The traditional religion of the Luba peoples of the southern Congo basin, in what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo, centered on Vidye Mukulu, the high creator, and the mikishi, ancestral and nature spirits invoked through carved figures and charms. Religious authority historically ran through the Mbudye, a society of royal historians and diviners who preserved the kingdom's sacred history on memory boards called lukasa, a mnemonic device rather than a written text.
History & Origin
The lukasa boards the Mbudye preserve encode a founding myth of sacred kingship: the outsider hunter Mbidi Kiluwe married into the line of the tyrant king Nkongolo, and their union produced the dynasty remembered afterward as the first true Luba kings, rulers understood not as ordinary successors but as living embodiments of Vidye rather than officeholders chosen by ordinary succession.
Luba Religion
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This source names Republic of the Congo directly: "basin, in what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo, centered on Vidye Mukulu, the high creator, and the mikishi, ancestral and nature spirits invoked through carved figures and charms."
Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)
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Encyclopedia of Religion
Mircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.), Macmillan Reference, 2005View the Source Reader Challenges (0)
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