Divination tool; Luba Janus, Democratic Republic of Congo, late 19th - early 20th century.

Divination tool; Luba Janus, Democratic Republic of Congo, late 19th - early 20th century.
Wood with honey-colored patina.
Provenance: private collection Paris / Millon Paris, Lot 93 "Parcours des Continentsª, "September 20, 2022.
Measurements: 11 x 4 x 5 cm; 14 cm (with stand).
Wooden reliquary with cylindrical body and a double Janus human head with half-closed eyes crowned at the top with a hole where it housed a magic charge. Honey-colored patina.
In this type of magical and religious objects of traditional Africa, nothing is left to chance and everything, down to the smallest detail, responds to a coded and initiatory language, whose reading is not available to all individuals of the cultural group for which they have been conceived, but often only for the most experienced initiates, the elders who have gone through the various stages of training, initiation. If there is a common thread that allows us to travel through Africa through its artistic creations, that thread is that of a concept as intangible and unreal as that of magic, conceived as the path to follow for the control of supernatural forces and for the understanding of Nature. As part of this attempt to understand the natural and control the supernatural, in Africa, as in practically all pre-industrial societies, instruments suitable for the management of certain energies appear, sometimes in the form of a mask, sometimes in the form of a sculpture, or a fetish, or a conglomerate of elements, sometimes just a stone placed horizontally or a line drawn on the ground.