Water Into Bones: Birth Rituals, Ancestors, and Religious Hybridity in Northern Madagascar

Water into Bones explores the spiritual importance of water in Madagascar. Families in northern Madagascar conceptualize water as a spiritual realm where magical creatures and some ancestors live, and believe that infants are born with a special connection to the spirit world that makes them ＂still full of water＂ (mbola rano) and lacking bones. Over the course of their lives, the water is transformed into bone, and lives end as entombed bones, which symbolize their legacy as ancestors and become objects of their descendants’ care and remembrance.

Author Erin Nourse examines the ways that Malagasy women in the northern port city of Diégo Suarez actively enable their infants to acquire ＂bones＂ and establish belonging within their communities. Navigating diverse social environments that enable them to draw from various religious, ethnic, and familial traditions to welcome babies into their families, Malagasy mothers secure their children’s status as distinctive individuals who are also firmly grounded in their ancestral legacies.

Water into Bones reveals the vast possibilities for creating community, identity, and sacred power through the personal experiences of northern Malagasy women during pregnancy, childbirth, and parenthood.

Erin Nourse is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Regis University. She has published an article in the Journal of Religion in Africa and contributed chapters to the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of African History and Africa Every Day: Fun, Leisure, and Expressive Culture on the Continent