Azaghvana E-Book 2003 - Flipbook - Page 439
wife. We did not elaborate on what God's wife did, but could imagine her ritual presence by
going back to the chapter about the architecture of the house and its role as a place of
worship. We also referred to bulama Ngatha who provided us with the image of a room or
building (batiwe) when discussing the shape of this world (luwa). In that sense, most items of
ritual importance relating to the Dghweɗe perception of divinity were found in the context of
the household compound.
We remember that lineage ancestors no longer had objects of religious adoration, and that
these were reserved for those who still lived in the memory of the extended family. We
discussed the different aspects of God, and concluded that the personal gods of males and
children were perceived to be God's children. We also explored the meaning of 'god the thief'
and highlighted the possible interpretation of him as a childless man who contained the image
of death as a cosmological reference to his lack of reproduction. Altogether we emphasised
how important the concept of reproduction was in Dghweɗe ritual culture, and mentioned
cooking pots and eating bowls in their cosmological dimension as celebratory vessels. They
were stored in the 'stomach' of the house shrine as a cosmological symbol of food production
and consumption, and played roles during the fstaha ritual of the ngwa kwalanglanga in adult
initiation for the prevention of food crisis by means of surplus food storage against climate or
other environmental emergency.
In the next chapter we will describe the cosmological importance of Durghwe, which is the
highest mountain in Dghweɗe and the most important shrine, and was significant far and
wide, not just for the Dghweɗe, according to our friend Zakariya Kwire. We have already
mentioned Durghwe, and an image of the three granite pillars representing 'granaries' are on
the back cover of this book, next to a man and a woman drinking sorghum beer from one
calabash as a symbol of reproductive unity. We will single out Durghwe from the chapter
about the distribution and custodianship of local shrines, and will detail memories of its
cosmological significance. In the light of this we will revisit the importance of Durghwe
regarding the discovery of sorghum, and we will show that the explorer Heinrich Barth (1853)
might have referred to Durghwe as Mt Legga. We will discuss the cosmography and ritual
role of Durghwe, and compare it with the DGB sites, both important prehistorical subregional
places of presumed ritual significance of the early pre-colonial past.
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