This page groups deities by the theological framework used to describe their nature, since traditions disagree about whether a god is a distinct being, an aspect of a single divine reality, or something else again. Wikipedia describes theology as "the study of religious belief from a religious perspective, with a focus on the nature of divinity and the history behind religion." Browsing this way lets a visitor compare how differently two traditions can explain what a deity actually is.
Facts
Attestation
Era of AttestationTransmitted orally. The written record begins with the nineteenth-century missionary literature, above all Callaway's collection of 1868 to 1870, whose rendering of Unkulunkulu later scholarship has had to unpick. The tradition is current. 2 Veneration TodayAncestral practice continues among Zulu people, alongside Christianity and within the independent churches. 2 Overview
What Defines This GroupingFigures of Zulu traditional religion. This is not a pantheon: as in Southern Bantu religion generally, the working centre of the tradition is the relationship with the ancestors, the amadlozi, and the sky and creator figures stand behind rather than above it. What is collected here is therefore a short list, and the shortness is the point. 2 Status
Standing as a Comparative CategoryThe category Zulu deities is imposed from outside. Unkulunkulu's standing as a high god was contested from the first written accounts onward, partly because missionaries needed a word for God, and the ancestors rather than any god are what the practice is organised around. 2 Learn More
The divine in Zulu tradition
This small group holds figures of the traditional religion of the Zulu people of southern Africa. As in many Southern Bantu traditions, worship centres less on a pantheon of gods than on a remote supreme being together with the ancestral spirits (amadlozi) who mediate between the living and the divine.
The browser will find the sky and creator figure Unkulunkulu, the first ancestor and source of humankind, and related powers such as the sky-princess Nomkhubulwane associated with rain and fertility. The atlas notes that the ancestral cult, rather than a developed pantheon, is the living heart of the tradition.
Henotheistic: a supreme being above served lesser divinities
Filter Results2 entries
Connections
Belongs to Tradition
The divine figures of the Zulu tradition.
Source Zulu Thought-Patterns and SymbolismAxel-Ivar Berglund
Sources
1. Divinity Atlas Directory Taxonomy, First Edition Category Tree
2. Zulu Thought-Patterns and Symbolism
Axel-Ivar Berglund, C. Hurst / Indiana University Press, 1976chs. 1-2View the Source Divinity Atlas Directory Prose, First Edition Category Descriptions
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