The powerful concept of gods and the worship of them in Igbo land

The Igbos make up one of the 3 largest ethnic groups in Nigeria. Nigeria is the most populous black nation on earth.

The uniqueness of the Igbo language

Here is a short background to this write-up, unlike many languages in the world, the Igbo language has so many different dialects. The dialects are so rich that words, accents, and intonations can be different across family clusters and communities but they all understand each other. However, there is a central Igbo language that everyone communicates with across the variations. This write-up deals with words in this central Igbo language. Yes, that’s actually the real name of this language, central-Igbo.

The concept of gods and the worship of them in Igbo land is both unique and intuitive.
Igbos don’t have only one god, there are many. There are no good and evil gods. All gods are just and reward each person according to their deeds. There are no judgment days after death, everyone receives the bulk of their judgment in the way of karma while alive.
There are no sins against self. But there are sins against deities such as desecrating their shrine and there are sins against other humans. When you a person commits any such sin, the person has to atone for it.
The ultimate punishment from the gods is death by some scary disease or banishment from the community, not eternal damnation. The gods can also curse a bad person to die and reincarnate as some crippled or deformed person.
First, there is a general almighty god that which every Igbo community worships. The name of this almighty god differs from community to community. The primary power differs too. The most popular name is AmadiOha.
Amadi means Man or more precisely ‘person’.
Which means the famous bible phrase “Son of man” will translate to “Nwa Amadi”.
The word ‘nwa’ means offspring.

This almighty god protects the community that worships it in general. But it’s not the only god, there are many others
In most Igbo communities everyone has their own personal god. This personal god is called ‘Chi’.
Chi means, you know right, personal god. But that’s not all, it also means ‘personal luck’ or ‘luck’ for short. Another beautiful meaning of this word is ‘fate’. In this write-up, I will stick with ‘luck’.
So luck and god means the same in Igbo language and culture. If you are lucky, your god is good. If you aren’t, you have a bad god or more accurately, you have an incompetent god.
Another beautiful quote to illustrate this is “Chi ya egbuo ya”.
The Igbos say this when someone runs into bad luck or misfortune. It simply translates to “His god has killed/punished him”. More accurately, “his luck has failed him”.
So if a thief is caught in Igbo land, you’d hear the phrase often “Chi gi egbuo gi taa” which means “your luck has failed you today”.

The creation of a personal god

Just before a child enters puberty in most communities, the child is initiated into adulthood, during which their personal god is created by the native doctor in the community. This personal god comes in the form of a crafted artifact the size of a human palm that the child has to take home and hide somewhere private.
This child is then expected to pray to and worship this personal god all their lives. The worship basically consists of sacrificing little animals to it periodically and doing incantations.

What is a Chi

A person’s Chi is their spiritual replica. More like their spirit condensed into a physical item. The Chi in Igbo has an almost identical meaning with the word ‘Chi’ in traditional Chinese medicine — a central force that controls a person’s divinity.
According to Igbo tradition, if a person’s chi is stolen or misplaced, the person might lose their mind and go mad. Or more subtly, lose their direction in life. Yes, this is a very powerful concept in Igbo land. If a person is lost in life, facing some juvenile delinquency or midlife crisis. The family of the person in crisis takes them to the native doctor, what the native doctor tries to do is amazing. They try to spiritually control their chi right back into the artifact or a new one, then pins the chi to the ground inside the shrine. This is expected to calm the person down and give them their focus in life again.
There are many versions of this procedure but this is the general idea behind it.

This Chi represents a person’s ability to prosper or fail in life. And so the Igbos have a saying that goes “Onye kariri mmadu kariri Chi ya”. This translates to “He who is greater than a person is greater than the person’s god/luck/fate”.
Another good translation is “He who is luckier than a person is luckier than his god”.

Which means, if a person is able to outsmart you in life, they were first able to outsmart your personal god. Your personal god was supposed to protect you and present you good luck, that’s what all that sacrifice was for.
In reverse, this means that in a way, physical actions by humans can trump spiritual deities of care is not taken.

Dimgba the mighty wrestler

There is a short but interesting Igbo story about a great wrestler I would call “Di mgba” that illustrates this concept very well. This translates to “Great wrestler” and transliterates to “Husband wrestler”.
Dimgba was so powerful that he beat everyone in town. He consulted the elders and told them he wanted to be taken to the 7 other Igbo towns to wrestle their best wrestlers. The elders tried to stop him, but he wouldn’t agree.
Eventually, they obliged and took him from town to town. He beat all of them. He was simply too powerful. He brought glory to his town.
But he wasn’t satisfied. Soon, Dimgba requested that the elders take him into the spirit world so he could wrestle the spirits. The elders tried to convince him it was a bad idea, but Dimgba was too powerful.
Soon they accompanied Dimgba into the spirit world with the aid of the chief priest who opened the portal for them to enter the realm.
The spirits told Dimgba’s side that no one has ever dared to come to wrestle with them. Dimgba insisted on the challenge so the spirits agreed to the duel.

