Dogon Kanaga Mask
The kanaga is the wooden headdress of the Dogon of Mali, a crest of crossed bars rising from a vertical plank, danced by the men of the masked society at the dama, the great funeral rites that lead the souls of the dead to their ancestors. The mask is worn on the top of the head, the dancer looking out through the costume as the double cross revolves, and its form is read as the structure of the world, the arms of the cross as the sky and the earth, or as the hand of the creator god Amma shaping the cosmos. Every sixty years the Sigui, the great regeneration ceremony, renews the tradition, and