Encyclopedia of African Religion

“above” live those gods, goddesses, and spirits in charge of the sky, rain, and thunder. For some peoples, mountains and hills a ...

experiences of the people. They are the guardians of the sacred power of Mount Cameroon. Molefi Kete Asante SeealsoMountains and ...

It is worth noting here that the wordMogai,if not the sacrosanctity, originated with the Maasai wordEnkai and was appropriated b ...

because it guarantees a domicile to peacefully and safely cultivate the precious soil, which supplies their material needs and p ...

The heart and the kidneys were most often left inside the body because of the difficulty of remov- ing them. Next, the priests b ...

traditional African societies today. The African’s concept of music is unlike that of Western soci- eties, and therefore those u ...

SeealsoCeremonies; Rituals Further Readings Avorgbedor, D. (Ed.). (2003).The Interrelatedness of Music,Religion,and Ritual in Af ...

advice for healing illness and the elimination of social disharmony and spiritual degradation. Credo Vusamazulu Mutwa isSangomaa ...

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NAM IN G African religion is expressedin the names of pe oplean d places.MostAfricanna mesof pe ople andpl aceshavesymbolicmeani ...

440 Nana Buluku Awusi/Osi; a male child is called Kwesi/Kwasi, whereas a female child is named Akosua/Esi. The significance of t ...

Mawu is thought to be a Janus-like figure associ- ated with the moon, and Lisa is associated with the sun. Their dual nature rep ...

Nanny is believed to have been born in the Gold Coast area of West Africa (today’s Ghana) to the Ashanti people during the late ...

in the treaty demanding the capture of escaped Africans, keeping white men on her land, and fighting alongside the British. Seri ...

initiation masks found among the Dogon, the Kurumba or Nioniosi, and the Bamana. Although each of these cultures has its own uni ...

place of honor among burial items, its primary function was the preservation and protection of the body from either physical or ...

who assist Mwari and the living. Of particular importance are ancestral spirits, and among those, a particular group is believed ...

and respect, as Mbuya (“Grandmother”) Nehanda by Zimbabwean nationalists. The main maternity hospital in Harare is named after h ...

Ngai Nanyokie asked Ngai Narok to stop sending rain, which she or he did. Later, when asked to release rain again by Ngai Narok, ...

The notion of nganga emerges from the funda- mental vision of African theological anthropology (i.e., African understanding of h ...