First, they brought out a spirit wrestler with 2 heads, 3 hands, and 3 legs. Easy work, Dimgba wrestled him to the ground and defeated him within an hour. They brought another one with 4 heads, 4 hands, and 4 legs. Dimgba one again.
This continued until they brought their most monstrous spirit wrestler. This one had 14 heads, 14 arms and 14 legs with a long spiky tail.
Dimgba wrestled and wrestled with this spirit four 7 days and 7 nights. On the 7th day, Dimgba lifted this spirit into the air and brought it to the ground.
This sent shockwaves down the spines of the spirits and throughout the spirit world. Even the people in the real world could feel the earth tremble. They knew Dimgba must have won.
Dimgba had defeated everyone and it was now time to return to the human world. But the spirits quickly consulted among themselves and decided to offer Dimgba just one more fight.
The elders rejected this, but Dimgba couldn’t resist the new offer.
Its time to wrestle and the spirit that was presented to Dimgba was lean, frail and looked like something that had starved for 3 months. It looked like a normal human — 2 hands, 2 legs, and one head.
Immediately the chief priest saw this new opponent, he warned Dimgba not to take the fight. Before he could finish, Dimgba had already attacked his new opponent. The opponent offered no resistance. In one wrestle move, Dimgba lifted him to the air and hit him on the ground.

Soon as Dimgba did this, Dimgba lost his mind and went imbecile. This threw the entire spirit world into a laughter frenzy. In an act of desperation, the spirits played a fast on Dimgba by presenting him with his own spirit. Dimgba took the bait. Dimgba fought and defeated his own Chi. He had wrestled his own luck to the ground and destroyed it. So he lost his mind.
Dimgba was powerful physically but his spirituality was weak and frail. He couldn't even recognize himself in the spirit when he was presented to him.
The elders had to lead him by hand back into the human world where he lived the rest of his life as a bedridden imbecile.

Enter Christianity

This culture and tradition were all going this way until Christianity came and brought with it a religious and cultural disruption. Christianity came up with the concept of one almighty God for the whole universe. The Igbos never cared about the whole universe much. That topic was largely inconsequential. But it existed in the culture nevertheless.
The Igbo equivalent for the almighty creator of the universe is “Chi ukwu okike abia ama”. The last two words in that name has multiple meanings making it difficult to get the exact translation. One of the translations of that name is “god of creation that comes to bear witness”.

This new almighty God, his son and his devil had no original place in the language and culture of the Igbos. To accommodate it, the Igbos have to first improvise a naming convention for them.

So first, since personal god already means ‘chi’ and the concept of personal gods were being discarded in order to embrace this new religion, the Igbos simply started using the same word for this new God.

So here are some translations:
God = Chi or Chi ukwu
God the creator = Chi Ukwu Okikie or Chineke

Now we have a name for this God, what do we call his son Jesus Christ?
There is no word for that, so we take the Latin pronunciation “Jeso Kristi”. That’s not all, there is no satan, or hellfire or heaven so we have to improvise more names:

Hell fire : Oku mmuo. This translates to “fire of the spirit”
Heaven: Enu igwe. This translates to ‘Top of the sky’ or ‘above the sky’.
Demon: Ajo mmuo. This translates to “Bad spirit”.

As you can see, the names Igbos call these entities does not accurately represent them. There is one more left:

Satan : Ekwe Nsu. This is said to be the name of one of the ancient Igbo deities who was ruthless in judgment. Since there is no way to create the concept of the devil, they just pointed accusing fingers on this deity and called it the devil.
Till today, no one dares worship Ekwe nsu again. It has been demonized.
Professor Wole Soyinka once opined that this happened in the Yoruba culture too. According to him, the Yoruba word for Satan is ‘Esu’ which used to be the name of one of the Yoruba gods.

Some Igbo names

Now let’s look at some Igbo names and how their meanings have changed over time.

God answers = Chi na-aza
God is merciful = Chi di ebere
God is power = Chi bu ike
Good God = Chi oma
God is good = Chi di mma

Did you notice something? The English translations above are a bit weird because there are no English or Christian names like “God is good”.
Yes, those names were improvised from their original meanings. For instance, remember that the word ‘Chi’ meant ‘luck’, so a name like Chi oma originally meant ‘Good luck’.
But now, it means ‘Good God’.
Another example is the name ‘Chi di mma’ which originally meant any of the below
‘Having a personal god is good’,
‘Good luck is good’,
‘the concept of a personal god is good’
or ‘being lucky is good’,
now has a different translation due to Christianity which is ‘God is good’.

