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The Igbo
believe in one creator, Chi and numerous invisible spirits and the
founding ancestor, Ale the earth goddess. The Igbo use thousands of
masks for cult concerns, initiations, funerals, agrarian festivities
and entertainment. Social
control is exercised through the use of masks and figures representing
good and evil spirits in the Igbo and Ibibio tribes. The Igbo use
thousands of masks, which incarnate unspecified spirits of the dead,
forming a vast community of souls. The outstanding characteristic of
the many Igbo masks is that they are painted chalk white, the color of
the spirit. Among the Southern Ibo, the ekpe society, introduced from
the Cross River area, uses contrasting masks to represent the maiden
spirit and the elephant spirit, the latter representing ugliness and
aggression and the former representing beauty and peacefulness.
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