di Alessandra de Nardis
remnants comes from the Latin restituĕre, composed of: king-, “back”, “again”, “to the original point” and statues, “to place”, “to place”, “to put in a state”.
Literally it means "to put back in its place", "to bring back to a previous state", "to give back what had been taken away or lost".[1].
At its core then, “giving back” implies a tension towards the original equilibrium, a gesture that mends a fracture or heals a deficiency.
It is a word that implies circular movement, like everything that has to do with the sacred: what we receive is not ours, but passes through us, and in giving it back the world returns to balance.
I begin with this word, with its deepest, now almost lost, meanings, to try to understand some ancient ritual objects whose meaning still eludes us. These are representations that likely had a specific purpose: to maintain balance in a world where what is taken must be returned, so that the cycle of life is not interrupted.
The Paleolithic and Neolithic figurines, sometimes with the female sexual attributes made in an exaggerated way, other times barely distinguishable, do not they represented something: they wereThe spirit, power, or strength they evoked were not abstract concepts, but concrete realities manifested in the object itself. We, accustomed to clearly separating the real from the symbolic, tend to call it superstition. But for many ancient cultures, as still today for the Ainu people,[2], the sacred manifests itself concretely and the ritual gesture dialogues directly with the reality that the object embodies.
I stumbled upon the Ainu almost by chance, an ethnic group in northern Japan now numbering only a few thousand individuals, still little studied and at risk of extinction as an ethnic group. Their culture, passed down for over sixteen thousand years, possesses a symbolic and religious tradition profoundly different from ours. It offers a completely new perspective on the concept of the sacred and demonstrates how distant from the Western mindset is the idea that an object can fully embody what it represents: the idea of an object being what it represents.
The ritual wands that they create, with particular rites, called inau, they are not objects to be admired: they are live bodies, created to welcome the sacred spirit and channel it during rites of thanksgiving, purification or protection. Once their task is completed, the inau They are returned to the earth: buried, thrown into rivers, or left to the wind. A powerful concept that can also help us interpret the European female statuettes of the Paleolithic. Perhaps they were not just icons invoking abundance, fertility, or protection, but living ritual instruments, capable of hosting an invisible force. inau They are thin wooden sticks, often made of willow, birch, or alder, carved with a ritual makiri knife and frayed at one end into a fan of shavings. They are decorated with thin strips of bark or wood bent into fringes. Every detail—the wood, the length, the number, and the angle of the fringes—has a precise meaning, designed to welcome and channel the spirit during the ceremony. They serve not to represent it, but to draw it in, to make its presence tangible, even if only for the duration of a ritual.
The prehistoric heritage of the Ainu
The Ainu people trace their origins to those pre-Indo-European hunter-gatherers who populated northern Eurasia. Today, their culture survives mainly in Hokkaido, the Kuril Islands, and Sakhalin. Physically, they are distinguished by their fair complexion, dark eyes and hair, and archaic features, traits that connect them to the Paleolithic populations of Europe and Siberia. But it's not just a question of appearance. Their culture tells of a world made up of small, mobile communities, deeply connected to the forest, rivers, and animals. Every natural element—plants, rocks, rivers, animals—is inhabited by a sacred spirit, the kamuy, which we come into contact with through specific rituals and objects. In this sense, the Ainu offer us a window into spiritual practices that were likely also common to our European ancestors.
The Ainu female tattoo—and especially the mouth tattoo—is one of the most profound and symbolic aspects of their spiritual culture. It is a rite of passage, a sign of identity and protection, and at the same time an aesthetic and sacred act that connects the woman to the spirit world (kamuy).
Present in the area since 16.000 BP, they were still living in a sort of Stone Age when the Japanese arrived in their lands. They used spears tipped with chipped stone and obsidian arrows; their bows were simple, not reflexed, like those of neighboring populations, and the iron knives they use today retain an archaic workmanship, sometimes crude, but tastefully decorated. Treccani observes: "It's amazing to find such a highly developed artistic sense in such a modest cultural ensemble. The Ainu sculpt or embroider everything they can..." A curious observation that reflects the concept of civilization as linked to the technical ability to produce weapons rather than to artistic sensitivity.
The Ainu religion knows no temples or permanent altars: it is a system of relationships between humans and spirits, in which every element of nature—a bear, a river, a birch tree—is alive. Life itself is ritual: every attentive gesture can open a channel to the invisible. In this context, the Inau represent one of the most concrete and mysterious means of communication with spirits.
The object that breathes
The value ofinao It does not reside in the form, but in the gesture that creates it. The wood, engraved and opened, transforms into a body available to the invisible. The ritual cut is not a technical but a symbolic act: the material "opens" to let the breath of life pass through (Ramat). The inao is born, lives, and dies within a few hours or days. Its function is transitory, like the breathing of one who prays.
This idea of the sacred as movement rather than permanence is found in many Eurasian shamanic cultures. Power passes through matter and then withdraws: the object becomes a temporary, fragile body, which, once exhausted, must be returned to the earth or to the spirits.
Prehistoric statuettes: images that contain
If we look at Paleolithic and Neolithic statuettes through the same lens, we can perhaps draw some analogies. Small female figures, often found chipped, broken, or buried, seem more like instruments than images. They do not depict real women, but embody an invisible force. Like the inau, they are vehicles of the sacred: breaking or burial marks the end of the ritual, the return of their energy.
