Kel Essuf, the spirits of the desert

By Ana Santiso.
Watercolor on paper.
12 cm x 13 cm.
Registration: 0e920c3eb01ad79982e0921c6890dde6d40aa3b50093c507a25871ebb340a7f1
Token ID:14336555718945184532

CREATURE: The desert spirits, called Kel Essuf, are supernatural entities tied to a particular place, which can often be found in darkness or during long journeys. It is believed that they have their own language and can reproduce.
Although they are not essentially malignant, they can attack adults, usually people who feel jealous of being lucky, or because they are going through important personal transitions. The Kel Essuf are capable of altering their perceptions by means of possession, inducing them disorientation so that they are lost in the desert, or provoking diseases. Sometimes they take over the victim’s mind and must be exorcised.

The Kel Essuf have friends among the Tuaregs, shamans who use their power to heal other victims of these spirits or even to guess the future.

CULTURE: The Amazigh are the indigenous people of North Africa, a place they have inhabited for millennia. With their own language and alphabet, they are currently the second ethnic group in the region, behind the majority Arabs, and have an important presence in all the states of the Maghreb. Tuaregs, who are specifically the Amazighs who live in the deserts of the Sahara, have preserved their culture and traditions to a greater extent than the rest of their brothers.

Tanned desert travelers, Tuaregs have always shied away from obedience to any state power, crossing borders and relying on self-organization and mutual aid. Although industrialization has come to change their way of life and make many of them sedentary, until a few years ago the Tuaregs were nomads, lived in large itinerant family units and practiced trade along great trade routes through the desert.

They are a deeply Islamic people, which has not prevented the survival of animistic beliefs that, in general, are perceived as complementary to Islam.

CURRENT POPULATION (all Amazigh people): 60.000.000