A common Igbo name with the word ‘Chi’ in it but almost loses its translation is the name “Chi na-asa”. (different from Chi na aza)
It originally means something in the lines of “Good results or good luck clears all doubts” but now it means something both weird and difficult to translate “God replies (haters? )”. Or “God verbally defends…”.

Let us look at 2 more words. The Igbo word for tattoo is ‘ichi’. I wouldn’t know if this word is related to ‘chi’. But here is a very interesting one, the Igbo word for birthmarks is ‘ahumarachi’. Let’s break this down:
Ahu = mark
Mara = to know
Chi = luck/fate/god/God

Reincarnation

So ‘ahumarachi’ means a special mark that the gods/fate knows you by. The background to this is that re-incarnation is a thing in some Igbo cultures. People can permanently become ghosts known as Ancestors once dead. This is normal across many cultures on earth. But the Igbo culture goes further, in some parts of Igbo land, it is believed that a person alive can reincarnate another person!
Yes, a grandmum, for instance, can reincarnate a granddaughter while she is still alive. So how do they know who reincarnated who within the family? The older person reincarnates the younger if at least one of their ahumarachi appears in the same spot in their bodies.
If this happens, the younger person will be named after the older person and treated with the same respect in the family as that old person.

There are no concepts of heaven, hell or eternal damnation. So what happens to people who didn’t reincarnate? They stay in the spirit world and serve as mini gods called ancestors. Each family can with the help of a diviner consult their ancestors if they run into problems.
So what does this ancestral land look like?

Yes, that’s what it looks like. That movie got it right. Notice a few things in the above picture, the skies aren’t bright, yet it's not dark. A twilight. The second is that ghosts in Igbo can most times be white in dressing or wear white paint on their skins especially when they aren’t in their traditional garb. The concept of dark or black ghosts came with Christianity.

So with that birthmark on a person’s body, the ancestors, fate and the gods can track them wherever they may go on earth. An Igbo person can pray to any of these ancestors in times of trouble especially the one that reincarnated them.
If a dead person is not buried at all or not buried with the complete cultural rites, it is believed that the ghost of this person gets stuck in the chasm and have to roam about the spirit world restless until the humans do a proper burial. If there is no proper burial done, the ghost of this dead person may start causing unexplained problems in the lives of the living members of the family.
So rather than a good-bye party, the Igbo burial is a send-forth party. Till today, Igbos still throw a huge feast during a person’s burial.

Fate vs doctors, herbalists, diviners, witchdoctors, and spiritualists

Here is a name, ‘Chi ka dibia’. This means that fate is mightier than doctors, diviners or spiritualists.
The Igbos believe that a person’s fate or personal luck supersedes all possible attempts to delay, divert or destroy it by any third party.
So a person determines the power of their Chi, their Chi supersedes all circumstances.
This whole concept made it impossible for Igbos to have kings. Yes, some parts of Igbo land has a king or two. But back then, so many Igbo communities did not use kings. Instead, they used a council of the elders. The oldest people in the community automatically form leading members of that community. Many communities have kings now as an adopted concept yet the reverence to kings in Igbo land is not the same with what you get from other parts of the world.
Here are examples:
An SUV is called, ‘Okwu oto ekele eze’, this simply translates to ‘He who greets a king while standing’. This name or title may have been assigned to something else of high repute in the past before cars came. But it simply shows that the Igbos believe that a person can achieve enough in life such that they don’t have to bow to greet kings. In general, the Igbos don’t bow to greet kings or elders most of the time. A king in Igbo land is respected but not feared or worshipped. The king's directives can be objected if it doesn’t make sense. Since every Igbo man has his own Chi, the king is considered the second or third level authority hierarchically.
This concept may in part explain why the Igbo nation has been fighting since independence to pull away from the present union called Nigeria and form their own nation-state. The independence of the Igbo man is a fundamental concept in the Igbo belief system.

The almighty entity in Igbo culture

With all these pointed out, with your permission, I will safely conclude that the most powerful entity in Igbo culture is the Igbo person, their luck, gods, and God comes after them anywhere they may go in the world.
This amazing philosophy is embodied in the Igbo adage that says “Onye kwe, chi ya ekwe”. This simply translates to, “If a person agrees(or submits) to a thing, his god/luck/fate will agree”.