Sidi Mimun
Maghrebi folk supernaturalism · numen · Maghrebi folk supernaturalism traditional religion; continuing · Recorded classification
Sidi Mimun is the great lord of the black spirits in the Gnawa possession liturgy. The mluk are ranked by colour, and the black cohort, tied to the sub-Saharan and formerly enslaved ancestry of the Gnawa, is among the most powerful and most feared; Sidi Mimun heads it. He is summoned in the deep of the night with black cloth, the sacrifice of a black fowl and thick clouds of incense, and his possession is heavy, solemn and commanding. Standing at the threshold between the human and spirit worlds, he is a spirit of night and of the ancestral memory of bondage, and his section of the ceremony is one of its gravest and most charged.
Domains
- night
- possession
Powers
- leads the black spirits
Sources
- Sidi Mimun is the leading male spirit of the black cohort of the Gnawa pantheon, associated with night, the colour black and the sub-Saharan heritage of the brotherhood.: Deborah Kapchan, Traveling Spirit Masters, 2007, pp. 55–62 (secondary); Viviana Pâques, La religion des esclaves, 1991, pp. 90–100 (secondary)