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Mali divination ceremony is an ethnic ritual practiced by the Dogon tribe in the country. The Dogons inhabiting the Bandiagara Cliffs in southern Mali claim themselves to be the channel between earth and heaven. There are about 300,000 Dogons spread across 700 villages in the Bandiagara region.
The Dogons practice many mysterious and intriguing rituals, which attract anthropologists, historians, scholars, and social scientists to their villages. Fox divination is one such ceremony. Fox divination ceremony is undertaken to foresee the future of the Dogon tribesmen and Dogon villages. This divination ceremony of Mali is performed by the ‘diviner’ or Dogon priest.
The Dogon divination ceremony begins just before sundown in the evening. The ‘diviner’ begins the ritual by drawing six interconnected squares in the sands at the foothills of the Bandiagara Cliffs. Together with the squares an intricate pattern of symbol is drawn that represent God's wishes, life and death, regional harmony and peace, and future of the families and the village.
Subsequently, ‘l’ shaped drawings representing peace and death are traced. Then, the Dogan priest places tiny sticks representing God and family in the sand panels. Thereafter minutely holed small sand mounds representing next harvest, village harmony, sickness, individual mortality are made.
All along while drawing sand patterns, the priest chants prayers appealing to the fox to come and foretell the future. The prayers finish just before darkness and everybody returns to the village.
The following morning all villagers gather at the site of the ceremony to discover footprints of the fox
across the sand drawings made by the 'diviner'. The path of the fox foretells the future of the village for the forthcoming year.
Mali divination ceremony is a mystifying ritual, which has intrigued and attracted travelers and scholars to this beautiful land of Mali in West Africa.
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