TRADITIONAL AFRICAN BELIEFS

from:

THE MEANING OF PEACE IN AFRICAN TRADITIONAL RELIGION AND CULTURE

Godfrey Igwebuike Onah

Pontifical Urban University, Rome 

@ http://www.afrikaworld.net/afrel/

"Considering Africa as a whole, the main objects of religious belief are: God, the divinities, spirits, and ancestors. Belief in God, conceived as one Supreme Personal Being seems to be shared by the majority of African cultures. Nevertheless, there are a few cultures where the situation is not very clear....
            Next to God are what one may call divinities, for lack of a better expression. These are spiritual beings who owe their origin to and are dependent on God. Some of them are personified attributes of the Supreme Being, like the thunder divinity, which usually represents God’s wrath...
            There is yet another class of spiritual beings who are not always good. There is yet another class of spiritual beings who are not always good. Some of them are good, some are, to say the least, mischievous, while others are outright evil. And they are innumerable! Some of these are human, like the wandering spirits of some dead persons who due to some lack did not make it to the home of the ancestors and also the spirits of witches and wizards who, though still alive, are believed to be able to leave their bodies and inhabit lower animals in order to harm other persons....            
            Perhaps the most dearly loved spiritual beings in ATR are the ancestors, those “living-dead” (to borrow the expression of John Mbiti), who are effectively members of the family and clan, now living in a state that permits them to enjoy some special relationship with God, the divinities and the good spirits...."