Their Name For This God Is Anyambie, Which When
Pronounced Sounds To My Ears Like Anlynlae - The L's Being Very
Weak, - The Derivation Of This Name, However, Is From Anyima A
Spirit, And Mbia, Good.
This god, unlike other forms of the
creating god in Fetish, has a viceroy or minister who is a god he
has created, and to whom he leaves the government of affairs.
This
god is O Mbuiri or O Mbwiri, and this O Mbwiri is of very high
interest to the student of comparative fetish. He has never been,
nor can he ever become, a man, i.e. be born as a man, but he can
transfuse with his own personality that of human beings, and also
the souls of all those things we white men regard as inanimate, such
as rocks, trees, etc., in a similar manner.
The M'pongwe know that his residence is in the sea, and some of them
have seen him as an old white man, not flesh-colour white, but chalk
white. There is another important point here, but it wants a volume
to itself, so I must pass it. O Mbuiri's appearance in a corporeal
form denotes ill luck, not death to the seer, but misfortune of a
severe and diffused character. The ruin of a trading enterprise,
the destruction of a village or a family, are put down to O Mbuiri's
action. Yet he is not regarded as a malevolent god, a devil, but as
an avenger, or punisher of sin; and the M'pongwe look on him as the
Being to whom they primarily owe the good things and fortunes of
this life, and as the Being who alone has power to govern the host
of truly malevolent spirits that exist in nature.
The different instruments with which he works in the shaping of
human destiny bear his name when in his employ. When acting by
means of water, he is O Mbuiri Aningo; when in the weather, O Mbuiri
Ngali; when in the forests, O Mbuiri Ibaka; when in the form of a
dwarf, O Mbuiri Akoa, and so on.
The great difference between O Mbuiri and the lesser spirits is
this: - the lesser spirits cannot incarnate themselves except
through extraneous things; O Mbuiri can, he can become visible
without anything beyond his own will to do so. The other spirits
must be in something to become visible. This is an extremely
delicate piece of Fetish which it took me weeks to work out. I
think I may say another thing about O Mbuiri, though I say it
carefully, and that is, that among the M'pongwe and the tribe who
are the parent tribe of the M'pongwe - the now rapidly dying out
Ajumba, and their allied tribe the Igalwa - O Mbuiri is a distinct
entity, while among the neighbouring tribes he is a class, i.e.
there are hundreds of O Mbuiri or Ibwiri, one for every remarkable
place or thing, such as rock, tree, or forest thicket, and for every
dangerous place in a river.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 115 of 371
Words from 59965 to 60473
of 194943
