a section of the cosmos is

given over to mythic women, particularly the spirit Muu, to reproduce all living things- from the point of view of mimetic connection the crucial factor being that during pregnancy a woman's "soul" or pEMRTCurpa becomes, as Chapin puts it, "one with the cosmos itself. The two spiritual realms are fused to

gether in the never-endin

• g process of creating
• offspring and replenishing th
• e Earth's stock of l
• iving beings." (433) On
• this view, then, the

singing of the Muu-Igala for a woman suffering from obstructed childbirth is an enactment of the spirit helpers in the wooden figurines making their way at one and the same time into both the cosmic d