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Nkisi
or (plural varies: , , or ) are spirits or an object that a spirit inhabits. It is frequently applied to a variety of objects used throughout the Congo Basin in Central Africa, especially in the Territory of Cabinda that are believed to contain spiritual powers or spirits. The term and its concept have passed with the Atlantic slave trade to the Americas. Meaning The current meaning of the term derives from the root , referring to a spiritual entity or material objects in which it is manifested or inhabits in Proto-Njila, an ancient subdivision of the Bantu language family. In its earliest attestations in Kikongo dialects in the early seventeenth century, it was transliterated as in Dutch, as the ''mu-'' prefix in this noun class was still pronounced. It was reported by Dutch visitors to Loango, current territory of Cabinda, in the 1668 book '' Description of Africa'' as referring both to a material item and the spiritual entity that inhabits it. In the sixteenth century, w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fetishism
A fetish (derived from the French , which comes from the Portuguese , and this in turn from Latin , 'artificial' and , 'to make') is an object believed to have supernatural powers, or in particular, a human-made object that has power over others. Essentially, fetishism is the attribution of inherent value, or powers, to an object. Historiography The term ''fetish'' has evolved from an idiom used to describe a type of object created in the interaction between European travelers and Africans in the early modern period to an analytical term that played a central role in the perception and study of non-Western art in general and African art in particular to increase the evil in the world. William Pietz, who, in 1994, conducted an extensive ethno-historical study of the fetish, argues that the term originated in the coast of West Africa during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Pietz distinguishes between, on the one hand, actual African objects that may be called fetishes ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kongo People
The Kongo people ( kg, Bisi Kongo, , singular: ; also , singular: ) are a Bantu ethnic group primarily defined as the speakers of Kikongo. Subgroups include the Beembe, Bwende, Vili, Sundi, Yombe, Dondo, Lari, and others. They have lived along the Atlantic coast of Central Africa, in a region that by the 15th century was a centralized and well-organized Kingdom of Kongo, but is now a part of three countries. Their highest concentrations are found south of in the Republic of the Congo, southwest of Pool Malebo and west of the Kwango River in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, north of Luanda, Angola and southwest Gabon. They are the largest ethnic group in the Republic of the Congo, and one of the major ethnic groups in the other two countries they are found in. In 1975, the Kongo population was reported as 4,040,000. The Kongo people were among the earliest indigenous Africans to welcome Portuguese traders in 1483 CE, and began converting to Catholicism in the l ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bakongo
The Kongo people ( kg, Bisi Kongo, , singular: ; also , singular: ) are a Bantu ethnic group primarily defined as the speakers of Kikongo. Subgroups include the Beembe, Bwende, Vili, Sundi, Yombe, Dondo, Lari, and others. They have lived along the Atlantic coast of Central Africa, in a region that by the 15th century was a centralized and well-organized Kingdom of Kongo, but is now a part of three countries. Their highest concentrations are found south of in the Republic of the Congo, southwest of Pool Malebo and west of the Kwango River in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, north of Luanda, Angola and southwest Gabon. They are the largest ethnic group in the Republic of the Congo, and one of the major ethnic groups in the other two countries they are found in. In 1975, the Kongo population was reported as 4,040,000. The Kongo people were among the earliest indigenous Africans to welcome Portuguese traders in 1483 CE, and began converting to Catholicism in the late 15t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kingdom Of Loango
The Kingdom of Loango (also ''Lwããgu'') was a pre- colonial African state, during approximately the 16th to 19th centuries in what is now the western part of the Republic of the Congo, Southern Gabon and Cabinda. Situated to the north of the more powerful Kingdom of Kongo, at its height in the 17th century Loango influence extended from Cape St Catherine in the north to almost the mouth of the Congo River. Loango exported copper to the European market, and was a major producer and exporter of cloth. The English traveller Andrew Battel, when he was there in about 1610, recorded that the predecessor of the unnamed king ruling at that time was named "Gembe" or Gymbe (modernized as ''Njimbe''), possibly the founder of the kingdom. With the death of King Buatu in 1787, the succession of leadership is uncertain. Name The inhabitants, who are a branch of the Bakongo, spoke a northern dialect of the Kikongo language also spoken in the Kingdom of Kongo. Missionaries who visited ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nganga
''Nganga'' is a Kikongo language term for herbalist or spiritual healer in many African societies and also in many societies of the African diaspora such as those in Haiti, Brazil, and Cuba. It is derived from ''*-ganga'' in Proto-Bantu which means "medicine". As this term is a multiple reflex of a Proto-Bantu root, there are slight variations on the term throughout the entire Bantu-speaking world. In Africa The owner and operator of an ''nkisi'', who ministered its powers to others, was the ''nganga''. In the Kingdom of Kongo the term "nganga" was the name for a person who possessed the skill to communicate with the Other World, as well as divining the cause of illness, misfortune and social stress and preparing measures to address them, often by supernatural means but sometimes natural medicine as well. They were also responsible for charging nkisi, or physical objects intended to be the receptacle for spiritual forces. When Kongo converted to Christianity in the late fift ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Roman Catholic Church In Kongo
