The kontuossi, spirits of the bush

The kontuossi are the spirits of the uncultivated bush, the lowest of the unseen ranks in the tiered Lobi cosmos. Below the creator Thangba Yu sit the tutelary thila, and below the thila come these bush spirits, beneath whom in turn stands the human world. They belong to the wild land outside the compound and its fields — the forest, the fallow, the watercourses — which the Lobi treat as a domain dense with presence and not wholly safe. Recorded by ethnographers in the variant spellings kontuossi and kontuorsi, they are conceived collectively rather than as named individuals, and they complete the descending hierarchy that links the remote sky-god to the everyday life of the living.

Domains

• wild bush

Powers

• to dwell in and hold sway over the uncultivated bush

Epithets

• kontuossiPiet Meyer, Kunst und Religion der Lobi (Zürich: Museum Rietberg, 1981). (secondary); Madeleine Père, Les Lobi: tradition et changement (Laval: Éditions Siloë, 1988). (secondary)

Relations

• subordinate to: The thila, tutelary nature deities of the LobiIn the tiered Lobi cosmos the bush spirits stand a rank below the tutelary thila, the nature divinities to whom they are subordinate.Piet Meyer, Kunst und Religion der Lobi (Zürich: Museum Rietberg, 1981). (secondary); Daniela Bognolo, Lobi, Visions of Africa series (Milan: 5 Continents Editions, 2007). (secondary)

Sources

• The kontuossi (also kontuorsi) are the spirits of the wild bush in Lobi cosmology, ranked beneath the tutelary thila and above human beings.: Piet Meyer, Kunst und Religion der Lobi (Zürich: Museum Rietberg, 1981). (secondary); Madeleine Père, Les Lobi: tradition et changement (Laval: Éditions Siloë, 1988). (secondary)