There are Many Kongo Worlds: Particularities of Magico-Religious Beliefs Among the Vili and Yombe of Congo-Brazzaville

Abstract

The article analyses the distinctiveness of magico-religious practices in the north-western sector of the vast Kongo cultural complex, namely among the peoples who refer to themselves as Vili and Yombe. On the basis of fieldwork and a critical examination of the sources, the article points out that such widely distributed terms of proto-Bantu origin as nkisi cannot be covered by a single or even a multi-stranded definition; the variants, ranging from spirit to object, express local and time-specific beliefs. An approach that seeks a single Kongo universe is an ethnographic, historical and linguistic misreading that obscures existing regional concepts while possibly overlooking the importance of other notions. The article focuses on sorting out the basic ethnographic data relating to the beliefs current in the region and reveals not only long-standing aspects, some of them common to the wider Kongo world, but also those that have developed more recently in this particular coastal zone where different peoples trade and interact.

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“…In villages in the Mayombe Forest, people also resort to such figures in search of money and need, in exchange, to sacrifice members of their family. Nkíisi is a proto-Nbantu term widely discussed among Africanists and very often understood as an object with spiritual force or a charm, For a critique of the literature on Kongo culture and the notion of nkisi, see Hersak 2001. Over the course of fieldwork, this term appeared in reference to a power (force, potency) imbued in an object or animal, associated with both the ngaánga and the ancestors.…”

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