Mangwe
Ila · numen · Ila traditional religion; continuing · Recorded classification
Mangwe is an Ila spirit of the waters, whose name is glossed 'the flooder'. The figure belongs to a people settled on the Kafue flats, a great plain that fills and empties with the annual inundation, so that a personified power of the rising waters sits naturally among their spirit-beings. The record of Mangwe is slight, the name and its gloss standing as the chief attestation, but it marks the Ila recognition of the flood as an animate force alongside the rain that they named for Leza himself.
Domains
- water
- flood
Powers
- swells and floods the waters over the land
Epithets
- Mangwe — the FlooderMalcolm J. McVeigh, God in Africa (1974), p. 14 (secondary)
Sources
- Mangwe is an Ila water-spirit, glossed 'the flooder', associated with the swelling of the waters.: Malcolm J. McVeigh, God in Africa: Conceptions of God in African Traditional Religion and Christianity (1974), p. 14 (secondary)