Fetish. Congo, first half of the 20th century.

Fetish. Congo, first half of the 20th century.
In carved wood.
Measurements: 15 cm. high.
Provenance: Pon's Collection (Europe), from the 1970s. European Private Collection.
Fetish from the Congo, carved in wood with a full body. These figures are used to obtain personal, family and village protection, to ward off evil spirits from the village, to attract rain, to ward off illness, to bring healing or as a therapeutic remedy, among many other purposes. Fetishes are not to be confused with statues that represent ancestors, genies of nature or that are objects of worship or used in healing and divination practices. Only those figures intended for black magic, sorcery or to cause evil are true fetishes. Let alone confusing fetishism with animism. The first magical figures brought from Africa by the Portuguese were called "fetishes", a word derived from feitiço meaning "fictitious, false, artificial". This term has come to prevail and is applied to all those pieces that are objects of worship or to which a magical power is attributed, apparently granted by plant, animal or mineral substances introduced in the hollows of the figure and mainly in the belly, source and seat of the vital force and by the incantations performed by the soothsayer, priest or sorcerer.