Igbo: The World of Spirits

 

 Write a brief note on Ibo people's belief in the world of spirits.

The Igbo people have a religious conception of the universe. They see their world as made up to two planes: the physical and the spiritual. Igbo worldview, however, abhors the tendency to a digital categorization of things. In this way, the understanding among the Igbo is that spiritual beings and cosmic forces are highly intermingled. The activities of spiritual beings and forces often directly impinge on the affairs of humans in the human world. The diagrammatic representation of Igbo Cosmology shown in Figure 1 adapted from Animalu (1990) would explain the Igbo outlook in a more detailed form.

In Igbo religious worldview, the human world is three dimensional – the sky; the earth, intricately woven with water; and the spirit/ancestral world. Each of the three dimensions operates as a viable reality or a place of habitation; with all three interconnected or contiguous and continuous in a non-hierarchical manner. This means that in such a worldview, although the Supreme Being is believed to live in the sky and major divinities such as Lightning, Thunder, Sun, and Moon are near Him, there is nothing to suggest that the ancestors who live in the ancestral world are inferior (Kalu and Kalu 1993). 

There is the sky above, Igwe, then, the earth, Ala, and finally, we have the under-world, Ime-Ala. Each of these layers is thought to be densely inhabited”. Perceiving the world in this way, Igbo cosmology understands the sky as the Supreme Being‟s (Chukwu‟s) palace. He is believed to dwell there with a host of powerful divinities and primordial beings like Anyanwu(the Sun god), Amadioha (the god of thunder), Igwe, (the sky god). In the same way, some local major divinities are equally believed to live in the sky as well. The earth-surface is seen as the abode of human beings, the earth Nwoye 307deity, minor divinities and personified nature forces. Finally ancestral spirits, myriads of disembodied spirits and other personified forces. One important characteristic of this spatial ordering of reality in Igbo worldview is the due recognition extended to the exalted position and power of the preternatural order and supersensible beings over humans and the material order. Yet, humans and their world are located at the center of the traditional Igbo cosmic structure. This is because human life, for the Igbo, although received from God, is the greatest good to be fostered. In this way, Igbo traditional world-view is seen as heavily anthropocentric. In it, the activities of the various categories of spirits as well as the happenings in the other realms of the universe are seen as meaningful insofar as they relate to human life and the general welfare of humans in the environment. Furthermore, in Igbo worldview, the human world is perceived as a mirror of the spirit world. In this way, the 

traditional Igbo cosmology inspires and sustains a religion that is this-worldly affirming (Nwoye, 2005). Seen in this way, and knowing that human life and the general welfare of the human world are the central focus of attention, the primary thrust of most religious activities among the Igbo, is geared towards the enhancement of human life and the promotion of human being‟s total well being. Thus influenced by such anthropocentric cosmology, slaves used to be buried alive with their masters so as to continue serving them in the spirit world. In such a cosmology the human world itself is seen as an alive or dynamic universe that humans share with a host of malevolent human spirits (such as witches and sorcerers); guardian spirits of various professions such as hunting, fishing, farming, and so on; animal spirits; evil spirits; and the Earth Goddess (Achebe, 1975; Ejizu, 1987; Kalu, 1992). In this perspective, a filial relationship is believed to exist between the Earth Goddess and the water spirits, called Mami Water. Such Igbo worldview further reflects the fact that Igbo deities are arranged spatially in four levels as follows:

(i) Sky – male

(ii) Earth – female

(iii) Water – female

(iv) Ancestral – male

The structure shows that in Igbo religious worldview, male deities predominate in the first and fourth levels while female deities dominate in the second and third levels as seen earlier. The deities in the sky, such as lightning, thunder, and sun, who live near the Supreme Being, are males while the earth and water under the purview of the Earth Goddess and Queen of the Coast are females. In addition, female ancestral rituals exist, but most rituals are male, as if the females lose their identity at death.In Igbo worldview, human existence is perceived as precarious in the effort to tap the resources of good spirits to ward off the machinations of evil spirits. In this way, the socio-political and economic aspects of life of 

the Igbo are predominated by a highly spiritualized and religious world. In it, relations to kin, neighbours, and spirits are seen as at once a source of security and often that of affliction and distress.