The reverence of the Guardian Spirit Totem is lend by its wooden material: total black with blue-violet shades wood, extremely light and deeply porous, sponge at sight and scratched when touched.
Face particular of Efate Guardian Spirit Totem
It’s carved in the stem’s lower-half of a typical South-Western Pacific fern, called by locals “black fern tree” or “black palm” (Cyathea medullaris), which can achieve 20 m. height with 5m. leafages.
Cyathea medullaris, Vanuatu
Once this kind of totem was spread over the entire Vanuatu archipelago, nowadays it’s carved only in Ambryn and Malekula islands.
Our totem comes from Efate Island but there isn’t any track record of its effective islanders’ provenience. When it was bought, it was playing its cultural role: planted at the village entrance, close to a clan’s fence. This function is called “mague” in Ambryin language.
This kind of totem represents ancestral figures, both male and female (our one is male), and usually they act as “ancestral spirit dwelling” during rituals.
Their common feature is the disproportioned and oval head's shape, with huge circular eyes dilated and protruding. Chin and mouth are mold recalling a beak. An ambiguous link between the surfaces ties the stylized hair along totem’s shoulder with a slanting surface over the breast, marking a neat beard’s. This totem keep an half-seated position, astride to an imaginary support which allows to place the totem into the terrain.
These kind of totem are also integral part of “Nimangki” ceremonials, which have a social and ritual aim. Our totem, colored by vegetal extracts and grinded shells, points out to a middle class owner.
In the picture below, shoot in 2006, two totem protect the entrance of a villace nearby Rentapo estuary, on Efate Island, Vanuatu.
Totem at the Village Entrance nearby Rentapo river, Vanuatu