The Men's Societies, Named Here but Not Opened

Outside the household, Mande religious and social life is organized substantially through a series of men's initiation societies, among them Komo, N'domo, Kono, Kore, Chiwara and Nya, each teaching esoteric knowledge in graded stages and performing at masked rites tied to the society's own standing in the community. Komo in particular carries graded initiatory teachings, together with the making and consecration of masks and power objects used in its rites, that this atlas records as closed rather than open, restricted to initiates and to the men who administer the society's teaching, a restriction Bamanaya's own restricted tradition record names directly. What is recorded here is that these societies exist, that they organize a significant part of Mande religious life outside the household, and that their teaching proceeds in graded stages toward fuller initiation, without setting out what any of those stages actually teach or how a mask or power object is made or consecrated. That line, between naming a closed practice and describing its content, is the same line this atlas draws around every other initiatory tradition it records, applied here to Bamanaya's own societies rather than around them.