Kalunga, creative power of the waters and the realm of the dead
Chokwe · deity · Chokwe traditional religion; continuing · Recorded classification
Kalunga is a pan-Central-African Bantu conception that among the Chokwe names the supreme creative power in its connection to the great waters and to the realm of the dead. Ethnographers report that the Chokwe believe in a remote supreme being responsible for creation called Kalunga and/or Nzambi; the name Kalunga emphasises the abyssal waters and the threshold between the living and the dead, across which the souls of the deceased pass. Like Nzambi, Kalunga is not the object of a direct sacrificial cult but is approached through the ancestral mahamba. The same term recurs among neighbouring and related peoples (Mbundu, Kongo, Lunda, Ovimbundu) with the layered senses of sea, death and the otherworld.
Domains
- death and the underworld
- waters and the sea
Powers
- to hold the realm of the dead beyond the waters
- to embody the creative power that originates the world
Epithets
- KalûngaMarie-Louise Bastin, La sculpture Tshokwe (Meudon: Alain et Françoise Chaffin, 1982). (secondary)
Relations
- ally: Nzambi, the remote supreme creatorKalunga and Nzambi are the two names under which the Chokwe address the one remote creator; Kalunga foregrounds the same power as it dwells in the waters and governs the land of the dead.Merran McCulloch, The Southern Lunda and Related Peoples, Ethnographic Survey of Africa (London: International African Institute, 1951). (secondary)
- subordinate to: Nzambi, the remote supreme creatorWhere the two names are distinguished rather than merged, Kalunga is understood as the watery, death-bound manifestation of the supreme creator Nzambi.Jan Vansina, Paths in the Rainforests: Toward a History of Political Tradition in Equatorial Africa (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1990). (secondary)
Sources
- Kalunga is the Chokwe name for the supreme creative power as it is bound to the great waters and the realm of the dead, used interchangeably with or as an aspect of Nzambi.: Merran McCulloch, The Southern Lunda and Related Peoples (Northern Rhodesia, Belgian Congo, Angola), Ethnographic Survey of Africa, West Central Africa Part I (London: International African Institute, 1951). (secondary); Boris Wastiau, Chokwe, Visions of Africa series (Milan: 5 Continents Editions, 2006). (secondary)