Yuku free message boards

Recieved this from another group disscussion and thought that I should post it here since this subject was a major point of contention. Lets see what the "athourities" have to say on the significance of the Kongo science and Cosmogram in African and Diasporic warrior traditions.


Mfundishi






Greetings my name is AQAtic I'm doing research on Capoeira Angola and
other related African art forms in the diaspora linking them back to
there roots in Angola and Kongo regions. I came across this article
in my on going research called combat and the crossing of the kalunga
by T.J Desch Obi will be posting it in segments wanting to open the
floor to comments and insights on the subject.




This paper investigates the unexplored Central
African controbution to new world culture in terms of martial arts
and the spiritual underpinnings of ritual practise. there is a
growing body of literature on the martial art of capoeira Angola(much
more than a martial art)in Brazil , but being written in isolation
from the wider world of capoeira's cognate and reflective forms in
the atlantic world , none has delt with capoeira Angola's african
background beyond speculation. ion contrast, this current discussion
will root itself in the combative and philosophical traditions of
Central African and then look onward to Martinique , north america ,
and Brazil. this broad perspective is important for highlighting the
fact that this arts were thriving even in places such as Virginia and
Martinique where Central Africans did not constitute the dominant
pluralities of the enslaved african population. in this light these
martial arts are properly viewed not as riesidual by-products of the
demographic cluctering of central Africans , nor as retentions or
memories doomed to fade, but rather as living traditions that spread
from enslaved central Africans to other Africans and their desendants
and eventually to people of european descent. durring the dynamic
spread of this martial art inthe americas the cetral fighting system
of the tradition remained remarkably constantin most areas while the
practise rituals of the system where influenced by by the dynamic
religious practices they interacted with in the ninteenth and
twwentieth centuries. yet even these combative practice rituals in
the america's could not be fully understood apart from the underlying
Central African cosmology that linked human combat to the interplay
of spiritual forces from across the kalunga or the threshold between
the landsof the living and the dead.

John Thorton spoke of the religious and ceromonial life
illusrated the existance of dissenting religious beliefs in central
Africa. in this regard the central African religious tradition is no
different than the judeo-christian tradition with its myriad of
diffussing groups and theologies all emanating from an inherited
group of theological concepts. in central africa, one of these common
inherited paradigms revolved around the concept of kalunga. this term
was used throughout the central African region to mean the sea ,
rivers , the world of the ancestors and god. these various meanings
for kalunga were reconciled by the common cosmology represented in
the Kongolese cosmograms that symbolized the nature of the cosmos in
miniature. there were numerous varieties of the Kongo cosmograms, but
of particular interest are those involving counterclockwise circles
and crosses. Fu Kiau Bunseki explains these cosmograms represented
the nature of the universe which the Kongolese unerstood as
parallelingthe counterclockwise movement of the sun. within the
counterclockwise movement a cross could drawn or implied. the
horizontal line of this cross referted to as the kalunga was linked
with the rivers or the sea which was believed to form a line between
this world and the next. the point coresponding with cardnal east was
linked with cocecption , whereas cardnal north represented maleness ,
noon , and on's peak of physical strength. from there to the cardnal
west represented a phase of decline reaching death at the kalunga
line. this death for the Kongolese people just a passage through the
kaluga to the spirit world ,an inverted world of white clay.
regeneration in the spirit world contiued to the southern point
corresponding to midnight, femaleness , south ,the highest point of a
persons other worldly strength. acording to Robert Farris Thompson,
for the good and heroically strong Kongo person completing the
cosmic circle by returning to the cardinal east point represented
eternal life: The Kongo yowa cross dose not signify the crucifixion
of jesus for the salvation of mankind; it signifies the equally
compelling vision of the circular motion of human souls about the
circumference of the intersecting lines ..... the four disks at the
points of the cross stand for the four moments of the sun, and the
cicumference of the cross the certainty of reincarnation: especially
the righteous Kongo person will never be destroyed but will come back
in the name or body of progeny.

While some ancestors might be reborn into the land of
the living all had the power to affect events in the land of the
living . thus Kongo cosmograms were more than mere symbols; they could
also be ritually activated to mediate power between the spiritual
world of the ancestors and the world of the living. However , it was
not only trough cosmograms that the central Africans believed that
they could cross the kalunga to gain access to spiritual power. a
number of agents could bring the spiritual power from beyond the
kalunga to bear on the world of the living. the three major players
in the universe were the chief, the witch, and the ritual expert, and
among some central African groups the prophet/diviner was
distinguished as the fourth group. the chief were believed to access
power from across the kalunga by means of their lineage ancestors,
who interceded on behalf of the entire community. a chief's
associationwith lineage ancestors linked with him to the power of
death, and he was expected to use his power to kill antisocial
elements and witchs.on their part witchs drew on the powers of the
dead(through "ghosts" or nzumbi among the Kongolese) but for their
own selfish ends and at the cost of the rest of society. finnally,
between these two stood the ritual experts, called nganga or kimbanda
drew on the ancestral power to divine and/or resolve the physical or
spiritual problems of the client. the Kongolese divided this last
office into nganga (ritual experts) who create sacred medicine figures
called minkisi to protect their clients from harm or to hurt there
enemies , and ngunza (prophets/diviners). the ngunza or prophet drew
on the healing power of bisimbi spirits to heal individuals and
society of witchcraft. as a result of these various spiritual
intermedeiaries, there was a constant antagonism between those
individuals that used the power from across the kalunga for good,
which for central african peoples ment for the good of the
community , and those who used the power for the selfish desires of
an individual , which was considered evil. this understanding of
spiritual antagonism was reflected in the the KiKongo term for ritual
mvita which literally meant war.

