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<m.bivins@csuohio.edu> Many thanks to Don Osborne for posting the "Hausa alphabet." Looking at the letters, I felt that I had seen something like them before. Robert Farris Thompson presented curiously similar "alphabets" associated with the "ground writing" used in ceremonies associated with voudun in Haiti and a "spirit writing" called nsibidi among the Ejagham in his book, FLASH OF THE SPIRIT:AFRICAN & AFRO-AMERICAN ART & PHILOSOPHY ((1983). Jean Gabus also published images of various kinds of letters/alphabets/ideographs used by Saharans in his ART NEGRE. RESEARCH DE SES FONCTIONS ET DIMENSIONS (1967). No doubt that there are other examples of alphabets in other work by art historians and anthropologists, but the Ejagham nsibidi spirit writing prompts me to ask if Mr. Osborne's Hausa alphabet has any association with Bori.
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