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Conversations with Ogotommeli (An Introduction to Dogon Religious ideas) – Professor Marcel Griaule

The ancestral smith was equipped with an iron bow and spindles for arrows.  One of these arrows he aimed at the granary roof at the centre of the circle representing the moon and he wound a long thread of gossamer round the shank to form a bobbin, so that the whole edifice became a gigantic spindle whorl.  Taking a second arrow, he attached the other end of the thread to it and shot it into the vault of the sky to give it purchase.  A whole constellation of symbols was now to appear.  In the first place there was the miraculous granary itself symbolising the world system, set in place and classified into categories of creature.  It was the ‘plaited basket’ which its Constructor had copied and which was to serve as a unit of volume.  The unit of length was the tread or the rise of the ‘steps in the stairways…