African Mythology

In African oral cultures, myths embody philosophical reflections, express values, and identify moral standards. Unlike Western mythology, African myths are not recounted as a single narrative story, nor is there any established corpus of myth. Instead, myths are embedded and transmitted in ritual practice.

African mythology commonly depicts the cosmos anthropomorphically. The human body is a microcosm that incorporates the same primordial elements and essential forces that make up the universe. Twinship is a predominant theme in much West African myth and ritual because the human body is conceived as the twin of the cosmic body. According to the cosmogony shared by the Dogon, Bambara, and Malinke peoples of Mali, the primordial beings were twins, and twins, therefore, represent the ideal. Every individual shares in the structure of twinship. Following birth, the placenta, which is believed to be the locus of one’s destiny and the soul’s twin, is buried in the family compound and watered for the first week of the child’s life. Among the Asante of Ghana, twins are assigned a status akin to that of living shrines; a sign of abundant fertility, they are deemed repositories of sacredness. For the Ndembu of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, by contrast, twins represent an excess of fertility more characteristic of the animal world than the human, and rituals are undertaken to protect the community from this anomalous condition.