Owo
Owo is the Idoma personal guardian spirit: the divine portion that the Supreme Being Owoicho grants to every person at birth. It accompanies and protects the individual throughout life and embodies that person's allotted destiny. When the person dies, the Owo is said to go back to Owoicho and to become an intermediary through whom the deceased may still address the Supreme God, an idea that links the doctrine of the personal spirit to the wider Idoma system of ancestral mediation. In everyday Idoma speech the same word, owo, is used both for this personal spirit and for rain, and Owo is accordingly numbered among the beneficent powers that grant rainfall and life. The concept is broadly comparable to the Igbo chi and the Yoruba ori, though it retains its own distinct place in Idoma theology alongside the earth power Aje and the ancestral collectivity Alekwu.
Domains
- personal guardian spirit
- destiny and fate
- rain and weather
Powers
- to guard and protect the person to whom it is given
- to carry a person's appeals to the Supreme God after death
- to send or withhold rain
Relations
- subordinate to: OwoichoThe Owo is given to each person by the Supreme Being Owoicho and returns to him at death, so it is theologically dependent upon and subordinate to Owoicho.Allam, Onche Solomon. 'Unmasking "Alekwu" Religious Experience among the Idoma People-Group of Nigeria.' GNOSI: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Human Theory and Praxis 1, no. 2 (2018): 118-130. (secondary)
Sources
- Owo is the God-given personal guardian spirit or soul that the Idoma believe Owoicho apportions to every individual, associated also with destiny and with rain, which returns to the Supreme God at death to intercede for the deceased.: Armstrong, Robert G. 'The Idoma-speaking Peoples.' In Daryll Forde (ed.), Peoples of the Niger-Benue Confluence, pp. 77-138. London: International African Institute / Oxford University Press, 1955. (secondary); Anizoba, Emmanuel C., and Edache Monday Johnson. 'Patterns of Traditional Religious and Cultural Practices of the Idoma People of Nigeria.' Filosofia Theoretica: Journal of African Philosophy, Culture and Religions 10, no. 2 (2021): 155-172. (secondary); Allam, Onche Solomon. 'Unmasking "Alekwu" Religious Experience among the Idoma People-Group of Nigeria.' GNOSI: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Human Theory and Praxis 1, no. 2 (2018): 118-130. (secondary)