Teny

Teny is one of the individually named free-divinities of the air (kuth nhial, spirits of the above) recognized by the Nuer of the southern Sudan alongside Deng, Wiu, Mani, Diu and Rang. It is best documented among the western Nuer, where it seized the prophet Macot; Douglas Johnson records that Macot joined a raid in 1883, together with Wol Athiang, in which Dinka attacked the Egyptian garrison at Rumbek. Oral histories collected by Jedeit Riek and Naomi Pendle relate that after Macot's death Teny passed to his brother Puot. As with all Nuer divinities of the air, Teny is understood as one of the 'children of God', a partial manifestation of the one Spirit, Kwoth, which descends to seize particular persons and speak through them.

Parentage

• parent: Kwoth

Domains

• sky
• prophecy

Powers

• to seize men and women and make them prophets
• to pass from a deceased prophet to a kinsman

Relations

• subordinate to: KwothLike the other spirits of the air, Teny is counted among the gaat kwoth, the 'children of God', and is a lesser manifestation of Kwoth rather than an independent power.E. E. Evans-Pritchard, 'The Nuer Conception of Spirit in Its Relation to the Social Order', American Anthropologist 55(2), 1953, pp. 201-214. (secondary); Douglas H. Johnson, Nuer Prophets: A History of Prophecy from the Upper Nile in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994. (secondary)

Sources

• Teny is a free-divinity of the air among the western Nuer which seized the nineteenth-century prophet Macot and afterwards passed to his brother Puot.: Douglas H. Johnson, Nuer Prophets: A History of Prophecy from the Upper Nile in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994. (secondary); Jedeit J. Riek and Naomi R. Pendle, Speaking Truth to Power in South Sudan: Oral Histories of the Nuer Prophets, Rift Valley Institute, 2019. (secondary)