the Creator who Ordered the World
Entered as a deity (the Baule creator-god of the firmament, 'Anangaman Nyamien'). IMPORTANT INTERPRETIVE NOTE: the Baule sources treat 'Anangaman' and 'Nyamien' both as a single compound name for the one supreme creator AND (in the ethnographic/scholarly framing after Guerry and Étienne) as a creator-demiurge aspect set just below the remote, intangible high god Nyamien (baule_nyamien) — hence the directed subordinate-to relation rather than an identity merge. The Baule are an Akan people, so the creator is cognate with the wider Akan high god Nyame. 'blolo' (otherworld), 'asye usu' (bush spirits) and 'amwin/amuin' (power-beings) are CLASSES of spirits, not individuated figures, and are not authored. Principal scholarship: Guerry (1975); Vogel (1997); Étienne.
Domains
- creation and ordering of the world
- supreme creator
- souls of the dead
Powers
- to create and set in order the world and its three tiers
- to receive the souls of the dead returning from the world
Relations
- subordinate to: Sky GodDirected (non-symmetric): Anangaman is bound to Nyamien — in the compound divine name 'Anangaman Nyamien' the two may be read as one supreme creator, and in the scholarly framing Anangaman is the creator-demiurge who ordered the world below the remote high god. No reciprocal required.Rezo-Ivoire.net, 'Croyance en pays Baoulé' (the supreme creator of the firmament is named 'Anangaman Nyamien'; in the ethnographic framing, Anangaman is the active creator-aspect set beneath the remote, intangible high god Nyamien); Vincent Guerry, Life with the Baoulé (1975) (secondary)
Sources
- Anangaman (Anangaman Nyamien), in Baule religion, is the named creator-god of the firmament — the active creator who ordered the three-tiered Baule cosmos and at whose head stands the cycle by which souls issue from and return to the otherworld (blolo); the formula 'Anangaman Boli-Alliè' is glossed 'God the creator of the universe'. He is bound to the remote supreme sky-god Nyamien, with whom he is sometimes identified as a single compound name and sometimes distinguished as the creator-demiurge below him.: Vincent Guerry, Life with the Baoulé (Three Continents Press, 1975; orig. La Vie quotidienne dans un village Baoulé, Abidjan: INADES, 1972) (secondary); Susan Mullin Vogel, Baule: African Art, Western Eyes (Yale University Press / Yale University Art Gallery, 1997) (secondary); Rezo-Ivoire.net, 'Croyance en pays Baoulé' and 'Les valeurs culturelles ancestrales et les interpénétrations culturelles chez les Baoulé' (Anangaman Nyamien, god of the firmament; 'Anangaman Boli-Alliè' = 'Dieu le créateur de l'univers') (secondary); baoule.ci, 'Étude approfondie sur les funérailles et la mort en pays Baoulé de Côte d'Ivoire' (Baoulé eschatology: souls come from and return to the otherworld blôlô; immortality of the soul) (secondary)