Bantu religion
[4][5] Generally, these traditions are oral rather than scriptural and passed down from one generation to another through folk tales, songs, and festivals,[6][7] include belief in an amount of higher and lower gods, sometimes including a supreme creator or force, belief in spirits, veneration of the dead, use of magic and traditional African medicine.
While some religions adopted a pantheistic worldview, most follow a polytheistic system with various gods, spirits and other supernatural beings.
[8] Traditional African religions also have elements of fetishism, shamanism and veneration of relics, and have a high complexity, comparable to Japanese Shinto or Hinduism.
Native African religions are centered on ancestor veneration, the belief in a spirit world, supernatural beings and free will (unlike the later developed concept of faith).
Ancestors can offer advice and bestow good fortune and honor to their living dependents, but they can also make demands, such as insisting that their shrines be properly maintained and propitiated.
Monotheism does not reflect the multiplicity of ways that the traditional African spirituality has conceived of deities, gods, and spirit beings.
Most names of various deities include the Bantu particle ng (nk); some examples are Nyambe (Bantu), Nzambi Mpungu (Bakongo), Nzambici (Bakongo), Mulungu (Wayao, Chewa, Akamba, Embu and others), uThixo or Qamata (AmaXhosa), Unkulunkulu (AmaZulu), Gulu (Baganda), Muluku (Makua), Mungu (WaSwahili), Mukuru (OvaHerero and OvaHimba), Kibumba (Basoga), Imana (Banyarwanda and Barundi), Modimo (Basotho and Batswana), Ruhanga (Banyoro and Banyankole), and Ngai (Akamba, Agikuyu, Aembu and other groups),(Umbundu),(Kioko, Bajokwe, Chibokwe, Kibokwe, Ciokwe, Cokwe or Badjok), (the other groups are Kavango people, also known as the vaKavango or haKavango, are a Bantu ethnic group which is divided into five kingdoms (Kwangali, Mbunza, Shambyu, Gciriku and Mbukushu).
[citation needed] Among the Sawa ethnic groups of Cameroon, particularly the Duala, Bakweri, Malimba, Batanga, Bakoko, Oroko people and related Sawa peoples, jengu (plural miengu) is a water spirit, among the Bakweri, the name is liengu (plural: maengu).
The rising, peaking, setting, and absence of the sun provide the essential pattern for Bakongo religious culture.
When it grew too large, Kalûnga became a great force of energy and unleashed heated elements across space, forming the universe with the sun, stars, planets, etc.
Tukula is the time of maturity, where a muntu learns to master all aspects of life from spirituality to purpose to personality.
The last time is Luvemba, when a muntu physically dies and enters the spiritual world, or Nu Mpémba, with the ancestors, or bakulu.
[4] In some Bantu myths, the first man was born from a plant: for example, he came from phragmites reeds in, and from a "Omumborombonga" tree in Herero mythology.
[citation needed] Traditional African religions generally believe in an afterlife seen in the way most of the tribes conduct their burials.
Practices like burying the dead at midday so they could make it to the other world before night were common but have been left majorly to the rural areas.
[citation needed] Ancestors were believed to be in direct communication with the gods and sacrifices were made to them to plead on behalf of the people.
As a consequence, kings and heroes, who are celebrated by oral tradition, live for centuries, while the spirit of common people may vanish in the turn of a few generations.
[citation needed] The dead communicate with the living in different ways; for example, they talk to them in dreams, send omens, or can be addressed by specially gifted seers.
[citation needed] The living, through clairvoyants and seers, may address the dead in order to receive advice or ask for favours.
Many Bantu cultures have myths and legends about living people that somehow manages to enter the world of the dead (kuzimu in Swahili); this may happen by chance to someone who is trying to hunt a porcupine or other animal inside its burrow.
[citation needed] One finds here and there traces of belief in a race of Heaven dwellers distinct from ordinary mortals.
A specific type of monsters is that of raised, mutilated dead (bearing a surface resemblance to western culture's zombies) such as the umkovu of Zulu tradition and the ndondocha of the Yao people.
[citation needed] The traditional culture of most Bantu peoples includes several fables about personified, talking animals.
