Kongo religion (Kikongo: Bukongo or Bakongo) encompasses the traditional spiritual beliefs of the Bakongo people. Due to the highly centralized position of the Kingdom of Kongo, its leaders were able to influence much of the traditional religious practices across the Congo Basin. As a result, many other ethnic groups and kingdoms in West-Central Africa, like the Chokwe and Ambundu, adopted elements of Bakongo spirituality.
The spirituality is based on a complex animistic system and a pantheon of spirits. The principle Creator God of the world is Nzambi Ampungu, the sovereign master, and his female counterpart, Nzambici. While Nzambi Ampungu, who gave birth to the universe and the spirits who inhabit it, is vital to the spirituality, ancestor veneration is the core principle.
The Bakongo cosmos is split between two worlds: the top half representing the physical world, or ku nseke and the bottom half representing the spiritual world, or ku mpèmba. Expert healers, known as Banganga, undergo extensive training to commune with the ancestors in the spiritual realms and seek guidance from them.
General beliefs
The religion of the Kongo is deeply complex. According to historians John K. Thornton and Linda M. Heywood, "Central Africans have probably never agreed among themselves as to what their cosmology is in detail, a product of what I called the process of continuous revelation and precarious priesthood..." However, the Kongo people had a consensus view amongst themselves, with traditional religious thought best developed in the northern Kikongo-speaking area. There is plenty of description about Kongo religious ideas in the Christian missionary and colonial era records, but as Thornton states, "these are written with a hostile bias and their reliability is problematic".
Generally, these traditions are oral rather than scriptural and passed down from one generation to another through folk tales, songs, and festivals, include belief in an amount of higher and lower gods, sometimes including a supreme creator or force, belief in spirits, veneration of the dead, use of magic and traditional African medicine. Bakongo mythology, like other nearby traditional religions, can be described as animistic with various polytheistic and pantheistic aspects. This includes the worship of tutelary deities, nature worship, ancestor worship and the belief in an afterlife. While some religions adopted a Panentheistic worldview, most follow a polytheistic system with various gods and spirits.
Creation and cosmology
According to researcher Molefi Kete Asante, "Another important characteristic of Bakongo cosmology is the Sun and its movements. The rising, peaking, setting, and absence of the Sun provide the essential pattern for Bakongo religious culture." These "four moments of the sun" equate with the four stages of life: conception, birth, maturity, and death. For the Bakongo, everything transitions through these stages: planets, plants, animals, people, societies, and even ideas. This vital cycle is depicted by a circle with a cross inside. In this Yowa or dikenga cosmogram, the meeting point of the two lines of the cross is the most powerful point and where the person stands.
Creation of the universe The Bakongo people believe that "The world in its beginning was empty; it was an mbûngi, an empty thing, a cavity, without visible life." Mbûngi (also called mwasi and mpampa) was symbolized as a circle of emptiness. The creator god Nzambi, along with his female counterpart called Nzambici, is believed to have created a spark of fire, called kalûnga, and summoned it inside of mbûngi. Kalûnga grew and became a great force of energy inside of mbûngi, creating a mass of fusion. When the mass grew too hot, the heated force caused the mass to break apart and hurl projectiles outside of mbûngi. Those projectiles became individual masses that scattered about, and when the fires cooled, planets formed and life came into existence. The Bakongo believe this was the process Nzambi used to create the universe, with the sun, stars, planets, etc. The Bakongo referred to this process as luku lwalamba Nzambi, or "God created and cooked dough." Because of this, kalûnga is seen as the origin of life, or moyo wawo mu nza and a force of motion. The Bakongo believe that life requires constant change and perpetual motion. Nzambi is also referred to as Kalûnga, the god of change. Similarities between the Bakongo belief of kalûnga and the Big Bang Theory have been studied. Unlike many other traditional African religions, the creation beliefs of the Bakongo are compatible with creatio ex nihilo.
Creation of Earth
Like the creation of the universe, the Bakongo believe that in the beginning, the world was lifeless, circular void of nothingness (or mbûngi). Then Nzambi created a great force of fire (or kalûnga), and filled this empty circle. Kalûnga heated up the contents of mbûngi, and when it cooled, it formed the Earth. The Earth, the starting point of the fire, then became a green planet after it went through four stages. The first stage is the emergence of the fire. The second stage is the red stage where the planet is still burning and has not formed. The third stage is the grey stage where the planet is cooling, but has not produced life. These planets are naked, dry, and covered with dust. The final stage is green stage is when the planet is fully mature because it breathes and carries life. As the Bakongo believe is part of the universal order, all planets must go through this process in order to achieve completeness, or nlunga.
