Pemba

Creator god manifest as grain and acacia; head of the fourfold creative quaternity.

Children

• Faro
• Mousso Koroni
• Ndomadyiri

Domains

• creation
• earth vegetation

Powers

• Create himself and the world as a fourfold being
• Descend as a seed and grow into the acacia tree
• Knead rotten wood and saliva to form the first woman

Epithets

• the balanza-tree creator latin · Pemba · cultThe creator who descended as the balanza (acacia) and from whose body the first beings sprangGermaine Dieterlen, Essai sur la religion bambara (secondary)

Relations

• ancestor of: FaroPemba, head of the fourfold creative quaternity, is the source of the water-deity Faro (born of his breath); Faro already registers Pemba, mirrored as ancestor-of to preserve the deity tier.Dieterlen, G., 'Essai sur la religion bambara' (1951); Zahan, D., 'The Religion, Spirituality, and Thought of Traditional Africa' (1979) (secondary)
• ancestor of: Mousso KoroniMousso Koroni, the chaotic first woman of the quaternity, proceeds from Pemba and already registers him as origin; mirrored as ancestor-of.Dieterlen, G., 'Essai sur la religion bambara' (1951) (secondary)
• ancestor of: NdomadyiriNdomadyiri, the archetypal smith-healer of the quaternity, proceeds from the creator Pemba and already registers him as origin; mirrored as ancestor-of.Dieterlen, G., 'Essai sur la religion bambara' (1951); Zahan, D., 'The Religion, Spirituality, and Thought of Traditional Africa' (1979) (secondary)

Sources

• existence: Dieterlen, Essai sur la religion bambara (Paris, 1951) (secondary)