Iran, Male With Piton

The snake and especially the python has a great symbolism in most African ethnicities and plays an important role in many of their traditions and cosmogony. It is true that this animal is omnipresent in Africa and particularly in the Bissago Islands, apparently one of the corners of Africa where this reptile is most abundant, which appears in most masks and ritual objects carved by its inhabitants. Bidjogo.

But the bidjogo python is particular, it is presented in the most diverse forms, elongated, short and robust and often with a crest over the head that sometimes confers on it the appearance of a dragon.

The Añaki, Bidjogos of the island of Canhabaque believe in a creative god they call Nindu and as most Animist peoples do not address him directly but through intermediate powers they call him arebuko and that other peoples Bidjogo call in Creole They'll go.. These intermediate divinities are presented as supernatural entities, natural or man-made. In addition, every living, plant animal or human being possesses a arebuko, anima or nyama of the majority of the Animist peoples.

Arebukos they can be individual or collective and the more they accumulate, for example in a more powerful fetish (made by man) will be. And there is arebukosChristine Henry tells us that she has studied the subject in depth, that they can return from beyond to incorporate into humans. But there is arebukos they cannot do so, for example elamundi. The elamundi represents a power whose origin is an old python snake that went to live in the sea. The elamundi each clan has its own elamundi and when a man is very powerful it is thought to have passed a contract with a elamundi. Hence many objects of the Bidjogo represent the python snake, the elamundi protector of his clan.

This figure represents the torso of a man with a short and robust python snake, curled in his body that has devoured a child, from which only the head protrudes. However, the serpent's body does not accuse the child of having been devoured. Many of the objects of Bidjogo they are carved by their owners and the only ones that interest them is symbolism and sculptural improvement. This small sculpture has belonged to an initiated bidjogo.