Wouna le Roux

Dolos (or Dolus) is the name of the Greek spirit of trickery.

Tricksters are shape-shifters, ambiguous, promiscuous, the clever fool. They are often defined by their duality. Tricksters, as part of the liminal process, are all around and help to shape the world. In modern times, think Bart Simpson, Frank Abagnale, Bugs Bunny, Tyler Durden, Jerry Mouse, The Joker, Andy Kaufman, The Mask, The Pink Panther, Ct Jack Sparrow, Keyser Söze.

My dolos can be placed any which way (there’s no right way up), therefore they change ‘shape’, so to speak.

But the word dolos has significant other meanings to me. In my home language (Afrikaans) dolos (plural: dolosse) is also the word for the knuckle bones of goats or sheep that our parents and grandparents played with as kids in the old days before toys were such an invasive species.

During the initiation of a Zulu sangoma, the remaining little bones from a goat or sheep sacrificed during the ceremony, becomes the dingaka (oracle bones) of the healer. These are used in combination with other found objects to perform the rituals. These are also called dolosse in Afrikaans.

And also, dolosse is the name given to the interlocking wave breakers (a wave-dissipating concrete block) developed by South African Eric Mowbray Merrifield in 1963 to combat beach erosion.