Kontome

The kontome, singular konton and known as kontomblé among the Dagara of Burkina Faso, are the beings of the wild: small spirit-beings that inhabit the uncultivated bush, the hills, the water and the earth. Because Naangmin the creator has withdrawn beyond reach, the kontome occupy the crucial middle ground between the human world and God's, and it is they who carry knowledge downward. In the Bagre recitations a being of the wild becomes the teacher of the first humans, revealing the arts of cultivation, iron-working, brewing and the making of culture itself, and guiding the questing younger brother on his journey toward God's country. In the teaching of the twentieth-century Dagara initiate and writer Malidoma Patrice Somé, the kontomblé remain living intermediaries encountered by diviners, small folk of the mineral and earth realm who speak on behalf of the spirit world.

Domains

• wilderness
• revelation knowledge
• mediation

Powers

• reveals culture and craft to humankind
• mediates between the distant God and people
• inhabits bush, hill and water

Epithets

• kontome — the beings of the wildJack Goody, The Myth of the Bagre (1972). (secondary)

Relations

• companion: The Younger BrotherA being of the wild accompanies and instructs the younger brother on his journey to God's country.Alexis B. Tengan, Mythical Narratives in Ritual: Dagara Black Bagr (2006), on the being of the wild who guides the junior brother. (secondary)

Sources

• The kontome (sg. konton; kontomblé in Burkina Faso) are bush-spirits or 'beings of the wild' who reveal craft and cultural knowledge to humans and mediate between people and the remote God.: Jack Goody, The Myth of the Bagre (1972). (secondary); Malidoma Patrice Somé, Of Water and the Spirit (1994). (secondary)
• In the Bagre the beings of the wild teach the first humans farming, iron-working and other arts.: Alexis B. Tengan, Mythical Narratives in Ritual: Dagara Black Bagr (2006). (secondary)