Midimu (the masked ancestral spirits of initiation)
The midimu are the ancestral dead in their masked, dancing manifestation. A single masked figure is a lipiko (plural mapiko), embodied by a costumed dancer wearing a carved wooden helmet-mask tilted back on the head so that he sees out through its open mouth. The masquerade climaxes the boys' (and, in related forms, the girls') initiation, where the ancestors are understood to come back to rejoice at the initiates' passage into adulthood, making visible the bond between the living and the dead. The performance is bound up with secrecy and gendered exclusion: the mapiko are said to terrify women and the uninitiated, who must not learn the identity beneath the mask. Documented from Karl Weule's expedition of 1906 onward and made the subject of Paolo Israel's history of the genre, mapiko has continually reinvented itself across the twentieth century while remaining rooted in ancestral religion.
Domains
- initiation masquerade
- ancestral return
Powers
- to return from the dead in masked form to dance at the close of initiation
- to overawe women and the uninitiated who must not know the secret
Epithets
- lipikoIsrael, Paolo. In Step with the Times: Mapiko Masquerades of Mozambique. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2014. (secondary)
Relations
- subordinate to: NnunguAs returning ancestral spirits the midimu belong to the order of the dead that mediates beneath the remote high god Nnungu.Dias, Jorge, and Margot Dias. Os Macondes de Moçambique. 4 vols. Lisboa: Centro de Estudos de Antropologia Cultural / Junta de Investigações do Ultramar, 1964. (secondary)
Sources
- The midimu (singular lipiko, plural mapiko) are the masked ancestral spirits who return embodied in helmet-masked dancers at the close of Makonde initiation rites.: Israel, Paolo. In Step with the Times: Mapiko Masquerades of Mozambique. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2014. (secondary); Dias, Jorge, and Margot Dias. Os Macondes de Moçambique. 4 vols. Lisboa: Centro de Estudos de Antropologia Cultural / Junta de Investigações do Ultramar, 1964. (secondary)