Kongo de ReligionàMagie

P1: OTE/SPH P2: OTE RLBK001-Friedman March 20, 2008
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OTHER MODERNITIES? RESISTANCE, CONTINUITIES, AND TRANSFORMATIONS Modernity has returned in a most forceful way to the social sciences in recent
years. This term has lled the void left by the collapse of evolutionism. The latter was a semantic transform or homologue of the relation between powerful centers of civilization or development and their peripheries. The space separating the two was and is still a hierarchy within which individuals and societies were assumed to develop themselves from periphery to center, or via the transformation of space into time, from primitive, traditional, and undeveloped to civilized, modern, and developed. Modernity was usually identied in this discourse as the social and political organization of the contemporary centers. In the powerfully developmentalist frame of reference modernity too was assumed to have emerged historically in Europe in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, linked to the English and French Revolutions, to the enlightenment, and the industrial revolution. But, if the proliferation of modernities in contemporary anthropology may indeed replace a former modernist understanding of the modern, current usage of the term is not a product of the decline of the former framework. It is, rather, related to the relativization of modernity and a modernization of culture. This is very much a product of the dialectic that we have explored in an earlier volume (Friedman 1994). We have suggested that the decline of modernism, itself part of the decline of Western hegemony, implies the rise of culturalism and a more extreme form of relativism, the conversion of linear time into relativist space. Now one of the intellectualist forms taken by this culturalism is textualism, an objectication of culture and its transformation into mere difference, with no obvious roots in social experience. In the emergent postcolonial and globalization-oriented framework, culture is identied with tradition, a dangerous and even racist term insofar as it takes difference too seriously (Meyer and Geschiere 1999). As we live in the contemporary, we are all modern. All culture, if one wishes to use the word, is contemporary culture. Cognizant that we are indeed part of a world
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in which populations that were once referred to in terms of tradition are integrated into the global system, in which their lives are articulated with the advanced sectors, where they consume Western goods, may work in the capitalist sectors of the world economy, and construct their lives using objects that are part of this larger world, we are urged to interpret contemporary witchcraft as modern witchcraft, contemporary kinship relations as modern kinship, and so forth. Indeed these authors are very often keen to deny any historical continuity (Comaroff and Comaroff 1999; Geschiere 1995). In many works the concept of alternative modernity is used to designate two facts: real cultural difference and contemporaneity, which usually implies something from the West like telephones or computers. Thus alternative modernity is simply another term for contemporary culture and since all culture is contemporary, the term culture can be dropped. The approach adopted here is somewhat different. Instead of conating modernity with contemporaneity, turning the former into an empty signier, we stress the specicity of modernity as a particular cultural form. We have suggested earlier (Friedman 1994) that modernity is a structural phenomenon that emerges in highly commercialized societies where a strong tendency to individualization, the differentiation of self from identity, is a core element of a series of other transformations. In chapter 7 in the next section we return to this issue, but in the four chapters of this section we focus on the formation of contemporary structures and social worlds in peripheral zones. This has nothing to do with modernity as such but with social and cultural transformations that are crucial aspects of the articulation of historical continuities and the formation of local social elds within the contemporary global system. Chapter 1 analyzes a curious mirage in early anthropology that has been inherited in a great number of classic works, the supposed evolution from magic to religion made famous in the work of Frazer and in which latenineteenth-century Africa plays an instrumental role. Here the argument is reversed. Nineteenth-century Africa was precisely an example of the rise of magic in societies in the grips of violent disintegration. Phenomena such as powerless sacred kingship, witchcraft, and the proliferation of magic are shown to be products of the transformation of colonial society rather than a remnant of an earlier period. Chapter 2 examines the way in which history is integrated into identity practices, whether in the form of nationalist and indigenous myths, often assumed to be inauthentic by self-appointed anthropological masters of authenticity and true history, or even in the form of just plain standard history. The emergence of Greek national identity in the nineteenth century is part of a massive historical construction process, one that integrates Greece as ancestor of the West at the same time as it was becoming integrated as a periphery within the expanding Western world system, opposing itself to its own former
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integration within the Ottoman empire. Hawaiian history is, on the contrary, one, developing within the Hawaiian movement, that separates Hawaii from the West. Chapter 3 further develops the issue of the politics of authenticity showing how rising indigenous movements enter into a necessary structural conict with anthropologists who previously maintained a monopoly on the truth of their realities. Chapter 4, nally, demonstrates the way in which local life projects structure and simplies what appears for distant observers as global complexity. Real lives in global reality are small worlds, whether the worlds of indigenous populations or cosmopolitan intellectuals. If there is a relation to the modern in these chapters it concerns the articulations between expanding Western hegemony and the populations that are integrated within this hegemony. The articulations are many and diverse, and the strategies produced are at once culturally specic while framed within larger global contexts. The catastrophic situation within which Congolese culture is transformed is one in which its internal properties determine the nature of the nal product. The various ways in which Hawaiian life forms confront and avoid an encompassing American world demonstrate the way in which forms of resistance produce localization. In both examples historical continuity plays an important role even if in different ways. Thus, alternative modernities are better understood as alternative historical articulations.
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From Religion to Magic
Kajsa Ekholm Friedman
massive mud-slinging campaign on the part of whites. As concerns the nganga1 it has been stressed that he was medically incompetent, that his minkisi were hocus-pocus, that he was the leading gure in the witchcraft hysteria, and that he generally played a reactionary role in the development of society. Fetishism has been seen as idolatry in its most evil form. To keep as sacred wooden gures and small bags of medicines instead of worshipping God, the Father in heaven, appeared outrageously heathenish. MacGaffey says in an article on fetishism that the actual word had such negative connotations for us that we willingly avoided it. It implied that African peoples were too immature to perceive the world correctly; intellectual error led them to the moral error, in Christian opinion of Idolatry (MacGaffey 1977:172). But the Congolese themselves use the word today without any negative connotations, except, perhaps, in a Christian context. In the following passage from the Swedish missionary, P. A. Westlind, the fetishes are called gods: With the help of these gods they could nd out secrets, rule over rain and sunshine, over success and adversity, over health and illness. They are therefore held in esteem by all (Westlind 1911:97). However, the majority of the missionaries saw no true religious content in fetishism. On the contrary, they emphasized that it was only a selsh magic, and it was difcult for them to reconcile themselves to such practices. They had come to the Lower Congo, self-sacricing and with no desire for personal gain, to spread the Gospel. They therefore reacted with great indignation when confronted with fetishism which at that time was primarily directed toward peoples immediate practical problems: health, fertility, and material survival. Even Laman, who in many other situations showed great understanding for the
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Both fetishism and the ngangas practices have historically been subjected to a
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culture in which he worked, writes in a text of 1911: The law and desire, which this people follow and by which it is dominated, is selshness (1911:20). A common view among whites was that the Kongo totally lacked religion. The people of the Congo, as we found them, were practically without religion, the English missionary, Bentley, declared unpropitiously and continued: There is no worship, no idolatry in fetishism, only a dark agnosticism, full of fear, helpless and hopeless (1900 1:247). In the turn-of-the-century society (late 1800s and early 1900s), fetishism was clearly a question of magic. I will argue here that this focusing on magic at the expense of more religious aspects was an effect of colonization, not a traditional feature. The survival problem came to overshadow all other questions about their worldly existence, and the techniques of communicating with the gods were used increasingly in a desperate struggle for survival. Fetishism was thought of so negatively because it was, explicitly or implicitly, perceived in terms of evolutionist assumptions of the relationship between fetishism/magic and religion. Frazer thought he could discern a general evolution from magic to religion (compare Comtes sequence fetishismpolytheism-monotheism). But this is merely an intellectual construction, based on the erroneous assumption that the victims of Western expansion showed primitive characteristics because they represented earlier stages in social evolution. The magically inclined fetishism of the Lower Congo is not a primitive phenomenon in a primitive society but, on the contrary, a crisis phenomenon in a society that had been crushed and that lived under the acute threat of extinction. There is no general historic process leading from magic to religion, but there may well have been a process, shared by a large part of the Third World, leading in the opposite direction: from religion to magic. Religion must of course have been affected by what happened to society in general. When the political system was destroyed, the traditional religion lost its social character. It was simply too intimately implicated in the political hierarchy to survive. Disease and illness, the high mortality, the extreme insecurity, and the violence and oppression led to a situation in which fetishism became more of a traditional medicine than a religiona magic wall (Mahaniah 1980:11), or an imaginary bulletproof vest. After colonization the banganga became the actual power factor in indigenous society: It is the nganga nkisi, the charm doctor, who sways the minds and lives of men, and possesses a power superior to that of the chiefs (Ward 1890:38). The real potentate in Mayombe is le f ticheur (Van Overbergh e 1907:423). There were many different types of banganga, and when specialization developed to its greatest extent, one can say there was a special nganga for every illness or complaint (see Laman 1962:17383). The nkisi cured illness and,
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though it may seem bewildering, could also cause illness. When nkisi wants to show its power, it attacks a person until a nganga, priest, averts the nkisi, as he has the power to do so (Laman 1923:57); the nkisi-spirit attacks . . . a person through illness, and is, at the same time, that nkisi through which the same illness is to be cured (60). Every nkisi had its own afiction which it also cured (Laman 1962:69). There were minkisi with quite a broad range of activities, but in the turn-of-the-century society we can discern a tendency to a greater degree of specialization, so that every special illness had its own nkisi. For instance, Syadada was the name for diarrhea containing blood and also the nkisi which was supposed to be able to cure it. Smallpox was called Bimwengi or Sala nsamba, chickenpox Cubu-Cubu, mumps Mayititi, and so were called the minkisi that cured these different diseases (Laman 1962:70). It is evident that the fetishism we meet in the turn-of-the-century society is a product of dissolution and crisis. There are several statements by missionaries which support this view. E. Andersson claims that the word nkisi originally meant spirit and only later did it come to mean charm or fetish; it does not look as though the development has gone from power-magic to ancestral cult but rather the other way around (1958:21, 23). Even Laman describes fetishism as a degeneration of something else. He claims that nkisi originally referred to the rst great heroes, the great clan or tribal founders, Kongo, Nsundi, and Mbenza, who were subject to the cult during the earlier period. It is only during recent generations, he states, that many lesser minkisi have come into existence. Fetishism should, then, have evolved from a more original nkisi-cult: What on the west coast is referred to as fetishism is actually a degenerated form of nkisi cult (Laman 1962:67). In the old days, nkisi Nakongo and several others were undoubtedly more ardently worshipped, but this cult has gradually been replaced by worship of ancestral images (bankuyu), basimbi, and a variety of other minkisi as new diseases spread in the country (78). Here Laman explicitly associates the change in fetishism with the appearance of all the new diseases. Van Wing is also aware of this relationship: [The problems] gave rst rise to a are-up of fetishism among the natives; they fabricated new fetishes in order to combat the new evil (1938:128). There was an increase in, and specialization of, fetishes in order to counteract and combat the new problems. Van Wing knew of more than 150 different minkisi; new ones were created all the time. In the major centers, and particularly in Leopoldville, there emerged minkisi of foreign, exotic origin, from Senegal, Azande, and Bangala (128), according to the Kongo principle that things from the outside are always better and stronger than things from inside. It is important to look at fetishism from a historical perspective. As long as it is perceived as traditional culture it remains strange and abstruse. In
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order to understand the specic form it had at the turn of the century we must take into account the very special conditions that prevailed. It is not, of course, possible to combat epidemics, sterility, poverty, and social chaos with the help of minkisi, however sophisticatedly one goes about it. But the fantasy and creativity is impressive. There were already signicant changes in the traditional religion during the centuries following the rst contact. Even if the general design of the system of thought remained the same, minkisi constantly changed their character. Old minkisi disappeared, and new ones appeared. Certain elds of religious practice lost their meaning while others suddenly became central. From the beginning there were minkisi and amulets for individual use, just as there were minkisi that could be hung in individuals houses. There were, further, minkisi linked to public life, providing life and fertility and protecting the kingdom and the political order. This type of change has not gone unnoticed. Janzen (1982) has compared Dappers descriptions from the seventeenth century with those of the German expedition of the 1870s. In both cases we are dealing with the area north of the Congo river. The minkisi of the earlier period were, as Janzen shows, primarily connected with the well-being of the king, large harvests, successful shing expeditions, and the accumulation of wealth in the form of trade goods 1982:53). In the 1870s the well-being of the king no longer played any role, and the same minkisi occupied a dominant place in relation to trade, law and order, witchcraft, protection, and the fertility of women. Janzen accounts for the change in terms of the decline of kingship and the entire court system in Loango. There were, in the new situation, a great number of minkisi whose function was to judge and mete out punishment, to bring clarity and justice to the increasingly tangled social relations present in the port city (55). Several reservations are in order here. The loss of interest in the king is most certainly the direct result of the fact that the kingdom no longer functioned as a centralized political structure. But the causal relation between general lawlessness and political insecurity and the minkisis juridical and supervising functions does not seem convincing. Minkisi already had such functions in the beginning of the seventeenth century (see Battell). Nor is it the case that the Lower Congo can be described as in a state of political dissolution in the 1870s. It was still a well-functioning society, even if rapid commercialization and economic expansion had led to a transformation of the power structure. Bastian talks, for instance, about the emergence of a new class of upstarts (1874:195) which led to increasing tensions and conicts. Janzens lawlessness and insecurity better characterizes the next period. There is an enormous difference between the society of the 1870s where there
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still existed a traditional religious practice with its public cult and its fetishes reinforcing the juridical order, and the turn of the century with its individualized fetishism and magical struggle against disease. The shift in focus from general fertility to the problem of female infertility is accounted for by Janzen in terms of the slave trade and general political insecurity (1982:55). It might be more protable to consider that declining fertility was already widespread on the coast following the path of venereal disease. The local population here was severely affected by the presence of white traders and the imported African workforce. Janzen does not treat the religious system in its entirety, however, and therefore the changes may seem less profound than they really are. The major change occurring toward the end of the nineteenth century, in connection with colonization, was the disappearance of the entire public aspect of the religious cult. Religion lost its larger social dimension and was reduced to a system of magic to deal with disease. During the acute survival crisis of this period all interest and energy was summoned in the struggle against epidemics and sterility. Bittremieux has, in his work of 1936, taken up a number of different aspects of the precolonial cult. He begins by stating that the Nkisi tsi cult was central in the traditional religion (1936:136) and he continues:
In a sense it controls the entire life of society and the family. It is from the nkisi tsi that the chiefs get their power. Among the Bawoyo, the entire community attempts to gain its favor by means of public ceremonies. And it is in its name that the bandunga, masked men, also referred to as wives of Nkisi tsi or even its soldiers, engaged in their so-called policing of Kabinda villages. It is apparently for this nkisi that, among the Bawoyo, as in most of Mayombe, nubile girls are made to enter the nzo kumbi in preparation for marriage . . . It is to this nkisi that adult men consecrate themselves in the grand rite of semuka. (136)
Here Bittremieux refers to the royal coronation, the Bawoyos public ceremonies, masked men in Kabinda, puberty rites for girls, and the great consecration of adult men. Later in the same text he refers to nkimba, the initiation school for young boys, and the relation between minkisi and the juridical system. There existed, in other words, a true religious system, pervading the entire society, before the advent of the modern era. Bentley is right when he says that the people of the Congo . . . were practically without religion (Bentley 1900 1:247). He is wrong, however, in assuming that this state of affairs was aboriginal. One of the rst more detailed descriptions of minkisi is found in Battells work from early-seventeenth-century Loango and Mayombe (Ravenstein
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1901:48ff., 56ff., 61ff.). It is a fragmentary picture, but it reveals certain principal traits of the religion that can be discovered for the period preceding colonization. In the capital of Mayombe there was a nkisi, he says, called Maramba. It was placed in a tall basket in a house or under a roof without walls. This is their religion. One consecrated oneself to Maramba, two marks were cut into each shoulder, and a number of food taboos were imposed. The ordained wore Marambas relics on a necklace. All unsolved deaths and thefts were brought before him. When someone died, his neighbors were called before Maramba, and if the deceased was an important person, the whole population had to come and vow innocence. The guilty party fell dead to the ground. There was another nkisi called Checocke. He was small and black and stood in a little house in a village called Kinga. Offerings were made to him for success in hunting and shing. He was placed in the middle of the village, and when people passed by they clapped their hands. Among his qualications was the ability to make his best beloved possessed. A third nkisi was Gomberi. His nganga was a woman who at its annual celebration gave a speech in his honor from under the ground. A fourth nkisi was called Imbonda. This word was later written as mbundu and was used as one of the poisons administered to persons suspected of kindoki. It is important, in this connection, to recall that the Kongo themselves did not suppose that mbundu was a poison. It was a nkisi that had the power to determine the guilt or innocence of the suspect, and it was assumed to be perfectly harmless for the innocent. That it was deadly for the guilty was due to the fact that it could search the suspects body until it found the material substance, or organ, responsible for witchcraft (kundu) which led to death. The master of the Imbonda was placed in the center of the village (in the high street), or in the market square, with his water and administered it to all witchcraft suspects. Up to 500 people, both men and women, could come to drink mbundu. Afterwards they could urinate to demonstrate their innocence. Those who could not fell dead to the ground after a moment, and the assembly cast themselves upon the guilty party and cut him or her to bits. This is done at the town of Longo almost every week, according to Battell. There are many of the ingredients of the nkisi cult to be found here. There was a public cult for the great minkisi. Participants were consecrated to Maramba, their bodies were ceremoniously carved, and they observed special food taboos. The nkisi cult was central to the whole society. Its temple was located in the center of the capital and there was a well-dened congregation with denite rules. This is their house of religion, comments Battell. Minkisi were, further, implicated in the political and juridical organization of the kingdom. Maramba punished those guilty of theft and murder and Imbonda sought after witches.
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To those who were honest and made offerings to the gods, there was success in hunting and shing. These were typical traits of traditional Kongo religion and indeed very different from the medical magic that we nd at the turn of the twentieth century. Traditional Kongo religion is not easily understood. The material is fragmentary, often contradictory, and sometimes even incomprehensible. There are several reasons for that. One is that the religious sphere was the most inaccessible for the Europeans. Certain places of religious importance were so holy that the common man dared not look upon them, let alone set foot upon them (see Bastian 1874:221) and subsequently they were also overlooked by the Europeans (cf. Verly 1955:477ff.). Another reason is that the European visitor often did not fully understand what he observed or was told. A third reason, more interesting than the others, is the lack of a clear and consistent belief system. And how could there be one without a group of theologians ruling over the truth? Here we have a general worldview, or mode of thought, in a number of different shapings and a set of problems that are handled in various ways and provided with different interpretations or solutions. There is a great deal of ambivalence in the attitude toward the gods and for anthropological analysis it is important to identify the contradictory statements as ambivalence and refrain from trying to separate the true one from the false. The time perspective makes it even more complicated, as every piece of information must, as far as is possible, be understood within the specic social context. POWER AND COSMIC HIERARCHY The spiritual world of African peoples is very densely populated with spiritual beings, spirits, and the living dead. African religions contain, as a rule, a whole set of different deities and spirits. R. Horton attempted to show, in his article of 1962, that the different spirit categories among the Kalabari stood in a certain relationship to each other and, as a whole, to the social structure. His approach was Durkheimian and structuralist and meant, more specically, that every spirit category represented a specic level of the segmented social unit, culture heroes for the larger political unit and ancestors for the descent groups. MacGaffey has applied (1983) a similar approach to the Lower Congo. There was, during the precolonial period, a hierarchy of spirits corresponding to the hierarchy of political titles. At the top was Nzambi Mpungu, the most remote and most powerful of spirits . . . the highest nzambi, the paradigm of the series. Below him were a number of hierarchically ranked spirits: Below him, partially localized, ranked great regional spirits (nkisi nsi) such as Bunzi and Funza, sometimes confounded with Nzambi, and lesser bisimbi, some at
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least of which were thought of as very old ancestors. Any of these spirits, and also in certain contexts a human being, could be called nzambi (MacGaffey 1983:129). The hierarchy of spirits was seen in terms of different generations, as father, son, grandson on the model of the ideal hierarchy of all local groups, in which each titleholder stood in a paternal relationship to his subordinates. In this context he quotes Doutreloux who very explicitly expresses this correspondence between the tata-muana-relationship in the spirit hierarchy and the political hierarchy. In another context, MacGaffey links local spirits to local groups and ancestors to descent groups (MacGaffey 1977:182). This is an important aspect of the traditional religion, but it must not obscure the fact that behind this pyramidal spirit world there existed a specic conception of God. The presence of various categories of spirits, we could say, is a secondary phenomenon, a consequence of a special idea of God, found in clan societies. It was basically a monistic worldview where everything hung together and all could be traced back to a primary cause, a kind of Big Bang. This explains to some extent why it was so easy for the Kongo, and many other African peoples, to convert to Christianity. The similarities between Christianity and African religions are obvious. The only thing the Kongo had to do was to bypass all channels and mediums of the Force and let themselves be persuaded that a direct contact with God was possible. The new message was not the Christian God; He was already there, in a very similar form. Instead it was the idea of direct communication that was new. The transition to Christianity was, of course, facilitated by the fact that the political hierarchy collapsed at the end of the nineteenth century. With it disappeared one category that stood between God and the individual. Left was only fetishism. But soon movements appeared that had the destruction of minkisi as their main purpose. Their worldview was also hierarchical. The hierarchical representation of the social world was, as we have seen, crucial for their strategies in the encounter with the European factories during the precolonial period. The actual situation was interpreted very differently by Europeans and by Africans. The Europeans dualistic view, separating us from them, that is, where the relationship to the Africans was interpreted in terms of a binary opposition, conceived the factory as an enclave in a foreign environment. The Africans, however, placed, according to their hierarchical model, the two groups higher and lower in the ow of life-force emanating from God. The white factory was incorporated into the political hierarchy of the area and given the position of apex since it actually functioned as the source of power.
