Ancient Civilizations in Credo: African Religions

From The Hutchinson Unabridged Encyclopedia
Primordial god of the Ngombe people in the Democratic Republic of Congo (formerly Zaire), essence of the spirit in all humanity.

From The Oxford Companion to Children's Literature
Anansi ('spider'); A trickster from African and West Indian mythology.

From The Ashgate Encyclopedia of Literary and Cinematic Monsters
Ogun and Eshu are part of the Yoruba pantheon of West Africa, appearing also in Vodoun traditions in the Caribbean. They are demonic insofar as they represent dangerous, even evil, sides of divinity, or what can happen when an entity is imbued with both divine power and human fallibility.

From The American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language
Any of various spirits in West African and especially Yoruban religious belief that can interact directly with human beings, often ritually invoked to influence human affairs or communicate messages from the spirit world.

From The Hutchinson Unabridged Encyclopedia
Unkulunkulu ('ancient of days'), in the traditional beliefs of the Zulus of southern Africa, the primordial being who brought them from the reed bed where they were created, and determined their mortality.

From Cultural Studies: Holidays Around the World
Agwunsi, or Agwu, is the god of healing and divination among the Igbo people of Nigeria. He is also the patron of doctors, because he gives herbs and other medicines their power to cure.

From Chambers Dictionary of the Unexplained
The belief that every object contains a spirit or soul. The word animism is derived from the Latin word animus, meaning ‘spirit’ or ‘soul’. Its basic principle may be stated simply as ‘everything is alive’ or ‘everything has a soul’. Animism is one of man’s oldest beliefs, with origins probably dating back to the Palaeolithic age; animistic beliefs are still widespread today among native cultures, and some modern neopagans also describe their belief system as animist, with the goddess and horned god who make up everything that exists, while pantheists similarly equate ‘God’ with ‘existence’.

Religion founded in Palestine by the followers of Jesus; one of the world's major religions. Christianity predominates in Europe and the Americas, where it has been a powerful historical force and cultural influence, but it also claims adherents in virtually every country of the world. Together with Judaism and Islam, Christianity belongs to the scriptural religions (Monotheism), whose common origin is in the Near East.

The term Coptic Christianity refers to the various forms of Egyptian Christianity, in particular the Coptic Orthodox Church. Originally, the word Coptic, from the Greek Aigyptos (“Egyptian”), referred to Egyptians in general. Of the 10-15 million Coptic Orthodox Christians in the world, the majority are still located in Egypt, with only 2 million spread out among various other countries.

Islam, one of the world’s great monotheistic religions, was founded (or restored) by the Prophet Muhammad (570-632 CE), who lived in Mecca and Medina on the Arabian Peninsula. Followers of Islam are known as Muslims, or Moslems, and their religion embraces every aspect of life. The Arabic word islam means ‘surrender’-specifically, surrender to the will of the one God (Allah).

The practice of putting oneself into, and remaining in, direct relation with God, the Absolute, or any unifying principle of life. Mysticism is inseparably linked with religion.

A form of culture that revolves around the central position of the shaman, a religious practitioner in various, generally small-scale societies who is believed to be able to diagnose, cure, and sometimes cause illness because of a special relationship with, or control over, spirits. The shaman acts as an intermediary between man in his environment and society and the forces and the spirits of the other world.

A form of animism involving trances and other rituals. Communication with the dead is a principal feature of voodoo. It is most common in the nations of the Caribbean Sea, especially Haiti, where people sometimes mingle voodoo and Christian practices.

A form of sorcery, or the magical manipulation of nature for self-aggrandizement, or for the benefit or harm of a client. This manipulation often involves the use of spirit-helpers, or familiars. As the practice or the production of malign or beneficial magic, witchcraft has an enduring place in the western, and in much of the non-western, imagination of the dynamics of esoteric and exotic powers.