Do / Dwo (Bwa bush spirit and cult)

Do (also rendered Dwo in some transliterations) is the principal spirit power recognised by the Bwa of Burkina Faso and Mali, inhabiting the wild bush beyond the village and mediating between human communities and the forces of fertility, protection, and moral order. The Do cult is the institutional framework within which Bwa plank masks and leaf masks are made, maintained, and performed: masks do not exist as autonomous objects but as materialised manifestations of Do's presence during initiation cycles, funerary rites for initiated men, and annual agricultural ceremonies. Access to Do and to mask performance is restricted to initiated men; the mask's emergence from the bush into the village space enacts Do's controlled entry into human affairs.

The leaf mask — assembled from fresh leaves and branches rather than carved from wood — represents an alternative and in some contexts more archaic mode of Do manifestation alongside the carved plank. Roy's fieldwork clarifies that both wooden plank masks and leaf masks operate within the same Do institutional framework, serving different ceremonial registers rather than representing distinct cults. Collectors and curators encountering Bwa masks should understand Do not as an animist curiosity but as a structured religious institution with its own specialists, initiation grades, and rules governing object production and decommissioning — context that directly informs questions of completeness, condition, and the legitimacy of an object's transition into private ownership.