The Tumbuka are an ethnic group living in Malawi, Zambia and Tanzania. In Tumbuka mythology, Chiuta ("Great Bow") is the supreme creator, symbolised in the sky by the rainbow, and is approached through a wider hierarchy of spirits that Tumbuka cosmology sets out in some detail.
Tumbuka mythology is carried mainly through myths and folktales, traditionally told around a fire at night to the accompaniment of drumming and choral response; these stories aim to entertain as much as to teach children moral behaviour. Much of this repertoire has thinned since the mid-twentieth century as rural life has changed, though a good deal survives; these vidokoni (stories) still carry a moral.
Three animals recur more than any others: fulu (the tortoise), kalulu (the hare) and chimbwi (the hyena). Fulu is generally the wisest of the three, chimbwi the greedy villain, and kalulu the clever trickster and manipulator who can usually outwit everyone except fulu.
Cosmology Tumbuka traditional religion sets the high god at the head of a graded hierarchy of intermediaries reaching down to the living and, below them, to the dead. One detailed account of this system, compiled from the recollections of Tumbuka elders around Livingstonia by the Presbyterian theologian Stephen Kauta Msiska, describes six ranked levels: the high God (Chauta, Chiuta, Mulungu or Mulengi); the higher spirits (vipiri, called agogo further south); the ancestors' spirits (mizimu); the priests or ritual leaders (basofi); the people on earth (bantu); and, beneath the earth, the dwelling place of the dead (malo gha bakufwa). Prayers pass upward through this chain: a person's needs go to the basofi, who convey them to the mizimu, who forward them to the vipiri, who in turn carry them to Chiuta, believed to answer with rain, food, children, health, success in war and peace. The rest of this section draws heavily on that one account, and should be read as one theologian's systematisation of oral testimony rather than a settled scholarly consensus.
Chiuta Chiuta is the supreme deity figure in the traditional religions of the Tumbuka people of present-day Malawi. Chiuta is also known by the names Mulengi, Mwenco and Wamtatakuya. Further names recorded around Livingstonia include Kyala, Mbanda and Mbepomwikemo ("God-spirit-wind"); Chiuta/Chauta itself is explained as a compound of uta, "bow", with the augmentative prefix chi- that in Chitumbuka marks something extraordinarily large or powerful. A small bow is kauta and an ordinary one uta; the greatest of all bows, the rainbow, is Chiuta.
Chiuta is omnipresent, though shapeless. Prayers can be made directly to Chiuta, but ancestors and spirits play a large part in determining whether these prayers are fulfilled, and offerings and appeals to them can help sway their favour. Chiuta is associated with natural phenomena that come from the sky, such as rain and thunderstorms. In this same account, the Creator is unapproachable and too remote even for the recently dead to reach directly, so people addressed him only through the chain of ancestors and higher spirits described above, much as a villager would approach a chief only through a messenger and counsellor, never directly.
is also the name used for the supreme being in Chewa traditional religion, and names for God vary by region: Chiuta or Chauta in the north and south, Chisumphi, Mphambe or Nduna among the Chewa and Ngoni of the centre, Leza further afield. All these regions, however, agree in calling God Mulungu or Mulengi, "creator", which has been read as evidence of a shared monotheistic core beneath the regional variation in names.
Vipiri: the higher spirits Below Chiuta stand the vipiri (singular chipiri; called agogo, singular gogo, in central and southern Malawi), understood as the spirits of earlier basofi or chiefs remembered for exemplary lives, who remain in communion with God and act as intermediaries for the mizimu beneath them. Tumbuka tradition attaches particular vipiri to particular places, clans or tribes, and describes relationships among them not unlike those among the living: the vipiri visit one another, marry, and sometimes fight. Chombe, the spirit associated with the Chombe area on the lakeshore, was said to have a wife, Chombe-Mwanakazi, living apart from him by the lake; when he travelled to join her, a heavy storm was said to mark the journey. Chombe was also said to have fought with a rival spirit, Chikhang'ombe, after Chombe's people killed one of Chikhang'ombe's own; thunder, lightning and storms outside the rainy season were read as signs of their continuing conflict, with Chikhang'ombe sometimes driving away rain that Chombe intended to send.
A long list of such territorial spirits, recognised across northern Malawi in the early twentieth century, has been recorded, each paired with the human musofi, or priest, who served it. Among them: Filawule at Karonga, Wovo (or Furu) at Fulirwa, Chitende at Deep Bay, Manchebe near Livingstonia, Wongwe at Mlowe, Phwezi in the Henga valley, Jerekere at Mhuju, Munguyi at Uzumara, Kampaba at Ng'onga, and Mwanda and Chikhang'ombe among the Hebe. Attached to the vipiri in the northern region were nchimi, diviners or soothsayers, usually women, who were said to prophesy while in an ecstatic state and whose pronouncements people acted on at once.