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Political hierarchies in the Lower Congo were based upon the control and distribution of prestige goods (Ekholm 1972). In the precolonial period indigenous prestige goods had been replaced by European trade goods, such as cloth and beads. According to the Kongo mode of thought these objects, containing political power, entered their world from above. Europe became higher, closer to God, not just another part of the world. What to the Europeans seemed to be a spatial relationship was interpreted by the Kongo as a genealogical relationship. In Lamans material, as well as in other material from the turn of the century, we still nd fragments of a more elaborate traditional worldview. But at the same time there are clear evidences of dissolution. In an article from 1975, M-C. Dupr presents an analysis of the Nkisi system based upon Lamans e material in The Kongo III (1962). The main purpose of her study, concerning 119 minkisi, has been to reveal the system of thought behind Kongo fetishism. As the point of departure she cites Lamans words about minkisi belonging to three different categories, land, water, and sky, according as their nkisiforming medicines derive from these respective spheres. Her picture of the cosmological eld is very simple, in the sense that it contains few components. There are forces of land, water, and sky, and the various minkisi are composed of ingredients from these different forces (see gure 1.1). Even if Dupr s purpose was not to present a complete picture of the cose mological eld as it appears in Lamans material, her analysis still reveals a certain tendency in the transformation of the traditional religion. The elaborate
Figure 1.1. The Cosmological Field, based on Dupres interpretation (1975) of the Congo
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cosmological eld that we nd during earlier periods (sixteenth through nineteenth centuries) is dissolved, and what is left after colonization are the forces of nature and the minkisi. If she had taken up the various spirit categories and what is said about the ancestor cult in Lamans third volume, her picture would perhaps have been different. But on the other hand she found no reason to do so in order to explain the fetishism of early colonial society. In traditional Kongo religion there were two fundamental components. One was life-force itself, which in its purest and most concentrated form is found at everythings beginning, beyond reach, at a maximum distance from the living. From this point it becomes increasingly diluted and diversied the nearer it comes to the present time and the human/cultural world. The other was the power relations through which this life-force was channeled and controlled, and the mediums or materializations in which it was incorporated and made accessible to man. The Kongo feel no dependence on Nzambi, says Laman (1923:23); he lives in heaven and does not concern himself with the living and their problems: He has created the world and lives in heaven. He does nothing really evil, is not feared and is not prayed to. He does not usually concern himself with the people, as he has given medicine-bags and nkisi-gods for assistance (20). Between him and the living there were minkisi and various spirits or lesser gods, from which man could obtain help and protection. The deceased forefathers (bakulu) were to be found in the village of the dead, living an ordinary life like that on earth (Laman 1962:14). Basimbi is a spirit category that is sometimes depicted as nature spirits and sometimes as ancestors who have died twice, rst in this world and then in the land of the dead. They safeguard the country (and) man could not exist anywhere without them (33). They are connected with mountains, ravines, stones, and water pools inside dark cliff caves. Bankita (ancestors of the beginning) resemble basimbi in that they are very old ancestors and also in that they exist in both a land and a water category (Laman 1962:33, 36; Van Wing 1938:18ff.). The Kongo used the model for the clan in many different situations. They described the kingdom as if all started with a little group of people in the area around the capital in a country otherwise devoid of people. The country was thereafter, according to the myth, successively populated through demographic growth and internal segmentation of this original group (Cuvelier 1930). The political relationship between king, province governor, district chief, and village chiefthat is, between the different titleholders of the political hierarchywas, as we have seen, expressed in terms of different generations: father, son, grandson. The kingdom was in other words represented as a clan, either in matrilineal or in patrilineal terms, emanating from the capital.
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This picture has, of course, nothing to do with the more objective construction and development of the kingdom. The cosmos was also conceived as a clan. Nzambi, who was the highest, was also the oldest, at the cosmological starting point. The higher ranked was always older. He lived in heaven, and man originated from there. Even nature was structured as a clan; certain phenomena in nature were supposed to be nearer the origin than others and were thought to have been created by Nzambi at the beginning of the world. This is especially true of large upright stones and rocks (Laman 1962:36), those places that were connected with basimbi; Laman also mentions waters, caves, and stones as their abodes (41). Among the Yombe it was, above all, sources of rivers and small brooks which bore this primeval impression (Doutreloux 1967:215). Natural phenomena like the whirlwind, thunder, lightning, and the rainbow were also seen as more primeval and in that sense closer to Nzambi. Life-force saturated nature in its entirety, however, representing hidden powers that can be of use or harm for Man (Laman 1923:23). His power is also evident in the rain, in the growing plants, owers, trees and fruits, in the birth of man, his growth, his getting a beard and grey hairs (Laman 1962:55). It exists in everything that lives and grows, but also, and perhaps particularly, in that which for the Westerner appears as deadmountains, stones, collections of stagnant water inside dark cliff caves. The primeval in nature, and consequently higher ranked, seems to be represented by phenomena which appear as unchangeable and eternal, which unlike human beings and plants do not die. Characteristic of the people of the sky is that they too, unlike people on earth, do not die; they are white, tall, and very strong (Laman 1962:56). Nzambi is sometimes depicted as a creator god of about the same type as in Judaism and Christianity. He has created heaven, the sun, the moon, the stars, and he has created all that which is on earthpeople, animals, and plants (Laman 1962:53; Van Wing 1938:2425). Thus far it is the same. But he is a deus otiosus and must be, because he is so far away from the living. Contact was indirectly established through materializations and mediums that were closer to man. The Kongos God was, in fact, much more a father than the Christian God. He was not the engineer God (cf. Jahn 1960:101ff.) who created (that is, constructed) man in his own likeness and who thereafter supervises his progress. Instead he was the Ancestor, the Begetter. There existed between him and man a bond of kinship. Direct communication with an ancestor cannot be had. The appeal must be made to the generation/s closest to oneself. This idea of a descent relationship between Nzambi and man explains why they could call other human beings nzambi, both the king and their parents (even the white missionary) (Laman 1923:15). God, the Creator, is Nzambi Mpungu, the very great Nzambi (Laman 1962:56).
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Nzambi lives in the sky and hence he cannot visit the earth; yet he is not totally inactive, he observes and watches everything, that nothing may go wrong (Laman 1962:55). Here Laman lets Nzambi stand for that which actually is represented by the minkisi of the lower levels. When oaths were sworn, Nzambi was taken as a witness with the implication that he would take revenge on the one who committed perjury (Laman 1923:20ff.). This is, however, a function that was usually assigned to nkisi Nkondi (Laman 1962:88). It does not t the concept of a deus otiosus. This lack of consistency may perhaps be ascribed to the introduction of Christianity, which supplied them with such a picture of God. The same description is found in Van Wing: Nzambi est l gislateur, il punit les transgresseurs de ses lois (Van Wing e 1938:30). One of his informants explained to him that all laws that the elders had left as their heritage came from Nzambi. To break the laws was un p ch e e contre Nzambi and led to punishment by him (31). If we consider that the concept Nzambi actually included the whole clan pyramid (Nzambi Mpungu is called the very great Nzambi [Laman 1962:56]), there was perhaps nothing contradictory in this. Nzambi is a deus otiosus if we dene him narrowly as the beginning of everything, in the remote past and at a maximum distance. On the other hand he is present everywhere with his laws and punishments through his presence in parents, political chiefs and minkisi.
NZAMBI, EARTH GODS, AND NKISI Nzambi was to be found in heaven and was thereby separated from man on earth. His body was white and clean, and it was strong and unchanging as an immovable rock (Laman 1962:55ff.). On the level below, on earth, we nd the rst man, the Ancestor (Mukulu) or Nzambi a nsi, Nzambi on earth, and those primeval phenomena that represented the origin of society. The rst man was believed to have come down to earth on a rope or a spiders thread and had a nkisi with him: Nzambi a nsi, the rst human being, who descended from heaven and paved the way on earth, brought with him a nkisi, Mukongo or Nakongo (Laman 1962:68). Here a distinction is made between the Ancestor and the nkisi. They are depicted as two different phenomena. But they can also be one (gure 1.2). There are myths in which the Ancestor is described as a nkisi. Nakongo, who is depicted as the rst nkisi, is also described as the great ancestor of the tribe. He is the Ancestor of the kingdom of the Kongo, and after him it was named nsi a Kongo and its capital mbanza Kongo (Laman 1953:10). Thus Nakongo is both the Ancestor and nkisi. In this case the Kongo differentiated between Nzambi, the creator in heaven, and the Ancestor/nkisi at the origin of life on earth. In a third version the Creator merged with the nkisi. Both
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Figure 1.2. Three different versions of the relationship between the Creator, man, and Nkisi
Bunzi and Funza were described as creator gods who, at the same time, were minkisi (Laman 1962:78). When Funza came down from heaven he rst made his dwelling place in water. After a while he went ashore and started to create animals, birds, sh and all, and after that he created man (Laman 1920:10). He was described as the master of the nkisi-gods, the most superior of all minkisi. About the same was said of Bunzi. He was, as mentioned above, both the creator, a tribal nkisi and the chief of the basimbi. These three versions of the relationship between the Creator, man, and nkisi are only variations of one and the same conception of God where the three components, in the same way as the Trinity of Christianity, can be conceived as separate at the same time as they are one. This reveals another interesting difference between the Kongos traditional religion and Christianity. There was a more intimate relationship between God and mankind in the former. God was present through the elders, the chiefs, minkisi, and nature. The novelty that Christianity introduced was not perhaps merely the possibility of direct contact with God but, instead, the general notion that God is distant and separate from man. The Ancestor could also be depicted as a whole group of people, the rst immigrants. In this shape he resembles the spirit category basimbi (or bankita, Kinda). The Ancestors or the rst mans house here on earth was on a mountain or in a cliff cave: In Bwende it is thought that Nzambi a Nsis house still exists; it is a big rock in the middle of a valley which is called Bweno. Others call such a rock grotto Mukongos cave (Laman 1962:68). These special localities were also associated with the rst immigrants. They came, according to the myth, from the east; they walked toward the sea, and then they turned and walked back toward the east, along the south shore of the River Congo. At Noki they crossed the river and then continued up
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to Mpalabala. There they stopped at Tadi dya ngo (the Leopard Cave), from where they migrated to Kimpese, Lukungu, and Inkisi. There were several such caves in the Lower Congo, which have been seen as abodes for the spirits of the deceased ancestors of the tribe and which played an important role at the installation of kings and other political chiefs (Laman 1953:10ff.). These mountains and rock caves were also generally associated with basimbi: The accounts of waters, caves, stones and rocks inhabited by basimbi are innumerable. In addition to these places, they may also dwell in mountains, woods and plains (Laman 1962:41). Basimbi were mainly associated with water and stone, but they could also be connected with other aspects of nature, as in the quotation above, with forests and plains. Basimbi and the rst immigrants seem to be identical most of the time. Laman makes a distinction when he says that the caves in question were originally inhabited by the rst immigrants and later were taken over by basimbi (196). The rst immigrants (The Ancestor/s) were transformed into basimbi by the relationship that existed between the king and certain rock caves. Even if they are conceived as different originally, they become identical. The nature of basimbi is unclear. Sometimes they appear as ancestors and sometimes as nature spirits, as a special class of being created by Nzambi (Laman 1962:33). They are categorized in the same way as bankita, in a land category and a water category (1962:33, 36; Van Wing 1938:19). Those associated with land are red or dark skinned, and those associated with water are white. The actual word basimbi comes, according to Laman, from simba which means hold, keep, preserve (Van Wing says to attack [1938:19]). Their task was to protect land and people and to promote fertility: man could not exist anywhere without them (Laman 1962:33). Basimbi were closer to the people than Nzambi was and protected/punished them. As long as the individual behaved as he should, followed all rules and kept all taboos, basimbi brought him prosperity: They never harm him, unless he has done wrong (33). The gods occupying the level between Nzambi and society are described in many different ways. But in spite of all the variations they all seem to have the same signicance for man. They are older and higher ranked, own the land, supply fertility, protect the good, and punish the bad. Besides, they constitute, at lower levels, a force that can be used by man. In Doutrelouxs description of the Yombe, Kinda play the same role as basimbi. For each domain (tsi) there was a Kinda who protected and gave fertility to land and people. This deity, who cannot be described, owns on earth certain material symbols: He possesses . . . on the earth of which he is the proprietor and protector, material symbols, generally boulders, Tadi (Doutreloux 1967:215). A Kinda owns and protects the land in the same way as basimbi. Stones and cliffs are seen as his material symbols; such natural manifestations are,
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according to Doutreloux, called Nkisi Tsi (pl. Bakisi ba Tsi). They are not dwellings for deities, he says, but rather sacred places where only the initiated were allowed to go (215). That they can be seen as dwellings or as material symbols is perhaps not so important. In Lamans material it seems that they are usually perceived as dwellings. But Laman also says: The power of basimbi is concentrated on Tadi (Laman 1962:42; my italics). Kinda are depicted as pure nature spirits. They are not ancestors. They were associated with the cliff caves (Tadi) but also with other natural manifestations, such as the sources of rivers and small brooks. When occupying new land one must try to nd the original or primeval places in nature in order to bury a nkisi there, which, then, has the form of tribute to the deity. This would be an expression of the pact the group entered into with the deity (Doutreloux 1967:215). Doutreloux refers to God or life-force as nkisi. The different spirit categories of the Yombe can, he says, be seen as a manifestation of one and the same Esprit which saturates the whole of nature: cette force universelle et immat rielle porte du reste un nom, Nkisi (226). Doutreloux has, in many e respects, the same view of the structure of traditional religion as the I present in this book. However, nkisi is not the Force itself but a materialization of it which mediates the channel between God and man and designates the point of control. The Force is, or comes from, Nzambi or more directly from those deities who are located on earth, at a shorter distance from man, and which I here have chosen to call earth gods or gods of the land. Laman claims that the incorporated spirit in nkisi is a nkuyu, which is dened as an evil spirit or the spirit of an evil, deceased person. Its evil nature makes the connection with minkisi very confusing. If nkisi occupied a central position in traditional religion, it would logically be connected to bakulu/basimbi bankita, not to souls of bad people. This view of the nature of nkisi is most certainly a result of change, when higher levels of both political and religious powers had disappeared and lower spirits had taken their place, and when the whole nkisi complex was in disrepute. It must be kept in mind that Lamans material on this point, to a large extent, derives from newly converted men who certainly were anxious to delineate the nkisi cult in an unfavorable light. Buakasa, himself a Kongo, makes a very strong connection between basimbi and nkisi:
The force invested in the nkisi object, is the force of a simbi. Thus whenever we come to face a nkisi we also have to face a simbi. It is possible that not all simbi had a corresponding nkisi. In every nkisi, however, there is always a simbi of which the former is the vehicle, its materialization. The name of a nkisi is the name of the simbi represented by the former. (Buakasa 1980:242)
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Here nkisi and the simbi beings are one. The connection between nkisi and basimbi exists even in Lamans material. He says, for example, that the oldest and greatest minkisi came from mysterious lakes (Laman 1923:65), that is, from localities which were thought to house basimbi. The connection is also made evident by the belief that there were land-minkisi and water-minkisi (also sky-minkisi) in the same way as there were land-basimbi and water-basimbi (Laman 1962:64, 71). Nzambi cannot be controlled and is, therefore, never incorporated into a nkisi (Laman 1920:10; Van Wing 1938:35). The lesser gods, however, are possible to control and dominate, at least to some extent. Laman makes an exception for Bunzi, who is alternately described as the creator, a tribal nkisi, and the chief of the basimbi (Laman 1962:36, 78, 105). But the rest of them, even the nkisi-gods of the sky, such as thunder, can be controlled (Laman 1920:21). Buakasa, who writes in a much later period, stresses this dominance relationship between man and his minkisi in which simbi-spirits are assimilated to the former. The spirit is like a slave, he says; it represents a power that is captivated and dominated (1980:242ff.). But people in the colonial period seem to have had their doubts about the nature of this relationship. There are several statements in the literature about the opposite attitude, that is, the need for respect and obedience toward the nkisi (see Laman 1923:58). EARTH GODS AND THE KING The person who entered into the aforementioned pact with the earth gods was the king (the crowned chief). Among the Yombe he obtained his power and authority from Kinda or Nkisi tsi (De Cleene 1935:67). Among the SundiBwende, Nkisi nsi does not seem to be so closely associated with natural manifestations (as in the case of the Yombe). Nkisi nsi was rather an ordinary nkisi. It consisted of sacred objects, including the ingredients that were used at the installation of the king, which were needed to strengthen his authority. But his pact is still with the earth gods. The king himself occupied the juncture between the world of the gods and the world of the living (gure 1.3). He was Nzambis representative on earth (Laman 1923:15). He was also called nzambi ku nsi, god on earth (16), and he opened up the channel between the two worlds. The individual, as the fragile creature he is, must establish contact with the divine, with the strong eternal being, that which never dies. One way this could be done was through the installation of a king. The king was placed at the point where Force owed from the divine to the human world. In that way he was as important to societys existence as basimbi and minkisi. The cosmos met
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Figure 1.3. The hierarchical worldview of the Kongo
the human world in the kings person and position and was then transferred into the latter without there being any clear demarcation between them. The king was next in line after Nzambi and the earth gods of the cosmological clan. After him came the whole hierarchy of political chiefs. In the elaborate political hierarchy there were several territorial levels of elected and crowned chiefs, all of whom where charged with this paternal power (Laman 1916:201; 1923:45). Farthest down was the father (sometimes Laman gives the parents as representatives for Nzambi) (Laman 1962:58). When the father is angry with his son and utters his curse, he says: Am I not your father na nzambi mpungu (na expresses reverence and the other words are the name of the god). Contained in this is a high degree of reverence and it could be translated as God (Laman 1916:202). There was an identication between God and father in the traditional society, and this was imported into Christianity. Todays Tata Nzambi denotes the Christian God. The epithet father is usually conceived as a loan from Europe and the new religion; Nzambi est absolument bon; il est Tata, mon P` re, e notre P` re (Bittremieux 1936:132). It is, however, completely in line with the e domestic concept of God. Laman even stresses this connection. They honor and love God, he says, in the same way as they do the father and the chief. In their new religious life adoration and worship of God is understood in the
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same way. God is seen as their creator and their loving father who cares for them (Laman 1923:83). Religion was, in this sense, inseparable from the political structure. It did not make up a sphere detached from the social order that generated it and had therefore no possibility of surviving its destruction. Force owed from God, the beginning of everything, toward the world of the living through a hierarchy of clan ancestors, rst to the earth gods in their cliff caves and thereafter to the king and further down the political hierarchy. However, the Force did not only ow in one direction. It had a cyclical course. There was a way from man upward, rst to the land of the dead and from there to the earth gods. In this way the circle was closed and the Force was restored to its source. There is a myth about a chief entering into an alliance with a simbi-spirit, which resided in a dark pool of water inside a cliff cave:
Kidi-kidi (sound of splashing water) is the name of a water lled cave in a rock. The water is so dark that no stones are visible on the bottom. A powerful simbi made it his dwelling and became very inuential. A mighty chief Nangoma Neuka, allied himself to the simbi in order to hide his life in the cave . . . When Nangoma Neuka had lived for twelve years in the sickness of old age, he was compelled to ask his nephew to fetch six drops of water from the cave and besprinkle him in order that he might meet his dead ancestors. The nephew did so and the chief died. The old people said that he returned to the simbi chief, as the two had remained friends through the years. That is why Nangoma Neuka dwells in Kidi-kidi instead of in the land of the dead. (Laman 1962:38)
The chief makes an alliance with the simbi spirit in order to have a long life. After death he himself becomes a simbi spirit. He does not, as ordinary mortals, go to the land of the dead but goes to the simbi chief as they had been close friends through all the years. Here the two categories mesh with one another. Basimbi becomes equivalent to dead chiefs, even if they originally had the character of nature spirits, that is, deities separate from man. This text is also interesting for what it says about the chiefs death. He is helped to die (ritually killed?), and the reason given seems to be that he could not otherwise die. Van Wing says something puzzling about bankita (which in principle are the same as basimbi [Van Wing 1938:20, 283; cf. Laman 1962:43]), which further seems to connect this category of spirits with dead kings or chiefs. Bankita are white and very strong, he says, and they are associated with primeval forests and rivers. They are also people who died a violent death. They are, more precisely, ancestors of the beginning who either have fallen in war, been murdered, or committed suicide (Van Wing 1938:18).
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Who are those ancestors who have been murdered or who have committed suicide? The history of the Lower Congo is full of them. To be ritually killed is, during certain periods, in large parts of Africa south of the Sahara, the fate of kings. The murder of the king could therefore be an attempt to send the dying to the right place. According to Doutreloux ordinary people (or their mwela) went to Vata dya Nsitu (the village in the forest) while the crowned chiefs went to un lieu r serv (Doutreloux 1967:234). He should not go to the land of e e the dead but to Nkisi tsi or the dark water pools inside the cliff caves where basimbi lived. It is said that the paramount chief of Nanga was not allowed to die a natural death. He was strangled just before his decease, and his body was thrown into a ravine (Laman 1957:143). Ravines were also usual haunts of basimbi and bankita. It is unclear if the sacred kings were not allowed to, or if they could not, die a natural death. In any case, they did not go to the land of the dead after death but to the higher level of ancestors, to the earth gods. Here we can distinguish two hierarchical levels of ancestors, ordinary people in the land of the dead and extraordinary people in the dark water pools inside the cliff caves. Those who die a Nzambi-death cannot die again, says Laman; but those who are killed become nkita nsi or simbi-spirits (Laman 1923:22). There is also actually one type of suicide among high dignitaries which could be explained in this way. There is information in the early literature of chiefs, who often ranked just below the king, committing suicide and giving themselves as cannibalistic offerings to the king. We shall return to this subject later and, in this context, only point out a possible interpretation of Van Wings data. Those who committed suicide in honor of the king and in order to be eaten by him did so for the assumptions that they thereby were assured of a high position in their next existence. This act extended their reach on their upward way back to God. THE ACCUMULATION OF POWER AFTER DEATH: BACK TO GOD Ordinary people seem to have been able to reach basimbi after their death, but not as easily as the kings. At death the inner person goes to the land of the dead. Death is not an annihilating process but a transition from one body phase to another, to a continued existence as when the snake sloughs its skin (Laman 1920:23). It is as if we, at the end of our lives, fall away and grow weaker until we nally disappear. But that is not the case according to Kongo religion. After death they become stronger and more vital. The dead are the living par excellence; they have a durable life and superhuman powers (Mahaniah
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1980:9). There is a myth which explains this apparent contradiction. It is as follows:

