Funza

Funza is the origin-point of the nkisi complex at the heart of Kongo religion. In the primary text written by the Kongo catechist Nsemi Isaki and published by Janzen and MacGaffey, the first nkisi, called Funza, originated in God and came with a great number of minkisi which it distributed throughout the country, each governing its particular domain. Laman's ethnography and MacGaffey's later work connect Funza with the waters and with the birth of twins and of physically unusual children, who are regarded as sacred and akin to the simbi spirits. Some texts describe Funza as a female water spirit, while others treat Funza simply as the first of the minkisi issuing directly from Nzambi; the sex of the figure is therefore left undetermined here. Funza is distinct from the supreme creator, standing to Nzambi a Mpungu as a commissioned distributor of divine powers.

Domains

• ritual medicines
• twins
• waters

Powers

• to distribute the minkisi, each with power over its own domain
• to send twin births and shape unusual children in the womb

Relations

• subordinate to: Nzambi a Mpungu

Sources

• John M. Janzen and Wyatt MacGaffey, An Anthology of Kongo Religion: Primary Texts from Lower Zaïre (University of Kansas Publications in Anthropology 5, 1974)
• Wyatt MacGaffey, "Twins, Simbi Spirits, and Lwas in Kongo and Haiti," in Linda M. Heywood (ed.), Central Africans and Cultural Transformations in the American Diaspora (Cambridge University Press, 2002)
• Karl Edward Laman, The Kongo III (Studia Ethnographica Upsaliensia XII, 1962)