Kongo religion (Kikongo: Bukongo) encompasses the traditional beliefs of the Bakongo people. Due to the highly centralized position of the Kingdom of Kongo, its leaders were able to influence much of the traditional religious practices across the Congo Basin. As a result, many other ethnic groups and kingdoms in West-Central Africa, like the Chokwe and Mbundu, adopted elements of Bakongo spirituality.
The spirituality is based on a complex animistic system and a pantheon of spirits. The principle Creator God of the world is Nzambi Mpungu, the sovereign master, and his female counterpart, Nzambici. While Nzambi Mpungu, who gave birth to the universe and the spirits who inhabit it, is vital to the spirituality, ancestor veneration is the core principle.
The Bakongo cosmos is split between two worlds: the top half representing the physical world, or ku nseke and the bottom half representing the spiritual world, or ku mpèmba. Expert healers, known as Banganga, undergo extensive training to commune with the ancestors in the spiritual realms and seek guidance from them.
General beliefs
The religion of the Kongo is deeply complex. According to historians John K. Thornton and Linda M. Heywood, "Central Africans have probably never agreed among themselves as to what their cosmology is in detail, a product of what I called the process of continuous revelation and precarious priesthood..." The Kongo people had diverse views, with traditional religious thought best developed in the northern Kikongo-speaking area. There is plenty of description about Kongo religious ideas in the Christian missionary and colonial era records, but as Thornton states, "these are written with a hostile bias and their reliability is problematic".
Generally, these traditions are oral rather than scriptural and passed down from one generation to another through folk tales, songs, and festivals, 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. Kongo mythology, next to other nearby traditional religions can be described as animistic with various polytheistic and pantheistic aspects. This includes the worship of tutelary deities, nature worship, ancestor worship and the belief in an afterlife. While some religions adopted a pantheistic worldview, most follow a polytheistic system with various gods, spirits and other supernatural beings.
Creation and cosmology
According to researcher 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 Yowa or dikenga cosmogram, the meeting point of the two lines of the cross is the most powerful point and where the person stands."
Creation of the universe
The Bakongo believe that in the beginning, there was only a circular void, called mbûngi, with no life. The Great Spirit, Nzambi Mpungu, summoned a spark of fire, or Kalûnga, that grew until it filled the mbûngi. 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. Because of this, kalûnga is seen as the origin of life and a force of motion. The Bakongo believe that life requires constant change and perpetual motion. Nzambi Mpungu is also referred to as Kalûnga, the God of change. Similarities between the Bakongo belief of Kalûnga and the Big Bang Theory have been studied.