Talk:Nommo

Old discussion

I removed the section below because no indication is given that anyone ever claimed that these are related to the Nommo. I wouldn't be averse to their reinclusion, as long as connections are explicit. Tuf-Kat 06:21, Nov 12, 2003 (UTC)

Zecharia Sitchin, an archaeologist and linguist specialising in the Sumerian and Hebrew languages, claims that an ancient race of extraterrestrials, the Anunnaki, genetically engineered the original humans, and that they probably still exist in some form or another, with some degree of influence over humankind. These beings are speculated by Sitchin to be either reptilian, quasi-reptilian, or amphibious, from ancient description.

Did he ever claim that these beings were the Nommo of Dogon lore?

Erich von Däniken theorises that extraterrestrials have influenced human history for millennia, and that they may have influenced human evolution.

Did he ever claim that these beings were the Nommo of Dogon lore?

Robert Anton Wilson once claimed to have contacted three-eyed beings from Sirius.

Did he ever claim that these beings were the Nommo of Dogon lore?

Timothy Leary claimed contact with three-eyed beings from Sirius.

Did he ever claim that these beings were the Nommo of Dogon lore?

Pythagoras spoke esoterically of a magickal Mother Essence coming from Sirius, which may have been the result of his having spoken to priests of Isis in Egypt. He apparently believed in many worlds, and in higher intelligences.

Did he ever claim that these beings were the Nommo of Dogon lore?

The Zulu shaman Credo Mutwa claims that the Zulu people have known of a reptilian species for centuries. He is the official historian of the Zulu people. He mentions amphibious beings from Sirius in his book, Song of the Stars.

Did he ever claim that these beings were the Nommo of Dogon lore?

The Sumerian God Enki, said to have created the first humans (Adam), had a mystical connection with Sirius, as well as water, and was depicted as amphibious or semi-fish on many occasions.

Has anybody ever claimed that these beings were the Nommo of Dogon lore?

The Gnostic Archons

The Gnostics believed in a class of beings they called 'Archons', meaning 'rulers', who came from the stars and ruled over Humankind in the physical realm. Some of these beings were said to have come from Sirius, particularly those believed in by Gnostics living in Egypt.

Has anybody ever claimed that these beings were the Nommo of Dogon lore?

The connection to the Nommo should be obvious. Especially in the case of Credo Mutwa--he spoke of the Nommo themselves from the perspective of the Zulu people! (Khranus)

However, if you can't personally see the connection, it gives you NO RIGHT to delete the information. The connections will arise with new knowledge. Khranus

The connections are not obvious. The Dogon believe in deities that they connect with a particular star -- therefore anybody that combines some sort of alien-type creature with the same star is describing the same beings? That doesn't make any sense... surely it is possible that the Dogon beliefs are unrelated to actual Sirius-aliens, or that there are no aliens/deities and the Dogon are simply wrong, or a thousand other possibilities. If Sitchin et al claimed that the deities of Dogon mythology are equivalent to aliens from Sirius, then include that claim. Otherwise, this is just a random collection of facts with a few minor connections. Tuf-Kat 02:53, Nov 13, 2003 (UTC)

Start a new page on Beings from Sirius if you wish to propagate information correlating to that subject and have an interactive knowledge base. Information grows on digital trees also. - Kaos

Remove Tags?

I've cleaned up the article. Are we ok to remove the NPOV and Standards tags? Isotope23 15:21, Jun 22, 2005 (UTC)

I've removed the tags. If anyone disputes the neutrality of this article or feels it need further work, go ahead and restore the tags. Isotope23 1 July 2005 12:55 (UTC)

sentence

"Some have made a connection between the Nommo and the "ancient ones" in the Cthulhu stories of H.P. Lovecraft." Removed as unsourced. If you can source this claim, add it back in.--Isotope23 19:46, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

Unbalanced Source

The entire voice of the controvery bit is set from a European academic perspective, there is no counter our other claims from African Academic sources like Van Sertima etc. Even today in the NEW AFRICA magazine there is a huge article on this. Please discuess and until an agreement is reached do not remove any tags as Wiki rules allow dispute tags to be placed esp when a debate is in progress. It is dishonest not to question this section which has one plan to discredit the Dogon. --Enathager (talk) 20:01, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

No one is discreding the Dogon. Van Sertima is an American academic born in Britain, he is not an African although he obviously has African ancestors (so do we all, but of course for some of us ours are further back). And Wiki 'rules' have something to say about calling other editors dishonest. The tag was put on without any discussion or effort to do anything by an IP editor with only one other edit to their name, thus possibly someone who had no idea what they were doing. There was no debate in progress.