In the beginning a man and his wife had a child, but it died. The man told his wife to lay it in the interior of the house and cover it up, but she was, under no circumstances, to look at the child until he had returned home from a projected journey. Then one day she heard something beginning to rustle and move from the inner room, and she got the notion that she should look at the child. When she opened the door she saw that it was beginning to come to life and was in the act of shedding its skin. She was glad and immediately shut the door. When her husband came home he saw that the door to the inner room had been opened. He looked at the child, but it was unable to come to life as it had started to do. It died forever. The father became indignant and said: You, my wife, are a disobedient being. See, the child had begun to change its skin, but because you looked at it the changing of skin has failed. Now we shall die and go to another land to be transformed. Here on earth we cannot do so. (Laman 1962:14)
The impossible thus becomes possible. We die, but only in this world. The myth asserts that life continues after death and explains why this continuous growth process cannot occur here on earth but must take place in another land. Due to a disobedient wife opening the door where the dead child lay, the possibility of sloughing ones skin in this life was lost. Now, instead, it has to occur in the land of the dead:
When the life at nseke mpanga, the prepared land, the world, has ended, the inner person goes to the grave which also is called where we shall remain or to the land of the dead. The body, the thrown off shell, the skin, like the snakes, is buried. In the land of the dead they get new bodies, cleansed of illness, wounds and defects . . . .They throw off their old skin, which is left in the grave, and get a new, white body: To die is like changing ones body or sloughing ones skin. Death is a transition and development process, a throwing off of the body, the outer envelope. (Laman 1923:4748)
This shedding of skin makes them stronger. The deceased excels the living in strength and power (Laman 1962:24). By doing as the snake they can continue to live, become stronger and stronger; it is a kind of rejuvenation which they call old rejuvenation (Laman 1923:49). There occurs, as Mahaniah states, an accumulation of active force (Mahaniah 1980:9) in which they become strong and white. If the woman had refrained from looking at her dead child, this process could have taken place here on earth. It was not Nzambis intention that man would die but that he should live eternally as the heavenly beings (Laman 1920:9). The beings in question are the people of the sky who are white,
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tall, and very strong, and who, unlike humans, never die. They die during the dry season, but it is more of a sleep, as they reawaken when the rainy season begins and thunder starts (Laman 1962:56). That is how people live longer in the land of the dead, and when they become weak from age they shed their skin, rejuvenate themselves, and become stronger. When they have changed their skins ve to six times they are transformed into basimbi or bankita (17). These have left the world of the dead to take up their abode here and there on the earth, e.g., under stones, in watercourses and forests or on the plains etc. (68). Basimbi are described as human beings who have died twice, rst on earth and then in the land of the dead (33). By dying once more they have gone further in their accumulation of power and on their way back to Nzambi, the origin of all things. Thus man becomes one with the Force, and the circle is closed. THE TWO SPHERES OF THE RELIGIOUS SYSTEM There are two separate spheres of traditional religion in Lamans The Kongo III, however vaguely outlined. They are referred to as the Nkisi Cult and the Ancestor Cult, respectively. This distinction is also made by Van Wing (1938). The turn-of-the-century material is not enough, however, for an understanding of this phenomenon. This is demonstrated clearly by MacGaffey (1977) who suspects Van Wing of Christian prejudice against fetishism. He, himself, sees no ancestors separated from minkisi. From a historical perspective on Kongo religion, the two spheres are, however, easily distinguishable. The ancestor worship among the Kongo within the Belgian area seems to be nearly extinct since some time ago. This Laman wrote a bit into the twentieth century (1923:56). In other words it disappeared very shortly after the colonization. The ancestor cult was closely associated with the political structure, and it is therefore intelligible that it lost much of its signicance as soon as the political hierarchies collapsed. The rst sphere contained the tribal ancestors, represented by a set of great minkisi who were subject to cult. Laman gives the following description:
The rst great heroes, the founders of the powerful tribes of Kongo, Nsundi and Mbenza etc., are still the objects of worship and cult practices through minkisi with these names. The rst great nkisi was Nakongo. Others have in the course of time arisen for different purposes, but it is only during recent generations that a whole series of minkisi of minor importance have existed. (Laman 1962:67)
Here the religious symbols are minkisi, in the form of a wooden statuette or a container of some kind, lled with various ingredients. These minkisi are said
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Figure 1.4. The two spheres of the religious system
to have a highly personal character and to carry the tribal or ancestral name. Some of them had the singular prex mu-, plural ba-, which indicates that they were seen as persons. The plural prex mi-, on the other hand, expresses that it belonged to the semi-person class (Laman 1923:60) which is typical for all the fetishes of the later period. Of these great fetishes we therefore ought to use the word bankisi instead of minkisi. The word nkisi or mukisi is often placed in the ba-class, hence bankisi, in analogy with bankuyu, basimbi (78). Below Nzambi in heaven, there were, within this sphere of the traditional religion, a number of great tribal or clan bankisi whose character could be compared with the saints in Catholicism or perhaps with the Greek and Roman pantheons as their members were gods and not just extraordinary people. The great bankisi each had a name, a special look, a special area of activity, and they were composed in a special way. They had mwela, that is, life and soul, and they had ngolo, strength and power (67). A similar picture can be found in the literature of the seventeenth and eighteenth century. Cavazzi-Labats description is from the mid-seventeenth century and concerns the southern part of the Kongo kingdom. There is rst of all, he says, an all-powerful God up in heaven whom they call Nzambiampungu. Below him are a number
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of other gods in the form of roughly carved wooden statuettes, each one with its own name. Some of them have the shape of men or women and some of wild animals, monsters, and demons (Cavazzi-Labat 1732 I:24041). Proyart, from the eighteenth century, also makes this distinction between Nzambi in heaven and Gods ambassadors, the wooden statuettes, on earth. These great minkisi are here situated on the level below Nzambi, as lesser gods, but they are more precisely culturally made beings that incorporate earth gods (Proyart 1780:129). The other sphere has to do with the same gods but usually in connection with certain places in nature, such as Tadi dya Ngo, cliff caves, dark water pools, and stones. In principle there are no minkisi in this sphere. Nkisi nsi (or tsi), which belongs to this second sphere, is of a different nature than ordinary minkisi. Laman expresses the difference between the two aspects of religion in the following way: Earlier the great tribal ancestors were made into nkisi and were used for various purposes. Besides, there was a so-called nkisi nsi; it is the nkisi of the land and it represents the royal or chiey ofce (Laman 1923:63). What Laman identies as ancestor cult are the last manifestations of this second sphere. He talks about the graves and how the living obtain the blessing of the father by bathing in grave earth. Power can, he says, be transferred to the living from the dead, through the grave cult, and especially through graveearth (kitoto). This is conceived as the medium between the living and the dead. The grave-earth is one with the person who is buried there . . . Earth from the grave, therefore, bestows life, health and prosperity (Laman 1962:52). The dead were said to inhabit two different places, the grave and the land of the dead. There are a number of different names for this latter place, kutwa zingila (where we shall live), nsi a bafwa and ku mpemba (land of the dead), and ku mnda (in the forest) (Laman 1962:14). Van Wing says ku masa, in the water. He also talks of an ancestor village (gata di bakulu) located somewhere on clan land, near forest and water in the same way as ordinary villages are. There the dead live in the same way as during their life on earth, only much better. They had their huts and their elds, and they had both game and palm wine and all other things that belong to the essentials of life (Van Wing 1938:37; cf. Laman 1962:14). The burial ground was often an old head village (capital) where the Kitomi resided during earlier periods. It was a replica of the main village of the living. This is one of the examples of Kongo dualism where the world is divided in two halves, the world of the living and the world of the dead. According to Laman the land of the dead, or the ancestor village, was located somewhere near the actual burial place. There they came after having spent six to eight months, sometimes up to 10 months, in the grave where they changed their skin and
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went through a process of power accumulation. Here they change their skins and acquire a fair appearance like albinos. Here they get strength, so that they are soon able to go their way (Laman 1962:15). Only the good, those who did not devote themselves to witchcraft during their lives, were accepted in the land of the dead. The evil ones became bankuyu (evil spirits) and continued to torment the living (Laman 1916:207; 1923:4950). The dead stayed in their own village and did in no way trouble the living. The communication between the living and the dead was, however, very active. The living solicited the help of the dead, and it was the dead chief they turned to, not just to anyone. The fathers power when deceased is not pronounced and outstanding in all, says Laman; it was only certain Ancestors and chiefs who became the objects of cults, depending on the degree of power they possessed during life (Laman 1923:51). The dead were actually the owners of the land and all game that lived on it (Van Wing 1938:37). They gave the hunter his kiana (hunters luck) and, in return, he was to give them the heart of his kill (he could also, as already mentioned, give this to his living father). If they get meat, then they will also give meat in return (Laman 1916:209). The graves were cared for. They were to be hoed at the end of the dry season, so that the res could not sweep over them. After that, palm wine was poured as a gift accompanied by a prayer for blessing (Laman 1962:46). This was a duty toward the dead, and if it was omitted, there could be serious consequences. Then one had offended and polluted them (Laman 1916:209). The living could also make contact with the dead and the power they possess, when the former had some serious problem. Then they also went to the graves in order to bathe in the grave-earth. Ancestor worship is called ngiobolo atobe, in the Kongo language, bathing in grave-earth (Laman 1923:51). Here Laman seems to identify the ancestor cult with the bathing in graveearth. Mahaniah who writes in the later period, provides the same picture. The grave-earth is, he says, le pointe de contact le plus intime between the dead and the living. The grave is the door between the two worlds, through which one can communicate (Mahaniah 1980:40). The living go to the grave to rub themselves with grave-earth, a medium for paternal power, in order to get health and success via the fathers blessing. If we examine the very oldest material to ascertain the structure of the cosmological eld at that time, we nd striking similarities with the more elaborate picture of the turn of the century, indicating a signicant continuity. The terms nkisi and nganga are there from the very beginning. In Histoire du Congo, written at the end of the sixteenth century, it is made clear that the population had une grande v n ration for their banganga, priests, and e e fetishes (Cuvelier and Jadin 1954:122). The fetishes seem to have the same
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form as in later periods: plain carved wooden gures or receptacles lled with various types of ingredients. The Europeans also observed a cult at the graves in the old Kongo kingdom. In Histoire du Congo, from the end of the sixteenth century, there is a description of how les enfants and les proches parents went to the burial ground, innda, at every new moon, to mourn and to give food and drink to the dead (123). I will here give a brief presentation of the pattern that can be derived from early material. We have quite detailed information about the religious practice in the early sixteenth century as the Kongo king, with the help of Europeans, launched a violent attack on the traditional religion. After contact with the Portuguese, the king converted to Christianity. The old king, Nzinga Nkuwu, who died in the beginning of the sixteenth century, managed to revert to his former religion, but his son Affonso, who became the king of the Kongo in 1506, remained Christian throughout his long reign (15061543). He dedicated all of his energies to the elimination of the traditional religion. Nzinga Nkuwu had earlier ordered, as it is reported, that all supernatural objects (objets superstitieux) and fetish houses (huttes a f tiches) be burned (Cuvelier ` e 1946:69, 79, 120), and the project was carried out earnestly by Affonso. The latters name had been Mpemba Nzinga before he took on Christianity and his Portuguese name. Now, when you have seen Gods Cross, he is to have said to a gathering of chiefs, you shall never more pray to your fetishes nor trust in amulets. He who transgresses against these prohibitions shall be condemned to death (120). Fetish houses were destroyed, minkisi were burned, and Christian churches were built in their stead. In 1514, Affonso turned to the governor of San Tom with a plea for military assistance. He intended to burn a large e fetish house (a casa gramde dos ydolos) and as he expected resistance from the traditionalists, he hoped to get external reinforcements (Paiva Manso 1877:16; Brasio 1952:296). Affonso also directed his attacks in another direction. In a letter from 1526 to the king of Portugal he tells how he had a certain grove, north of the capital, cut down, a grove where the former kings were buried (Brasio 1952:479). He later had a church built in this very place. Affonso did not succeed, in spite of his heroic attempts, in eradicating the traditional religion. His campaign was continued through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries under the aegis of fanatical missionaries and sanctioned by the local ruling elite. There are numerous descriptions of the way in which the European missionaries assaulted the fetish houses, burning and destroying what could be found of minkisi and musical instruments (see Montesarchio, Georges de Gheel, Luca da Caltanisetta). These houses were often called kimpasi-huts. Kimpasi is the term that later is associated with initiation schools for youth. It is believed that during the seventeenth century they were used as general places of
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religious congregation and thus represent the principal equivalent of the church and main target for the modernists (Balandier 1965:219). Montesarchio, who worked in the northern and eastern parts of the Kongo kingdom in the mid-seventeenth century, tells how he fought against an association called Chinpassi Chianchita (Kimpasi kia nkita). During a visit to the capital of the province of Mbata, he succeeded in burning six chinpassi in the environs of the town followed by three along the road to San Salvador and, nally, another three on returning to Mbata (de Bouveignes and Cuvelier 1951:156 60). When, on one occasion, he tried to explain to members how wrong they were, how they were slaves of the devil who would be excluded from the joys of heaven and would instead burn in hell, they answered him by saying that they believed in neither heaven nor hell and that leur chinpassi etait leur dieu (162). Thus both rulers and European missionaries attacked minkisi and houses (or temples) where these minkisi were kept and which seem to have been centers of the public cult. The other strategic target was a certain wood north of the capital where former kings were buried. At the highest ranks of the kingdom the grave cult was directed toward the dead kings, and the burial ground was a sacred grove north of mbanza Kongo. From later material, especially from the seventeenth century, we know that this grave cult was controlled by a titleholder who, in some parts of the country, was called Kitomi. Kitomi ensured fertility, and in exchange he received the rst fruits (Cavazzi-Labat 1732 I:254). In that he mediated for the fathers, or the dead kings, blessing, he was, in other words, the representative of the dead father. This ts well with the model of two religious spheres that can be deduced from the material about the much later precolonial society. The public cult at the turn of the century was focused on the earth deities. Each political unit had its own earth gods connected with the founding of the kingdom. There could either be a single godhead, primal father, founder, the rst king, or a set of earth deities: the royal ancestors or basimbi/bankita. At the lower level, closest to the living and more accessible, were the minkisi, in the form of wooden statues and receptacles lled with various ingredients. Such gods were more individually specic in character; possessing both body and soul and integrated in a specic way. They were usually placed in the villages, in the cultural sphere. They had their special taboos, and those dedicated to them might not transgress them for fear that their power be closed off from them. In order to reactivate them, they had to be raised via rituals and offerings. At a higher level and less attainable for mere mortals we again nd the earth gods in a more primordial state. Among the Yombe the word Kinda referred to a god or to life-force in itself, and Nkisi tsi referred to the location in nature
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where such force was materialized. The equivalent among the Vili is Bunsi and Nkisi nsi. Bunsi existed in the earth, according to Pech el-Loesche, and u rose to the crust at certain places where the sacred re burned and places of offering were established (Pech el-Loesche 1907:27677). Fetishes are u not honored, he writes; but Nkisi nsi is referred to as follows: Ein Fetisch is greifbar und kann vernicht werden. Kissi nssi is unantastbar und ist den Blicken der Menschen ebensoentzogen wie Nsambi selbst (276). Nkisi nsi also functioned as a symbol of the primordial ancestor:
The Nkisi tsi is the sacralized spirit of the primordial ancestor that occupied and determined the territorial boundaries of the clan. It is honored in a sanctuary (tschibila) designated by the same name as the temple in which it is located, constituted of a sacred grove with variable dimensions and to which access is forbidden for the Fumu (princes). (Hagenbucher-Sacripanti 1973:31)
The primordial ancestor, or the rst king, is referred to here as Nkisi tsi. His temple consisted of a sacred grove to which the princes were forbidden access. The earth gods, too, were associated with specic natural symbols. They could be mountain caves, water pools, springs, and so forth. Such places were also described as ancient capitals or royal graveyards. Thus, when Affonso cut down the sacred grove where previous kings lay buried, he truly assaulted the core of traditional religious practice.
CHRISTIANITY AND THE TRADITIONAL RELIGION One may sympathize in part with Hortons interpretation of African conversion (1971). Horton starts with the general model of the spirit hierarchy of the preChristian period. There was, he says, a supreme being concerned with the world as a whole and lesser spirits concerned with the local community and its environment. People directed more interest and concern toward the lesser spirits, as most eventsboth fortunate and unfortunatewere attributed to their agency. Ideas about the supreme being were usually vaguerfew events were attributed to him, and their techniques for approaching him were poorly developed. The reason for that, according to Horton, is that people under traditional conditions live their lives in rather isolated communities and do not feel affected by the wider world. From this model he tries to explain the conversion to world religions by simply introducing the modern situation. There was, he claims, a fundamental change of the African societyan economic and political development, improvements in communications, and so forthwhich opened up the local
