Callaway’s informant objected to Christians who told the Zulus that the king of heaven made all things visible in this world. “We said that Unkulunkulu alone made them” (Callaway 1870, p. 21). The informant added, “And we black men, although some missionaries tell us that this king and that Unkulunkulu is the same, did not say that Unkulunkulu was in heaven; we said, he came to be, and died; that is all we said.” This parallels the Vedic conception, in which Brahma, the creator god, is mortal, and the ultimate high god, Krishna, is immortal. Apparently, Unkulunkulu has a heavenly abode. When asked about the whereabouts of the creator, some Zulu elders replied, “The Creator of all things is in heaven. And there is a nation of people there too” (Callaway 1870, p. 53).
A twentieth century Zulu philosopher, Laduma Madela, gives the following account of the creation. The creator god’s name is Umvelinqangi, which means “who created everything except the world which created him.” His wife’s name was Ma Jukujukwini. She is named after the place where creation took place, Ema Jukujukwini. At this place, the creator and his wife appeared “like mushrooms” (Bodenstein and Raum 1960, p. 169). After their appearance, they produced three children—Sitha, Nowa, and Nomkhubulwana, “the Princess who does not marry” (Bodenstein and Raum 1960, p.169). The earth is called Umhlaba. On the earth, the creator god erected four pillars. The creator god also created earths below the earth we see and heavens above the heaven we see. One of the Zulu informants said (Bodenstein and Raum 1960, p. 172), “Just as if you reach the horizon you always find another one beyond, so it is with the vault of heaven!”
A Zulu woman described Nomkhubulwana, the daughter of Umvelinqangi, as a heavenly princess (Berglund 1976, p. 70): “She loves human beings. So she opens the heaven, allowing them to see things in there. That is when the rainbow is seen. It is when she . . . lets them see it. The arches are the colours. They are beautiful having all the colours.” When the people see the rainbow, they say, “The Princess surely loves us. Now the rain will stop and give us sunshine. Then after a time she will bring rain again.”
In the early days, the first humans saw her directly. Now she is rarely seen. If she meets a man, she hides and asks him to turn his back and not look at her because she is naked. If one looks at her, one will become sick and die very soon. But she will sometimes speak, and her messages have great importance. She may tell a man in his garden, “This year you shall have food; although for a long time there has been famine, it shall be so no longer” (Callaway 1870, p. 254). She also gives various instructions, which the Zulu do not hesitate to follow. She is apparently sometimes seen by women. Krige (1968, p. 180) says, “A woman who claims to have met her this spring (1966) described her as a tall human figure in the mist near a thicket almost completely covered by a cape, greyish black in colour like the rain clouds.” She is also seen partially dressed with vegetable plants, reflecting her powers over agriculture.
The various forces of nature are also seen as manifestations of living entities. A Zulu man’s home was struck by lightning, and afterwards he claimed to have seen a lightning creature. He said (Berglund 1976, p.
39), “We were all in the house when suddenly the door was flung open and lightning came in, taking this one and that one. . . . Looking, I saw the thing. It was fearful to see and moved very quickly. But I saw it clearly. It was a bird. The feathers were white, burning. The beak and legs were red with fire, and the tail was something else, like burning green or like the colour of the sky. It ran quickly, saying nothing, simply snatching those whom it took. Then it touched the grass with its fire. It vanished through the door again.”
Concerning the origin of humans, Raum (1973, p. 76) says: “The Zulu do not consider that mankind originated by sexual reproduction but by a process resembling vegetative reproduction. There occurred a hiving-off, a division from a pre-existing entity. This entity is either called uhlanga (reed-bed) or umhlaba (earth). The agent responsible for the splitting off is Unkulunkulu.” Because humans are said to have come from a reed, reeds are held sacred and can only be cut by permission of a Zulu chief (Raum 1973, p. 76). Unkulunkulu is not directly part of any particular Zulu tribal lineage, but is the origin of all of them (Raum 1973, p. 76). It appears that there were sub-Unkulunkulus who were the creators of the members of specific tribes and races in addition to the “Unkulunkulu of all men” (Callaway 1870, p. 96).
Among the Zulu are female “diviners,” who give medicines and perform cures. They are called isangoma. In her book Body and mind in Zulu medicine, Harriet Ngubane (1977, p. 102) says: “A person does not choose to become a diviner (isangoma), but is said to be chosen by her ancestors, who bestow upon her clairvoyant powers. A neophyte learns about medicine from a qualified diviner to whom she is apprenticed for some time, but in addition some medicines are said to be revealed to her by her ancestors. I have already mentioned that the ancestral spirits do not take possession of the body, but they are close to the diviner—they
‘sit’ on her shoulders and whisper into her ears.”
The Zulus also have various categories of “doctors.” Some cure diseases with the aid of spirits. Another kind of doctor, the heaven doctor, operates on the weather and other natural forces, relying on his own knowledge of magic. Such doctors are often called heaven herds, because they herd storm clouds, with their dangerous lightning and hail, just like boys herd cattle. Eileen Jensen Krige (1968, p. 310) says, “They run out with their weapons and rain-shields and shout to the lightning, telling it to depart and go elsewhere, and whistling as cattle-herds do. No matter how old a heaven-doctor may be, he is always called ‘a young man who herds.’”
Part of the lore of sorcery and magic are “familiars,” spirits, often embodied in animals, who serve witches or wizards. The most important familiar among the Zulus is the wild cat called impaka. It can take control of dogs, cattle, snakes and other animals, inducing them to cause trouble to targeted people. Krige says (1968, p. 325), “To expel the animal and discover the wizard, a diviner will immediately be employed.”
The Zulu concept of the life-soul is connected with a person’s reflection. The Zulus hesitate to look at their reflection in a dark pool of water, fearing that a beast hidden in the pool will take it, thus depriving them of life (Raum 1973, p. 123). A pregnant woman believes she gives life to her child through her reflection. By custom, she therefore keeps a water pot in which only she can look. If someone else looks, the stranger may take away the child’s life. The reflecting surfaces of lakes and rivers are considered gateways to other worlds. One who loses one’s life in the water may find a new life on the other side of the surface (Raum 1973, p.123). The Zulu also believe that the life-soul (called iklozi or ithongo) is connected with a person’s shadow (ithunzi).After death the shadow passes some time in the bush or veld. The name for the dead is abaphansi, the people below.The departed ancestors depend on the prayers and sacrifices offered by their descendants, who in turn depend on the intercession of their ancestors. Raum (1973, p. 76) says that the ancestors “have control over the good and bad fortune of their descendants.”
Cosmology of the igbo of West africa
The Igbo people of West Africa live mostly in the present day country of Nigeria. According to the Igbo, each human being has a spirit double called the chi. Anthropologist Charles Kingsley Meek (1970, p. 55) states that the chi is a “transcendent self” and “closely resembles the Egyptian conception of the ka, which was the double or genius of a man, an ancestral emanation, apparently, which guided and protected him during his lifetime and to which he returned after death.” Conceptions of the chi vary somewhat, but Okpewho (1998, pp. 90–91) says: “It is at least generally recognized that chi is the spirit which helps the protoself negotiate a prenatal destiny before the supreme divinity; it either remains in the spiritual world to ensure the individual’s welfare as (s)he acts out his/ her choice or accompanies him/her to the world as some kind of protective spirit-double.”