Kalunga
Kalunga is the great cosmic ocean of Kongo thought, pictured in the dikenga cosmogram as the horizontal line of water dividing the mountain of the living (nseke) from the inverted mountain of the dead (mpemba). Bunseki Fu-Kiau describes Kalunga as the total force that filled the primal emptiness and as the door and wall between the two worlds, while Wyatt MacGaffey documents the belief that the sun circles through both realms across this water, so that day among the living is night among the dead. Robert Farris Thompson traced the same idea into the African diaspora, where the 'Kalunga line' remained a key image of the boundary of the spirit world. Kalunga is a personified cosmic presence rather than an anthropomorphic god, and no genealogy is recorded for it.
Domains
- sea
- death
Powers
- to divide the world of the living from the world of the dead
- to fill the universe as the primal ocean of vital force
Sources
- K. Kia Bunseki Fu-Kiau, African Cosmology of the Bântu-Kôngo: Principles of Life and Living (Athelia Henrietta Press, 2001)
- Wyatt MacGaffey, Religion and Society in Central Africa: The BaKongo of Lower Zaire (University of Chicago Press, 1986)
- Robert Farris Thompson, Flash of the Spirit: African and Afro-American Art and Philosophy (Random House, 1983)