Tilo is the Tsonga word for the sky and, by extension, the diffuse celestial power that early ethnographers took to be the nearest thing in Thonga religion to a supreme being. Junod described Tilo as at once a place and an agent: it is the physical heaven, but it also acts, striking people dead with lightning, brewing the great storms, and sending the convulsive seizures of small children that are named the diseases of Heaven (mavabyi ya tilo). Twins and their mothers are held to belong to Heaven, and in drought communities addressed Tilo directly for rain. Junod concluded that Tilo was only partly personified, a mysterious force rather than a creator god possessing myths of his own, and later students of Southern Bantu religion have continued to debate whether Tilo represents an indigenous sky-divinity or an impersonal numinous power. Worship centred on averting the sky's violence: specialist doctors of Heaven treated lightning-struck homesteads and worked to still hailstorms.