And no one so far seems able to say how the Dogon are being discredited (or more importantly, show that they think they are). If they are, is it Temple who is discrediting them by suggesting that Nommos were aliens?

I will be very interested to see evidence that the Dogon are being discredited, since that seems to be the substance of the complaint. Let's concentrate on that please.--Doug Weller (talk) 20:24, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

when all the evidence sources are being used to say 'they didnt and they couldnt' it is biased per the tag. to develop the article i am sure more could be done to research the counter to the claim. it is a mystery how African-American van sertimas place of birth has to do with his knowledge on dogon!!! i guest no one can have a theory about jupiter unless from jupiter. but what is the issue is the trend where any and everything 'good' in Africa is disnissed by western scholars.--Enathager (talk) 22:49, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

see http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/S/Siriusred.html more detail on the argument] i am sure if this stuff is added to show both sides for and against it would be better, the issue is the article only champions crushing dogon claim.--Enathager (talk) 23:02, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

You wanted African scholarship, all I was pointing out that Van Sertima is not African. And the article definitely does not champion crushing the Dogon. Saying that the Dogon didn't get information from aliens is not an insult to them. Nor is saying that they didn't have astronomical knowledge that wasn't know elsewhere either an insult to them. And with all respect to you, that encyclopedia neither adds anything new to the discussion nor is acceptable as a source (you might want to read up on Wikipedia guidance on this) (and it is certainly not African).Doug Weller (talk) 07:54, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

Minor correction of a citation

The former phrase "astronomers Peter Pesch and Roland Pesch", though a reasonable conjecture, is incorrect. I am the Roland Pesch who was one of the authors of the cited article. I am not now, nor have I ever been 8-) an astronomer. That distinction belongs only to my brother Peter, the other author. I have rephrased to make it clear that only one astronomer was involved; another, perhaps clearer, formulation would be simply to avoid stating the profession of either of us, which would also have the virtue of being more concise... Rhpesch (talk) 18:58, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

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Removing irrelevant clutter

I an removing the below controversy section as per my edit summary. It is so inappropriate. The editor(s) copied and pasted the same old rubbish all over Dogon articles. This article is about the religion /spiritual beliefs or mythology of the Dogon. People come here because that's what they want to learn about, not some silly Western scholars or so called scholars arguments about these people. Almost the entirely article was dominated by this silly Sirius stuff and people arguing over it — copying and pasting it all over Dogon articles. Notice however that, these controversy nonsense are not in Griaule and Dieterien articles. If one wants to create a controversy article, create Criticism of Dogon religion or something like that. Not to use our articles and fill it with rubbish stuff that has nothing to do with the article in the first place. This has been here for years and I'm surprise that few have taken action. I come here to read about the Nommo and Dogon spiruality and mythology, not what some Western scholars and so called scholars are arguing about. I am deleting this nonsense. This should go in the articles of those scholars/writers. Where it even deserve mention, see also, or a brief summary with respect to weight is quite sufficient. Not to fill up Dogon articles with rubbish and irrelevant stuff. Take it out with the authors. Any particular reason why those biographies do not have these controversies or criticism, yet are in many Dogon's articles? Hmm! I don't care what Griaule or Temple said or anybody else thinks or said. I don't care what scholar X or wannabe scholar X says or thinks of Griaule or Temple's work. I am here to learn about the Nommo, not to spend my time reading waffle.

Controversy

In the 1970s a book by Robert Temple titled The Sirius Mystery popularized the traditions of the Dogon concerning Sirius and the Nommos. In The Sirius Mystery, Temple advanced the conclusion that the Dogon’s knowledge of astronomy and non-visible cosmic phenomenon could only be explained if this knowledge had been imparted upon them by an extraterrestrial race that had visited the Dogon at some point in the past. Temple related this race to the legend of the Nommos and contended that the Nommos were extraterrestrial inhabitants of the Sirius star system who had travelled to Earth at some point in the distant past and had imparted knowledge about the Sirius star system as well as the Solar System upon the Dogon tribes.