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community and thus made it possible for people to enter the wider world. This would be the primary process in African conversion. People involved in this transformation of society were led to believe that the lesser spirits were in retreat and that the supreme being was now more active. Hence . . . they develop a far more elaborate theory of the supreme being and his ways of working in the world, and a battery of new ritual techniques for approaching him and directing his inuence. In this way Christianity and Islam are reduced to the role of catalysts (Horton 1971:1013). The problem is that there was no modernization of African society underpinning the conversion to Christianity and Islam. People were not drawn into the wider world through a process of development. Rather the political hierarchy, and the traditional authority structure in general, broke down and thereby the channel of communication between man and God was cleared. The Catholic missionaries of earlier centuries reported mass baptisms (see Montesarchio), and it would seem as if there was a real and large-scale conversion among the common people. It is unlikely, however, that Christianity, as long as the political organization remained intact, would have been capable of successfully competing with the traditional religion. R. Gray has pointed out (1983), for seventeenth-century Soyo, that Christianity had, in fact, a much stronger inuence upon political and social life than has generally been assumed (cf. Balandier 1968). But that does not necessarily imply that people became Christians in our sense of the word. The interest of the king and aristocracy in the whites source of power was primarily of a politico-ideological nature. Chiefs converted for political reasons and, with them, their whole groups (cf. Ekholm 1972). And, which is very important in this context, Christianity was interpreted in indigenous terms, not conceived as a totally foreign idea. The penetration and colonization of the area altered, however, the very preconditions for the Christian mission. The rst missionaries in this period were not unconditionally accepted; the literature from the end of the nineteenth century contains descriptions of strong resistance. They were accused of eating the population, and parents did not want to send their children to missionary schools for fear that the missionaries would make witches out of them (see, for example, Vildmarkens V r 1928:193). Many political chiefs were, however, a explicitly positive to the new missionaries for the same reasons as during the earlier period, and for such reasons they were also eager to establish contacts with Stanley and white traders. Colonization thus started with very much the same kind of interrelationship as in earlier centuries. What changed the situation was the breakdown of the Kongo political system and the establishment of a new social order. Religious movements have been reported as early as 1886 (Granstig 1957:67), and people seemed to be susceptible to Christian preaching in a way, or to an extent, that astonished many missionaries. Those
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early movements were directed against the old order. Their excited adherents used to burn fetishes and other paraphernalia of the traditional religion. But it was not Christian conversion in the true sense of the word (see Andersson 1941:66). The missionaries came, in many respects, to replace the former chiefs. The conquest created a political vacuum in the traditional sector of the colonial society which was lled by the white missionary, in competition and conict with the nganga. The white missionary was a person lled with Force and Power in the same way as the old kings. The Swedish missionary, Hammar, at Madzia, was regarded as a good tata who took good care of his people; he was a father who protected and blessed his children and who gave them good health and success as fathers should do. Many missionaries were aware of the relationship between their own position and the old, traditional power. P. A. Westlind comprehended it as a replacement of the chief with Christ: In congregation work we have always tried to get the members under the authority of Christ. The chief was their head in heathen society; in the congregation Christ should be their head. The chiefs word was their law in the village; in the congregation Christs word should be their law . . . instead of the chiefs sovereignty there will be the sovereignty of Christ (Westlind 1911:266). In fact it was the white missionary, not Christ, who came to replace this chiefs sovereignty. This explains the very strong position of the missionaries in the Lower Congo, a phenomenon which they never really understood. In Swedish culture the priest/missionary was an ordinary human being, a servant of God but clearly separated from Him. To the Kongo the difference between God and his intermediary was not marked in any way. In some cases there was no difference at all. The word Nzambi, meaning God, could also be used for human beings, and was sometimes used for the rst missionaries (Andersson 1936:22). The Kongo notion of external sources of power did not change very much. God and Christ were conceived as a source of power of the same kind as ancestors and nkisi-spirits. The Swedish missionaries had difculties in accepting that the Kongo primarily were interested in receiving strength and health from God. The Kongo wanting to try a stronger force than ancestors and nkisi (Granstig 1957:99) is a common complaint. The Kongo prayed for good health and success instead of being affected by guilt feelings and the need of the grace of God. Their morals, says Laman, are not of a religious character. They do not experience sin and guilt in their relationship to God; instead their guilt feelings concern man himself, his family and his clan (Laman 1923:75). Sin is masumu in Kikongo and is derived from the verb sumuna which means break a law, a prohibition. For the Swedes, sin was most of all a feeling of insufciency. Andersson tries to explain the difference
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by placing sin, according to the Swedish conception, in an evil heart, in a wicked character, in enmity towards God. In the Lower Congo, on the other hand, it had to do with certain prescribed actions that they have omitted to carry out or . . . in certain prohibited actions that they have carried out (Andersson 1951:66). Such a notion of sin was incompatible with the Swedish view. In order for that to happen, the Christian must realize the truth in Pauls word about sin inherent in Man, he says (66). Jesus the magician, he who heals the sick and resurrects the dead, has always been an important aspect of Christianity in the Lower Congo. It was emphasized in Simon Kimbangus prophetic movement in 19211922. So was also the possession trance (I use here a term suggested by Bourguignon 1979). It was reported that both Kimbangu himself and his disciples trembled, threw their heads from one side to the other, and rolled their eyes. People told the missionaries that it was exactly what their ancestors used to do (Nyr n e 1922:224). In the 1930s a prophetic movement broke out at Kingoyi, in which the members met during the night out in the forest. One of them reported that we shake when the Lord seizes us. The nightly meetings also included confessions and exoticism of evil spirits (Ald n 1936:7376). e Religious revival has been a central element in the SMF (Mission Covenant Church) in Sweden and it has, therefore, also been difcult for the Swedes to react fully negatively to outbreaks of ecstatic movements within the Protestant Church in the Lower Congo. Possession trance is, however, a phenomenon that is very foreign to Scandinavian Christianity. It is typically African and has existed throughout the history of the Lower Congo, as far back as it can be traced. In todays Congo it is the most pronounced among the Zephirins while there is less of it in Eglise Evang lique du Congo (EEC). It is mostly e women who are affected. Back in the 1920s it seemed to be the opposite. We surmise this difference is an effect of possession trance being used as a means of social protest and change. During earlier decades it was used by men in the political struggle while today women employ it in opposition, explicit or implicit, to the men. I was present during a church meeting in Madzia in 1985, the aim of which was to deal with the spiritual gift, where the male priests in incisive words condemned what they regarded as an unacceptable form of ecstasy among the women. Their message was that the women spent too much time on it, that they went to church instead of taking care of their husbands, and that they even neglected their conjugal obligations. And who could, after all, be sure that it was God and not some other power that came down to them? The possessed person raises himself above his ordinary self. God sees him and chooses him as his medium. He yearns to be lled with Gods power and when God hears him and comes to him, he grows in his own eyes as well as
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in those of others. During the colonial struggle possession trance made men strong in relationship to the colonial oppressors. Today women use it as a form of resistanceand their men realize it immediately. A woman with such an intimate relationship to God, and who receives power from Him, can be more difcult to dominate. The above concerns the kind of ecstasy that can be found in the twentieth century in a more political context. The ecstasy of the traditional society seems, in principle, to be connected with the nkisi-cult and especially with the discovery of new minkisi. The nkisi-spirit lets a strong mayembo, ecstasy, [seize] the person in a certain place at the sight of a certain object or in the way that the person runs down to the water or to some other place in order to take certain objects which he carries back with him to the village. This, then, constitutes the [principal] ingredient in nkisi (Laman 1923:59). The ecstasy primarily strikes the nganga (or the one who wants to become nganga). It provides him with a sixth sense. The forces in nature reveal themselves to him. The nkisi-spirit shows itself to him or, rather, unveils to him its ingredients or components. The herbs used then, and still in use within the traditional medicine, were unveiled by ecstasy. They were earlier subordinated nkisi and carried out the orders of nkisi (63); today they are unveiled through the ecstasy that comes from God. So far we have stressed the similarities between traditional Kongo religion and Christianity and the continuity within the religious sphere. But all has not remained the same. The year 1947 is an important one in the history of Eglise Evang lique du Congo. A religious awakening erupted that year, rst appearing e at the seminar in Ngou di and then spreading throughout the southern part of e the Congo, to Brazzaville, Musana, Madzia, Indo, and farther. Buana Kibongi received Jesus Christ during ecstasy. This awakening was much closer to the Swedish experience than anything that had ever happened before in the Lower Congo. Besides the traditional ecstasy, it harbored confessions of sin marked by crying and the longing for mercy (see Granstig 1957:82). Buanas own description (1977) gives a clear picture of how this new movement really broke with the old. He had been sick for a long time and had been praying to God to be healed. That was the old kind of relationship to Godto pray for power, good health, and success. They worship their gods for the sake of outward advantages . . . the sick pray to be healed, as one of the Swedes expressed it (Nyr n 1922:69). And then, suddenly, during the meeting in Ngou di in e e January 1947, there was a change. The Swedish pastor was preaching from John 3:16 and Buana Kibongi experienced a change in his attitude toward God: The power in the preaching was such that it, in a special way, touched the heart of the sick pupil, who for months had been praying to God for healing by miracle. Suddenly this pupil realized that his deeper need concerned the only
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begotten Son, not a healing, and that he had to receive Christ in faith (Buana 1977:67). What was important was no longer his health and his success but Jesus, who loved him and whose love he needed. The awakening was rst spread to other pupils of the seminar and to teachers and members of the Ngou di e congregation. Later it embraced all the other congregations in the Congo. What happened, then, to Buana and his colleagues? At the meetings most participants shout O Jesus! O Jesus!; they are shivering, crying, shaking. Something strange happens deep in our hearts. After Gods words, the singing and preaching there is a devouring re revealing and condemning our sins, forcing us to confess these sins (68). This was the kind of Christianity that the Swedish missionaries were more familiar with, and subsequently they also expressed their sympathy and approval (at a church meeting at Ngou di June 2225, 1947). e The need of power (re)charge (Andersson) still exists in the Congo but besides that, there is today another kind of religious experience, the one that rst reached Buana Kibongi in Ngou di in 1947. This experience of God e does not really belong to clan society but to modern society and the modern individualized subject. TRANSFORMATIONS OF TRADITIONAL RELIGION: FROM CULT TO MEDICAL MAGIC In the following I shall take up various aspects of the public cult and attempt to show the way in which the traditional religious system was transformed into that which we meet at the turn of the century. I have chosen to limit the perspective to three aspects, encompassing the sacred king, cult groups and consecration, and the relationship between minkisi and social control.
The Sacred King: The General Involution of Sacred Kingship
The powerless royal marionettes that we nd at the end of the 1800s, young boys taken as prisoners, sometimes even castrated, and whose lives are severely curtailed by ritual regicide, are in fact recent phenomena. In an earlier work (Ekholm 1985) I tried to demonstrate how political power was transformed throughout the history of the Lower Congo. Generally it can be said that the early king possessing a real control over his sociopolitical environment is ultimately transformed into a helpless gurehead, an instrument of his own people, a fetish in their struggle against social disintegration and against the real threats to survival posed by their crisis-ridden world. In the colonial society,
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chiefs are crowned in times of accentuated crises, such as epidemics and death. In previous centuries royal power was indeed sought after, and there were often violent struggles for the throne following the death of the king. By the turn of the century there were very few indeed who would be king. This change occurred, in fact, before direct colonization. There is the story of the wealthy and powerful chief in the 1870s who always carried arms for fear of being made king (Bastian 1874:11). Lamans tale of the sufferings of Namenta documents the life of a king as a frightening experience. Namenta, who was apparently the last ntinu (crowned king), was taken prisoner when he was a young boy. He was held prisoner for a long time, was maltreated, and was nally castrated (Laman 1957:141). His life did not improve after the coronation, since his functions were reduced to obeying a massive quantity of taboos in order to keep the country alive and well. There is a report from Soyo of a king who was isolated in the forest, and who was absolutely forbidden to turn over on his side in his sleep. In order to ensure that he slept on his back and thus averted catastrophe, a special guard was appointed to watch over his movements during his nightly slumber (Troesch 1962:95). There are also reports about the king being killed immediately after the coronation. A man named Neamlau told Dennett some time around the turn of the twentieth century that he, in fact, had the right to the throne of Ngoy but that he was not interested in the post, as this chief was always killed on the night after his coronation he did not care to do so (Dennett 1906:120).
Power and Symbolism
Royal power constituted a complex set of rituals and representations, and it is necessary to grasp the election and coronation in terms of a symbolic framework consisting of two basic relationship sets: one between the king and his followers and one between this political unit and the earth gods of the land (gure 1.5). The kings men designated or elected him as their leader and, as such, his political power was based upon their strength. I shall refer to this relationship simply as the king-and-his-men. It is a mobile human unit that migrates over the landscape, continually adding new territories to its possessions. This practice must, however, be legitimized from within the occupied area (tsi, nsi) by obtaining the gods blessing. The kingdoms origin myth lays bare the fundamental symbolic structure referred to earlier. There are several versions. One version is as follows (Ekholm 1972): Wene was the youngest son of the king of Bungu, a small kingdom north of the river. He was young and ambitious and grew tired of his subordination to his elders. He was, further, dissatised with the limited extent of his fathers domain. He decided,
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Figure 1.5. Two basic relationship sets: the king-and-his-men and the earth gods of the land
therefore, to leave together with his men. He crossed the Congo River and founded the Kingdom of Kongo. The immediate reason he left his home was because of a dispute between his mother and a stranger. Being pregnant, she behaved impatiently while waiting to be taken across the river. The stranger said, Who do you think you are, the Kings mother? She told this to her son Wene, who, infuriated, vowed to see her honor retrieved by really making her the Kings mother. According to another version, the emigration occurred in more dramatic conditions. The hero is referred to as Nimi a Lukeni, and it is said that he is son to Lukeni, herself daughter of Mani Mbata and Nima a Nzinga, a local chief from the area east of the Congo. One day this Nimi a Lukeni attempted to procure payment from his pregnant aunt for assisting her in crossing the river. She refused on grounds of her high status and, with this, he killed her. The reaction to the deed was divided. His father was furious upon hearing of the murder, but the deed was also worthy
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of esteem. Through this exceptional act, Nimi was proclaimed ntinu by his men, and under his command they proceeded westward, crossing the river and founding the Kongo kingdom. According to both versions there was an aboriginal population in and around the capital which was defeated. Wenes men then married the women of the defeated people, noble marrying noble and commoner marrying commoner. Wene himself married a daughter of Nsaku ne Vunda, or a woman from Mbata. This is the rst part of the myth which deals with the actual conquest and founding of the new kingdom. Wene (or Nimi a Lukeni) is a young man, lled with ambitions and creative power. He breaks with the established rule of succession of the matrilineal order (killing his fathers sister who bore the legitimate heir) in which power is based on social age and position in the lineage hierarchy. He transgresses the bounds of the traditional order and founds, by means of his creative political capacity, a new and higher social order. The murder of the fathers sister is a crucial performance in this scenario. It is an exceptional act that elevates him above ordinary mortals, and he is thereafter designated as ntinu by his followers. This establishes the rst relationship set in the political structure; there is now a group, the-king-and-his-men, that sweeps across the land conquering new territories. This rst type of power is expressed in the person of the king himself, via his virile capacity for action, but it also emanates from his men. Without them he is nothing. In practical terms they are the core of his military and political might. They supply him with tribute and the loyalty of vassals and soldiers. It is a relationship of father to sons, or tata to muana. Let us continue, then, with Wenes (or Nimi a Lukenis) adventures which constitute the second element in the basic structure of the political sphere. The area surrounding the capital is overrun, and the new kingdom is established. The male conquerors marry the conquered women. Soon, however, the entire adventure is jeopardized as Wene has taken ill. His men understand that only Mani Kabunga, the chief of the original inhabitants, can cure him. They go to him and say, We know that you are the oldest and rst occupant of this place. Wene is ill and you must help him. After due consideration, Mani Kabunga agrees. He goes to Wene, who exclaims You are the eldest of us two, the rst to occupy this place. I need your help. In this way Wene recognizes Mani Kabungas seniority and religious stature. The latter touches him with the buffalo tail (nsesa) upon which he recovers and is able to rule the land. Conquest, the creative political act, is completed, and the group, represented by the king-and-his-men, must acquire their legitimacy within the domain of the earth gods, mediated by the religious chief. In myth he is represented as the chief of the original inhabitants of the land. In the historical situation he is the mirror image of the king but without the latters cultural attributes, that is without his specic political and economic power. He represents the deceased
