Tradition · African & Diaspora
Kongo Religion
The religion of the Kingdom of Kongo, whose cosmogram and spirit objects shaped Palo and other Atlantic faiths.
c. 1300 CE → · Central Africa · African & Diaspora
Kongo religion pictured the cosmos as a cross within a circle, the living world above water and the land of the dead below. Ritual specialists made minkisi, objects charged with spirit power. After Christianity arrived in 1491 the two blended, and Kongo ideas crossed the Atlantic into Palo Mayombe, Candomblé and Vodou.
Key figures
- Nzambi a Mpungu, the creator
- Bisimbi, nature spirits
- Banganga, ritual healers
Texts
- Oral tradition
- Minkisi (sacred objects)
Beliefs
- The world of the living and the dead are mirrored across water
- Minkisi hold spirit power
- Ancestors guide their descendants
Rituals
- Making and empowering minkisi
- Healing by banganga
- Rites at the crossroads
Grew from
Connections in the atlas
- Simon Kimbangu
- The word zombie
- The Bantu expansion
- Capuchin reports on Kimpa Vita
- Vèvè
- The Bantu-speaking peoples
- ▶ How Christianity spread
- Kimpa Vita
- The Middle Passage