The Ancestral Shades (Grandfather-Spirits)
The cult of the dead carries more of the everyday weight of Nuba religion than the distant creator does. The lineage forebears, addressed collectively through the kinship idiom of 'grandfather', remain interested members of the descent group: honoured with libations of beer, with grain and with blood at household and lineage shrines, they protect their living kin, uphold custom, and punish neglect or wrongdoing with sickness and misfortune. Affliction traced by the diviner to an offended ancestor is set right by sacrifice at the shrine. The ancestral dead are not sharply separated from the other spirit-powers: the being that possesses the kujur is frequently an ancestor, and the line between forebear, spirit, and the more diffuse powers of place is drawn differently from one hill community to the next.
Domains
- ancestors
- kinship
Powers
- guards the living lineage
- sends sickness when neglected
- receives libation and offering
Relations
- ally: The Green-Stone Spirit (Kujur's Tutelary Power)The spirit possessing the diviner is often identified with an ancestral shade.S. F. Nadel, The Nuba (Oxford University Press, 1947) (secondary)
Sources
- Ancestral spirits, addressed under the idiom of 'grandfathers', are venerated at household and lineage shrines with libation and offering, and send sickness when neglected.: S. F. Nadel, The Nuba (Oxford University Press, 1947) (secondary); Gerd Baumann, National Integration and Local Integrity (Clarendon Press, 1987) (secondary)