'eau or Conversations With Ogotemmeli, and a finished anthropological report on the Dogon religion called Le Renard Pale or The Pale Fox. There are no native written texts to use as a reference for the religion because the Dogon rely on oral transmission rather than writing. This entry looks at the religious beliefs and practices of the Dogon primarily through the works of Griaule Dieterlen."

"Organization and Ritual : According to Griaule and Dieterlens, ther are three primary Dogon cults. The first is devoted to a supreme god named Amma, who is deemed to have created the universe. The second is primarily concerned with the first living celestial beings created by Amma, called the Nommo. The third is devoted to the eight Dogon ancestors from whom the members of the four Dogon groups are thought to be descended. Regardless of cult, all Dogon members commonly acknowledge first Amma, then the Nommo, then the revered ancestors.  Religious beliefs and practices similar to those of the Dogon are also observed by neighbouring tribes, [...]

"Fire can sustain life as wel as cause much destruction, similar to the Dogon understanding of the oppositional character of the universe: All things in nature are believed to possess a spiritual force that brings either prosperity or hardship."

"According to the Dogon, in the beginning of human existence immortality was the norm and time, as we know it, was irrelevant."

COSMOGONY: "THE BEGINNING OF THINGS" : "That the existence of Amma, the one God, is a "taken-for-granted" first principle and necessary condition for the existence of all other things is clear to us from the manner in which Ogotemmeli begins his discourse.  The whole solar system, like the star which constitute it, came into being by the work of the God Amma, who flung out into spacethe pallets of earth from which the stars came.  God also created the earth, perhaps only in a rudimentary for, leaving its development to the interaction of the principles mentioned above. The earth was feminine. "Its sexual organ is the anthill and its clitoris a termite hill." Amma, being lonely and desirous of intercourse with the creature, approached the earth and united with it, thus giving occasion to "the first breach of the order of the universe." Disorder now followed disorder. From this union, instead of duality necessary for the development and well-being of things, God, however united with earth for the second time and the birth of twins restored the regular cycle of duality. These twins, called Nommo, developed from water, which was God's sperm that penetrated the earth and impregnated her. The Nommo were half men (top half) and half snakes (bottom half). They were also green, which is the symbol and presage of fertility (germination and vegetation). These spirits, called Nommo, were thus two homogeneous products of God, of divine essence like himself, conceived without outward incident and developed normally in the womb of the earth. Their destiny took them to Heaven where they received instructions from their father. Not that God had to teach them the Word, that essence of all things, as it is of the Word system; the pair were born perfect and complete, so they needed no teaching; they had eight members and their number was eight, which is the symbol of the Word. Their nature was identical with that of the Word just like vapor is identical with breath. They were were also of the essence of God, since they were made of his seed, which is at once the ground, the form, and the substance of the vital force of the world, from which derives the motion and the persistence of created beings. This force is water, and the pair are present in all waters;  they are water, the water of the seas, of coasts, of torrents, of storms, and of the spoonful we drink."

Similarities with other African cosmogonies
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.

In Serer cosmogony, the jackal is not named despite its desecration of the divine placenta, and the disrespect it has shown to the Divine before it was condemned and banished by the Roog. The Serer only alldude to it by referring to it as "the dog of the forest" (boxo-kob in Serer) but they do not refer to it by its true name. This is, because the Seereer believe that the animal was once closed to the Divine and dvserve to be afforded respect. They also believe that, despite the level of disrespect it had shown to the Divine in primordial time, the Deity still kept it alive, and therefore, the animal deserve respect—but one must be wary of it because it still has the powers and wisdom that the Divine had bestowed upon it. In Dogon cosmogony, the animal it is ambigiously named Ogo-Yurugu (Pale Fox), Yurugu means The Fox. However, they also afforded it respect and vivwed its desecration of the divine placenta as necessary in order to bring the world as we know it today.

Like their Serer counterparts, the Dogons have resisted Islamization for 1000 years, and were two of the last African ethnic groups to covert to Islam, due to holding "a strong connection to their ancient religious past"—despite centuries of Dogon and Serer persecutions by other groups. Dogons are now mostly Muslims.