Just asthis central African ritual system was
conceptualized in terms of warfare between these opposing forces, so
too was human combat considered inseparable from the interplay of
these religious forces. for central African warriors, a war's out
come was ultimately determined on the spiritual level . this belief
ran so deep among west central Africans that once two armies engaged,
it was not uncommon for the losers of the initial melee to flee as it
was considered futile to resist since the outcome of the battle -
which had already been determined on the spiritual plane across the
kalunga - was evident inthe first clash. for Kongolese this often
took the form of harnessing ancestral power through spcial war
charms. Miller notes that warfare preparation for the seventeeth-
century Mbundu primarily consisted of intense rituals to draw on ever-
more powerful forces from across the kalunga to secure a victory.
thus for days and weeks before a battle, the Mbundu conducted rituals
which, they believed, could determine which army would prevail,
arming themselves with the best magical charms available, waitingfor
omens to indicate the most propitious momentto attack and cementing
their good relations with spiritual forces which couldturnthe actual
battle in their favor. suchprepartions were not a simple task as
there was always a chance that enemies could access forces even more
powerful than their own ; thus the importance of ritual war experts.

This paradigm linking combat and the crossing of the
kalunga could also be found as far south as the highlands. in the
eighteenth and ninteenth centuries many warrior-kings onthe southern
highland plateau would not declare war without first approching their
kalunga, the hoiliest place of there palace. this kalunga shiine
housed the ritual emblems and relics of their ancestors and thus
acted as a bridge to the spirit world. it was believed that all who
approached the kalunga apart fromthe king would die fromsuch direct
contact with the land of the dead. even the king approached only on
special occadions of communnal calamity such as drought or war. on
declaration of war the king approached the kalunga to petition the
royal ancestors in the other world to battle for his warriors on the
spiritual plane. in the kingdomof Ecovongo(Bie)these most sacred
relics of the kingdom could only be touched by the highest ritual
expert in the land who carried them into battle in a vanguard unit
also consisting of a war general beiieved to embody the soirits of
human sacrifices, and the generals hand crack troops. the king and
the main army remained at a distance and would not engage in combat
if his crak troops broke. thus it was essential for suchelite
warriors to be well prepared ritually and militarily. although not a
ubiquitous practice in central Africa, many warriors fromthe interior
of the loango coast to the highlands were both physically and
spiritually prepared for the battle through a martial art that was
linked to the comological paradigm of crossing the kalunga . as a
combat system, the art of N'golo and its cogates utilized kicks and
powerful headbutts for attack and acrobatic evasions for defense.
these attributes were developed in a number of training exercises one
of which was the ritual practice with a partner inside a circle of
singers who were at the same time potential combatants. individual
singers/fighters took turns leading call and response song in which
all those present answered back with the chorus. once the music
reached its crescendo a pair of fighters would enter the circle,
dancing and swaying to the music as they squared off. one adept would
launch an attack normally consisting of a circular sweep or kick,
often with the hands supporting the body weight. the defender either
crouched low to the ground to duck under the kick, or blended with
the attack in such a way that he could respond with a smooth
counterattack. the two conued in a cycle of attacks, defenses and
counterattacks in a flow that allowed them to diplay their technique,
trickery, and finesse. the encounter ended when one or both of the
two felt that their engagment had come to completion. the two then
rejoined the circle to allow another pair to enter the circle.


This riual circle, or elola, was designed to bring the
practitioner into the spiritual world through circling or physically
enacting the counterclockwise comograms to draw on spiritual power.
this involved counterclockwise movement arround the elola. such
enactments of cosmograms were believed to give the fighter spiritual
powerfor combat. the techniques of the combative system itself
reflected the kalunga paradigm, with fighters predominantly using
their feet to fight, often supporting their weight on their hands and
kicking while upside down. in this way they ritually mirrored the
ancestors as the other world across the kalunga was believed to be an
inverted one. these kicks from an inverted position were considered
among the most powerful techniques in the ngolo arsenal. from an edic
perspective, the precarious nature of such an inverted position could
not have allowed for the generation of much power incontrast to the
power of a kick launched from a normal upright position. however, the
power refered to by ngolo exponents was rather the more important
spiritual power derived by harmonizing the body with that of the
ancestors. somefighters sought even deeper connections to ancestral
power through ritual initiations instruction in the martial art and
its most important festivals were linked to male and female rites of
passage. beyond this community initiation, full mastery of the art
was relegated to those whohad been further initiated into the art as
a sacred profession. this ritual process involved having a cross
drawn on their heads in white powder, the color of crossing the
kalunga. after completing the ritual, these fighters could tap
directly into the superhuman combat abilities of ancestral ngolo
fighters.