BORI

Possession spirits, trance

Bori, also called Maguzanci, designates the pre-Islamic animist religion of the Hausa people of West Africa, widespread in northern Nigeria and in Niger. The term bòòríí refers to the spiritual force that dwells in beings and things. At the heart of this tradition stand the iskoki, a multitude of spirits endowed with names, characters and powers of their own, divided between ancient entities called babbaku and later spirits described as Muslim. The cult takes the form of possession and trance rituals. To the sound of specific music and drums, adepts called yan bori — literally the children of bori — become the mounts of the spirits, whom they embody for the duration of the ceremony. Far from exorcism, the approach belongs to adorcism, which seeks to come to terms with the spirit and to heal the person. Bori long offered an important social and therapeutic role to women, with priestesses of high rank such as the Inna, the Mother of all. A state institution in some precolonial Hausa kingdoms, it receded with the Islamisation launched by the jihad of Usman dan Fodio around 1800, while surviving at the margins, sometimes in complementarity with Islam.