SPIRIT BELIEFS
Ancestral Spirits.—The belief in the vitality of the ancestral spirits is very strong among both the Kikuyu and the Kamba peoples; the former call them Ngoma and the latter Aiimu (singular Imu). The A-Kamba declare that the life breath ngo becomes the Imu. Curiously enough, the disembodied spirit was called Edimmu by the ancient Assyrians (according to R. C. Thompson in “Semitic Magic”), and they also believed that the soul could return to earth and that ghosts were responsible for many body ills.
Under ordinary circumstances, when a person died and was duly buried his soul entered the underworld, “the house of darkness, the seat of the god Irkalla, the house from which none come forth again.” This would seem to correspond to the Sheol of the Hebrews.
The Assyrian word Edimmu (the root of which is immu) is practically identical with the Kamba word for the same conception, but there is no evidence to show that the identity is anything but accidental.
The belief in the ancestral spirit is merely a form of the belief in a soul, with the difference that the present-day religions of the civilised world would not admit that the spirits of the departed could interfere with the life of man. We still find traces of this belief in Europe in the Feast of All Souls, and in curious ceremonies which take place in some countries on St John’s Eve. [[28]]
The Yezidis of Mesopotamia believe that the spirits of the good inhabit the air, whilst the Kikuyu believe that the ancestral spirits live underground, and the Kamba that they inhabit certain sacred fig trees. This latter belief would seem to be particularly widespread. It is prevalent all over India, and examples of it are to be found at most places along the east coast of Africa.
The Kikuyu will tell you that there is only one ngoma or spirit for each person, and that women as well as men possess it. Cattle are said to have no ngoma, but sometimes they may become possessed with that of human beings, and an evil spirit will now and again enter their body in the hope of destroying the poor beast. An animal so possessed is easily recognised by its peculiar behaviour; it goes about shaking its head, and tears stream from its eyes. This spirit may be of the same nature as the evil demons of Semitic mythology. The Kikuyu declare that it can be driven out by getting the possessed animal to sniff the smoke of a fire made of the dry fruit of the tree known as Kigelia musa. They believe that the high god Engai can control the actions of the ngoma, and they sometimes go to a sacred fig tree, mugumu, and beseech Engai to protect the people from evil spirits.
It is said that the ngoma of a murdered man flies straight back to his father’s village and, as a rule, hovers around it; but, should the murderer run away and hide, the ngoma of his victim will often pursue and haunt him or else influence events in such a way that the guilty one will be discovered and handed over to the authorities, who will deal with him according to tribal law.
I endeavoured to find out from the elders whether the spirit or soul was supposed to be present in the body during life. But they declared that all they knew was that ngere, the life breath, was present during life, and between this and the soul they seemed to make no [[29]]difference. They believe, however, that it is dangerous to wake a man suddenly, as his ngere is away, and, in this semi-conscious condition, he is very apt to strike you if he should happen to have a weapon at hand.
They have quite a clear conception of the ngoma or spirit of the departed, the character of which is said to be similar to that of the person during his or her lifetime.