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The Shape of Maasai Religion

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The Shape of Maasai Religion

Maasai religion centres on one God, Enkai, and the most striking thing about that God is a duality held within a single figure rather than divided between two.

Enkai is spoken of as black and as red. The black God is benevolent, associated with rain, with grass and with the wellbeing of cattle and people; the red God is associated with drought, with anger and with what destroys. These are aspects of the same deity rather than opposed powers, and a tradition that puts the whole moral range inside one God rather than distributing it across a pantheon is doing something structurally distinct from almost every other entry in this atlas.

There is no divine society below Enkai. No assembly, no ranked offices, no succession between generations, and no roster of subordinate deities to enumerate. Prayer is addressed to Enkai directly, frequently, and often collectively.

Cattle are central to the relationship. In Maasai tradition the cattle were given by Enkai to the Maasai, and that gift underwrites both the pastoral economy and a claim about the world's proper order.

There is no route by which a human being becomes divine. The office of the oloiboni, the ritual expert and prophet, is a human office held within lineages, and its holder is a specialist in the relationship rather than a participant in the divinity.

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