The Dogon are an ethnic group located mainly in the administrative districts of Bandiagara and Douentza in Mali, West Africa.

The precise origin of the Dogon, like those of many other ancient cultures, is undetermined. Their civilization just emerged, in much the same manner as ancient Sumer and Ancient Egypt.

The early histories are informed by oral traditions that differ according to the Dogon clan being consulted and archaeological excavation much more of which needs to be conducted.

Because of these inexact and incomplete sources, there are a number of different versions of the Dogon's origin myths as well as differing accounts of how they got from their ancestral homelands to the Bandiagara region. The people call themselves 'Dogon' or 'Dogom', but in the older literature they are most often called 'Habe', a Fulbe word meaning 'stranger' or 'pagan'.

Certain theories suggest the tribe to be of ancient Egyptian descent. They next migrated to Libya, then somewhere in the regions of Guinea or Mauritania. Around 1490 AD, fleeing invaders and/or drought, they migrated to the Bandiagara cliffs of central Mali.

Carbon-14 dating techniques used on excavated remains found in the cliffs indicate that there were inhabitants in the region before the arrival of the Dogon. They were the Toloy culture of the 3rd to 2nd centuries BC, and the Tellem culture of the 11th to 15th centuries AD.

The religious beliefs of the Dogon are enormously complex and knowledge of them varies greatly within Dogon society. Dogon religion is defined primarily through the worship of the ancestors and the spirits whom they encountered as they slowly migrated from their obscure ancestral homelands to the Bandiagara cliffs.

There are three principal cults among the Dogon;

• Awa

• Lebe

• Binu

• The Awa is a cult of the dead, whose purpose is to reorder the spiritual forces disturbed by the death of Nommo, a mythological ancestor of great importance to the Dogon.

  Members of the Awa cult dance with ornate carved and painted masks during both funeral and death anniversary ceremonies. There are 78 different types of ritual masks among the Dogon and their iconographic messages go beyond the aesthetic, into the realm of religion and philosophy.

  The primary purpose of Awa dance ceremonies is to lead souls of the deceased to their final resting place in the family altars and to consecrate their passage to the ranks of the ancestors.
   

• The cult of Lebe, the Earth God, is primarily concerned with the agricultural cycle and its chief priest is called a Hogon.

  All Dogon villages have a Lebe shrine whose altars have bits of earth incorporated into them to encourage the continued fertility of the land.   According to Dogon beliefs, the god Lebe visits the hogons every night in the form of a serpent and licks their skins in order to purify them and infuse them with life force.   The hogons are responsible for guarding the purity of the soil and therefore officiate at many agricultural ceremonies.

  Nowadays, the Dogon blacksmiths forge mainly scrap metal recuperated from old railway lines or car wrecks. So, little by little, the long process of iron ore reduction, which demands a perfect knowledge of fire and its temperatures, has been abandoned.

  One of the last smelting was done in Mali, in 1995, by the Dogon blacksmiths. The event became the subject of a film which was entitled 'Inagina, The Last House of Iron'. Eleven blacksmiths, who still hold the secrets of this ancestral activity, agreed to perform a last smelt. They gathered to invoke the spirits.   They sunk a mine shaft, made charcoal, and built a furnace with earth and lumps of slag. The last furnace - or Inagina - meaning literally the 'house of iron' gave birth to 69 kilos of iron of excellent quality.

  With this, the blacksmiths forged traditional tools intended for agriculture, the making of weapons, and jewelry for the Dogon people.
  
  Youdiou Dances - During the Dama celebration, Youdiou villagers circle around two stilt dancers. The dance and costumes imitate the tingetange, a long-legged water bird. The dancers execute difficult steps while teetering high above the crowd.
   

• The cult of Binu is a totemic practice and it has complex associations with the Dogon's sacred places used for ancestor worship, spirit communication and agricultural sacrifices. Marcel Griaule and his colleagues came to believe that all the major Dogon sacred sites were related to episodes in the Dogon myth of the creation of the world, in particular to a deity named Nommo.
  