The stylization of the bodies, the concentration on certain details, seeks not realism, but symbolic concentration. Some statuettes are footless, designed to be laid down or buried; others are pierced or shaped to be worn, reminiscent of the lightweight inau that the Ainu carried while traveling or hunting. In both cases, the material accompanies the human being in the ritual, becoming an extension of their body and their breath.
Mircea Eliade reminds us: "The symbol is not a sign, but a presence." Both the inao and the statuette act as bodies of the sacred: temporary containers of a force that cannot remain still.
The inao opens to the sky; the statuette offers itself to the earth. Two poles of the same human gesture: recognizing that the divine passes through matter, but does not dwell there permanently.
Mediation tools
Today we have only one example, a legacy of this perception of the sacred, even if completely alienated from the spiritual context to which it referred.
In fairy tales, a magic wand appears as a small, simple object, yet capable of overturning fate. It is the instrument that transforms reality, but above all, it makes visible the power of its wielder.
Originally, however, the wand was not a sign of individual power, as in modern versions of fairy tales. It was a ritual object, a fragment of branch or sacred wood that connected the human world to the invisible one—just as with the Ainu inau or the sacred rods of ancient cultures. The wood came from trees believed to be bearers of life force—hazel, ash, oak, willow—plants that "vibrate" between earth and sky.
The wand is thus a miniature axis of the world, a conduit that allows divine or natural power to flow into human gesture. The magic formula, pronounced along with the movement of the hand, is merely the language that opens the door between the two worlds.
In the oldest fairy tales, the wand is often in the hands of a woman: a fairy, a sorceress, a witch, or a goddess in disguise. This is no coincidence. It indicates an archaic, feminine knowledge, linked to the understanding of cycles, transformation, and the creative word. The wand, in this sense, is not a weapon but an extension of the voice, the body, and the breath. It is the extension of a force that comes from within and can "persuade matter to change shape."
When in modern fairy tales the fairy touches something and transforms it, the image poetically preserves an ancient gesture: the ritual act of calling forth life, of reawakening the inert spirit of matter. It's the same logic by which prehistoric men and women constructed figures, decorated sticks, and statuettes: not to possess them, but to give them life, to allow the spirit to pass through them.
The magic wand is therefore a mythical survival of an ancient sacred instrument, like the inau, shamanic staffs, or priestly rods. All intermediate objects, never ends in themselves, that serve to connect two levels of reality.
And when in fairy tales the wand breaks, disappears, or loses power, it means its purpose is accomplished: the spirit has been freed, the spell lifted, the transformation accepted. Like the burned inau or the broken or buried statuettes, the magic wand belongs to the world of gestures that unite, not to that of things that remain.
The gesture that gives back
The Ainu carver carving a branch and the Neolithic woman modeling a statuette perform the same ritual: the sacred is not possessed, it is traversed. Every fragment, every trace of these figures—in wood or terracotta—is a reminder of a primordial relationship between human and spirit, between form and dissolution. The gesture matters more than the object: giving life to the invisible and then returning it to its cycle.
[1] In Latin, it already had concrete uses (restituere templum – “to rebuild a temple”) and moral ones (restituere libertatem – “to restore freedom”). In philosophical language, “to restore” can be understood as an act of recognition: acknowledging that something does not fully belong to us, but that it passes through us and must be put back into circulation. It is an act that contradicts the logic of appropriation—the one that establishes a domination between subject and object—replacing it with a logic of relation: everything, all knowledge, every life, comes from a greater flow, and “to restore” means reconnecting to that flow, not holding it back. In ethical terms, “to restore” coincides with responsibility: the awareness of a debt to that which generated us (the earth, the community, memory, life itself). It is a concept akin to the Greek dikē, justice as cosmic balance, and also to the Platonic notion of anamnesis: to know is to “remember,” therefore to restore to consciousness what was already within us. In religious language, "giving back" has a sacred meaning: it is the act of returning. We return to God what belongs to God, to the Earth what belongs to the Earth, to the spirits what has been received as a gift. It is the idea that everything is on loan, and that humanity lives in the rhythm of giving and returning. In archaic religions, this is the foundation of ritual: offering, sacrifice, and libation are forms of restitution. Giving is never one-sided: maintaining the world in balance requires that what is taken be returned, so that the life cycle is not interrupted. In Christianity, "giving back" also takes on a sense of reparation (restoring sin): restoring good after a mistake, healing a broken relationship with God or with one's neighbor.
[2] The name Ainu means "humans," like Inuit means "human beings" among the Eskimos. Both peoples share ancient roots and an identity forged through a relationship with nature. Though few in number today, the Ainu of Hokkaido hold great fascination for some due to their ancient traditions. Ethnologists believe they are the remnants of the original Japanese Jomon people and that their spiritual heritage dates back to prehistory. For Joseph Campbell, they offered a compelling picture of how religion evolved into its earliest forms.
Bibliography
- Giuseppe Tucci – “The Ainu” – in The ways of the world n. 8 – Milan 1937 – pp. 835-847;
- Mircea Eliade (edited by) – Dictionary of symbols – Jaca Book – 2024
Alessandra de Nardis - November 9, 2025
