The mpungu and the firma

Tradition described: Palo Monte / Regla de Congo (Cuba)

The mpungu and the firma

Above everything is Nsambi (Sambia, Nzambi), the God who made the world and is not worked with directly — “Sambia arriba, Sambia abajo”, as one song in the owner's archive has it. Below Nsambi are the mpungu (also mpungo, in the singular and plural both), the powers of the world with which a prenda is charged and for which it is named. Cabrera records the principal ones with the correspondences Cuban practice gave them to Lucumí orichas and Catholic saints: Sarabanda or Zarabanda, of iron and the forge, set beside Ogún and Saint Peter; Siete Rayos or Nsasi, of thunder and lightning, beside Changó and Saint Barbara; Lucero, Nkuyo or Mañunga, of the roads and the crossroads, beside Elegguá; Madre de Agua or Kalunga, of the sea, beside Yemayá; Chola Wengue or Mama Chola, of the river, beside Ochún; Centella Ndoki or Mariwanga, of the wind and the cemetery gate, beside Oyá; Tiembla Tierra, beside Obatalá; and Cobayende or Pata en Llaga, of sickness, beside Babalú Ayé and Saint Lazarus.

Two cautions belong with that list. The correspondences are Cuban — they are how two religions that shared houses and families came to speak of each other's powers — and a Mayombe elder in Cabrera's pages may insist that a mpungu is not an oricha under another name. And the spellings vary from house to house and from book to book; those given here are Cabrera's and the practitioner dictionaries', labelled as such, and none has been checked by a speaker of the lengua.

The firma — signature — is the drawn side of the same vocabulary. Every mpungu, every prenda and every tata has signatures: figures drawn in chalk (mpemba, whence patipemba for the drawing) on the floor, on a board or on paper, made of arrows, crosses, circles and marks, which call, direct and seal the work. Cabrera reproduces a collection of them in Reglas de Congo; Thompson reads their crosses and circles as descendants of the Kongo cosmogram. None is reproduced here. A firma is an instrument, drawn by someone entitled to draw it for a purpose, and the pages describe what it is rather than show what one looks like.

Not yet checked The list of mpungu and their correspondences is compiled from Cabrera and from the practitioner dictionaries in the owner's archive; the exact set, and which pairing each house accepts, has not been checked against page references in Cabrera and varies by rama.

Editorially reviewed against the sources named

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