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former ruler, functions as interregnum regent, or better, as religious head of the interregnum. Kings come and go, but he is eternal. Throughout the early history of the Kongo people, Kitomi (or Mani Vunda) represents the stable form of power, the eternal that cannot die, un dieu sur terre (Cavazzi-Labat 1732 I:254) bringing rain and fertility. He is the earth priest who, with his buffalo tail and chalk, is charged with the royal coronation and without whose acknowledgment the kings legitimacy would never be accepted by the people (Cuvelier 1946:15). Without Kitomi, the king would surely die (de Anguiano 1950:437) Kitomi represents the dead or former king, and he is associated with the earth deities of the domain as well as their dwelling places in nature, that is, a former capital or royal cemetery. After being installed as governor by the king in San Salvador, Mani Nsundi (seventeenth century) went together with his wife to the Kitomi of the province who lived in a previous capital. A contrived battle was staged there between the two parties consisting on one side of the governor and his wife and, on the other side, of Kitomi and his rst wife. The former employed weapons of iron, the latter had only weapons made of plants. The symbolic battle was thus a contest between culture and nature. Kitomi won and only then, after the conqueror yielded to the power of the gods of nature, could he cross the body of water that separated the two worlds (Montesarchio, in de Bouveignes and Cuvelier 1951:97). This is not a question of two sociocultural orders existing side by side, one elder, the other younger, as has sometimes been suggested (Balandier 1965:2426; Vansina 1973:38; Randles 1968:42), but one and the same order. The origin myth embodies a dualism where foreign conquerors, the king and his men, are opposed to the original population, Mani Vunda and women. There are supposedly two paramount clans, one which supplies the king, the other which is wife-giver to the former and which crowns its kings. In another myth the king calls his sons and says: Go out and occupy new territory; dance two by two, one with the sword, the other with the buffalo tail (Cuvelier 1930:482). The land is said to be divided in two, often by a river. This form of dualism is in evidence throughout the history of the Lower Congo (cf. MacGaffey 1986). In Loango the equivalent of Kitomi is Maboma. The latter took care of the land, according to Bastian (Bastian 1874:191ff.), while the king represented his human followers, his men. This is also a clear example of dualism; the gods of the land on one side, and the human and political qualities on the other.
Election and Coronation
In the precolonial period there was a hierarchy of political chiefs, elected and crowned, headed by ntinu, the king. Even before colonization there developed
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a certain amount of uncertainty with respect to the king himself. There are reports of very long interregnums from Loango. Several of those who were elected could not be crowned, and deceased kings, consequently, were not buried since that was the duty of the new king. Elections and coronations continued, however, well into the twentieth century. In the 1890s, the French took the initiative to elect a new king in Loango, and appeared anxious to administer the country through native channels (Dennett 1906:6). In 1898 the high chiefs of Loango were called to the Administrator, who informed them of the administrations wish that a new Maloango be crowned and that the native regime be reconstituted under the protection of the government (6ff.). A certain Maniluemba was elected, but he was never crowned because he could not afford the costs of coronation. He turned to the French government with an appeal for funds. He would have to invite hundreds of guests to live on his provisions for several days. The colonial administration did not feel it could meet such demands and so Maniluemba remained uncrowned (15). But other lesser kings were indeed crowned. In Lamans material there are several descriptions of both elections and coronations. Unfortunately it cannot be ascertained in which years the observations were made. There were crowned chiefs in the eastern part of the Lower Congo as late as the 1930s, even if coronations only occurred in periods of acute crisis (Mertens 1942:47). The ethnographic material is, of course, incomplete, but it sufces for us to gain an insight into the practice and symbolic content of both elections and coronations. It is even possible to discern a transition from a more traditional situation to the colonial situation and the acute survival problems that it engendered. We know that in earlier centuries the election was a phase of both election and succession disputes. The King of Kongo was elected by a council comprising twelve high dignitaries, including the provincial governors. These were his men, his children. But the election was not always clear cut. There were different factions, and the competition for the throne was often solved by warfare which conclusively demonstrated the identity of the real king. In a letter to Affonso the king of Portugal emphasized the advantages and stability of the practice of inheritable royal ofce. But Affonso had no sympathy with the argument. Election was a central principle, he answered. The king should be everyones king, elected and crowned by the people. The king had to be an exceptional being. He was often physically imposing, and he demonstrated his superiority by conquering his political position and by committing exceptional acts, such as the murder of a close parent. In Lamans material such themes are still to be found: election, struggles for succession, and murder, but now in a strictly ritualized form. In all rituals connected with
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the coronation there is a complementary relation between the members of the ruling group who support the king, and the muana and ntekolo, who represent the other half of society and who have important ceremonial functions. They control the sacred places in nature that are associated with the earth gods and the deceased king. They are also in charge of the basket containing the white chalk and the red and yellow ochre (nkisi nsi) that are used to paint the king at the coronation (Laman 1953:16; 1957:141, 153; 1962:42). It would appear that muana and ntekolo had, by the end of the nineteenth century, taken over the functions of the Kitomi. But the difference between them was, in any case, insignicant since Kitomi represented the people in the same way as muana and ntekolo. In Lamans data some tests play the important role of proving whether or not the elect has the blessing of the basimbi, or the royal ancestors. This is, in all probability, a late phenomenon linked to the decline of royal power. The kingly candidate cannot make a show of his own strength. In Mukimbungu he went to Tadi dya ngo, the leopard cave or leopard mountain, in order to meet and communicate with the spirits who once exercised their sway over the country. He solicited their support and protection. He must say: I shall receive the chieftainship and sit on the nkuwu mat, leopard-skin and ironchest. Give me therefore happiness in my days, that I may become strong, great and powerful (Laman 1957:143). If he were to become ill that day, everyone would understand that his coronation was out of the question. Illness was a sign that he was not acceptable to the royal ancestors. As an example of a possible inadequacy or fault in the candidate, Laman refers to equivocal descent (the lack of pure royal blood), or incest committed in preceding generations. The candidate was sometimes punished for his crime by being lost in the cave. The ancestors might also test the royal contestants by confronting them with problems to be solved: Some of the candidates had to enter great caves and try to nd an exit by another way than they had come in, and the ancestors recognized only the one who was successful in this (Laman 1957:140). Laman also describes a ritualized battle for the throne which determines whether or not the elected contestant is the right man. Thus the unfortunate castrated Namenta must violently conquer the capital before he can be crowned. All came together to proceed to the capital. On the day when the coronation was to take place, Namentas enemies also assembled to wage war on him. If Namenta had been elected by the ancestors, his enemies were powerless against him, and lost the battle. If, on the other hand, he had not been so elected, Namenta was unable to penetrate the capital and would inevitably die in the ghting. This lasted the whole day. A village on the way was reached
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and the ghters rested here, to shake their weapons the following morning and resume the struggle, which went on until Namenta had penetrated the city and set himself on the coronation mat. When Namenta had obtained the victory those who had resisted him wept, for they feared his vengeance. His friends, on the other hand, uttered shouts of joy, beat drums and gongs, red salvoes, and rejoiced mightily. Young men and women danced and all ate and drank much, for now Namenta had by force of arms won the right to be crowned (Laman 1957:141). In earlier centuries the struggle for the throne was a test of real political and military strength. Such is not the case with Namenta. He does have the gods on his side, and they dene his right to rule. In the battle for the throne in 1506 between Affonso and his opponent, Mpanzu a Kitama, his half-brother, the former clearly also had the gods on his side (Cuvelier 1946:120ff.), but this was not the sole source of his strength since he was also politically and militarily powerful. Namenta, on the other hand, has nothing but the gods. In myth the murder of the pregnant FZ is a crucial event that motivates the election of Lukeni a Nimi as ntinu by his men. This kind of slaying also appears in the historical and ethnographic records. It is commonly said that the king has slain his mother or a close matrilineal relative. This claim is made for both Affonso, in the sixteenth century, and for Pedro, the last king in San Salvador (Cuvelier 1946:120; Weeks 1914:36). This was a rule according to Laman: The ntinu ofce seems always to have been connected with the murder of a member of the kanda, so that the aspirant to the throne could thereby prove his authority (Laman 1957:138). In the myth it is not, in fact, a matrilineal relative of the king but, on the contrary, two important members of the fathers kanda, his legitimate heir (ZS) and the latters mother, that is, his sister and the murderers paternal aunt. The assassination is represented here as a violation of the principles of matrilineality. The founder of the Kongo kingdom is a son and neither a mothers brother nor a sisters son. The murder of a matrilineal relative, thus, separates the king from his own lineage. Laman returns to a myth recounting how Maloango one day said to his son Mengo Mbakala, Kill your brother! The son obeyed, after which Maloango called all of his children and said, See, now I give the sword of power to your brother. Respect and obey him, that you may avoid suffering. Here, it is a brother who is murdered. In Mbanza Manteke, a chief who wishes to be crowned must kill a sisters son, according to Laman, and names two chiefs who were not crowned precisely because they refused to perform the necessary act (Laman 1957:140). The Sword of Power (Mbele a Lulendo) is transferred to the new king immediately following the assassinationthis is the very sword that appears in the myth of the king who tells his sons to dance two by two, one with the
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sword and the other with the buffalo tail. The sword symbolizes the political power that the king possesses from the start, which is bestowed upon him by his men, and on his military prowess which he shall be called upon to demonstrate. Murder is thought to be part of the complex as an expression of his unwillingness to let personal matters interfere with his function or to take a soft position in legal and administrative matters. Political power was to be frightening. In the traditional society the political chief had the right of life and death over his subjects. The Kongo are, as MacGaffey points out, well aware of this striking difference between traditional and modern chiefs. The former could totally change the conditions of existence of their subjects and even the boundaries of political units: They killed and burned and enslaved (MacGaffey 1970:230). But this was true only of the precolonial period, that is, before the region was invaded and occupied by the Europeans. The powerless chiefs of the new era must have been a serious problem in purely intellectual terms. How, after all, was one to account for the power that, according to tradition, was the essential characteristic of the chief, and which was revealed so strikingly in the phase preceding the coronation? The problem is manifestly evident in Doutrelouxs portrayal of the scenario leading to the coronation. The elect is rst isolated in a special hut where he is guarded by mwana and ntekolo. De Cleene also refers to this event and adds further that the elects guards are the consecrated, those who have been consecrated to the nkisi tsi (earth gods) of the domain (De Cleene 1935:67). From this time on, according to Doutreloux, he is referred to as Kintumba. On the evening before the coronation he required to leave the hut and go to his own village where he undergoes the ceremony in which he receives the Sword of Power and a leopard skin (Doutreloux 1967:168ff.). The second moment in the ceremony is the blessing, the painting of the candidate with white chalk and red and yellow ochre. This is apparently the moment that marked the actual making of the king, its religious dimension. In Lamans description of Namentas coronation there are two days of dancing, and on the third day Namenta was to be marked with the chalk, i.e. crowned (Laman 1957:141). In the myth, Mani Kabunga touches him with the buffalo tail, which appears in the oldest descriptions of the coronation ceremonies. There are also descriptions of how Kitomi paints the king with chalk. In a text from 1701 it is claimed that the king is painted whenever he goes out in order to protect him against evil inuences (Bontinck 1970:217). Painting with chalk is not, then, exclusive to coronations, even if it constitutes a major event in the latter. Nor is it connected exclusively to the king. In the later ethnographic material it is visible in many different contexts. In general it can be said to express blessing and protection, and is performed by the earth gods (royal ancestors).
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During Lamans time the chalk and ochre was kept by muana and ntekolo until the actual coronation. In the description of Namentas coronation, the painting of the chief-elect is carried out by Mpanzu: Mpanzu took the chalk from the kiyaazi and marked Namenta about the ears with it and then let him tramp on the leopard-skin (Laman 1957:141). Cooperation in this ritual was either between the ruling group and its muana and ntekolo, or between two different clans as in this case, between Nsundi and Mpanzu (Laman 1953:16; 1957:141, 142). The chalk was stored in the kiyaazi, a term which usually refers to the basket in which the paraphernalia of the coronation are to be found. Laman also uses the term nkisi nsi for this basket: The investiture of a paramount chief was accomplished through a nkisi nsi (government nkisi) (Laman 1957:144). Nkisi and nkisi nsi do not correspond to what is now connoted by nkisi, but to what higher up-country is called kiyaazi (from yaala, to rule), thus a power of religious character that is needed to strengthen the authority of the regent (150). The coronation resembles an initiation into a cult at the turn of the century. The chosen spent, as we have indicated, a period of isolation similar to initiations. Among the Yombe he remained in a special hut for nine Congolese weeks (36 days), and during this time he was instructed in which taboos he was required submit to as a crowned chief (De Cleene 1935:66). There are also reports that he had to assemble different minkisi (Laman 1957:143). With respect to the actual coronation the picture is not altogether clear. According to myth, the conqueror must submit to Mani Kabunga and acknowledge him as his elder. Political and military power were thus subordinate to the order of nature and its deities. Mani Kabunga imparts his blessing, but he is merely a mediator, the real source of the blessing being the earth gods. This relation is clearly in evidence in the reports of the coronations from the sixteenth century and in their descriptions of the relationship between the political chief and Kitomi. According to Cavazzi-Labat, Kitomi was to tramp on the governor to emphasize the latters submission (Cavazzi-Labat 1732 I:258) and in Montesarchios description of the meeting between Mani Nsundi and the local Kitomi, the superiority of nature over culture was unequivocally conrmed.
The Transformation of Divine Kingship
The imprecision in the material from the turn of the century concerning the coronation is connected precisely to the relation between nature and culture (see Dupr 1975 about the same ambiguity in the eld of fetishism). There is e one version, the more original, in which culture is subordinate to nature, and
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where the latter is pictured as life-giving and good. But there is simultaneously another version in which nature, is, instead, threatening and evil and where the king is used to hold it at bay. According to Lamans material, the coronation was often held at Tadi dya ngo. People assembled outside the grotto, playing drums, dancing, and singing while the king entered. When he reappeared, the deceased of the grotto (the earth gods) had covered his body with white chalk and with red and yellow ochre. The leopard has licked his arms and legs. The gathering was ebullient and red a round. This was repeated three times after which the coronation was terminated, for the deceased have conrmed his election and anointed him with chalk and with red and yellow ochre (Laman 1957:143). Here it appears as if it is the leopard, alias basimbi, or the royal ancestors, that crowns the king. The special grottos where the royal ancestors are supposed to reside are called leopard grottos. But the King, too, is a leopard. The leopard with its skin, its teeth and claws and if possible also a lions claw, these are the symbols of the regents full power. The regent is a leopard. Where the regent speaks, there speak the leopard, the lion. The leopard is king and the paramount chief his fellow-king (152). They are both kings, the leopard rules over nature, the king over culture. It is said that Mansundi was prohibited from eating leopard because he was the leopards brother (Laman 1953:16). The identication of the king with the leopard recurs in Doutrelouxs description of the Yombe coronation. The words Tsona Ngo! which mean mark the leopard, are cried and Matsona, he who marks or paints, takes the chalk and then the red paint from the special basket. When he has painted the king, the latter is full chief (Laman 1967:169ff.). The king is granted the blessing of nature. In the earlier version nature appears not only as higher ranked but also as life-giving and protective. It is primordial, elder, and eternal while culture, as a human product, is conspicuously impermanent. The king, but also man in general, must humbly yield to that which is greater than himself. In this we can achieve harmony and balance, and life and health ow from the gods. By painting the human body with red and white the two worlds are joined, the godly and the human, the two elements of the symbolic structure. The king-and-his-men are incorporated into the cosmological order. In the other version nature is dangerous and must, if possible, be controlled. And the king himself is the means of this control. At the coronation of Namenta he is rst covered with chalk and ochre after which he walks over the leopard skin. He repeats this twice in order to show respect for the leopard, but the third time he tramps on the latters head in order to reign over the leopards so that they should not kill the domestic animals in the villages
