Personal Altar Figure

Baule ideas regarding the sources of suffering attributed bad luck, or difficulties in an individual’s personal life, to the jealousy of their ‘spirit spouse’ in the Other World. In such cases a solution was sought by having a special wooden figure carved for the afflicted person’s altar to their spirit spouse. This female figure would have been carved for the personal ‘spirit spouse’ altar of a Baule man, who would have offered gifts and prayers before it in order to remove his affliction.