Old Lobi Wood Bateba Bêtise Mating Couple Figures with Sacrificial Patina, Burkina Faso

Description

This superb old and ritually sacrificed Lobi bateba sacred divination altar figure depicts a mating couple. 
The Lobi carver has stylistically captured  a superb plastic quality as well as striking realism. 
The male figure is always positioned behind the woman), the thilbou khe mounkha and are prescribed by the village fetisher or diviner who has been advised by the thila or protective village spirits. Such figures will be destined for single men so that they may find a wife, but they are also prescribed to women in order to avoid infertility and to fulfill their wish to have a child.
The nomenclature bêtise Lobi or bangala is abstractly given to this type of bateba by African dealers, as it is a rather simplistic manner in which to describe the mating bateba.  The Lobi believe that if the copulating bateba is placed at the household altar, its magic powers will increase the fertility of the women living in the household. in either case, it is once that the couple is placed at the altar that it becomes active. 
The Lobi view the intermediary bateba figures on a level superior to human beings, whom they resemble, but inferior to the thila from whom they derive their powers.
It is noteworthy to mention that Lobi statuary sets itself aside from the majority of African statuary, in that there exists a large variety of forms and individualistic styles.
Traces of sacrificial patina, very minor age cracks, mid 20th century – Collected in Burkina Faso.

Height: 24 cm (9 1/2 inches)
Width: 13,5 cm (5 1/4 inches) 
Weight: 345 grams