Fakoly is depicted as the most powerful sorcerer and traditional healer, known as a ‘féticheur’ in French. Féticheurs possess spiritual knowledge and abilities to communicate with spirits, perform rituals, and provide healing and guidance to their communities using fetishes, charms, and other spiritual objects.

Associated with the Kourouma clan, one of the prominent clans among the Malinke people, Fakoly is deeply rooted in Malinke cultural and spiritual traditions.

BASSITI

Among the Malinké of Upper Guinea, Bassiti are sorcerers and traditional healers—known in French as “féticheurs”.

Bassiti possess deep spiritual knowledge and the ability to communicate with spirits—both ancestral and tutelary. They perform rituals, provide physical and spiritual healing, and offer guidance to their communities. They are also the guardians of sacred places such as ponds, forests, and ancestral groves.

They work with herbal remedies, ritual objects (amulets, fetishes, staffs, and other sacred instruments), and ceremonies intended to protect the community from harmful entities—whether malevolent spirits or wicked sorcerers.

Bassiti occupy an ambivalent position in Malinké society: they are respected for their protective and healing powers, yet sometimes feared or stigmatized, suspected of witchcraft or of wielding political and social influence through occult means.

During public celebrations—such as processions to sacred ponds, great mask festivals, or Dununba festivals—Bassiti take part to bless the gathering, summon the spirits, and ensure the ritual purity of the site. They are believed to detect malevolent individuals, whom they symbolically strike and drive away from the assembled crowd.

Each “féticheur” has his own rhythm and ceremony, usually performed late at night. Among the principal ritual masks are Djina Mansa, Kawa, Koma, Nama, Nyaba, Soliwulen, Woïma, and Wulujeng.
Among them, Koma is regarded as “the greatest”, “the master of fetishes”—the most powerful of all.