Maa Ngala
Maa Ngala, also rendered Mangala, is the formless supreme creator of the cosmological tradition the Maninka share with their Mande neighbours. In the creation narrative recorded by Dieterlen he forms a primordial seed within an egg-shaped matrix, from which emerge the paired ordering powers and, in time, the first human ancestors. Having set the world in motion, Maa Ngala remains distant from human affairs and receives little direct cult; the everyday religious life of shrines, sacrifice, and initiation is directed instead toward intermediary divinities, ancestral spirits, and the powers governing the bush. Sources differ on how sharply this high creator is distinguished from the demiurge Faro, and the concept overlaps closely with the neighbouring Bamana cosmology, of which the Maninka corpus is a related rather than identical branch.
Domains
- creation
- cosmic order
Powers
- brings the ordered world into being
- delegates the governance of the world to lesser powers
Epithets
- Maa Ngala — the Lord God / the MasterAsante, Molefi Kete & Ama Mazama, eds. (2009). Encyclopedia of African Religion. Thousand Oaks: SAGE. (secondary)
Relations
- child: FaroFaro is the demiurge whom Maa Ngala brings forth and dispatches into the world.Dieterlen, Germaine (1957). 'The Mande Creation Myth.' Africa 27(2): 124-138. (secondary)
Sources
- Maa Ngala (Mangala) is the remote supreme creator of the Mande cosmological world shared by the Maninka.: Dieterlen, Germaine (1957). 'The Mande Creation Myth.' Africa 27(2): 124-138. (secondary); Griaule, Marcel & Germaine Dieterlen (1986 [1965]). The Pale Fox. Chino Valley: Continuum Foundation. (secondary)