Su (Gurunsi nature spirit)
Gurunsi term for an invisible protective nature spirit inhabiting the bush and watercourses. The masked animal-form is the spirit's safe interface for entering the village ritual sphere — not a depiction of the animal itself.
Su (the term carries across Nuna, Nunuma, Winiama, and Kasena dialects with minor variation) is the Gurunsi name for the class of invisible protective nature spirits central to the cosmology of the southern Burkina Faso and northern Ghana grassland peoples. Su inhabit the bush, the river systems, and uncultivated land; they are intrinsically dangerous to direct human contact and operate as the supernatural counterweight to the ordered space of the village.
Gurunsi masquerade is the negotiated interface through which su enter human ritual space safely. The mask carves an animal form — buffalo, antelope, snake, crocodile, hornbill — not as a depiction of the animal itself, but as the safe visible costume the spirit assumes when crossing from bush to village. The mask is activated by the masquerader, the music, the costume, and the ritual context together; without these the wooden form is inert.
Functions include village purification, agricultural intercession (calling rain, blessing the harvest), the management of social transition (initiations, the funerals of senior elders), and the resolution of community-level conflict. The masquerade is not hunting magic — the most persistent online misconception — and not entertainment.
Christopher D. Roy's ethnographic work (Roy & Wheelock, Land of the Flying Masks, 2007; Roy, Mossi, Gurunsi, Bwa, Dogon, 5 Continents 2015) is the standard English-language source for the su reading. The terminology is shared in part with Bwa and Mossi masquerade traditions of the same region, though each ethnic group activates the concept within its own ritual register.