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(Laman 1957:141). Here the relation between nature and culture is reversed. The king does not yield before Kitomi but, instead, ritually dominates nature. The environment is here experienced as threatening. Leopards emerge from the forest to attack the tame animals, and Namenta is their shield. He must not yield to nature but, on the contrary, behave as the prince who slays the dragon. It is crucial that he himself appear as intimidating as possible. Have you seen the leopard, the spotty one, the dangerous one? is a refrain that appears several times in Lamans material on the coronations, and it is the new king that is the menacing leopard, and it is he who is used in the struggle against both gods and wild leopards. The coronation ceremony could also take place at the royal cemetery (at the burial place of the deceased regents). The elected one was carried there in a great procession and upon arrival, wine was poured over the graves, and the mud is stirred up to the accompaniment of singing and clapping of hands. The following was sung: Eh, as regent I have come to be appointed. Eh, ye fathers. As regent I have come to be appointed. Eh, ye brothers, that which comes rst is the chalk. Eh ye mothers (Laman 1957:147). And while they chanted they painted the body of the king, rst with chalk followed by yellow ochre. The ceremony was ended with the words, Eh, we fall down as the goat falls, we fall down as the kid falls. We baana ba mbuta have come to receive mwela, we desire chalk and not extinguished embers. Ye lower the sword of power, we do not lift up (148). When the coronation was over the participants rolled in the earth of the graves and then receive(d) the blessing. Then they returned home, dancing and singing the refrain, have you seen the leopard, the spotty one, the dangerous one? (148). What is sought here is the blessing of the ancestors, all of which is obtained via chalk and the earth of the grave. We desire chalk and not extinguished embers. Chalk, white, seems to symbolize life and vitality, that which they hope to receive from their ancestors. Lower the sword of power; do not punish us, do not use your power against us, we fall down. There are two important changes compared with the rst version; the king is represented as a dangerous leopard, and the gods can no longer be trusted. There are also situations in which the dead king is experienced as a threatening gure who must be controlled. The elect was brought to the house of the dead king and was placed at his knee. He was painted with chalk and yellow ochre while the assembly chanted, have you seen the leopard, the spotty one, a dangerous animal?; this in order to show that the latter (the dead) no longer has any power (Laman 1957:145). The dead was no longer supposed to give his blessing, thereby transmitting life and health to the living. Instead he was a destructive power who had to be counteracted by the new king.
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The kings main task was to maintain the threatening powers of nature at a safe distance, to defend life in the village against menacing forces. This was accomplished essentially by suffering various taboos. Thus, for example, he was not allowed to tear meat with his nails or to tear off a piece, as this was an invitation to the leopard. He had to eat meat with a knife and to bite it with his teeth. But he was absolutely forbidden to eat meat that was not carved (meat in its blood, [Laman 1957:149]). Nor could he scrape the ground with his nails, as this was also a welcoming sign to the leopard. And if he were to growl the leopard would come and eat all the domestic animals in the village (149). This change in the conception of kingship and the relation between nature and culture can be understood in terms of the larger social changes. In the massive crisis following the devastating effects of colonization, nature was no longer envisaged as a source of life. The entire environment, including both cosmos and gods, was imagined to be a threat to society. It was a source of sickness and death rather than of health, life, and well-being. It became therefore necessary to defend oneself against the surroundings. What was a conict between Kongo society and expanding Western imperialism was here experienced as a conict between nature and culture. The fear of colonial destruction became fear of the forests leopards. And their Saint Jorgen directed his lance toward the forest and his ancestors instead of toward the foreign invaders. Other changes in their attitude toward the gods can be discerned; it looks as if the gods very existence was questioned. There are several statements about kings being killed shortly after coronation. In Soyo a strange story is told about a king by the name of Ne Nzinga who invited a great number of chiefs to witness his own execution. On the specic day he took his place on a podium with all his insignia. A man with a great sword danced around him to the sound of drums. The music increased in intensity until when it reached a climax, the dancer suddenly lopped off the kings head. All present cheered with joy, c tait vraiment une grande f te. A brother or son of the dead e e king took his place and reigned in the name of this glorious ancestor (Troesch 1962:96). What is supposed to be happening here? The king was killed and thereby he became an ancestor; and ancestors were needed in a period when the protective and life-giving deities seemed to have left them. If the gods no longer give what they are supposed to give, an interpretation near at hand is that they, for some reason, are no longer there. The colonial problem was again interpreted as a problem with the gods. When death, sterility, and social disintegration struck the area, they felt abandoned by their gods and they attempted to re-create their gods by killing their crowned kings. As gods were ancestors in this part of the world, it was possible to replace them with human vitality, with kings at the
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apex of the social pyramid being hastened out from the world of the living to the world of the ancestors.
Consecration and Cults
In the medicine that developed at the turn of the twentieth century, the cults of afiction played a central role. One became initiated into a cult in order to be cured, and the cult was focused on a nkisi that had the peculiar property of being the cause as well as the cure of a specic illness. This kind of phenomenon is typical of the turn of this century, entirely pre-occupied with illness and sterility, but it was based on the precolonial religious cults. In the ethnographic material from the beginning of the twentieth century there are references to several different kinds of consecration. There was an important such event among the Yombe after the birth of a rst child when the nal consecration to the Kinda occurred. The father went to the cliff where the earth gods resided (au rocher de lesprit chtonien), Nkisi Tsi, and was painted with white (pezo) and red (ngunzi), which were the marks of the sacred (Doutreloux 1967:220). This was, in fact, a consecration to the earth gods, and it had to do with the mans new and higher status as father, that he entered a higher category, not that he had become sick and required a cure. De Cleene reports that all the men of the region were consecrated to the Nkisi Tsi. They were called basemuka which meant men who are consecrated to the fetish of the region. The cult of Nkisi Tsi was the center of social and political life (De Cleene 1935:67). Bittremieux adds further details. Have you seen Bakist? was an expression, and it was a query as to whether the man in question had been consecrated to the regions Kinda. The consecration could take place only after the man in question had found a special stone during his visit in divuala. He then carried the stone to the place where the great Phungi- or Mbenza-stone was found surrounded by smaller stones. (Phungi and Mbenza were names of a specic clans or domains Kinda). There he lay the new stone and was consecrated. Before the birth of his rst child he was not even allowed to see the stone (Bittremieux 1936:14042). Here the Kinda is represented by a stone that is placed somewhere in the forest. There is evidence of the existence of such a stone from earlier centuries. It is, for example, mentioned by Luca da Caltanisetta at the turn of the eighteenth century. In his unagging struggle against the traditional religion he succeeded in stealing such a stone. He thereafter did his very best to smash it to pieces since he understood its importance. It was round and spherical and big as a bomb (Bontinck 1970:217). The Kitomi of the area complained to the king, underscoring that the white mans theft could lead to a catastrophe
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for the country. There would, then, seem to be a continuity here, at least as far back as the end of the seventeenth century. One phenomenon that has attracted much attention from the Europeans is the initiation schools for youth which were called secret societies. Their character changed at the turn of the century, and it was often difcult for Europeans to understand what they were all about. The raison d tre for e the Congo secret societies is lost in the dim and distant past, as Weeks expressed it (Weeks 1914:158). The two largest and best-documented cases in the historical material are nkimba, north of the river, and kimpasi, south of the river. They appeared, in a certain sense, as initiation schools where the young (either boys only, as in nkimba, or both sexes as in kimpasi) spent a period of time in the forest where they underwent education and preparation for adult life. It was characteristic of the rituals that the participants died and were reborn and that their bodies were painted white. The earliest European visitors reported seeing bankimba in the forest, painted white and clothed in crinoline-formed grass skirts. But it is also said that the goal of the rituals was to combat witches and to generate fertility and good health. Kimpasi is a complex phenomenon according to Van Wing: It is primarily une ecole dimmoralit . In this he refers to the authority of an old chief who appare ently agrees with him. The young in kimpasi know only one thing, fornication, writes Van Wing and explains that it meant masturbation (Van Wing 1938:225). Nkimba and kimpasi both existed in earlier centuries. The latter is thought, as noted previously, not to have been merely an initiation school but the general form of the congregation. The kimpasi is often referred to as the opposite of Christianity and as the missionaries major enemy. Cavazzi-Labat writing in the mid-seventeenth century calls their members les nquiti (bankita; compare with Montesarchios kimpasi kia nkita). These nquiti were a sect of the most nefarious who gathered in the forest, in dark, hidden, low-lying places in great secrecy. There they underwent consecration which entailed that they fell down as if they were dead and were then carried by the already consecrated to kimpasi, which was the name of the place in the forest where the ritual transpired (Cavazzi-Labat 1732 I:294). Hilton (1985) who perhaps has made the most painstaking study of the historical-ethnographic material of earlier centuries, has also concluded that kimpasi in the seventeenth century were cult groups that met regularly in the forest, continuous and sometimes very ancient associations which met regularly outside the villages and towns in deep places where the rays of the sun never penetrated (26). Kimpasi (and nkimba) were, one might say, one of the most striking aspects of the traditional religion, and it is not essential, in this context, to ascertain exactly what role it played, whether it was limited
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to initiations of the type that we nd at the turn of the century or included the totality of traditional religious praxis. Let us consider two narratives from the period immediately preceding colonization. The rst is Burtons description of nkimba from the beginning of the 1860s:
At any time between the ages of ve and fteen (eight to ten being generally preferred) boys are taken from their parents (which must be an exceeding comfort to the latter), and for a native year, which is half of ours, they must dwell in the Viv la ya Ankimba or Casa de Feiti o . . . They are now instructed by the Nganga a c in the practices of their intricate creed; they are taught the mysteries under solemn oaths, and, in ne, they are prepared for marriage. (Burton 1876 II:223)
Burton also reports that during their stay in the forest, the young initiates were not fed prepared food but were required to live on wild plants. They were painted white and were clothed in the usual crinoline-formed grass skirts. They sometimes appeared, in this attire, in the villages, armed with machetes and wooden swords (224). It was obviously taking place in the eld of nature, where the ancestors rested. Twenty years later M ller encountered them while working for the Congo o Association. If, when travelling through the country, ones trail leads through a dark wood, one may take by surprise a white painted ghost-like gure who usually draws away from the foreigners gaze. These are bakimba. According to M ller the boys were consecrated when they were fteen years of o age. Bakimbas society was made up of the young men of the society, but sometimes there were also elder men. The cult group was led by a nganga. The members were bound by an oath of silence, and they lived in the forest from one dry season to the next or even longer. The place was located in a solitary forest ravine, and the initiates were not allowed any contact with women or non-members. They were allowed to consume only vegetable food which was carried out to them from the village. They had their own language. When their period of initiation was over they returned to their villages and to their normal lives. This re-entrance into society is characterized by festivity; all the villagers are involved, and the entire event is one of ofcial celebration. This institution is held in the highest esteem by the people, concludes M ller. o He asked one of his assistants who had undergone initiation what it was good for and received the following answer: A white man who cannot read a book is a bad man, and in the same way, a black man who has not been nkimba is a bad man (M ller et al. 1887:28587). o Here the length of the initiatory period is stated to be a year. M ller writes o from one dry season to the next. Other sources indicate anything from a half
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year to 23 years (Johnston 1884:406; Weeks 1914:159; Bentley I 1900:283) Westlind says 12 years (1911:91). The early Europeans in the area provide a consensus for the existence of nkimba as a school of initiation for boys, including circumcision and preparation for adulthood, all of which is associated with a clearly religious content related to consecration to the gods of the land. In a work based on the writings of former fetish priests who had converted to Christianity, P. A. Westlind divides the nkimba into different fetisch families. Parents sent their children to nkimba schools where they were consecrated to nkimba, in order to grow quickly and be fortunate (Westlind 1911:8687). The consecration to the fetish nkimba is so different from the normal consecration of a priest that it must be described separately. Nkimbas disciples must take an oath of silence. If they were to reveal any of the secrets associated with the fetish, they would be punished by death. The day they depart for nkimba there is a great feast. The priests paint the signs of the fetish on the disciples temples, breasts, hands, and feet with sacred chalk and red color (90). Following this is a description of how the disciples die and how they are carried by the priests to a mountain that is sacred to nkimba. There they are reawakened and are given new names. Following this ceremony they are taken to a forest where they are to stay for one to two years. Only the priests may visit them, but their kin bring food to them during the entire period. In the forest they are visited by their teachers who educate them in priestly duties and teach them to consecrate nkimba images etc. (91). When this time of learning is completed the entire ordeal is crowned by a great celebration at which they receive gifts and are well received by their kin who regard them as very holy (91). The above description is clearly one of initiation and consecration in a religious cult, similar, supercially, to our conrmation camps, but much more encompassing and with a far greater social signicance. While nkisi nkimba are referred to, other sources indicate consecration to the earth gods. Divuala (or vela) is far out in the forest, in a solitary forest ravine. The initiates must subsist on vegetable products alone, and their bodies are painted white. Hilton believes that kimpasi was already primarily concerned with sickness at the beginning of the eighteenth century (Hilton 1985:28). But this is apparently not the case. She bases her argument on a passage in Bernardo da Gallo, from 1710, where he depicts kimpasi as a place of superstition destined to the care of the ill and other pagan ceremonies. This is certainly no evidence that the cults main function was to cure illness. Medicine and religion are intimately connected throughout the entire history of the Lower Congo, and the Kongo have always turned to their gods, whether traditional or Christian, for life, health, and fertility. But medicine was integrated into religion and was only one of its several aspects. Montesarchio also refers to the cure of the sick
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within kimpasi in the 1660s, but it is apparent in his text that kimpasi was a center for the entire religion (de Bouveignes and Cuvelier 1951:156ff., 162). The single-minded concentration on combating sickness and on magic does not appear until the colonial period when the cults and initiation schools follow the general pattern from religion to magic. When the rst whites found their way into the interior, the chalk-painted youth in nkimba launched an attack. Bentley tells about how they positioned themselves along the main roads and assaulted passersby, beating them with their sticks. This was a serious problem for mission transports at rst (Bentley 1900 I:283). The whites met clear resistance to further penetration here. They were clearly afraid. On the southern shore of the river, where Stanleys inuence was not yet established, it was dangerous to offend these fanatics (Johnston 1884:69). In one instance, a young member of the Livingstone Mission was seriously assaulted. The struggle against sickness was not, then, the only interest of nkimba after the colonization. As only boys and young men took part, the group represented a potential political power that was clearly in evidence in the initial years of colonial occupation. As Janzen has pointed out, the secret societies disseminated much fear among the whites at the turn of the century (Janzen 1982:1112). It should be added, however, that they also attacked their own people. If there was any justication for the rumors of leopard men and obscure stories of cannibalism during this period, the bankimba were certainly, with good reason, among the suspects (see Dupont 1889:90). Around the turn of the century, nkimba lost its social content and the schools of initiation developed into cults of afiction. Its professed object is the suppression of witchcraft, and the catching of witches (Bentley 1900 I:282). Bittremieux says that it was difcult to obtain a satisfactory answer to the question, Why Bankimba? They dont know, he maintained (Bittremieux 1936:31ff.). He did, however, get one answer. Greatly increasing numbers of nkimba schools were being established because the number of witches was increasing (31ff.). Nkimba was also set up in an attempt to reverse sterility (Ward 1910:244; Weeks 1914:159). Van Wing describes the desire for children as a motive for kimpasi. In the latter, attempts were made to activate the fetishes to grant children (Van Wing 1938:226). It was a weapon against declining fertility and infant mortality. It is a social-magical remedy for declining fertility and child mortality. Di gamamina galeke, gakotisa kimpasi, say the Bambata: we must enter Kimpasi because the children perish (226). From the start, nkimba was a school of initiation for boys only. This developed toward a situation where both sexes were eligible, as well as children and elders. Bittremieux reports in his work on bankimba that only boys aged 1018 were eligible, not girls, except for occasional cases where two to three
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were taken (Bittremieux 1936:29). His work was based on conditions during the rst decades of the twentieth century. Doutreloux (1967) on the other hand, whose work is based on oral tradition covering an indeterminate time span, states that both sexes were accepted (see also Ward 1890:244). The same was true of both kimpasi and ndembo (Van Wing 1938:174; Bentley 1900 I:284). Ndembo took on children and middle-aged people as well. The central rituals still contained the death and rebirth of the novices as well as the use of chalk paint. According to Van Wing, the signicance of these rituals was as follows: They sought their roots, the source of life, the place where everything began on earth. They turned to bankita, the primordial ancestors, or expressed differently, to the powerful primal father or genitor of the Kongo, for he (or bankita) could give of his fertility to his descendants. Kimpasi was for them the same as Kongo, the holy place that the primal ancestor and his brother conquered from their enemies. They lie buried there, and it is from that place that their descendants spread out over the land. When they feel weak, they turn to Kongo, he says, by means of the rites in kimpasi. They change themselves into bankita and are able then to participate in the generative force of the ancestors (Van Wing 1938:226ff.). Kimpasi, thus, represented the gods of the land and the place where everything began. When they felt weak they sought this energy source, the fountain of their vitality. Via the white and via death and rebirth they achieved contact with the ancestors. In this they became strong. To die implied an accumulation of force, or power. The dead cast off or shed their old skin and took on a new body in the land of the dead. The serpent, Mbumba, is the major symbol (Bittremieux 1936:25, 37ff., 52ff.). To die is like changing bodies or shedding skin. Death is a transition or development process (Laman 1923:48). In general this shedding and accumulation of power cannot occur in this world. But there is one exception, and that is, in this context, when they die and are reborn with white bodies. Just as the initiation school for young men became a cult of afiction in the colonial period, the curing of sickness also became integrated into this general form. One joined a specic nkisi-cult in order to cure or avert a given disease, and the initiation closely resembles the precolonial cult. The nkisi-spirit called on the person in question by making him ill with a specic sickness. The latter was perceived as a summons to become a member of the nkisis cult group. Nkisi seeks out . . . his own devotees, those among whom he wishes to dwell, those who shall fashion and maintain him (Laman 1923:59). A nganga, one already initiated, was called to instruct the patient on the seriousness of his illness, in the manner he was to construct the nkisi and on the taboos he was to obey:
