About: M'Bona Cult

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The M'Bona Cult is a system of religious beliefs and rituals which is currently restricted to the most southerly parts of Malawi, but which probably extended more widely, both in other parts of Malawi and adjacent parts of Mozambique. The cult is found mainly among the local Mang'anja people and its former extent reflected that people's wider past distribution. It aims to secure abundant rains at the appropriate season through the making of propitiatory gifts at cult shrines, and includes rainmaking rituals in the event of drought. It has been related to a number of other territorial cults among the Maravi cluster of related African peoples which aim to secure the well-being of the people of a particular area secure from drought, floods or food shortages. The cult is believed to be a long

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  • The M'Bona Cult is a system of religious beliefs and rituals which is currently restricted to the most southerly parts of Malawi, but which probably extended more widely, both in other parts of Malawi and adjacent parts of Mozambique. The cult is found mainly among the local Mang'anja people and its former extent reflected that people's wider past distribution. It aims to secure abundant rains at the appropriate season through the making of propitiatory gifts at cult shrines, and includes rainmaking rituals in the event of drought. It has been related to a number of other territorial cults among the Maravi cluster of related African peoples which aim to secure the well-being of the people of a particular area secure from drought, floods or food shortages. The cult is believed to be a long established one, although estimates of how long it has existed are speculative, as the earliest definite record of its existence dates from 1862. There are a number of debates about the sect. The first is what the essential nature of M'Bona is, whether a natural spirit, a deified single human or combination of several such people, a priest or other human intermediary with a god or even the personification of the suffering of the conquered people, whether this identity has changed over time, and whether the name M'Bona has been applied to what were originally different entities in different places. The second is whether the current stories about M'Bona are myths, created to explain the cult after it was formed, oral traditions with possibly a much distorted factual basis or a form of oral history from which actual past events can be recovered. The third is about the exact historical role of the M'Bona cult and whether its ritual practices as recorded in the 20th centuries are a continuation of those of earlier times. Much of the study of M'Bona was undertaken by Father Jan Matthew Schoffeleers (1928 – 2011), an anthropologist and researcher into African Religion, who was a Catholic missionary in the Lower Shire valley from 1955 to 1963 and then followed a largely academic career in Britain, Malawi and the Netherlands until his retirement in 1998. His extensive study of the cult began in the 1950s and he published eight books or papers on it between 1972 and 1992, besides two academic theses. (en)
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  • The M'Bona Cult is a system of religious beliefs and rituals which is currently restricted to the most southerly parts of Malawi, but which probably extended more widely, both in other parts of Malawi and adjacent parts of Mozambique. The cult is found mainly among the local Mang'anja people and its former extent reflected that people's wider past distribution. It aims to secure abundant rains at the appropriate season through the making of propitiatory gifts at cult shrines, and includes rainmaking rituals in the event of drought. It has been related to a number of other territorial cults among the Maravi cluster of related African peoples which aim to secure the well-being of the people of a particular area secure from drought, floods or food shortages. The cult is believed to be a long (en)
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  • M'Bona Cult (en)
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