Nkisi Nkondi Research Paper

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Traditional African art is devoted to dealings with a spirit world that is known to control success or failure in life. It is believed that spirits can live in fields that produce crops, the rivers that provide fish, the forests that are home, or the land that must be cleared to be able to build villages. Often times, families also believe that spirits may represent their ancestral spirits. Therefore, in order to communicate with them, specialists also known as diviners, are responsible for opening the lines of communication between the human world and the supernatural world. Some of the techniques used to open those lines are prayer, sacrifice, offerings, rituals, divination, and images that represents the visual identity and personality of such spirit. One of the most powerful and potent images of spiritual power is the nkisi. The Nkisi refers to the spiritual charm of the figure which were made by the Kongo and Songye peoples of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Nkonde refers to the carved power figure itself. Nkondi originated from the verb konda which means …show more content…

By doing so, powers begin to operate and serve private or public functions. This can be used to end conflict and provide healing. For African Americans, this power figure is very important. They go to the extent of believing that spirits may have families, live in villages and possess personalities. In fact people in the Ivory Coast believed that each person lived in a spirit world prior to entering this world or be born. This believe suggest that people had a spirit spouse whom stayed behind when one entered this world. Therefore, if a men or women struggles in this world with gender-specific roles such as a man who is not married and a woman who can’t have a child; has a dream of his or her spouse, this man or women receives a prescription from a diviner to create an image of the spirit

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