  Binu shrines house spirits of mythic ancestors who lived in the legendary era before the appearance of death among mankind. Binu spirits often make themselves known to their descendants in the form of an animal that interceded on behalf of the clan during its founding or migration, thus becoming the clan's totem.
  
  The priests of each Binu maintain the sanctuaries whose facades are often painted with graphic signs and mystic symbols. Sacrifices of blood and millet porridge the primary crop of the Dogon are made at the Binu shrines at sowing time and whenever the intercession of the immortal ancestor is desired.

Through such rituals, the Dogon believe that the benevolent force of the ancestor is transmitted to them.

Their self-defense comes from their social solidarity which is based on a complex combination of philosophic and religious dogmas, the fundamental law being the worship of ancestors. Ritual masks and corpses are used for ceremonies and are kept in caves. The Dogons are both Muslims and Animists.

Unfortunately, collectors have stolen some of the more intricately carved pillars, forcing village elders to deface their Togu Na posts by chopping off part of the sculpted wood. This mutilation of the sculpted pillars assures their safety.

The Dogon may ask questions such as: "Does the man I love also love me?" or "Should I take the job offer at the mission church?"

In the morning, the diviner will read the fox prints on the sand and make interpretations. The fox is sure to come because offerings of millet, milk and peanuts are made to this sacred animal.

The Washington Post
Robert Temple

The Sirius Mystery

According to Dogon mythology, Nommo was the first living being created by Amma, the sky god and creator of the universe.

The Dogon say that their astronomical knowledge was given to them by the Nommo. The Dogon elder, Ogotemelli, describes them variously as having the upper part as a man and the lower portion as snake; or as having a ram's head with serpent body.

Author Robert Temple describes the Nommo as amphibious beings sent to Earth from the Sirius star system for the benefit of humankind. They look like Merfolk; Mermaids and Mermen. [Metaphor: amphibius - referring to the flow of the collective unconscious - creational source].

There was a great noise and wind. The ship landed on three legs, skidded to a stop, scoring the ground. Four legs appeared and dragged the vessel to a hollow, which filled with water until the vessel floated.

At the same time a new star was seen in the sky, which possibly was a large space ship. The star was described by the Dogon as having a circle of reddish rays around it. This circle of rays was like a spreading spot yet it still remaining the same size.

There is a Dogon drawing of the spaceship hovering in the sky, waiting for the Nommo who landed on the Earth. It represents three stages of 'Pelu Tolo' when it is spurting different amounts of blood or flames [as if it crash landed].

They called the Nommo 'Masters of the Water', 'The Monitors', 'The Teachers or Instructors', 'Saviors', and 'Spiritual Guardians'.

The Dogons believe their gods are already here.
 

By Ellie
 

The Dogons have a unique distinction. Supposedly when they left Egypt and migrated to Mali where they brought with them sacred knowledge in the form of oral traditions - perhaps handed down by the ancient priests of Egypt. There are oral tradition about interaction with Amphibious Gods who came to Earth from the star Sirius (now called Sirius A).

Dogon astronomical lore goes back at least 5000 years. This knowledge most likely dates back to the time of the ancient Egyptian priests - who stored their knowledge as their civilization was destroyed. This knowledge was too be part of our collective unconsciousness - to be remembered - to be brought to the public - when it was time for humanity to make great changes. These changes are reflected in all ancient prophecies. The information is about creation by Geometry - Mathematical patterns or formulas. We sense change in our thinking and our souls. We dream unusual dreams about changes and look for Magic in our lives, movies, books, TV shows. We experience beyond third dimension.

The souls of children, teens and young adults are often called Indigo Children - Children of the Blue Ray sense this. They are telekinetic sometimes moving objects - or bending objects with their minds.

This collective unconscious is a program of grids. The Dogon draw grids. They understand the nature of our reality, based on an electromagnetic grid program that stores memory - The Matrix is the grids.

