Emitai
Emitai is the supreme creator of the Jola (Diola), a sky god whose name is built from emit, a word that denotes both the sky and the year. Remote and rarely petitioned in his own name, Emitai is nonetheless the origin of all life, the giver of rain, and the source of human knowledge of rice-farming, ironworking, and healing. The deity governs the community not through a shrine of its own but through the ukine (singular boekine), the many spirit-shrines that Diola tradition holds to be Emitai's first offspring and that act as intermediaries between people and the high god. Emitai also speaks directly to chosen individuals through dreams and visions, a channel of revelation that runs from the pre-colonial male prophets to the female prophets of the twentieth century. Sources differ on whether Emitai is gendered; the deity is most often invoked without a fixed sex, transcending the human categories of male and female.
Children
Domains
- creation
- sky and rain
- agricultural knowledge
Powers
- creates the world and its inhabitants
- grants and withholds rain
- reveals commands through chosen prophets
- creates the spirit-shrines that mediate the deity
Epithets
- Ata-Emit — the one of the sky; master of the universeEncyclopedia.com, 'Diola Religion' (drawing on Robert M. Baum): the supreme being is variously known as Ata-Emit or Emitai (secondary)
Relations
- child: HupilaRobert M. Baum, Shrines of the Slave Trade (Oxford University Press, 1999): the ukine are described as the first offspring of Emitai (secondary)
- child: EhugnaRobert M. Baum, Shrines of the Slave Trade (Oxford University Press, 1999): the ukine are described as the first offspring of Emitai (secondary)
Sources
- Emitai (also Ata-Emit, Emit) is the single supreme creator of Diola religion, associated with sky, rain, storm, and the agricultural year, and the ultimate source of the spirit-shrines.: Robert M. Baum, Shrines of the Slave Trade: Diola Religion and Society in Precolonial Senegambia (Oxford University Press, 1999) (secondary); Louis-Vincent Thomas, Les Diola: essai d'analyse fonctionnelle sur une population de Basse-Casamance (Dakar: IFAN, 1959) (secondary)
- The name derives from emit, 'sky' and 'year'.: Molefi Kete Asante and Ama Mazama, eds., Encyclopedia of African Religion (Sage, 2009), s.v. 'Diola' (secondary)