Kalûnga and the two worlds The
Bakongo people believe that "The world in its beginning was empty; it was an
mbûngi, an empty thing, a cavity, without visible life." Mbûngi (also called
mwasi and
mpampa) was symbolized as a circle of emptiness. The creator god
Nzambi, along with his female counterpart called
Nzambici, is believed to have created a spark of fire, called
kalûnga, and summoned it inside of mbûngi. Kalûnga grew and became a great force of energy inside of mbûngi, creating a mass of fusion. When the mass grew too hot, the heated force caused the mass to break apart and hurl projectiles outside of mbûngi. Those projectiles became individual masses that scattered about, and when the fires cooled, planets were created. The line became a river, carrying people between the worlds at birth and death, and mbûngi became the rotating sun. At death, or the sun's setting, the process repeats, and a person is reborn. In
Kikongo, the word
Kalûnga means "threshold between worlds." Accordingly, the Kalûnga line acts as a barrier between the two worlds and leads all Bakongo people, or
muntu, through the four stages of life. Together, the Kalûnga line and the mbûngi circle form part of the Kongo cosmogram, also called the
Yowa or
Dikenga Cross.
Four moments of the sun in
Savannah, GA, suggesting traditional Bakongo spiritual practices were infused with Christianity in the United States.|235x235px According to
Molefi Kete Asante, "Another important characteristic of Bakongo cosmology is the
sun and its movements. The rising, peaking, setting, and absence of the sun provide the essential pattern for Bakongo religious culture. These 'four moments of the sun' equate with the four stages of life: conception, birth, maturity, and death. For the Bakongo, everything transitions through these stages: planets, plants, animals, people, societies, and even ideas. This vital cycle is depicted by a circle with a cross inside. In this cosmogram or dikenga, the meeting point of the two lines of the cross is the most powerful point and where the person stands." The Kingdom of Ndongo preferred the name
xibila (pl.
bibila). The Kongo people also believed that some ancestors inhabited the forest after death and maintained their spiritual presence in their descendants' lives. These particular ancestors were believed to have died, traveled to Mpémba, and then were reborn as bisimbi. Thus,
The Great Mfinda existed as a meeting point between the physical world and the spiritual world. The living saw it as a source of physical nourishment through hunting and spiritual nourishment through contact with the ancestors. One expert on Kongo religion, Dr. Fu-Kiau, even described some precolonial Kongo cosmograms with mfinda as a bridge between the two worlds. == See also ==