the Creator of Life and Death
Ovambo · deity · primordial · Recorded classification
High-god / creator (deity) of the Ovambo of northern Namibia and southern Angola. The same name Kalunga/Karunga is shared into Herero (as Ndjambi Karunga) and along the Atlantic Bantu coast; its semantic range covers creator, death and the abyss.
Children
Domains
- creation of living things
- death
Powers
- create all life and recall it in death
- sends the rain and provides for the created world
Epithets
- Kalunga The supreme creator and lord of the dead of the OvamboOvambo (Aawambo) ethnography (secondary)
Relations
- ally: the Sky MessengerReciprocal of ovambo_musisi.ally — Intermediary divinity standing between the withdrawn creator Kalunga and humankind, bearing prayers upward.Carlos Estermann, The Ethnography of Southwestern Angola, vol. I (1976) (secondary)
Sources
- Kalunga is the supreme creator-god of the Ovambo (Ndonga, Kwanyama), associated also with death and the unseen; the term unites the senses of God, death and the unknown.: Tönjes, H. (1911). Ovamboland: Land, Leute, Mission. Berlin: Martin Warneck. (secondary); Aarni, T. (1982). The Kalunga Concept in Ovambo Religion from 1870 Onwards. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell. (secondary)