The Four Moments of the Sun;
Symbolism of the Cross in Kongo Culture
by
Bronwyn Mills
Talia Abrahams’ essay in this issue, “Voices of a Kongo Power Object,” is an examination of a 19th century Kongo sculpture of the crucified Christ. It brought me back to thoughts of a fertile time, intellectually, artistically and imaginatively, in the Oughties, when I was working my own doctoral dissertation, Maps. Cosmograms, and the Caribbean Imagination.
A common confusion, when not mistakenly ascribed to a simple misspelling, is between the Congo, the area first colonized by Europeans in West Central Africa, and the ancient, independent African kingdom of the Kongo, located roughly where Angola and the Democratic Republic of the Congo are today. Founded in the 14th century, the rulers of the Kongo maintained a relationship with the Portuguese, at their arrival, as a sovereign nation. However, the “discovery,” if one can put it that way, of the usefulness of the Kongo’s African captives as enslaved labor—and then, over time, their own—gradually reduced the Kongo to a lesser, client state first of Portugal, which got Sao Tome from them as a permanent based for the Portuguese part in the slave trade; and then of other European nations. Let us not forget the horrors perpetuated under King Leopold of Belgium when the Belgians moved in, with some help from the British. (See Adam Hochschild’s King Leopold’s Ghost for a harrowing account of that leader’s barbaric treatment of the Congolese.) |
Late in the 15th century the ruler of the Kongo, Nzinga a Nkuwu, requested information about Christianity, and sought the help of priests from Rome to provide such answers. He himself converted shortly thereafter. His son Alfonso I, is widely credited with development of the religion in the kingdom, in its specifically African form, which, as such, was later repudiated as "genuine" Christianity by Europe.
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I wonder, indeed, how the people of the Kongo (the Bakongo) actually read the Christ, esp. the crucified Christ, and in such a way as their Christian version so offended European Christian critics. For the symbol of the cross preceded Christianity in Kongo culture and has continued to persist on into contemporary times both in that part of Africa and in the Americas where, arriving at the time of the transatlantic slave trade, it underwent further adaptation by captive Africans and then, by their descendants. (In fact, the anthropomorphic image above references the culture in the Americas.)
On the other hand the image on the right, the dikenga, also appears widely in studies of West Central African art and culture: central is the cross and the circles at the ends of its branches. Other variants might show an "X' at each end, tridents, or other indicators; but the intent of the cosmogram—for so it is—whatever its varying forms, is to represent what art historian Robert Farris Thompson has called "the four moments of the sun." Imagine a mountain with water at its base, so that the mountain is reflected, upside down, in the water. The horizontal line of the cross, like the line/boundary between these mountains, let us imagine, divides our human world from that of the spirits. Then imagine the peaked summit of each mountain as indicated by the vertical, intersecting line of the cross. Thompson emphasizes the concept of circularity in Kongo belief; thus, imagine the circles at the end of these lines as the sun, moving from the right to its nadir then setting on the left but continuing to rise to its nadir below, in the spirit world. Similarly, think of human life as birth, fullness of human powers (the nadir) to old age and passing into the spirit world. The process does not stop there. One continues to develop, to acquire wisdom in the spirit world in a similar pattern as above and then is reborn into the human world, traveling the cycle once more, ad infinitum. This is a “renaissance par excellence,” to quote Thompson in the publication (with Joseph Cornet, ) for the exhibit The four moments of the sun: Kongo art in two worlds at the Washington, D.C., National Gallery of Art.
In those same exhibit notes, Thompson continues:
On the other hand the image on the right, the dikenga, also appears widely in studies of West Central African art and culture: central is the cross and the circles at the ends of its branches. Other variants might show an "X' at each end, tridents, or other indicators; but the intent of the cosmogram—for so it is—whatever its varying forms, is to represent what art historian Robert Farris Thompson has called "the four moments of the sun." Imagine a mountain with water at its base, so that the mountain is reflected, upside down, in the water. The horizontal line of the cross, like the line/boundary between these mountains, let us imagine, divides our human world from that of the spirits. Then imagine the peaked summit of each mountain as indicated by the vertical, intersecting line of the cross. Thompson emphasizes the concept of circularity in Kongo belief; thus, imagine the circles at the end of these lines as the sun, moving from the right to its nadir then setting on the left but continuing to rise to its nadir below, in the spirit world. Similarly, think of human life as birth, fullness of human powers (the nadir) to old age and passing into the spirit world. The process does not stop there. One continues to develop, to acquire wisdom in the spirit world in a similar pattern as above and then is reborn into the human world, traveling the cycle once more, ad infinitum. This is a “renaissance par excellence,” to quote Thompson in the publication (with Joseph Cornet, ) for the exhibit The four moments of the sun: Kongo art in two worlds at the Washington, D.C., National Gallery of Art.