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From Religion to Magic Many are cured of sickness, during pregnancy, etc. and they are, consequently, made to observe certain tabus during a specied time period after which they are freed of all such duties. Should the illness return, as is usual, they are persuaded to complete the construction of the nkisi that has made them ill, permit it to reside with them and receive offerings and prayers prescribed by the chief nganga. The former becomes, thus, a nganga-child, that is a little, new nganga. (Laman 1923:69)
79
Minkisi are here treated as gods who demand offerings and prayer rather than as medicine. The obvious similarity between this phenomenon and the traditional cult is that initiation occurred in the forest, in divuala, where a group of novices was under the leadership of a chief nganga (ngudi a nganga). An enclosure was rst built in which the medicines were to be prepared, and this was carried out to the accompaniment of song. Following this, medicines and other ingredients were collected, which made up the nkisi. The medicines included seeds and other vegetable matter, snake heads, pieces of animal skin, and scrapings from secret medicines (Laman 1962:73). Many ingredients were collected in a state of ecstasy from the forest, the water, and the plain. A smooth at stone was used to grind the medicine, and it was usual that this work was also accompanied by drumming, dancing, and singing, unless, as in certain circumstances, it had to be carried out in absolute silence. Nkisi had, furthermore, to be provided with a spirit that was to be sought at the burial place of a powerful chief (74). It was of the utmost importance that the nkisi was assembled in exactly the same way as it was originally put together. The chief nganga provided clear instructions followed by the actual consecration during which the novice was informed of the taboos and rules to which he must submit himself. This phase was often associated with various trials, and the novices might be put to death and reawakened just as in nkimba and kimpasi (75). It was also important that the initiated nganga maintained the ritual purity of his nkisi; if the nkisi is to be t for worship and effective (78). This was accomplished by obeying the prohibitions. If the nkisi were to be polluted as the result of the breaking of a taboo, it would have to be puried by means of specic rituals. Offerings were made in order that it be as attentive and effective as possible. The main offering was chicken blood. Nkisi, in this sense, is something between a god and medicine, or in more general terms, technology. It is something that people try to use for their own purposes. But the Kongo were in no sense liberated from it, as the Westerners have succeeded in doing with respect to the forces of nature. As a rule they (minkisi) are used to cure maladies, (69) but in another text by Laman it is presented more as a god than as medicine: What we call nkisi is used to cure
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someone who is sick. Nkisi defends mans soul and protects from sickness. Nkisi even stalks sickness and takes it out of the body. That is why many want to get a nkisi and consecrating [my italics] themselves to it and observe its taboos in order that the latter provide protection (Laman 1923:57). Nkisi is, in one respect, medicine. It is a means that can be used to cure sickness. Nor is it anything else, according to Van Wing. It is an articial object that is supposed to be inhabited or inuenced by a spirit . . . and . . . under a persons dominance (Van Wing 1938:120). Here it looks as if the spirit, or the power of the spirit, unambiguously can be used for the persons own ends. If such were the case, nkisi could be compared to our notion of electricity, our machines, or our fertilizers, that is, forms of energy exploited and dominated by man. But the Kongo do not take this step outside the realm of nature and religion. Instead they remain within the authority of the gods. The Force appears as gods that must be worshipped. They have their rules and prohibitions, and the person must submit to them if he is to receive their assistance.
Nkisi and Social Control: Taboo as Remedy
The Kongo society, at the turn of the century, was literally crammed with taboos. All societies have prohibitions and/or superstitions, about walking under ladders, laying ones keys on a table, and so forth. But in the Lower Congo this kind of phenomena appears to assume absurd proportions following the colonization. In Lamans material (1962) there is a list of more general prohibitions that were usually associated with the various minkisi:
A pregnant woman, and often even her husband, shall refrain from eating egg to prevent the child from having the properties of a shell and unable to grow properly. Children may not eat roasted potatoes, nor even be in the vicinity when they are being roasted because they can get weeping sores and rashes. It is forbidden to carry pregnant goats and to kill hyenas. Fire may not be removed from the hut by anyone who has just given birth. Otherwise the child will begin to cry. The yard may not be swept clean on nkenge or nsona days. One may not stand while drinking. Wood may not be carried in bundles. If a woman does so she must trample it when she lays it down. Otherwise one of her own domestic animals will be attacked by a wild animal or python. One may not hit the ground with ones hand when one is angry. One may not cry when going to bed. Otherwise the body will swell up. (Laman 1962:199200)
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Many impractical food taboos are still to be found in todays southern Congo. One should still not eat eggs, bananas are said to cause intestinal worms, papaya causes one to talk in ones sleep, and so forth. Many of these taboos are directly negative insofar as they preclude the consumption of foodstuffs that are crucial to childrens nutrition. The proliferation of taboos in the colonial society was positively paralyzing for the individual. If he belonged to several nkisi cults, he had a large set of food taboos as well as restrictions on his movements. Laman states explicitly that this proved to be a problem for people. The owner of a nkisi would only remain healthy as long as he kept the laws, and because the laws are so numerous, many natives do not want to become banganga and compose a nkisi (Laman 1962:71). Food taboos certainly appear even in the period preceding the colonization, as indicated by the German expedition north of the river (see Bastian 1874/1875; Pech el-Loesche 1907; G ssfeldt 1888). Bastian points out that u u even such basic foods as bananas and manioc might be forbidden. It would appear not to be the case, however, that bananas were absolutely forbidden. The taboo was limited to a certain type, or certain form, of preparation, such as raw, grilled, or boiled. It might also be forbidden to eat bananas on a certain day of the week or together with certain other foods (Bastian 1874/1875:184). In any case the taboos were not nearly as extensive as they became in the following years. We may understand the establishment of these kinds of prohibitions as attempts to gain control of reality. Where the social order is so constituted as to take care of disturbances that affect the individual, such meaningless taboos on food and movement ought not to take on signicant proportions. The more security provided for the individual, the weaker the taboos. Conversely, increasing insecurity in this relation implies a proportional increase in taboos. The initial conditions, then, were such that anything might happen. Danger lurked everywhere, and there was no security to be sought. The prohibitions appeared as an individual solution in the absence of control over the environment. Everything will be alright if he does not eat bananas on nsona, does not speak before he has gotten up, does not step out of his hut right foot rst, does not drink water standing up. The remedies and preventive measures are easily carried out, but the individual is totally immobilized if he practices them to the fullest extent. And the latter is the tendency as problems became aggravated. The more difculties accumulated, the more taboos had to be multiplied. Every nkisi was usually associated with a number of different taboos. The nkisis will is apparent in the prescriptions. To follow these is to feel well, live long, and in due time, to be received with honor by the deceased (Laman 1962:67). And since there was a clear increase in the number of minkisi, it
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follows that there must have been a related increase in the number of prohibitions. Further, there were a number of new, more general prohibitions. In some cases one can discern practical motives as when syphilitics were forbidden to share household goods with others (Van Overbergh 1907:302). There were also social taboos that would seem to have had positive practical consequences. An initiate of nkisi Bunzi had to obey certain food taboos; he might not eat byala fruits, the head of the pig, nor its inner organs, nor the kidneys of the pig, chicken, nzobi, mfuki, nsinzi, musimba, neither fowl nor the heads of any of the family of cervidae. But theft, indelity, and ghting were also forbidden (Laman 1962:106). The majority of food taboos and those that restricted movementand they are by far the most recurrentseems to have been gratuitous and of an essentially symbolic nature. The word nlongo (pl mi-), taboo, means holy, separate, something supernatural that may not be touched, eaten or used (Laman 1923:26). The nkisi gods will expresses itself via the taboos (27). Such rules appear similar to the Ten Commandments. Breach of a taboo was perceived as a sin, as a pollution of nkisi or at least of its sacredness. In both the Jewish and Christian faiths, God becomes angry and punishes those who transgress against his commandments. Among the Kongo the nkisis power was weakened or closed. The latter had to be sanctied, raised up again, which occurred when he who had polluted the nkisi was puried and reconsecrated to the nkisi, fully submitted himself to the taboos and rites, and paid the propitiation fee or offering. On one occasion Laman attempted to explain the notion of sin in Christianity for an African audience by translating it as polluting Gods taboo (27), which apparently was a successful interpretation. The various taboos were rules that had to be obeyed, like the Ten Commandments, but what makes them strange and puzzling is that they seem so meaningless from a practical and social point of view. It can, of course, be argued that such an elaborate complex of prohibitions must have a symbolic logic of its own. An analysis of this kind has also been made by Dupr (1975). But still there is a agrant lack of correspondence between the e various health problems that minkisi were supposed to cure and the overt meaning of the prohibitions. I will here concentrate on this aspect of the phenomenon. Prohibitions played an important role in the treatment of the illness, but there was also a practical side to the cure, based on medicines, massage, techniques for stopping the ow of blood, and so forth. According to Lamans material, the nganga often said to his nkisi during the treatment, Treat him inwardly. I treat him here outwardly (Laman 1962:107). There is an abundance of detailed information about the various minkisi, their composition, appearance, functions, and prohibitions. I will here take some
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examples from P. A. Westlind and Laman to display the arbitrary character of the prohibitions in relationship to the specic medical problems that they were supposed to counteract. Westlind mentions, among others, Mbuzi and Nkondi belonging to the Zulu family and Maninga and Mabunduka belonging to the Mamba family. Nkisi Mbuzi can make people angry, stupid, anxious, blabber mouthed, melancholic and insane as well as making them go astray in the forest. It can cause palmwine tappers to fall from the palms and kill themselves or be severely wounded. It was stored in a basket of palm leaves. It contained ground leaves, sweet smelling grass roots, fungi, the fruit of vines, bits of leopard, buffalo and hippo skin, antelope horn, birds nests and many other things. A person consecrated to Mbuzi has a hard time since there are many laws to obey; it was forbidden to eat meat of newly slaughtered animals, to shine a light in palm oil porridge while it is boiling, to stand while stirring in a pot, to drink palm wine when the head is bare, to eat fried corn, pork, pork rind. It is even forbidden to steal and lie (Westlind 1911:75). The nkisi Nkondi causes scabs, mouth sores, and other sores, and its prohibitions are the following: to roast cassava, nsafu . . . , palm nuts, dry corn and peanuts, or to eat plums, which have blown down in storms (75). Here it might be possible to surmise an idea behind the specic prohibitions in the analogy between sores and food, the skin of which has been damaged by roasting or storming. Nkisi Maninga is hard and unscrupulous; it punishes with pain in the joints, toothaches, and general pains in the body. Maninga is a woman, and Mabunduka is her husband. He punishes his victims with pneumonia or epilepsy, and he can also throw people out of their beds or away into the burning re (76ff.). This fate can be averted by not mixing different types of food and by not crushing shells of palm nuts, grasshoppers, and crabs. It is forbidden to mix (in food) sh, beans, newly harvested cassava, meat of newly slaughtered animals and cassava bread. It is even forbidden to drink water while standing, to crush palm nuts, or to eat grasshoppers and crabs (77). Lamans material contains a great number of minkisi and their prohibitions, and I will limit myself to a few:
Nkisi Mwe Nsundi causes stomach ache and aficts people with madunga and kibinda ruptures. The patient must not eat fresh manioc with other people, nor fresh peanuts. He may not pour out palm wine that has been out after night. Nor may he eat nsafu together with the uninitiated. (Laman 1962:148) Mpanzu causes sores and rough skin, ring worm, headache, and among women, pains in the back. The patient may not eat roasted maize, pepper, salt nor nsombigrubs before he has got permission from the nganga. (150)
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Chapter 1 Kimpanzu causes pains in the breast. The initiate may not break off a palm rib which applies to the house. He may not play the diti (an instrument) with shoots of a palm branch, nor scrape the walls of the house with a knife. He may not drink palm wine which has been out overnight nor break a roasted banana or scrape it. On leaving his house in the morning he must rst consecrate himself by painting his brow and ears with ashes and by strewing them outside of the house. He shall bathe in the dew on either side of the road and then set off on a ramble. (151)
Before the colonial period there were taboos of a more social character connected to various minkisi. Pech el-Loesche calls them grand or political u Tschina and claims they were important for the entire social life and public order (Pech el-Loesche 1907:459). These were prohibitions related to genu eral morality and respect for hierarchy. Such a denition of the functions of minkisi can also be found in Lamans material. The minkisi have a variety of functions. They intervene in every aspect of life, be it the social, political, legal or religious sphere (Laman 1962:75). The fear surrounding taboos was, in precolonial society, exploited for the maintenance of law and order but also for the utilization of power by the political rulers. Besides there were other elements in the society whose interest lay in using taboos to limit the power of the king. In this sense minkisi were an instrument in the struggle for, and maintenance of, power. The earlier political minkisi/prohibitions were, as Pech el-Loesche expresses it, ein wesentliches Mittel des Staatskunst u (Pech el-Loesche 1907:459). u Many of the minkisi that Laman and Van Wing refer to are associated with a somewhat exaggerated or even military version of order. They are said to have protected the village and the general public order; they ensured that people obeyed the law and were punished in cases of theft, adultery, and other crimes. Nkondi watches over the swearing of oaths and concluding of alliances and is revenged on the culprit (Laman 1962:86, 88). Lulendo is used to regulate the markets and ensure safety on the trade routes (118). Nkusu can tell when a theft has been committed and who is the culprit (118). Nakongo provides good luck and happiness, but its main function is to afict people with illness by way of revenge for crime (144). Van Wing mentions Nkosi whose function was to kill thieves and witches. He grabs them and squeezes them so tightly that blood runs from their noses. Problems of this type were cured by a nganga Nkosi (Van Wing 1938:133). Van Wing also speaks of a class of minkisi called Mpungu which lls an important political function in being the protector of the village. As such, it is also called the Nkinda gata, he who makes the village prosperous (141). The word nkinda does not appear to have been used generally for the earth gods in the eastern part of the area, as among the Yombe, but the connection is in any case
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quite obvious in Van Wings text. Nkinda gata represents the ancestor and is established in the village to protect it and give it life. In many villages, Mpungu becomes the center for festive invocations before the great hunt and before the grass is burned (145ff.). Minkisi were, in the precolonial society, a force that ordered fertility, wealth, and health, but that also punished those who did not live according to the law. To annoy the gods was the same as annoying the king and other political chiefs. He who obeyed the rules was also in good health. This rather common view of the relationship between the individuals health and general wellbeing and his obedience to political authorities is the more original mode of thought behind the puzzling pattern of the turn of the century. In precolonial society there was an intimate relation between sickness and minkisi, as well as between medicine and politics, and medicine and religion. Sickness was perceived as a consequence of displeasing the gods, as a punishment for sin. The cure implied, therefore, rituals and secondarily practical activities. He who performed accurately regained health. There is nothing here that is unique to the Lower Congo, and it is certainly a very common trait in traditional medicine generally. Pray to God, be righteous and pious, and you will remain healthy. Sickness as punishment is a thought that has profound consequences in a situation where the gods mete out much more in the way of sickness and accidents than of life and health. When health and well-being declined catastrophically in the Lower Congo at the turn of the century, the entire model of traditional medicine was upset. The solution that emerged among the Kongo was to correct the increasing disease and illness by a corresponding proliferation of prohibitions. Sickness and failure were interpreted as disobedience, a consequence of breaking taboos. It cannot have been very obvious, though, what the gods really wanted in the way of obedient behavior. The sudden development of thousands of meaningless taboos can be seen as an attempt to create conditions which made a high degree of obedience possible. Food taboos and taboos concerning the restrictions of body movements are easy to follow as they do not involve anything but the individual and his conscious behavior. They do not represent somebody elses wishes as is the case with taboos of a political and legal nature. Taboos of the kind that are reported in the material from the early colonial period emanate from the individual, which may seem like a paradox, as laws and prohibitions regulating individual behavior usually develop within a socio-political framework. The individual is, according to the more common pattern, compelled to adapt to rules that are external to him in the sense that they concern his behavior in relationship to others. In the Lower Congo taboos rather represent the individuals attempts to come to grip with his own health problemstrying to be a good boy in a situation where he is not clear about what is wanted from him and on which point he has failed.
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NOTE
1. This word is translated in French as f ticheur, and in English as witchdoctor, e magician, and similar terms.
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P1: OTE/SPH P2: OTE RLBK001-Friedman March 20, 2008

