To women and children, their geometric designs seem purely decorative. Luba royal arts may hide secrets in their engraved patterns. The lukasa memory board, which mnemonically assists the recall of a constellation of facts about the Luba kingdom, is used and understood only by officials of a powerful secret association. Its triangular and lozenge-shaped patterning refers to secret knowledge. Scarification is common on African sculpture.
Codification appears in graphic systems everywhere in Africa.
Robert Farris Thompson argues that nsibidi were an agent of memory in the transport of the Ejagham Leopard Society to the Americas in the late 1800s. What distinguishes these texts from writing is that they are not standardized, and their meanings are usually flexible. Coding provides an authoritative but fluid way of documenting them. Obscurity is deployed as an aesthetic means of handling the dangerous yet creative powers of the unseen. Among the Bamana, Patrick McNaughton has found the concept of obscurity operating in domains of knowledge and power such as the Komo association.