Sorcery and Witchcraft: Sickness masks from the Congo

Disease has always been mysterious. Only in the past two centuries has Western medicine understood the effect of microorganisms. Now we are facing a new global threat: illness caused by the coronavirus may not be mysterious but it is definitely not under control. Most Americans this week have had to face the consequences of widespread contagion; their responses vary, as you have no doubt read in the press. I know that some readers of this blog are still clinging to the idea that there's no real threat, while most are trying to prepare. As I've written, I've been keeping away from others as we are advised.

Among the Pende people of the Congo, one way to deal with disease was to fight the witchcraft that they thought was the cause. Dancers called Mbangu performed ceremonies  to fight the witchcraft that was causing disease. Alien though such efforts may seem, I think we are all learning to understand the motives for such ceremonies.

In my collection of African masks I have a Pende Mbangu mask that vividly evokes the condition of a sick person (at least I think it does).

Our Congolese mask, used in ceremonies to cure disease and witchcraft.

From the website of the University of Michigan Museum of art, an image and explanation of a sickness mask, which was the first one I saw and which definitely made me curious about this tradition:

From the museum's documentation:

"The twisted face and dramatic opposition of black and white identify this mask as an Mbangu mask, which represents infirmity and sickness—conditions that are often attributed to witchcraft. According to a common Pende explanation, Mbangu’s half-white, half-black face represents the scars of someone who fell into the fire due to sorcery, while the asymmetry of the face and the marks on the black side are an indication of various other medical conditions. When the mask appears in performance, the dancer limps on a cane to convey the physical weakness of Mbangu, and he wears a humpback pierced with an arrow in reference to sorcerers who shoot their victims with invisible arrows." (LINK)

Many Mbangu masks appear in museum collections, in books on African art, and also on a variety of websites, as illustrated in this screen shot of a search for them:

At the website RandAfricanArt.com I found an especially good description of the Mbangu dancers and images of a number of wonderful masks, including an image of the dancers which was originally on a part of the Smithsonian website:

Unfortunately the website does not give any information about this image, and the link provided does not
explain anything about it. Link here: http://www.randafricanart.com/Pende_sickness_mask.html

Wishing good luck and good health to everyone who reads this! 

This blog post copyright © 2020 mae sander for mae food dot blog spot dot com.