Witchdoctor Dog / Nkondi Nkisi Kozo NFT

This NFT is inspired by the actual physical piece Witchdoctor Dog / Nkondi Nkisi Kozo is in the possession of current NFT creator. The physical piece of art is also available for sale.

One well known Nkondi statue is Nkisi Kozo. This nkisi is in the form of a dog. It can have a single head or double head. The dog is considered a mediator between the living and the dead because it lives in the villages with the living but hunts in the forest where the dead live. Some say that on the way to the village of the dead one passes through a village of dogs. It is thought that dogs have four eyes to see this world as well as the other and it is possible to see the dead if you apply the ocular secretions (bihota) of a dog to your eye. To represent the dog’s four eyes some statues are made with two heads. Dogs are also hunters and it is thought they help nkondi to track witches. The statue is not a picture of a dog as such but a statement about hunting wrongdoers and about movements to and fro between the seen and unseen worlds. A common feature seen on a nkondi are madibu (dog-bells; sing. dibu) and some also have hunting nets entangling the legs. When the nkondi included a pot it might be medicated and placed on a fire to boil, as a divination device; such a pot was supported , not on three stones as usual, but on sticks of luvete wood, a physical pun on the verb veta (to hunt). The job of the nkondi was to hunt down witches, thieves, adulterers, and other wrongdoers. The wronged party pays the nganga with the nkondi to hammer (koma nloko [literally hammer a curse]) in a nail or iron blade into the statue while urging it to find the person who wronged them and do terrible things to them. The nails or blades represented an appeal and a way to arouse (koma) the force in the figure. The pounding of the nail or blades also mimed the violence to be inflicted on the wrongdoer. An item or cloth (mfunya) associated with the crime might be attached to the nail to remind it what to do and where to go. Mfunya tokens were also called “dogs” (mbwa). Eventually someone in the village would suffer chest pains or something like pneumonia (mungundu). This person would have to pay the nganga a large sum to lift the nkisi’s pursuit off him. For the Kongo people still practicing their traditional beliefs killing a dog even today can be serious offense as killing a man because the act induces the death of an actual man. A driver who runs over a dog might be accused of witchcraft. There is a tale told of a women caught in adultery who, before her execution, refused to name her lover. In the place of her lover a male dog was killed. In the Kongo spiritual thought the dog has a special place. They provide a bridge between the living and the dead and help nkondi hunt down wrongdoers. reference : https://www.randafricanart.com/Bakongo_Nkondi_figure.html https://www.dibubasenjis.com/papers/nkisi_kozo.pdf