P1: OTE/SPH P2: OTE RLBK001-Friedman March 20, 2008

P1: OTE/SPH P2: OTE RLBK001-Friedman March 20, 2008

P1: OTE/SPH P2: OTE RLBK001-Friedman March 20, 2008

From Religion to Magic

P1: OTE/SPH P2: OTE RLBK001-Friedman March 20, 2008

P1: OTE/SPH P2: OTE RLBK001-Friedman March 20, 2008

From Religion to Magic

P1: OTE/SPH P2: OTE RLBK001-Friedman March 20, 2008

P1: OTE/SPH P2: OTE RLBK001-Friedman March 20, 2008

From Religion to Magic

P1: OTE/SPH P2: OTE RLBK001-Friedman March 20, 2008

P1: OTE/SPH P2: OTE RLBK001-Friedman March 20, 2008

From Religion to Magic

P1: OTE/SPH P2: OTE RLBK001-Friedman March 20, 2008

P1: OTE/SPH P2: OTE RLBK001-Friedman March 20, 2008

From Religion to Magic

P1: OTE/SPH P2: OTE RLBK001-Friedman March 20, 2008

P1: OTE/SPH P2: OTE RLBK001-Friedman March 20, 2008

From Religion to Magic

P1: OTE/SPH P2: OTE RLBK001-Friedman March 20, 2008

P1: OTE/SPH P2: OTE RLBK001-Friedman March 20, 2008

From Religion to Magic

P1: OTE/SPH P2: OTE RLBK001-Friedman March 20, 2008

P1: OTE/SPH P2: OTE RLBK001-Friedman March 20, 2008

From Religion to Magic

Figure 1.3. The hierarchical worldview of the Kongo

P1: OTE/SPH P2: OTE RLBK001-Friedman March 20, 2008

P1: OTE/SPH P2: OTE RLBK001-Friedman March 20, 2008

From Religion to Magic

P1: OTE/SPH P2: OTE RLBK001-Friedman March 20, 2008

1980:9). There is a myth which explains this apparent contradiction. It is as follows:

P1: OTE/SPH P2: OTE RLBK001-Friedman March 20, 2008

From Religion to Magic

P1: OTE/SPH P2: OTE RLBK001-Friedman March 20, 2008

Figure 1.4. The two spheres of the religious system

P1: OTE/SPH P2: OTE RLBK001-Friedman March 20, 2008

From Religion to Magic

P1: OTE/SPH P2: OTE RLBK001-Friedman March 20, 2008

P1: OTE/SPH P2: OTE RLBK001-Friedman March 20, 2008

From Religion to Magic

P1: OTE/SPH P2: OTE RLBK001-Friedman March 20, 2008

P1: OTE/SPH P2: OTE RLBK001-Friedman March 20, 2008

From Religion to Magic

P1: OTE/SPH P2: OTE RLBK001-Friedman March 20, 2008

P1: OTE/SPH P2: OTE RLBK001-Friedman March 20, 2008

From Religion to Magic

P1: OTE/SPH P2: OTE RLBK001-Friedman March 20, 2008

P1: OTE/SPH P2: OTE RLBK001-Friedman March 20, 2008

From Religion to Magic

P1: OTE/SPH P2: OTE RLBK001-Friedman March 20, 2008

P1: OTE/SPH P2: OTE RLBK001-Friedman March 20, 2008

From Religion to Magic

P1: OTE/SPH P2: OTE RLBK001-Friedman March 20, 2008

P1: OTE/SPH P2: OTE RLBK001-Friedman March 20, 2008

From Religion to Magic

P1: OTE/SPH P2: OTE RLBK001-Friedman March 20, 2008

P1: OTE/SPH P2: OTE RLBK001-Friedman March 20, 2008