Nyamwezi · deity · Nyamwezi traditional religion; continuing · deity
Likube, 'the High One', is the name under which the Nyamwezi of the Tabora/Unyamwezi region of central-western Tanzania address their single Supreme Being. He is a sky-and-cosmos god conceived as exalted and distant; everyday religious life turns instead on the ancestral spirits (masamva), who mediate between people and the High God. Before an offering of a sheep or goat is presented to the ancestors, the help of Likube is first invoked. In the ethnographic record the same deity also bears the names Limatunda (the Creator), Limi (the Sun) and Liwelelo (the firmament), each foregrounding a different aspect of the one High God.
Domains
supreme sky deity
ritual invocation
Powers
to preside over the whole cosmos as the remote High God
R. G. Abrahams, The Peoples of Greater Unyamwezi, Tanzania (Nyamwezi, Sukuma, Sumbwa, Kimbu, Konongo). Ethnographic Survey of Africa, East Central Africa Part XVII. London: International African Institute, 1967.
Fr. Bösch, Les Banyamwezi, peuple de l'Afrique orientale. Bibliothèque-Anthropos III/2. Münster: Aschendorff, 1930.