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Nganga
A ''nganga'' (pl. banganga or kimbanda) is a spiritual healer, diviner, and ritual specialist in traditional Kongo religion. These experts also exist across the African diaspora in countries where Kongo and Mbundu people were transported during the Atlantic slave trade, such as Brazil, the southern United States, Haiti and Cuba. Etymology ''Nganga'' means "expert" in the Kikongo language. The Portuguese corruption of the meaning was "fetisher." It could also be derived from ''-ganga'', which means "medicine" in Proto-Bantu. 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. Central Africa In the Kingdom of Kongo and the Kingdom of Ndongo, expert healers, known as ''banganga'', underwent extensive training to commune with the ancestors in the spiritual realms and seek guidance from them. They possessed the skill to communicate with the ancestors in the spiritual realm, or ''Ku Mpémba ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kongo Religion
Kongo religion (Kongo language, Kikongo: Bukongo or Bakongo) encompasses the traditional beliefs of the Kongo people, Bakongo people. Due to the highly centralized position of the Kingdom of Kongo, its leaders were able to influence much of the traditional religious practices across the Congo Basin. As a result, many other ethnic groups and kingdoms in Central Africa, West-Central Africa, like the Chokwe people, Chokwe and Ambundu, Mbundu, adopted elements of Bakongo spirituality. The spirituality is based on a complex Animism, animistic system and a Pantheon (religion), pantheon of spirits. The principle Creator God of the world is Nzambi a Mpungu, Nzambi Mpungu, the sovereign master, and his female counterpart, Nzambici. While Nzambi Mpungu, who gave birth to the universe and the spirits who inhabit it, is vital to the spirituality, Veneration of the dead, ancestor veneration is the core principle. The Bakongo cosmos is split between two worlds: the top half representing the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Palo (religion)
Palo, also known as Las Reglas de Congo, is an African diasporic religion that developed in Cuba during the late 19th or early 20th century. It draws heavily upon the traditional Kongo religion of Central Africa, with additional influences taken from Catholicism and from Spiritism. An initiatory religion practised by ''paleros'' (male) and ''paleras'' (female), Palo is organised through small autonomous groups called ''munanso congo'', each led by a ''tata'' (father) or ''yayi'' (mother). Although teaching the existence of a creator divinity, commonly called Nsambi, Palo regards this entity as being uninvolved in human affairs and instead focuses its attention on the spirits of the dead. Central to Palo is the ''nganga'', a vessel usually made from an iron cauldron. Many ''nganga'' are regarded as material manifestations of ancestral or nature deities known as ''mpungu''. The ''nganga'' will typically contain a wide range of objects, among the most important being sticks and h ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
N'anga
A ''nganga'' (pl. banganga or kimbanda) is a Shamanism, spiritual healer, diviner, and ritual specialist in traditional Kongo religion. These experts also exist across the African diaspora in countries where Kongo people, Kongo and Ambundu, Mbundu people were transported during the Atlantic slave trade, such as Brazil, the southern United States, Haiti and Cuba. Etymology ''Nganga'' means "expert" in the Kongo language, Kikongo language. The Portuguese corruption of the meaning was "fetisher." It could also be derived from ''-ganga'', which means "medicine" in Proto-Bantu. 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. Central Africa In the Kingdom of Kongo and the Kingdom of Ndongo, expert healers, known as ''banganga'', underwent extensive training to commune with the ancestors in the spiritual realms and seek guidance from them. They possessed the skill to communicate with the anc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hoodoo (spirituality)
Hoodoo is a set of spiritual observances, traditions, and beliefs—including magical and other ritual practices—developed by enslaved African Americans in the Southern United States from various traditional African spiritualities and elements of indigenous American botanical knowledge. Practitioners of Hoodoo are called rootworkers, conjure doctors, conjure men or conjure women, and root doctors. Regional synonyms for Hoodoo include roots, rootwork and conjure. As an autonomous spiritual system, it has often been syncretized with beliefs from religions such as Islam, Protestantism, Catholicism, and Spiritualism. While there are a few academics who believe that Hoodoo is an autonomous religion, those who practice the tradition maintain that it is a set of spiritual traditions that are practiced in conjunction with a religion or spiritual belief system, such as a traditional African spirituality and Abrahamic religion. Many Hoodoo traditions draw from the beliefs of the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Shona People
The Shona people () also/formerly known as the Karanga are a Bantu peoples, Bantu ethnic group native to Southern Africa, primarily living in Zimbabwe where they form the majority of the population, as well as Mozambique, South Africa, and worldwide diaspora. There are five major Shona language/dialect clusters: Manyika, Karanga, Zezuru, Korekore, Kalanga, and Ndau. Classification The Shona people are grouped according to the dialect of the language they speak. Their estimated population is 22.6 million: * Korekore people, Korekore (northern region of Zimbabwe) * Zezuru people, Zezuru (central Zimbabwe) * Manyika tribe, Manyika (eastern Zimbabwe around Mutare, Buhera, Nyanga, Zimbabwe, Nyanga and into Mozambique) * Ndau people, Ndau (southeast Zimbabwe around Mutare, Chimanimani, Chipinge and into Mozambique) * Karanga people, Karanga (south-central Zimbabwe around Masvingo) * Kalanga people, Kalanga (southwest Zimbabwe, interspersed with the Northern Ndebele people, Ndebele ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Traditional Healers Of South Africa
