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

…. But the purpose of the garment was not merely modesty, it manifested on earth the first act in ordering of the universe and the revelation of the helicoid sign ….. for the fibres fell in coils, symbols of tornadoes, of the windings of torrents, of eddies and whirlwinds of the undulating movement of reptiles. 

They recall also the eightfold spirals of the sun, which sucks up moisture.  They were themselves a channel of moisture  ….

They were the essence of Nummo; they were Nummo in motion…. When Nummo speaks, what comes from his mouth is a warm vapour which conveys and itself constitutes ‘speech’. 

This vapour, like all water, has sound, dies away in a helicoidal line.  The coiled fringes of the skirt were therefore the chosen vehicles for the words which the Spirit desired to reveal to the earth.  He endued [sic] his hands with magic power by raising them to his lips while he plaited the skirt, so that the moisture of his words was imparted to the damp plaits, and the spiritual revelation was embodied in the technical instruction………. 

Thus clothed, the earth had a language, the first language of this world and the most primitive of all time.  Its syntax was elementary, its verbs few and its vocabulary without elegance.  The words were breathed sounds scarcely differentiated from one another, but nevertheless vehicles.  Such as it was, this ill defined speech sufficed for the great works of the beginning of all things