The Rain (Nuba Rain-Cult Numen)
In an economy of hoe-cultivation on rocky hillsides, rain is the decisive good, and the rites surrounding it are the most elaborate in Nuba religion. The rain is treated as a power that can be angered, coaxed, and controlled: its failure spells famine, and blame falls on both offended spirits and the human specialist charged with securing it. Among the Nyimang and comparable communities that specialist is a hereditary rain-chief who guards sacred rain-stones and other medicines and performs the seasonal rites at fixed places. Whether the rain is an independent numen or merely the working of the distant sky god is not consistently resolved in the sources; in practice it is addressed as a power in its own right, and its mastery is also claimed by the possessed diviner.
Domains
- rain
- agriculture
Powers
- brings and withholds the rains
- answers the rain-sacrifice
Relations
- ally: Supreme Sky-Being (Nuba High God)In some communities the rain is treated as the direct gift or agency of the sky god.S. F. Nadel, The Nuba (Oxford University Press, 1947) (secondary)
- ally: The Green-Stone Spirit (Kujur's Tutelary Power)Rain-making is among the powers the possessing spirit exercises through the diviner.S. F. Nadel, A Study of Shamanism in the Nuba Mountains, JRAI 76 (1946) (secondary)
Sources
- Rain, on which the hill agriculture wholly depends, is the focus of the most developed Nuba cults; in several groups hereditary rain-chiefs and sacred rain-stones mediate it.: S. F. Nadel, The Nuba (Oxford University Press, 1947) (secondary); R. C. Stevenson, The Nuba People of Kordofan Province (University of Khartoum, 1984) (secondary)
- Failure of the rains is ascribed to spiritual anger or to the fault of the rain-maker and is answered with sacrifice.: S. F. Nadel, The Nuba (Oxford University Press, 1947) (secondary)