Walter van Beek, an anthropologist studying the Dogon, found no evidence that they had any historical advanced knowledge of Sirius. Van Beek postulated that Griaule engaged in such leading and forceful questioning of his Dogon sources that new myths were created in the process by confabulation, writing that

"though they do speak about sigu tolo [what Griaule claimed was Sirius] they disagree completely with each other as to which star is meant; for some it is an invisible star that should rise to announce the sigu [festival], for another it is Venus that, through a different position, appears as sigu tolo. All agree, however, that they learned about the star from Griaule".

Carl Sagan has noted that the first reported association of the Dogon with the knowledge of Sirius as a binary star was in the 1940s, giving the Dogon ample opportunity to gain cosmological knowledge about Sirius and the Solar System from more scientifically advanced, terrestrial societies whom they had come in contact with. It has also been pointed out that binary star systems like Sirius are theorized to have a very narrow or non-existent Habitable zone, and thus a high improbability of containing a planet capable of sustaining life (particularly life as dependent on water as the Nommos were reported to be).

Daughter and colleague of Marcel Griaule, Geneviève Calame-Griaule, defended the project, dismissing Van Beek's criticism as misguided speculation rooted in an apparent ignorance of esoteric tradition. Van Beek continues to maintain that Griaule was wrong and cites other anthropologists who also reject his work.

The assertion that the Dogon knew of another star in the Sirius system, Emme Ya, or "larger than Sirius B but lighter and dim in magnitude" continues to be discussed. In 1995, gravitational studies indicated the possible existence of a red dwarf star circling around Sirius but further observations have failed to confirm this.

Space journalist and sceptic James Oberg collected claims that have appeared concerning Dogon mythology in his 1982 book and concedes that such assumptions of recent acquisition are "entirely circumstantial" and have no foundation in documented evidence and concludes that it seems likely that the Sirius mystery will remain exactly what its title implies: a mystery. Earlier, other critics such as the astronomer Peter Pesch and his collaborator Roland Pesch and Ian Ridpath had attributed the supposed "advanced" astronomical knowledge of the Dogon to a mixture of over-interpretation by commentators and cultural contamination.

Senegambianamestudy (talk) 01:17, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

I disagree entirely. We can't just cite Griaule and ignore Meeks. If you want to get rid of Temple, fine. This is still about their religious beliefs. The unbalanced tag, like the OR tag, was added before the article was considerably revised and both should have been removed. Your removal is I think a violation of NPOV, feel free to discuss it at WP:NPOVN. Doug Weller talk 16:12, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

I see the French article on the Dogon says "It is now accepted that this myth of Sirius B, as well as other astronomical facts not observable with the naked eye that the Dogon cosmogony would have integrated, such as the four largest moons of Jupiter 12 or the rings of Saturn 12 , are most likely a case of "cultural contamination", and that this knowledge would have entered Dogon culture only during recent contacts with Westerners". This sort of cultural contamination has also damaged our understanding of Native American religion. Doug Weller talk 16:15, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

When I deleted that section it was nothing against Meek or any scholar. Because the section I deleted (the waffle section) contained citation about Meek, it was deleted for the waffling reasons rather than about Meek. The issue seems to be the article, and similar articles spends a lot of time and space discussing controvercies and arguments about one scholar against another rather than what the article should be about. Of course any controversies should be included per sources, but IMO, those controvercies should go under the biographical article of the scholar who made the work. The problem is, a lot of these copy and pastes are in the Dogon articles rather than the article of the author (who did the work in the first place). In the end, we just end up learning nothing about the Dogon or the subject of the article e.g. Nommo. For me that's what I'm concerned about. All I'm saying is that people who check these articles want to learn about the culture and spiritual system of these people. If we have 3/4 of the article merely discussing scholarly arguments rather than the spiritual beliefs of these people, the reader ends up learning nothing just some scholarly arguments. I see you've added it back. It's ok. Senegambianamestudy (talk) 22:34, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

@Senegambianamestudy: thanks for your reasonable attitude, which of course is what I would expect from you. When I've raised similar issues I've usually been told that the answer is to add relevant material to the article, not delete. You seem to be a good person to do this. Doug Weller talk 16:28, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

References