Mahungu
Mahungu is the primordial androgyne of Kongo cosmogony. In the account given by the Kongo scholar Bunseki Fu-Kiau, Mahungu is 'the person of doubled being', at once male and female, whose separation into two persons of different sexes stands at the origin of human society and of the longing of man and woman for reunion. John Janzen documents Mahungu as an androgynous culture hero in the mythology of the Lemba society, the great healing and trading association of the region between the Loango coast and Malebo Pool, whose rituals consecrating husband and wife dramatize the recovery of Mahungu's lost completeness. As a being brought forth directly by the supreme god and standing between the divine and the human, Mahungu is classed here as a semi-divine figure of the primordial age.
Parentage
- parent: Nzambi a Mpungu
Domains
- human origins
- healing
Powers
- to unite the male and the female in one complete body
- to restore lost wholeness to the married couples consecrated in Lemba
Sources
- Mahungu is the primordial androgynous being of Kongo cosmogony, made by Nzambi and later divided into man and woman, and invoked as a culture hero in the Lemba healing society.: A. Fu-Kiau kia Bunseki-Lumanisa, N'kongo ye nza yakun'zungidila / Le mukongo et le monde qui l'entourait: Cosmogonie-Kongo (Office National de la Recherche et de Développement, Kinshasa, 1969) (secondary); John M. Janzen, Lemba, 1650-1930: A Drum of Affliction in Africa and the New World (Garland, 1982) (secondary)