Today I will show you Zangbeto dance and ceremony, a typical dance in which Zangbeto spirit comes in our human world, in Possotomè region, Benin.
Ad I have talked a bit about Zangbeto in this post Benin - Zangbeto spirit, now I wil show you the original ceremony where people invoke it.
Ceremony started with a lot of loud dance, with many women dancing (also some guys) with a lot of energy, maybe helped by some alcohol I suppose.
By the way, I don't want to judge if Zangbeto exists and if it really has supernatural powers, but only I have observed the act and the way they celebrate it, very interesting. They really believe in its existence in Benin and in all animist countries.
A lot of drums! All people in the village partecipate to this event, and it is not a touristic events (even if also foreign people can partecipate and they were welcomed):
After almost one hour of dance, act to prepare people, Zangbeto masks arrived! Three or four masks came into the square, rotating and dancing, sometimes touching people (but it is not recommend to touch them, and some people with a stick avoid the contact between people and the mask, made by a mass of threads of hay, with some colored stripes of different colors on the top).
Tradition says that in Benin there were three Gods, and each God took control of a part of the country. To reach the right place, one of the three Gods had to cross a wood, and it wore an hay mask, playing an horn, to scare wild dangerous animals. The hay mask refers to this story.
So Zangbeto is the spirit of this primordial God, and it has a sort of police role in the village, it is the guardian of the community, protecting people against bad spirit. People believe in it, and there aren't crimes in all Benin (except the main town Cotonou), all places are safe, because of people scared by Zangeto presence (it is also called the spirit of the night).
Zangbeto masks rotated to symbolize the spiritual cleaning of village.
Ceremony is managed by Secret Society (like animist priest), and only them know the secret and can organize the event. The amazing and stunning thing is that nobody is inside the mask! Ok, you can think 'it is impossible that nobody is inside this rotating mask'...
At some points, inside a circle someone has drawn on the ground, one mask stopped. They sprayed water on the mask and they talked with the spirit inside....
... and suddenly they overturned the mask! And, as I have seen it with my eyes, nobody was inside! People started to scream and I didn't really understood what was happening, but I'm sure mask was empty inside! I ask to myself 'where is hidden the dancer inside?', but I have no answer. Maybe it was hidden in the hay, or in some hidden layer? I don't know, I leave to you any suggestions or ideas!
By the way, why we should always understand and explain all things? It is a vice of our Western society; sometimes it would be better to believe and to enjoy the magic of the world, giving up out rational part.
Inside the mask there was only some great leaves. I have recorded them, and I have observed them, and they moved. Yes, they were trembling, like some animals were under the leaves. Obviously one can believe or not, but this things, together with the screams and the music, has moved me, creating a sort of trance and a feeling to be joined with the presence of this enigmatic spirit!
Now the last part of the ceremony: people here were very proud to show us the Zangbeto supernatural powers, and at this point the spirit is called to perform miracles to prove them!
One of the miracle is to take a plastic box on the fire, avoiding plastic to get melt. Here they were preparing the fire:
And here the plastic box on the fire:
Inside the box some water and some eggs. Before putting inside water the eggs, they asked to us to throw an eggs on the ground, to prove that eggs were fresh.
Around, people kept on dancing and screaming!
Finally they removed box from the fire, showing plastic has not melt!
And they gave one of the eggs to a friend of mine, to check it was cooked:
And yes! It's cooked! Zangbeto exists, it has worked well and it will protect village from bad spirits!!
My friend ate it and all people started to happily scream applauding to the miracle!
Pictures taken by 4K videos (Sony Alpha 7iii).
October 2022.
