A Lobi headstake

A Lobi headstake (baathil / pole head), collected in the Kampti village, Poni region, Burkina Faso, incl. stand.

In his Kunst und Religion der Lobi (1981), Piet Meyer treats the Lobi “head‑stakes” (or baathil; in his terminology also bateba ti bala yuo) as especially potent and ambiguous ritual objects. According to Meyer, these sculpted heads on posts belong to a category of Lobi iconography characterised by “superabundance” or bodily distortion.


A Lobi headstake of the wolfgang-jaenicke collection from the same region.

He links them to spiritually dangerous forces: these heads often serve as receptacles or supports for khele, a powerful “dangerous” spirit connected with violent occurrences (for instance, homicide).Meyer notes that in some cases these heads are placed on outdoor earth‑shrines, making them visible in the landscape.At other times, he observes, they may be kept inside, for instance in a house, in a basket or clay container, which points to a more intimate kind of spiritual use.

For Meyer the gesture (or symbolic “deformity”) of a head on a post is not a random distortion: it indicates concentrated power. In his analysis, such forms are part of a broader Lobi aesthetic register in which physical exaggeration or exaggeration of limbs is a way to express spiritual potency.

Finally, he is somewhat cautious in his interpretation: he presents different possible readings (khele‑power, ancestor mediation) and refers to ethnographic uncertainty, rather than asserting a single, fixed meaning.

Height: 63 cm incl. stand
Weight: 5,2 kg incl. stand