Mizimu and vibanda: ancestors and spirit doubles
The mizimu (singular muzimu) are the spirits of the dead, understood by the Tumbuka as departing the body at death to wander in remote places such as mountains, valleys and the bush; the spirits of chiefs and other prominent people were traditionally thought to return instead to the village, which is why some such figures were buried within it rather than away from it. This belief is distinguished from ancestor worship as such: Malawians historically worshipped Chiuta through the ancestors, as intermediaries, rather than worshipping the ancestors themselves.
A related but distinct category is the chibanda (plural vibanda), an entity understood as a kind of double of human society, perceptible to the living and distinguished by many Tumbuka speakers from the mizimu only with difficulty, if at all. Vibanda are described as calling a person by name without showing themselves, imitating the whistles herd boys use to call one another in the forest, or announcing their presence at a graveyard or in the mountains through the sound of a branch snapping; a person's hair is said to stand on end when a chibanda is near.
Basofi and traditional worship The basofi (singular musofi) were priests or ritual leaders, often chiefs themselves, expected to live exemplary, sober lives while caring for their people's spiritual welfare; each worshipped God through named ancestors, who in turn appealed to the higher spirits above them. Traditional religion had no fixed weekly day of worship, but the musofi appointed rest days tied to harvest festivals and, especially in times of war, famine or disease, a day of atonement on which people brought gifts to the ancestors' spirits and confessed their wrongs in a call-and-response liturgy: the musofi's prayer that God, all-knowing, should sweep away hidden sin was met with the congregation's cry of Fya! ("Away!" — the same word used to chase birds from a rice field), and the musofi would go on to invoke the departed by name, urging the living not to conceal anything from them.
Vimbuza spirit taxonomy
The spirits associated with the Vimbuza healing dance are classified by the Ngoni-Tumbuka into several distinct kinds, distinguished by their geographical origin, the character of the illness they cause, and the language in which they are said to speak. Three broad types are recognised: Vimbuza proper, of Bemba, Bisa and Senga origin, associated with fever-like pain, general body aches and loss of appetite; Virombo, of Chewa origin, associated with severe headaches and heart palpitations; and Vyanusi, of Ngoni origin, associated with a form of mental disturbance that, left untreated, was believed to lead to madness.
Individual Vimbuza spirits carry their own names, usually those of dead chiefs or notable figures from the Bemba, Bisa, Lunda and Senga peoples, among them Chota Muliro, Chanda, Chibesakunda, Chitimukulu, Jandalala, Mazabamba, Mwiza, Kafwimbi, Kakota, Kota, Kawuswe, Kazembe and Njekulala; each name is understood to cover a whole class of similar spirits rather than a single individual. Virombo spirits, by contrast, are typically named collectively rather than individually — as BaRondo, BaSenga, BaChewa, Mam'phanda, Mavundura, Makhabango and Ukhazi — while recognised Vyanusi spirits include Mngoma, Mhalule, Majelemani, and Mthwasi, a form of possession specifically associated with divination and healing. The therapeutic dance and drumming used to treat possession by these spirits, discussed in detail in the Vimbuza and Tumbuka people articles, was inscribed by UNESCO on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2008.Vimbuza healing dance, UNESCO, Malawi, Inscribed in 2008 (3.COM) on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity (originally proclaimed in 2005)
Legends Creation of the universe In the beginning, it is said, only the earth and Chiuta existed. The earth was empty, with no water on its surface, until Chiuta summoned the clouds, the rain and the lightning to fall upon it. Afterwards, Chiuta himself descended to earth, followed by the first humans and all the animals.
Origin of death Several versions of how death entered the world are told about Chiuta and his messengers, all turning on a message that arrives too late or too slowly.
In the version recorded by Lynch and Roberts, Chiuta sent a chameleon to tell humanity that they would be reincarnated after death, while a lizard was sent with the opposite message, that death would be final. The lizard, being faster, arrived first, and death has been permanent ever since.
A version collected among the Tumbuka of Mzimba and Rumphi districts places the story before Chiuta's involvement is even needed: two old men held up the earth, one at the point of sunrise and the other at sunset, so that people would not die, but grew tired of the labour and resolved to settle the matter with a single race. The elder at sunrise sent a chameleon with the promise that people would live forever; the elder at sunset sent a lizard with the news that people would die. The lizard, arriving first and exhausted from the journey, delivered its message before the chameleon could arrive with his, and once given, the message could not be taken back.
A related, more explicitly theological version traces the world's present state under a curse to the same failure: the chameleon, entrusted with word from the Creator, was too slow to deliver it, and death entered the world as a consequence.
A different, unrelated tradition, recorded by Harvey, instead explains death and separation from the divine through human agency rather than a messenger's failure. In this account, the connection between heaven and earth, represented by the sky, was severed when humans discovered fire. The animals, afraid of what humans could now do, appealed to Chiuta for help; Chiuta settled the dispute, but, exhausted by the conflict, withdrew to the heavens and cut the link between earth and sky.
Trickster and etiological tales Alongside its central myths, Tumbuka oral tradition includes a wide range of shorter animal tales, most of them explaining some feature of the natural world or a lesson about honesty, gratitude and friendship, and recorded from fieldwork among Chitumbuka speakers of Mzimba and Rumphi districts.