Minkisi (Nkisi singular) is a term for a wide range of religious objects that originate in the middle region of Africa extending through the Republic Of Congo, The Democratic Republic Of Congo and Angola that act as a communication between the worlds of the living and the dead. These are sculptures and objects which it is said ghosts and sprits live inside of and use to affect the living world. They are made from various and specific objects like ceramic vessels, leaves, cloth, shells or wooden sculptures into which different ‘medicines’ are bound and enclosed. The combination of the object, the medicine and the ritual acts of enclosing allows a spirit or ancestor to inhabit the vessel and to guide and empower him or her with healing and spiritual properties or antagonistic and retributive events on behalf of the owner.

Often made as figures that hold spears, musical instruments or other objects in their hands, Nkondi are specific Minkisi intended to act for the good of the community by protecting and defeating criminals, enemies and other evil forces. Typically ritual medicines and objects are placed in a cavity in the figure’s belly which is closed off behind a mirror. Mirrors allow the spirit to look out and are often placed on the eyes. Other Minkisi are also attached in small sacks around the neck or limbs of the figure and collectively they shape the power of Nkondi.
Most Nkondi are covered in nails or sharp pieces of metal which are hammered into the scuplture to awake the spirit within and get him to act.
Despite this seemingly violent act toward the Nkondi, Nkondi are thought to be volatile and temperamental representing the more aggressive tendencies of the dead and as such they are treated with reverence and respect.

Describing the above figure known as Nkisi Lunkanka, Wyatt Macgaffey qoutes Matunta at length.
“Lunkanka is an Nkisi in a statute and it is extremely fierce and strong. It came from Mongo, where many of our forebears used to go to compose it, but now it’s banganga have all died out. When it had nganga it was very strong, and so it destroyed whole villages. It’s strength lay in seizing [it's victims], crushing their chests, making them bleed from the nose, excrete pus; driving knives into their chests, twisting necks, breaking arms and legs, knotting their intestines, giving them nightmares, discovering witches in the village, stifling a man’s breathing, and so on. When it was known that Lunkanka was exceedingly powerful, a great many people trusted in it for healing, placing oaths and cursing witches and magicians, and so on.”
Lunkanka’s hands cup his ears so he can listen for slights and other insults which act as nails might to awaken the Nkisi to retaliate.

“The invocations addressed to Nkondi are extraordinary hymns to violence, transferring into the realm of the imagination the real violence of a harsh existence amidst disease, enslavement, tropical storms, and, since the mid-1880’s, the overwhelming violence of the European invasion.”- Wyatt MacGaffey, ‘Complexity, Astonishment and Power’.

A wide range of complex symbols, colors and ritual events shape and guide the spirit allowing the human world to communicate with the dead. Nonetheless, Minkisi are said to have their own will and exist on a plain separate from human events but affect all manner of special human powers. “The Nkisi has life; if it had not, how could it heal and help people? But the life of an Nkisi is different from the life of people. It is such that one can damage it’s flesh, burn it, break it, or throw it away, but it will not bleed or cry out… Nkisi has an inextinguishable life coming from it’s source.”-Nsemi Iskai quoted in ‘Flash Of The Spirit’ by Robert Farris Thompson.

The making of a Minkisi is a very specific act. The figures are composed in strict fashions by certain people within the community who have the specialized knowledge needed to bridge the divide between the worlds.
“The construction of an Nkisi—the ingredients and the songs—must follow the orginal model. If you put the ingredients together helter-skelter you injure the Nkisi and he will become angry over your failure to arrange the ingredients in the proper order.”-Nsemi, quoted in ‘Complexity, Astonishment and Power’ by Wyatt Macgaffey.
Likewise, only people with the unique knowledge of how to communicate with an Nkisi will act as diviner and make attempts to provoke the ghosts within.

Despite the intense image of the Nkondi, neither the figure nor the nail are essential and in some cases Nkondi are housed in seemingly docile vessels like pots or tied cloth. “To look at, all minikondi have feet on which to go about when they wish to wreck a village, but Mukwanga flies to the attack. It has tied around it the feathers of hawks and owls to show that these birds are the servants of the Mukwanga, who fly off whenever it wishes to seize someone to shed his blood. The Master who sends them is the ghost of a man who was violent in his lifetime in the village; this ghost is taken by the nganga to be the soul of Mukwanga when he composes it” (Kwamba, Cahier 141)

In this cosmology, nature is viewed as cyclical. Events of the past exist simultaneously within the present, the living and the dead sharing parallel realms despite neither being able to fully see or understand each other. Because Minkisi operate in a place between the living and the dead, they are said to have special knowledge. A Nkisi will know things beyond the owner or maker’s knowledge. Their activation is an act of communication between the worlds but is a translated dialogue because there are certain things and events in and of themselves that can only be known by the spirit itself. Likewise, the maker of a Nkisi and the diviner who will speak with Nkisi will each be aware of certain traits and powers the other does not understand and that it’s owner will not be aware of.

Minkisi are often made in pairs; Husbands and wives. This is the wife to the male figure above. Like a sitcom, it’s the wife who soften the husband and keeps him out of trouble. “If there were two males, many houses would be burned by the storm,” says Makundu Tito quoted in ‘Complexity, Astonishment and Power’. This is another kind of secret knowledge; a private language exchanged between husband and wife and spirit to spirit, impossible to be understood entirely from the outside.
Years ago, I actually owned a pair of male Nkondi. I came home late one night to discover the basement had exploded burning the bodega which was directly beneath my apartment. Burn marks were visible all the way up the walls and in attempt to save the building, the firemen had completely destroyed my apartment pulling down walls and ceilings and smashing all the windows. I managed to salvage a good deal of my things, but somehow, those menacing figures just didn’t seem quite so benign anymore and made me a little uneasy. I gave them away to friends who were helping me out.
Nothing happened to their apartment.

In a historical sense, Minkisi also posses multiple identities that can be thought of as secret histories each with contradictory and unique meanings beyond those originally intended.

Nikisi like objects exist throughout the Americas. The example above is of two cuban Lucero Mundo, (‘star of the world’), terra-cotta pots ‘charged’ with specific earth and spiritual objects that work in much the same way as Minkisi in a lineage that extends all the way back to the Congo Basin. The perseverance of their belief throughout the slave trade tell unique stories in themselves that are in a sense like a communication with ancestors and the dead. These American Minkisi possess their own secret knowledge of the African Diaspora and the influence and inclusion of traditions incorporated from other African regions and the West. “Kongo-Cubans of the nineteenth century made minkisi-figurines to mystically attack slaveholders and other enemies, and for spiritial reconnaissance.”-Robert Farris Thompson in ‘Flash Of The Spirit’.

Throughout the colonial period, Europeans called Minkisi Fetishes which they themselves fetishised and valued for their mystery and what they suggested of a ‘primitive’ culture and the ‘dark continent’. This western worshiping of the Nkondi and other Minkisi creates another secret-history which tells of European exploitation and observation. Indeed, many of the great Nkondi and Minkisi from the 19th century now live in art museums throughout America and Europe. Within Africa today a vibrant business of creating new, ‘soul-less’, Minkisi-like objects complete with faux rusted nails and aged cloth exists to supply tourist curio shops.

Staring out from under glass in the bright museum light would seem a rather lonely way to spend an ‘inextinguishable life’.

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 28th, 2010 at 10:32. It is filed under THITH Zine. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.