Traditional healers of Southern Africa are practitioners of traditional African medicine in Southern Africa. They fulfil different social and political roles in the community like divination, healing physical, emotional, and spiritual illnesses, directing birth or death rituals, finding lost cattle, protecting warriors, counteracting witchcraft and narrating the history, cosmology, and concepts of their tradition. There are two main types of traditional healers within the Nguni, Sotho, and Tsonga societies of Southern Africa: the diviner (''sangoma'') and the herbalist (''inyanga''). These healers are effectively South African shamans who are highly revered and respected in a society where illness is thought to be caused by witchcraft, pollution (contact with impure objects or occurrences) or through neglect of the ancestors. It is estimated that there are as many as 200,000 traditional healers in South Africa compared to 25,000 doctors trained in bio-medical practice. Tr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Herbal Medicine
Herbal medicine (also called herbalism, phytomedicine or phytotherapy) is the study of pharmacognosy and the use of medicinal plants, which are a basis of traditional medicine. Scientific evidence for the effectiveness of many herbal treatments remains limited, prompting ongoing regulatory evaluation and research into their safety and efficacy. Standards for purity or dosage are generally not provided. The scope of herbal medicine sometimes includes fungal and bee products, as well as minerals, shells and certain animal parts. Paraherbalism is the pseudoscientific use of plant or animal extracts as medicine, relying on unproven beliefs about the safety and effectiveness of minimally processed natural substances. Herbal medicine has been used since at least the Paleolithic era, with written records from ancient Sumer, Egypt, Greece, China, and India documenting its development and application over millennia. Modern herbal medicine is widely used globally—especially in Asia ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Native Americans In The United States
Native Americans (also called American Indians, First Americans, or Indigenous Americans) are the Indigenous peoples of the Americas, Indigenous peoples of the United States, particularly of the Contiguous United States, lower 48 states and Alaska. They may also include any Americans whose origins lie in any of the indigenous peoples of North or South America. The United States Census Bureau publishes data about "American Indians and Alaska Natives", whom it defines as anyone "having origins in any of the original peoples of North and South America ... and who maintains tribal affiliation or community attachment". The census does not, however, enumerate "Native Americans" as such, noting that the latter term can encompass a broader set of groups, e.g. Native Hawaiians, which it tabulates separately. The European colonization of the Americas from 1492 resulted in a Population history of Indigenous peoples of the Americas, precipitous decline in the size of the Native American ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Black Church
The Black church (sometimes termed Black Christianity or African American Christianity) is the faith and body of Christian denominations and congregations in the United States that predominantly minister to, and are led by, African Americans, as well as these churches' collective traditions and members. Black churches primarily arose in the 19th century, during a time when race-based slavery and racial segregation were both commonly practiced in the United States. Black people generally searched for an area where they could independently express their faith, find leadership, and escape from inferior treatment in white dominated churches. Throughout many African American houses, churches reflect a deep cultural emphasis on community and shared spiritual experience. For African Americans, the church is a dynamic, living body of believers whose collective faith and fellowship are central, regardless of the physical space. This difference highlights the unique cultural and histor ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rhodesian Bush War
The Rhodesian Bush War, also known as the Rhodesian Civil War, Second as well as the Zimbabwe War of Independence, was a civil conflict from July 1964 to December 1979 in the List of states with limited recognition, unrecognised country U.D.I. Republic of Rhodesia (later the temporary British colony of Zimbabwe-Rhodesia and now independent Zimbabwe). The conflict pitted three forces against one another: the Rhodesian white minority-led government of Ian Smith (later the Zimbabwe-Rhodesian government of Bishop Abel Muzorewa); and militant African guerillas organisations such as Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army, the military wing of Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe African National Union; and the Zimbabwe People's Revolutionary Army of Joshua Nkomo's Zimbabwe African People's Union. The war and its subsequent Internal Settlement, signed in 1978 by Smith and Muzorewa, led to the implementation of universal suffrage in June 1979 and the end of Minoritarianism, white minority rule ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Zimbabwe
file:Zimbabwe, relief map.jpg, upright=1.22, Zimbabwe, relief map Zimbabwe, officially the Republic of Zimbabwe, is a landlocked country in Southeast Africa, between the Zambezi and Limpopo Rivers, bordered by South Africa to the south, Botswana to the southwest, Zambia to the north, and Mozambique to the east. The capital and largest city is Harare, and the second largest is Bulawayo. A country of roughly 16.6 million people as per 2024 census, Zimbabwe's largest ethnic group are the Shona people, Shona, who make up 80% of the population, followed by the Northern Ndebele people, Northern Ndebele and other #Demographics, smaller minorities. Zimbabwe has 16 official languages, with English, Shona language, Shona, and Northern Ndebele language, Ndebele the most common. Zimbabwe is a member of the United Nations, the Southern African Development Community, the African Union, and the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa. The region was long inhabited by the San people, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
