Nommos

Wednesday, 12 August 2009

In his book ”The Sirius mystery”, of which I recently read the revised edition, Robert Temple writes about the Dogon people from west Africa.

The Dogon have an oral tradition in which they claim to have been in contact with beings from Sirius. The strange thing is that they seem to know many hard facts of the Sirian star system (and other celestial objects), that have only been discovered in the West since we have strong telescopes. Some facts, that the *Dogon have known for ages, have in our culture only been discovered as recently as the late seventies.
I find this a fascinating story, but apart from the information itself, I also love the drawings that the Dogon have of the beings, which they call ”Nommos”:

I copied these drawings by hand, as I often do when I like a drawing. Making it yourself often helps to get a better understanding of the subject. In this case I did not get a better understanding of the mystery, but I did get very inspired and made some variations on the theme:

It may seem that I am making fun of this mystery and the Dogon people, but I have certainly no intention to do that. “The Sirius mystery”, as Robert Temple called it, is one of the best proofs that we in the west have no idea about our own origin. And, apart from that, I just love this kind of art.

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