Dwo (Bobo mediating spirit)
First-born son of the Bobo creator god Wuro, the invisible mediator between humanity and the divine; its earthly vehicles are masks of leaf, fibre and wood.
Dwo (also spelled Do) is the principal mediating spirit of Bobo-Fing religious life — the first-born son of Wuro, the creator god, sent to remain on earth as intermediary between humanity and the divine. Dwo is invisible and cannot be described in words; masks of leaf, fibre and wood are its earthly vehicles, each material corresponding to a different theological level of Dwo's manifestation.
Dwo is the single governing religious concept behind the entire Bobo masking tradition — without it the individual mask types (molo, nwenka, and the leaf and fibre forms) cannot be correctly contextualised. A Do/Dwo cult also exists among the neighbouring Bwa, which is one root of the persistent Bobo/Bwa conflation; a catalogue entry must specify which people's Dwo tradition an object belongs to (Le Moal 1980).