In those same exhibit notes, Thompson continues:
In certain rites it [the cross] is written on the earth, and a person stands upon it to take an oath, or to signify that he or she understands the meaning of life as a process shared with the dead below the river or the sea - the real sources of earthly power and prestige, in Kongo thinking... The intimation, by shorthand geometric statements, of mirrored worlds within the spiritual journey of the sun…the source and illumination of some of the more important sculptural gestures and decorative signs pertaining to funerary monuments and objects designated for deposit on the surface of funerary tombs, or otherwise connected with funerary ceremonies and the end of life.
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And I am reminded of my own practice for several years of the Brazilian martial art, Capoeira, specifically the form which retains the most African aspects of the art, Capoeira Angola. Certain elements of Central West African culture were inevitable in that practice. For some time, for example, under our Mestre, Mestre João Grande, practitioners made the sign of the cross on the ground before a jogo began, not self-consciously, but clearly referencing Thompson’s comments above. This was not done as a gesture so often seen in Catholic circles, to call on Christian sources and referencing Jesus’ crucifixion as salvation for humanity. Rather, the gesture invoked the importance of the journey symbolized by the dikenga, the journey of humans from childhood to death, with death as an entry into the spiritual (under-) world where a person is taught more wisdom by the spirits and then returns. Once more, each journey from the spirit world to birth to one’s prime, to old age and then death also assumes a further exchange between the world of the spirit below and the world of the flesh. Rebirth is ongoing; and, in a sense, life includes a perpetual reincarnation.
The Four Moments of the Sun represent the philosophical underpinnings of minkisi, a concept upon which Abrahams has expanded most aptly. These are Kongo power objects (nkisi singular) and a range of objects both artistic and ritually important. Suffice it to say that her proposal that the 19th century Kongo crucifix which so struck her may very well be an nkisi seems entirely consonant with a continuation of underlying Kongo religious concepts; and I have left that discussion to Abrahams, at this time far too complicated for my short essay.
The Four Moments of the Sun represent the philosophical underpinnings of minkisi, a concept upon which Abrahams has expanded most aptly. These are Kongo power objects (nkisi singular) and a range of objects both artistic and ritually important. Suffice it to say that her proposal that the 19th century Kongo crucifix which so struck her may very well be an nkisi seems entirely consonant with a continuation of underlying Kongo religious concepts; and I have left that discussion to Abrahams, at this time far too complicated for my short essay.
FOR FURTHER READING:
Robert Farris Thompson and Joseph Cornet’s 24-page paperback from the above-mentioned exhibit, The Four Moments of the Sun: Kongo art in two worlds (1981), sells for a whopping £433 via Amazon.co.uk or $425 via Amazon.com. However, I strongly recommend Robert Farris Thompson’s Flash of the Spirit (Vintage Books, 1984) which has a whole section, “The Sign of the Four Moments of the Sun,” full of detail and interest. The book in its entirety (originally published in 1983) has become a classic, turning the study of African art in the West—deservedly—on it’s ear or, as the bookcover blurb from The Philadelpia Inquirer put it, “This is art history to dance by.” Other books by Thompson, including one on the African art of the Tango, are well worth the read.
The other essential reading for the underpinnings Kongo religious philosophy is work by the late Kimbwandende Kia Bunseki Fu-Kiau, a native scholar and renown expert: African Cosmology of the Bantu-Kongo: Principles of Life and Living is a key work—the paperback, sadly, starts at $102 at Amazon.com, or £102.19 through Amazon.co.uk. The second edition is a mere $90.00 at Amazon .com. The Book Depository has some for a reasonable price (one under $20), presumeably second hand. Otherwise, Support your local library and search via WorldCat (To be fair, WorldCat also notes some editions available at a reasonable price.)
Dr. Henry Luis Gates, Jr., who serves as the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and Director of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University, has done a series on the History of Africa (see Amazon Prime) which includes substantial information on the Kingdom of the Kongo.
The other essential reading for the underpinnings Kongo religious philosophy is work by the late Kimbwandende Kia Bunseki Fu-Kiau, a native scholar and renown expert: African Cosmology of the Bantu-Kongo: Principles of Life and Living is a key work—the paperback, sadly, starts at $102 at Amazon.com, or £102.19 through Amazon.co.uk. The second edition is a mere $90.00 at Amazon .com. The Book Depository has some for a reasonable price (one under $20), presumeably second hand. Otherwise, Support your local library and search via WorldCat (To be fair, WorldCat also notes some editions available at a reasonable price.)
Dr. Henry Luis Gates, Jr., who serves as the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and Director of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University, has done a series on the History of Africa (see Amazon Prime) which includes substantial information on the Kingdom of the Kongo.