The Catholic Church arrived in the Kingdom of Kongo shortly after the first Portuguese explorers reached its shores in 1483. Portuguese left several of their own number and kidnapped a group of Kongo including at least one nobleman, Kala ka Mfusu and took them to Portugal where they stayed a year, learned Portuguese and were converted to Christianity. The group was returned to Kongo in 1485 and Kala ka Mfusu led a royal mission from Kongo's king , Nzinga a Nkuwu to Portugal. Following their arrival in late 1486 the embassy stayed nearly four years in Lisbon and stayed with the monks of Saint John the Baptist. There they studied Christianity and Portuguese with Vicente dos Anjos (who also learned to speak Kikongo), and began the start of the Kongo version of Christianity. The mission returned to Kongo in early 1491, although Kala ka Mfusu died on the return trip. The provincial ruler of Soyo on the Atlantic coast received them and was the first to be baptized. They moved to t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kingdom Of Kongo
The Kingdom of Kongo ( kg, Kongo dya Ntotila or ''Wene wa Kongo;'' pt, Reino do Congo) was a kingdom located in central Africa in present-day northern Angola, the western portion of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and the Republic of the Congo. At its greatest extent it reached from the Atlantic Ocean in the west to the Kwango River in the east, and from the Congo River in the north to the Kwanza River in the south. The kingdom consisted of several core provinces ruled by the ''Manikongo'', the Portuguese version of the Kongo title ''Mwene Kongo'', meaning "lord or ruler of the Kongo kingdom", but its sphere of influence extended to neighbouring kingdoms, such as Ngoyo, Kakongo, Kingdom of Loango, Loango, Kingdom of Ndongo, Ndongo and Kingdom of Matamba, Matamba, the latter two located in what is Angola today. From c. 1390 to 1862 it was an independent state. From 1862 to 1914 it functioned intermittently as a vassal state of the Kingdom of Portugal. In 1914, following th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cabinda Province
Cabinda (formerly called Portuguese Congo, kg, Kabinda) is an exclave and province of Angola in Africa, a status that has been disputed by several political organizations in the territory. The capital city is also called Cabinda, known locally as ''Tchiowa'', ''Tsiowa'' or ''Kiowa''. The province is divided into four municipalities—Belize, Buco-Zau, Cabinda and Cacongo. Modern Cabinda is the result of a fusion of three kingdoms: N'Goyo, Loango and Kakongo. It has an area of and a population of 716,076 at the 2014 census; the latest official estimate (as at mid 2019) is 824,143. According to 1988 United States government statistics, the total population of the province was 147,200, with a near even split between rural and urban populations. At one point an estimated one third of Cabindans were refugees living in the Democratic Republic of the Congo; however, after the 2007 peace agreement, refugees started returning to their homes. Cabinda is separated from the rest of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Graves
A grave is a location where a dead body (typically that of a human, although sometimes that of an animal) is buried or interred after a funeral. Graves are usually located in special areas set aside for the purpose of burial, such as graveyards or cemeteries. Certain details of a grave, such as the state of the body found within it and any objects found with the body, may provide information for archaeologists about how the body may have lived before its death, including the time period in which it lived and the culture that it had been a part of. In some religions, it is believed that the body must be burned or cremated for the soul to survive; in others, the complete decomposition of the body is considered to be important for the rest of the soul (see bereavement). Description The formal use of a grave involves several steps with associated terminology. ;Grave cut The excavation that forms the grave.Ghamidi (2001)Customs and Behavioral Laws Excavations vary from a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Thunderstorms
A thunderstorm, also known as an electrical storm or a lightning storm, is a storm characterized by the presence of lightning and its acoustic effect on the Earth's atmosphere, known as thunder. Relatively weak thunderstorms are sometimes called thundershowers. Thunderstorms occur in a type of cloud known as a cumulonimbus. They are usually accompanied by strong winds and often produce heavy rain and sometimes snow, sleet, or hail, but some thunderstorms produce little precipitation or no precipitation at all. Thunderstorms may line up in a series or become a rainband, known as a squall line. Strong or severe thunderstorms include some of the most dangerous weather phenomena, including large hail, strong winds, and tornadoes. Some of the most persistent severe thunderstorms, known as supercells, rotate as do cyclones. While most thunderstorms move with the mean wind flow through the layer of the troposphere that they occupy, vertical wind shear sometimes causes a d ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rain
Rain is water droplets that have condensed from atmospheric water vapor and then fall under gravity. Rain is a major component of the water cycle and is responsible for depositing most of the fresh water on the Earth. It provides water for hydroelectric power plants, crop irrigation, and suitable conditions for many types of ecosystems. The major cause of rain production is moisture moving along three-dimensional zones of temperature and moisture contrasts known as weather fronts. If enough moisture and upward motion is present, precipitation falls from convective clouds (those with strong upward vertical motion) such as cumulonimbus (thunder clouds) which can organize into narrow rainbands. In mountainous areas, heavy precipitation is possible where upslope flow is maximized within windward sides of the terrain at elevation which forces moist air to condense and fall out as rainfall along the sides of mountains. On the leeward side of mountains, desert climates ca ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
