African Beliefs

Topic: Origins - Africa
West Africa was not some isolated backwater, when Portuguese navigators first kidnapped men from the coast in 1444. [1] It may not have been Roman Catholic, but it was part of the Mediterranean regional community, even if it was on its outer boundary. Each incoming group had carried new ideas that overlaid a substratum of concepts shared with people already in the area.

Many perceived a single superior god who produced a subsidiary layer of deities, then lost interest in human activities. Michael Gomez explained the Bambara of the upper Niger river [2] thought Bemba formed the lesser gods, then made women and the earth. Chaos followed the creation of plants and animals, but order was restored by one of the subordinate beings. [3]

Similarly, the Akan of modern Ghana, claimed Onayme created Assa Ya (the Earth mother) and demigods, [4] while Chineke made Ala, the Igbo Earth mother. [5] The Mende god sent rain to his wife, the Earth, then withdrew. [6]

Julian Jaynes hypothesized the perception of a remote creator arose in the chaos that followed an eruption on the island of Thera in the Mediterranean [7] some time between 1600 bc and 1525 bc. [18] Ash fell from "from the coastline of the Peloponissos to the west, over all of Crete to the south, over western Anatolia to the east, and as far as the Black Sea to the north-northwest." [9]

The volcanic activity set off internal migrations, while others fled inundated coasts. Jaynes argued the social disorder was so traumatic, it altered individuals’ mental processes. He pointed to the Iliad and Amos, written before, in which gods communicated directly to people through their voices. In contrast, in the later Odyssey, individuals turned to prayer and other means of approaching a god who had abandoned them. Charlotte Pearson’s team asserted the aftereffects coincided with the emergence of Egypt’s New Kingdom. [10]

Egyptians envisioned humans as composed of multiple elements, although the number varied from one historic period to another. The ka was a person’s "vital essence," which was depicted as an individual’s twin. When one died, one returned to the ka and needed to be sustained with food offerings. The ba was one’s personality that "Egyptians believed would live after the body died, and it is sometimes depicted as a human-headed bird flying out of the tomb to join with the ka in the afterlife." [11]

The Bambara taught a person was composed of his or her soul, the ni and its double the dya, and his or her character, the tere. [12] Gomez reported the Akan believed an individual was part blood (mogya), part spirit (ntoro), and part soul (kra). [13] Newbell Puckett noted the Ewe to the east presumed every person had "an indwelling spirit (kra)," [14] an immortal soul, [15] and a bush soul that resided in an animal. [16]

When a Bambara died, the dya entered the water, the ni returned to the ancestors, and the tere roamed loose. [17] For the Akan, the ntoro returned to the ancestors, while the mogya returned to the spirit world. [18] The Ewe kra survived to enter another infant or to wander as a sisa, a "kra without a tenement," [19] while the immortal soul became the person’s ghost. [20]

The Igbo of southeastern Nigeria simply assumed one’s soul was the chi, which returned to the land where it was born. [21]

The Kongo saw the afterworld as a mountain that mirrored the ordinary, separated from it by a river. [22] Likewise, Sjoerd Hofstra discovered the Mende believed the spirit of the dead needed to be helped over a river with gifts of food. If a ngafaga did not pass, it roamed the world of the living. [23]

These views were similar to those of the Greeks who thought the dead crossed the river Styx to enter the underworld of Hades. The boatman, Charon, was paid with a coin placed in the mouth of the dead. If there was no payment, the spirit of the dead stayed on the river shore. "Greeks offered propitiatory libations to prevent the deceased from returning to the upper world to ‘haunt’ those who had not given them a proper burial." [24]

Africans presumed the soul could be reborn. The Bambara thought the dya of one generation became the ni of the next, [25] while the Akan claimed the mogya was reborn. [26] The unborn child bartered with Chineke for its chi, predetermining "his length of life and his future activities." [27]. As soon as an infant was born, the parents consulted a professional who divined the identity of the baby’s chi. [28]

Egyptians were the ones who originated the concept of soul transmigration, according to Jaynes. Pythagoras, took the idea to Greece in the middle-500s bc. [29]

The ways individuals approached a god reflected more recent experiences. The Akan had created the Ghana empire. [30] They erected temples to the lesser gods, the abosom, who spoke through possession of professional priests and priestesses. [31]

The Bambara were part of the Mali Empire that succeeded Ghana. [32] Each village had a sacred space devoted to its particular deity, or boli. "Supplications for health, marital problems, the weather, and so on were made" to it through a jar of amulets. [33]

The Igbo had no hierarchical structures. [34] Each village had a shrine to its ancestor. Contact was made through sacrifices and prayers. [35]

The Mende came closest to maintaining the relationship with a god like that posited by Jaynes for the Iliad. Hofstra said they believed the ancestors were guardians who protected individuals. [36] The recently dead maintained contact through dreams, [37] which individuals shared with others. [38]. The visits slowly become less frequent and limited to times of trouble. [39]

Michael Gomez suggested it was these commonalities in world views that allowed slaves to form communities, first on plantations, then again under the aegis of Christianity. After all, the religion arose in the same eastern Mediterranean region.

