Bantu_Essay

Bantu ontology When hearing the term “Bantu people,” it should understand that it refers to a huge group of Africans with very different cultural and religious beliefs. Among the Bantu people, societies and governments can be radically different. The term refers to the African people of shared ethnicity who descended from the Bantu migrants who rapidly spread across South Africa around 5,000 years ago, and to those Africans who speak languages in the Bantu family. The Bautu culture is a culture that is made up of proto-Bantu. Their homeland is near the southwestern modern boundary of Nigeria and Cameroon ca. 4,000 years ago (2000 BC). Bantu-speaking peoples brought an array of new religious practices and beliefs when they arrived in the first millennium A.D. Most believed in a Supreme Being, or high god, who could bestow blessings or bring misfortune to humans. More influential in their spiritual life, however, was a group of ancestral spirits--a different pantheon of spiritual beings in each community. These spirits could communicate with and influence the lives of the living, and they could sometimes be influenced by human entreaties. The male head of a homestead was usually the ritual leader, responsible for performing rituals, giving thanks, seeking a blessing, or healing the sick on behalf of his homestead. Rites of passage, or rituals marking major life-cycle changes such as birth, initiation, marriage, and death, were also important religious observances, and rituals were used for rainmaking, strengthening fertility, and enhancing military might. Bantu religions usually avoided any claim that rituals performed by human beings could influence the actions of the supreme deity, or high god; rituals were normally intended to honor or lesser spiritual beings, and sometimes to ask for their intervention. The high god was a remote, possessing the power to create the Earth, but beyond human comprehension or manipulation. Ancestors, in contrast, were once human and had kinship ties with those on earth, and they were sometimes amenable to human entreaties. The Bantu believed that a human being are to achieve three things, these things being, life, strength and vital force. Bantu Philosophy says that the concept of vital force is fundamental characteristic of the Bantu worldview. This vital force is said to be admitting of increase or decrease and to function in all different domains of individual and collective life: thus, for instance, good governance (the right choice of a leader) is that by which an increase of the vital force is assured for the whole community; the right action is that by which the vital force is increased; religious rituals exalt the ancestors' vital force which in turn benefits the community, etc. In a word the definitions of right and wrong, just and unjust will all amount to what increases or diminishes the vital force.”Life force is vital for health, wealth, worldly power and success- in fact anything that makes life worth living. To have it is to be healthy and strong. To have it is to be healthy and strong to lose it is to grow weak and die. It exists in greater concentration in famous men, strong charms, revered fetishes, and powerful Gods. Gods, human (both living and departed), animals and plants have life only if they have this vital force. Families, lineages and tribes have corporate vital force and their happiness and prosperity depend on conserving and strengthening it.” (p.432) while everyone has a vital force; Tempel’s explain that every different individual is endowed by God with a certain force. The Bantu believe that a person’s vital force can go through good and bad times. According to the Bantu culture if anything bad happens it is because a person vital force has been losing force. The loss of forces can come from anywhere.”Every Illness, wound or disappointment, all suffering, depression, or fatigue, every injustice and every failure: all of these are held to be, and are spoken of by the Bantu as, a diminution of vital force. Illness and death do not have their source in our own vital power, but result from some external agent who weakens us through his greater force. It is only by fortifying our vital energy through the use of magical recipes, that we acquire resistance to malevolent external forces.”(p.430) While forces can increase or decrease at anytime, the forces and also interact with other forces that are present. And although European philosophy believes that the change or interactions/intervention of sprits does change, the Bantu culture believes that forces don not. ” It has been maintained that “Beings” only acquire “power” to act upon other beings or forces through the intervention of spirits and manes. This contention emanates from European observers; it does not exist in the minds of Africans. The dead intervene on occasions to make known to the living the nature and quality of certain forces. But they do not thereby change that nature or those qualities which are preordained as belonging to that force. Africans expressly say that creatures are forces, created by God as such; and that the interventions of spirits or manes change nothing. Such changes are a white man’s idea. The vital forces that every human has is set on a hierarchy scale, trees, humans and even the wall all possess this vital force. “Above all force is God, spirit and Creator, the mwine bukomo bwandi. It is he who has force, power, in himself. He gives existence, power of survival and of increase, to other forces. In relation to other forces, he is “He who increases force” (p.433). “After him come the first fathers of men…. After these parents come the dead of the tribe, following their order of primogeniture” (p.434). The author goes on to say “after the category of human forces come the other forces, animals, vegetables and mineral, But within each of these categories is found a hierarchy based on vital power, rank and primogeniture” (p.434). The Bantu people believe that there has to be structure in order for everything to stay in order. Many of these different concepts that are shown in the Bantu culture are similar to the early Egyptian philosophy. Both these two cultures have many of the same concepts. In the Heliopolis cosmology they believe that. They believed that one could be renewed through death. The Bantu culture believes that there is survival after death. The Bantu believe that the dead can interfere with those living. While not only sharing this characteristic, these two cultures share another. The hierarchy theme, both cultures believe that there is a hierarchy that keeps everything in order. With the early Egyptian hierarchy, they classified this to be the nun, which is the primordial. The Ra, which is the life force/energy, after these two Gods there are eight more 4 male and 4 female. The same applies to the Bantu. There is the God, spirit, the creator, then after him come the fathers of men, after them come the first parents and then the dead tribes. These all follow the order of primogeniture. As it can be seen a lot of the concepts that the Bantu have are influenced by ancient Egyptian philosophy.