Dagon and the Dogon: Serious Sirius mystery – Sirius’ place in Dogon ritual

Herein we continue considering the serious mystery behind “The Sirius Mystery” but it is not that which one may generally think. “The Sirius Mystery” is a book first published by Robert K. G. Temple in 1976 AD. Its premise is ancient astronaut or, as the terms has been updated, ancient aliens or actually, in this case, ancient extraterrestrial amphibians: find the whole series here.

“the Dogon maintain that Sirius has two companions, not one. These companions have male and female attributes, respectively. It seems that they are not to be interpreted literally as stars, but as fertility symbols. Nowhere is this better shown than in a Dogon sand diagram of the complete Sirius system…is clearly symbolic; Temple chooses to interpret it literally.”

This is stated because the illustration (see attached slideshow) includes “a mythical male, destined to pursue his female twin,” “The star of women,” “The sign of women” and, specifically, “Woman’s reproductive organs, represented by a uterus.”

In order to either simplify things, or make them more convenient to his point, Temple:

“gives his own modified version of this diagram, retaining the symbol for Sirius, one of the positions of Sirius B, and the surrounding oval; all else is omitted. He then interprets [perhaps, “re-interprets” is more accurate] the surrounding oval meant to represent ‘the egg of the world,’ as the elliptical orbit of Sirius B around Sirius A, even though the symbol equated with Sirius B is drawn as lying within the oval, not on it. This is Temple’s basis for saying that the Dogon ‘know’ Sirius B orbits Sirius A in an ellipse.”

Also note:

“The tribe has a periodic Sirius festival called the ‘Segui’ ceremony; each celebration lasts several years…The interval between ceremonies may be forty, fifty or sixty years…Such criteria suggest that these periodic festivals have been going on for at least 600 years and possibly much longer. But here’s the rub: there is no archaeological evidence that the specific references to the twin hidden companions of Sirius are anywhere near that old.”

Marcel Griaule and Germaine Dieterlen’s book The Pale Fox:

“describe the secret knowledge of Sirius B and Sirius C…But now, in another recent publication – Ancient Mysteries by Peter James and Nick Thorpe – this ‘mystery’ is also uncloaked as a hoax or a lie perpetrated by Griaule.

To recapitulate: Griaule claimed to have been initiated into the secret mysteries of the male Dogon, during which they allegedly told him of Sirius (sigu tolo in their language) and its two invisible companions. In the 1930s, when their research was carried out, Sirius B was known to have existed, even though it was only photographed in 1970. It was very unlikely that the Dogon had learned of this star’s existence from Westerners prior to the visit by Griaule and Dieterlen…

To quote Ancient Mysteries: ‘While Temple, following Griaule, assumes that to polo is the invisible star Sirius B, the Dogon themselves, as reported by Griaule, say something quite different’…

The biggest challenge to Griaule, however, came from anthropologist Walter Van Beek. He points out that Griaule and Dieterlen stand alone in their claims about the Dogon secret knowledge. No other anthropologist supports their opinions. In 1991, Van Beek led a team of anthropologists to Mali and declared that they found absolutely no trace of the detailed Sirius lore reported by the French anthropologists. James and Thorpe understate the problem when they say ‘this is very worrying.’

Griaule claimed that about 15 per cent of the Dogon tribe possessed this secret knowledge, but Van Beek could find no trace of it in the decade he spent with the Dogon. Van Beek actually spoke to some of Griaule’s original informants; he noted that ‘though they do speak about sigu tolo [interpreted by Griaule as their name for Sirius itself], they disagree completely with each other as to which star is meant; for some, it is an invisible star that should rise to announce the sigu [festival], for another it is Venus that, through a different position, appears as sigu tolo. All agree, however, that they learned about the star from Griaule.’ Van Beek states that this creates a major problem for Griaule’s claims.”

The full title of the James and Thrope book is Ancient Mysteries: Discover the Latest Intriguing, Scientifically Sound Explanations to Age-Old Puzzles.

More details on this portion of the issue are gleaned from Adams, H. H. 1983a. “African Observers of the Universe: The Sirius Question” which is found in I. Van Sertima, ed. Blacks in Science: Ancient and Modern, pp. 27-46:

“Adams (1983b) claims, without any reference, that under optimum conditions people with blue/green eyes can see stars of 6.5 magnitude, but that dark-eyed, dark-skinned people can see up to 8.1…

Adams‘ (1983: 38) sole proof is the following statement given without attribution or citation, ‘A wooden mask called the kanaga, used by the Dogon to celebrate the Sirius-related Sigui ceremony, is among the archaeological finds that indicate their preoccupation with this star for at least 700 years.’ Adams’ source is actually Griaule and Dieterlen (1950; Temple 1976: 37-38). The kanaga mask represents a crane-like bird, the bustard, and is connected to the Dogon creator god Amma (Griaule 1938: 470).

The dating of the sigui ceremony involves a different set of enormous wooden masks that are not worn but kept in protected shelters. These masks were not dated with C14, and their true age is not known. Griaule extrapolated the age of the masks by counting the number of masks in shelters and multiplying by 60 years per mask because a new mask was made for each 60-year sigui ceremony. Most shelters had 3 or 4 masks taking the ceremony back to AD 1720-1760 (Griaule 1938: 242-244; Temple 1976: 38).

A single location had 8 masks, the remains of another and 3 piles of dust, which Griaule (1938: 245) interpreted as possibly three further masks. This very shaky hypothetical extrapolation is the sole evidence dating the sigui ceremony to AD 1300, and tells us nothing concerning knowledge of Sirius B, the invisible dwarf star.”

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Resources for this series of articles include the following:

Astrophysical Journal: R. S. Harrington, 82: 753, 1977 AD, I. W. Lindenblad, 78: 205, 1973 AD and H. L. Shipman, 206: L67, 1976 AD

Bad Archaeology site, The Sirius Mystery

Bernard R. Ortiz de Montellano, The Dogon Revisited

Carl Sagan, Broca’s Brain

François-Marie Arouet aka Voltaire, Micromegas

Genevieve Calame-Griaule, “On the Dogon Restudied,” Current Anthropology, 32 (5): 575–577, 1991 AD

George Michanowsky, The once and future star: The Mysterious Vela X Supernova and the Origin of Civilizations

Griaule and Dieterlen, God of water: conversations with Ogotemmêli

I. Van Sertima, ed. Blacks in Science: Ancient and Modern, pp. 27-46

Ian Ridpath, “Investigating the Sirius ‘Mystery’,” Skeptical Inquirer, Fall 1978 AD