Bantu religion

[CATTY&Co.]

It's obvious from the maps: that many people would have believed lots of different things. Most of it wasn't written down. And much of what was, was written down in the 1960s by left-wing anthropologists on a mission to find evidence of Marxism prior to the invention of money.

I put it to you that by the time Western anthropologists started bothering with them, the peoples of sub-Saharan Africa had been so thoroughly militarily clobbered and displaced that their religious leaders were open to suggestion.

"We aren't monotheistic... perish the thought! It's more spiritual... and inclusive... and in fact nobody knows what they're supposed to believe anymore unless they ask a medicine-man, like me."

"That's good, Olupona. Avoid drawing too much attention to that last part, but you're well on the way to Socialism."

===

Bantu mythology is the setting for this game, but are we playing in the setting of anyone's actual religion, or is it all a _curated_ mish-mash: designed to emphasise colonially-imposed concepts like, I don't know, social justice?

Bantu covers the whole Congo. So one example of a group whose original (pre-colonial) religion might not have fit that paradigm is the Basuto. They pose decadent modern gamers with an important moral question: should we be _pretending_ to capture spirits and offer them to the death god, when we could be performing real cannibalistic rituals: with each other?

[Maluno]

as long as you don't eat the brains