Human creation The creation of a Bakongo person, or muntu, is also believed to follow the four moments of the Sun, which play a significant role in their development. Musoni is the time when a muntu is conceived both in the spiritual realm and in the womb of a Bakongo woman. Kala is the time when a muntu is born into the physical world. This time is also seen as the rising of the Sun. Tukula is the time of maturity, where a muntu learns to master all aspects of life from spirituality to purpose to personality. The last period of time is luvemba, when a muntu physically dies and enters the spiritual world, or Ku Mpémba, with of the ancestors, or bakulu. Because Bakongo people have a "dual soul-mind," or mwèla-ngindu, they are able to exist and live in both realms during the different moments of their lives. Even while in Ku Mpémba, a muntu still lives a full life as they prepare for Kala time once again. The right side of the body is also believed to be male, while the left side is believed to be female, creating an additional layer to the dual identity of a muntu or Kimuntu, the state of being a human.
Kongo cosmogram
The nature of Kalûnga is also spiritual. As Kalûnga filled mbûngi, Kalûnga transformed into a body of water that acted as a line, dividing the circle in half. The top half represents the physical world, or Ku Nseke, while the bottom half represents the spiritual world of the ancestors, known as Ku Mpèmba. The mbûngi circle, one longer a void, became the universe with the Sun at the center.
The Kalûnga Line separates these two worlds, and all living things exists on one side or another. Simbi spirits are believed to transport Kongo people between the two worlds at birth and death. Then the process repeats when a person is reborn. Together, Kalûnga and the mbûngi circle form the Kongo cosmogram, also called the Yowa or Dikenga Cross.
Represented on the Kongo cosmogram are the four stages of life: musoni, or conception; kala, or birth; tukala, or maturity; and luvemba, or death. They are believed to correlate to the four moments of the sun: midnight, or n'dingu-a-nsi; sunrise, or ndiminia; noon, or mbata; and sunset, or ndmina, as well as the four seasons (spring, summer, fall and winter) and the four classical elements (water, fire, air and earth).
Nzambi Ampungu and Nzambici Prior to European colonization, Nzambi Ampungu and his female counterpart, Nzambici, were perceived as the one Great Spirit who existed everywhere simultaneously and gave life to all things. Nzambi Ampungu was the "sovereign master," the God of the sun (fire) and change. It was believed that Nzambi Ampungu/Nzambici created the universe, the spiritual world (Ku Mpémba) and the physical world (Ku Nseke). Contrary to what the title "the Great Spirit" implies, Nzambi Ampungu/Nzambici and the spiritual nature of the Kongo people did not exist under the same confines of hierarchy as the omnipotent God of the monotheistic Abrahamic religions (Christianity, Judaism and Islam). All spirits within Kongo spirituality were believed to be of equal status and each had their own purpose across both worlds.
After the introduction of Catholicism by the Portuguese, there was a massive effort to convert Central Africans by creating connections between Christianity and their traditional religions. While it was largely a failure for ethnic groups such as the Ambundu, the Portuguese were able to deceive the Bakongo people by convincing them that Nzambi was the Christian God and separating the deity from Nzambici and the other spirits. Not only did this act make way for an easier conversion of the Bakongo people to Christianity, it created a hierarchy in Bakongo spirituality that reduced spirits like Nzambici, the simbi and nkisi to "lesser spirits" that no longer had relevant voices in spiritual matters. They became akin to angels and thus, subservient to Nzambi Ampungu, or God. This may have also played a role in the Kingdom of Kongo becoming a more male-dominated society, marginalizing the belief in the dual male/female identity of all Bakongo people and creating a gender hierarchy based on Portuguese culture, where men were traditionally at the center of spiritual matters.
Other spirits
By the early 17th century, oral tradition stated that Nzambi Ampungu was surrounded by lesser nature spirits, who were so powerful that they were given individual names. There is consensus among historians that this reduction of nature spirits to lesser spirits was due to Portuguese the influence of monotheism and their shunning of "idols." During this period, Nzambi Ampungu began to exist as a separate spirit from his female counterpart, Nzambici, and was seen the Creator God, while Nzambici was seen as his wife, the "God the essence, the god on earth, the great princess, the mother of all the animals, the one who promises her daughter to the animal who shall bring her the fire from heaven." She is also referred to as Nzambi, the mystery of the earth, "the mother of a beautiful daughter, gives mankind all laws, ordinances, arts, games, and musical instruments. Nzambi settles quarrels between animals, and in the stories giving her decision is embedded an immense amount of Fjort law."
Nevertheless, the Kongo spirits are believed to have been created largely as a means for the Bakongo people to understand the natural world around them. Most of them have a connection to the earth, water, the sky, fire and the stars. "The land is eternal. The earth withers in the dry seasons but flourishes with the coming of the rains. The sky bears the winds that brings the rains and shuffles the clouds to hide and then reveal the sun's rays... the Nzadi River flows forever... to eventually join the vast sea."
At the center of Kongo religion are the ancestors, or bakulu, who are believed to maintain a spiritual existence in the physical world (Ku Nseke) after death, through the "dual soul-mind" (mwèla-ngindu). Because of this, the ancestors are seen as spirits, who watch over the Bakongo people and direct power from the spiritual world (Ku Mpémba) to protect them. These ancestral spirits are also believed to inhabit bodies of water, known as kalunga (also called n'langu or m'bu), and the forest, known as mfinda.
High spirits