Ntangu is the Kongo spirit of the sun and of time itself, understood in traditional Kongo cosmology as the sibling of Ngonde, the spirit of the moon. Together Ntangu and Ngonde embody the Kongo religious conception of time as cyclical, marked by the alternation of day and night and by the passage of the sun and moon across the sky. As the spirit of time as well as the sun, Ntangu is bound up with the Kongo cosmogram, the four-moment cycle of sunrise, noon, sunset and midnight that structures traditional Kongo religious thought about the life cycle and the relationship between the living and the dead.
Facts
Attestation
Veneration TodaySourced to the subject's own accountActively venerated in a living tradition 2 HistoricityNot a historical person: a divine or other-than-human being 1 Function
Domain / Function Belief
TheologyPolytheistic: many gods 1 Sources
1. The Facts on File Encyclopedia of World Mythology and Legend
Anthony S. Mercatante, revised and expanded by James R. Dow, Facts on File
2. African Cosmology of the Bantu-Kongo: Principles of Life and Living
Kimbwandende Kia Bunseki Fu-Kiau, Athelia Henrietta Press
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