Following the pattern of the grids...... Dogon legend came with them from Egypt based on the ancient religions and the mystery school teachings of Isis and Osiris. It all begins in the area that was Sumer - The Cradle of Civilization - but in truth the area that surround the Great Pyramid. The Egyptian Goddess Isis is identified by the Egyptians with the star Sirius. The Dogons knew about Sirius long before modern man discovered the star system. Their religious tradition, dating back to their Egyptian roots, was later imparted through Greek migratory patterns. The name Sirius was given by the ancient Greeks.

The priests said that Sirius had a companion star that was invisible to the human eye. They also stated that:

• the star moved in a 50-year elliptical orbit around Sirius,

• that it was small and incredibly heavy,

• and that it rotated on its axis.

Initially the anthropologists wrote it off publishing the information in an obscure anthropological journal, because they didn't appreciate the astronomical importance of the information.

What they didn't know was that since 1844, astronomers had suspected that Sirius A had a companion star. This was in part determined when it was observed that the path of the star wobbled. In 1862 Alvan Clark discovered the second star making Sirius a binary star system (two stars).

In the 1920's it was determined that Sirius B, the companion of Sirius, was a white dwarf star. White dwarfs are small, dense stars that burn dimly. The pull of its gravity causes Sirius' wavy movement. Sirius B is smaller than planet Earth.

The Dogon name for Sirius B is Po Tolo. It means star - tolo and smallest seed - po. Seed refers to creation. In this case - human creation. By this name they describe the star's smallness. It is, they say, the smallest thing there is. They also claim that it is the heaviest star and is white in color. The Dogon thus attribute to Sirius B its three principal properties as a white dwarf: small, heavy, white.

Not far from the Pleaides, The Seven Sisters, the sky is like a big giant map of messages, a blueprint, if you will, of creational patterns. Ancient civilizations named the planets and created myths about them, all linked to the heavens and gods who created humans and came to Earth from the sky.

Isis and Osiris, Zeus and Hera, Amma and his female counterpart. He had to have one as this matrix and grid is all based on opposites - polarities - like a magnetic (north and south).

The Star of Isis is called Sothis, or Sirius and is the brightest star in our night sky. The Dogon also describe this 'star' specifically as having a circle of reddish rays around it, and this circle of rays is 'like a spot spreading' but remaining the same size.

Sirius C translated from the Dogon language into English is called the "Sun of Women". It is described by the Dogon as "the seat of the female souls of living or future beings". Its symbol contains two pair of lines that are relevant features of a Dogon legend. The Dogon believe that Sirius C sends out two pairs of beams and that the beams represent a feminine figure.

Some of the ancient Egyptian temples, such as the Temple of Isis at Denderah, were created so that the light of the helical rising of Sirius would travel down the main corridor to place its red glow upon the altar in the inner sanctum of the temple. When that light reached the altar, the beam of light from Sirius was transformed into Sothis, the Star Goddess, Isis.

In a manner of speaking, the same belief system was involved in the Greek Temples, such as the Parthenon, which were oriented to receive the beams of light from the Pleiades into their inner sanctums, where the beams were then transformed into seven women. As the beams from the Pleiades entered the Egyptian temple of Hathor it became the seven Hathors female judges of mankind.

Within the Dogon tradition, those pairs of feminine figures beamed down from the Star/Sun/Planet of Women to their original home near the Hoggar mountains bringing many aspects of civilization to the ancestors of their tribes.

Dogon oral traditions state that for thousands of years they have known that the Earth revolves around the Sun, that Jupiter's has moons and that Saturn's has rings.

The Dogons calendar is quite non-traditional in that its fifty year cycle is based neither on the Earth's rotation around the Sun (as is our Julian calendar) nor the cycles of the Moon (a lunar calendar). Instead, the Dogon culture centers around the rotation cycle Sirius B which encircles the primary star Sirius A every 49.9 - or 50 years.