Thus, slaves confronted with a god who created a son and ghost, already knew a god who formed lesser beings. Further, they expected some spirits to intercede for them, much like the Holy Ghost would do. [40]

Few had problems with Christ’s ritual rebirth. Instead of returning in the next generation, African Americans were willing to accept a period when they were united with Him, before the final resurrection. [41]

Slaves easily understood crossing the Jordan "represented death and the hereafter." [42] Puckett met a man from Johns Island, South Carolina, in the 1920s who said one flew above the river. [43] A man in Jacksonville, Florida, told him Jesus took one over on the Old Ship of Zion, [44] while a woman in Houston simply assumed one waded across. [45]

Gomez noted the only thing many didn’t understand was the absence of a mother Earth figure. [46]

End Notes
1. Hugh Thomas. The Slave Trade. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997. 22.

2. Michael A. Gomez. Exchanging Our Country Marks. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1998. 46. He said the Bambara were most common in Louisiana [page 42].

3. Gomez. 49.

4. Gomez. 111. He said most went to Jamaica, [page 106] and then to the tobacco lands of Virginia and Maryland [page 107].

5. Gomez. 129. The Igbo were sent to Virginia and the area around Chesapeake Bay.

6. Gomez. 95. The Mende were discussed in a series posted between 30 March 2019 and 31 March 2019.

7. Julian Jaynes. The Origin of Consciousness in the Bicameral Mind. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1990 paperback edition. 209. The island of Thera is now called Santorini.

8. Charlotte L. Pearson, Peter W. Brewer, David Brown, Timothy J. Heaton, Gregory W. L. Hodgins, A. J. Timothy Jull, Todd Lange, and Matthew W. Salzer. "Annual Radiocarbon Record Indicates 16th Century BCE Date for the Thera Eruption." Science Advances 15 August 2018.

9. F. W. McCoy and S. E. Dunn. "Modelling the Climatic Effects of the LBA Eruption of Thera: New Calculations of Tephra Volumes May Suggest a Significantly Larger Eruption than Previously Reported." American Geographical Union, Chapman Conference on Volcanism and the Earth’s Atmosphere, Thera, Greece, 2002.

10. Pearson.
11. Wikipedia. "Ancient Egyptian Concept of the Soul."
12. Gomez. 49.
13. Gomez. 111.

14. Newbell Niles Puckett. Folk Beliefs of the Southern Negro. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1926. 109. Gomez suggested the Ewe were shipped to Haiti, Brazil, and Cuba; in this country they were sent to Louisiana [page 54].

15. Puckett, Folk Beliefs. 111.
16. Puckett, Folk Beliefs. 112.
17. Gomez. 49.
18. Gomez. 112.
19. Puckett, Folk Beliefs. 109.
20. Puckett, Folk Beliefs. 111.
21. Gomez. 120.
22. Gomez. 147.

23. Sjoerd Hofstra. "The Ancestral Spirits of the Mendi." Internationales Archiv fur Ethnographie 39:177-196:1941. Translation in Among the Mende in Sierra Leone, 299–318. Edited by Marijke Gijswijt-Hofstra. Leiden: Afrika-Studiecentrum, 2014. 322.

24. Wikipedia. "Hades."
25. Gomez. 49.
26. Gomez. 112.
27. Gomez. 130.
28. Stuart J. Edelstein. The Sickled Cell. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986. 66.
29. Jaynes. 290.
30. Wikipedia. "Akan People."
31. Gomez. 111.
32. Wikipedia. "Mali Empire."
33. Gomez. 49-50.
34. Gomez. 128.
35. Gomez. 129.
36. Hofstra. 325.
37. Hofstra. 322, 327.
38. Hofstra. 327-328.
39. Hofstra. 328.
40. Gomez. 278-279.
41. Gomez. 278.
42. Gomez. 274.

43. Henry Walker, Johns Island, South Carolina. Quoted by Newball N. Puckett. "Religious Folk Beliefs of Whites and Negroes." Journal of Negro History 16:9-35:1931. 12.

44. B. Smith, Jacksonville, Florida. Quoted by Puckett, Religious Folk Beliefs. 12.
45. Mrs. B. Jones, Houston, Texas. Quoted by Puckett, Religious Folk Beliefs. 12.
46. Gomez. 278.