The pagan world of Africa seems to have disappeared with the introduction of the great world religions on this continent. However, the gaze of the anthropologist can detect the presence of the ancient gods of the animist mentality everywhere. "How can worship wood and stones?" missionaries and some anthropologists questioned. This book is a comprehensive answer to this question, based on research that Marc Augé held in various African countries before focusing on urban anthropology.  The African animistic universe is a fascinating thought interrelationships. Between matter and life, humans and gods, living and dead, there is a continuity that is a huge and complex symbolic network. Every person and every thing finds its meaning as it relates to the whole, a relationship that necessarily involves the dimension of the gods. In the god-object visible confused and dimensions of social cohesion materialize. Marc Augé takes the concept of Marcel Mauss "total social object" to analyze the different levels that condense in the god-object as meaning, history, revelation and mystery of all reality. In a very concrete way and in collaboration with the wise priest-diviners, Marc Augé discovers that African religion is also a great philosophy which raises profound questions and can give subtle responses that are not foreign to our own ability to conceptualize and symbolization