Ibon

Ibon is the primal rainmaker of the Lotuko, the first mortal to hold command over the rain. Tradition tells that at the end of his life he did not die as ordinary people do but dissolved and fell to the earth as water, his body returning to the land as rain. The stones he left behind became the rain-cult's most sacred objects, the implements through which the hereditary rain-chiefs continue to summon and restrain the storms. His story anchors the Lotuko institution of rainmaking, a hereditary ritual office of great political weight among the Otuho and their neighbours, and frames the human rainmaker as heir to a founder who himself became the rain.

Domains

• rain making

Powers

• calls down the rain
• falls to earth as water

Sources

• Ibon is remembered in Lotuko tradition as the first rainmaker, the founder of the rain-cult on which the community's later rain-chiefs depend.: Lynch, Patricia Ann, and Jeremy Roberts. African Mythology A to Z. 2nd ed. New York: Chelsea House, 2010. (secondary); Simonse, Simon. Kings of Disaster. Leiden: Brill, 1992 (Lotuho and Lokoya rain institutions). (secondary)
• At his death Ibon fell to earth as rain and left behind the rain-stones that became the sacred instruments of the rainmakers.: Lynch, Patricia Ann, and Jeremy Roberts. African Mythology A to Z. 2nd ed. New York: Chelsea House, 2010. (secondary)