Kalunga

Kalunga is the name by which the Pende invoke God in his relation to death. The term belongs to a deep Bantu stratum: across Central Africa kalunga evokes the sea, the great deep, the boundary between the world of the living and that of the dead. Among the Pende, Kalunga is both this divine name and the name of the realm to which the dead pass, so that the word names at once the lord of death and death's own country. It stands alongside Nzambi (God as creator) and Mawese (God as giver of custom) as one of the three names of a single supreme being.

Domains

• death and the underworld
• abode of the dead

Powers

• to receive the souls of the dead into the abode of the dead

Relations

• co identified aspect: NzambiKalunga and Nzambi are two of the three names under which the Pende speak of the one God; Nzambi names him as supreme creator.'Pende,' in Encyclopedia of World Cultures, Vol. IX: Africa and the Middle East, ed. John Middleton and Amal Rassam (New York: G.K. Hall / Macmillan, 1995). (secondary)
• co identified aspect: MaweseThe Western Pende say the dead depart for Mawese, while Kalunga also names the abode of the dead; the two names of God thus converge on the destiny of the deceased.'Pende,' in Encyclopedia of World Cultures, Vol. IX: Africa and the Middle East, ed. John Middleton and Amal Rassam (New York: G.K. Hall / Macmillan, 1995). (secondary)

Sources

• Kalunga is one of the three Pende names for the one God, designating him in his association with death, and is simultaneously the name of the abode of the dead.: 'Pende,' in Encyclopedia of World Cultures, Vol. IX: Africa and the Middle East, ed. John Middleton and Amal Rassam (New York: G.K. Hall / Macmillan, 1995). (secondary); Léon de Sousberghe, L'art pende (Brussels: Académie Royale de Belgique, Classe des Beaux-Arts, 1959). (secondary)