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

At sunrise on the appointed day the seventh ancestor Spirit spat out eighty threads of cotton; these he distributed between his upper teeth which acted as the teeth of a weaver’s reed.  In this way he made the uneven threads of a warp.  He did the same with the lower teeth to make the even threads.  By opening and shutting his jaws the Spirit caused the threads of the warp to make the movements required in weaving.  His whole face took part in the work, his nose studs served as the block, while the stud in the lower lip was the shuttle.

As the threads crossed and uncrossed, the two tips of the Spirit’s forked tongue pushed the thread of the weft to and fro and the web took shape from his mouth in the breath of the second revealed Word.

For the Spirit was speaking while the work proceeded.  As did the Nummo in his first revelation, he imparted his Word by means of a technical process, so that all men could understand.  By so doing he showed the identity of material actions and spiritual forces, or rather the need for their co-operation.

The words that the Spirit uttered filled all the interstices of the stuff; they were woven in the threads, and formed part and parcel of the cloth.  They were the cloth and the cloth was the Word.

That is why woven material is called soy, which means ‘the spoken word’…….

Thus the interlacing of warp and weft enclosed the same words, the new instruction which became the heritage of mankind and was handed on from generation to generation of weavers to the accompaniment of the clapping of the shuttle and the creaking of the block, which they call the ‘creaking of the Word’