Agwu

The first sign is usually trouble. Someone in the compound starts to behave wrongly. The mind goes muddy, the talk goes strange, and the eyes follow things nobody else in the room can see. In much of Igboland, in southeastern Nigeria, a family facing that does not only ask what is wrong. It asks who is calling. Very often the answer is Agwu.

The fullest study of him is the work of the Igbo scholar Jude C. U. Aguwa, first in an article on Agwu possession in the journal Paideuma (1993) and then in a book, The Agwu Deity in Igbo Religion (Enugu, 1995). Aguwa treats Agwu as far more than a vague force. He has intellect and will. He is the patron spirit of the dibia, the diviner-healer, and the one who inspires people of outstanding talent. The name has longer forms, Agwuisi and Agwunsi, and Aguwa reads the endings as pointers to the spirit’s character rather than to different beings: isi is head, or first, and nsi is poison.

That last syllable is fair warning. Agwu gives wealth, good fortune and children, and the same spirit is blamed for sickness, infertility, misfortune and bad behaviour. Other spirits in Igbo thought lean one way or the other, toward helping or toward punishing. Agwu does not lean at all. He is called muo nkpasa, the spirit of confusion, and a Gale reference work, World Eras, puts the matter plainly: he can scramble the mind of the clearest reasoner, and he can also clear a confusion that no human effort could lift. Nobody in the tradition pretends this is comfortable. The sick blame him, the gifted thank him, and the diviners are possessed by him.

He also comes in many local shapes, which Aguwa ties to the ecology, the social order and the working life of each community. There is an Agwu of the home and an Agwu of the wild, an Agwu of fertility, an Agwu of the farmer, an Agwu of the diviner, and one that possesses only women. Above all there is a good Agwu and a bad one. The bad Agwu, Agwu Ojoo, is explained as the gathered spirits of people who failed badly in life, never received proper funeral rites and so never became ancestors. They follow the lines of kinship and they wait, ready to afflict their own living relatives. The good Agwu is explained as the collective will of a family line to keep its hold on some advantage, often medicine, turned by ritual into a spirit that renews that purpose generation after generation.

Among all the spirits of Igbo belief, Aguwa notes, only Agwu is given a story of appearing in visible human form, and a version survives in Nri. He was born looking like a child, but deformed, so monstrous that he was judged an abomination. His strange hands and feet were bound and he was carried off into the evil forest. When the bearers came back to the compound, he was already there waiting for them. It is the only portrait he has, and it is not a flattering one.

Aguwa ranks him in human affairs perhaps second only to Ala, the earth goddess, and the reason is the dibia. The work is intimate and practical. The healer recites the incantations, and Agwu takes possession of him and names the herb that will cure, and the place in the forest where it grows. The Encyclopedia of Religion entry on Igbo religion, by Francis Arinze and Ogbu Kalu, describes exactly that exchange. In the shrine the dibia keeps his medicines in a horn and uses the horn to summon the spirit, and before a divination begins he makes the sacrifice that Agwu is owed. The dim room smells of crushed leaves. The objects around him are familiar Igbo emblems: the ofo staff of authority and truth, the ikenga of personal achievement, carved figures of a dog and a he-goat, and the ogirisi, a ritual plant closely tied to Agwu.

For the dibia J. A. Umeh, author of After God Is Dibia (1997), the bond is total. In his words, as quoted in a recent study of the dibia, the healer speaks the voice of Agwu and thinks the thought of Agwu. Umeh also compares Agwu to the Holy Spirit of the Bible, a Christian lens on an older idea, and his wider account separates two kinds of Agwu: Nne Agwu, the mother Agwu, of which every other kind is an offspring, and Ebo Agwu, the Agwu of a particular lineage. A dibia possessed by a lineage Agwu works only within the gifts that lineage holds. One possessed by the mother Agwu serves the whole people. Umeh says such healers are very rare, and fieldwork at Okpoto in Ebonyi State found no idea of a mother Agwu dibia there at all, in a community famous for its dibia lineages.

The call cannot really be refused. In Aguwa’s analysis the person the spirit selects, the future dibia, is the true victim of possession, and because the office runs in families, so does the seizure. The muddled mind, the wrong behaviour, the voices and visions all have to be read by a professional who can tell an Agwu disturbance from other kinds of trouble. What looks like madness in one light is, in this one, a summons that has not yet been answered.

Outside writers sometimes set Agwu beside the great West African tricksters, the Akan Ananse and the Yoruba Esu, and World Eras does exactly that. The likeness lies in the confusion: like them, Agwu can unsettle what seemed clear. It is a comparison, not an identity.

His power is knowledge that people cannot get for themselves: which leaf cures, what the future holds, how to see clearly when everything is fog. He gives skill, prosperity and children, and he lifts the confusion he causes. His limit is his character. Because he keeps no fixed disposition, he can never simply be trusted, only served, and the only remedy for his confusion is to work with Agwu himself through the dibia and the sacrifice. The spirit that muddles the mind is the same spirit the healer needs in order to see.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Agwu in Igbo religion?

Agwu is the Igbo patron spirit of divination and healing, and the spirit who possesses and guides the dibia, the diviner-healer. He is also held responsible for confusion, sickness and misfortune, so Igbo tradition uses Agwu to explain both good and bad fortune.

Is Agwu good or evil?

Agwu is neither consistently good nor consistently evil. According to the scholar Jude C. U. Aguwa, Agwu can give wealth, fertility and talent and can also cause sickness, infertility and misbehaviour, and unlike other spirits he has no fixed leaning toward helping or punishing. Some communities distinguish a good Agwu from a bad Agwu, called Agwu Ojoo.

How does Agwu choose a dibia?

Agwu is believed to choose a future dibia by possessing him or her, and the call often shows up as muddled thinking, inappropriate behaviour or hallucinations that a professional has to interpret. Because the office of dibia runs in families, Agwu possession is also understood to be hereditary.

What is the story of Agwu being born?

In a version of the story told in Nri, Agwu was born looking like a human child but was so deformed that he was judged an abomination. His hands and feet were bound and he was carried into the evil forest, but when the bearers returned home, Agwu was already there.

What is the difference between Nne Agwu and Ebo Agwu?

J. A. Umeh, author of After God Is Dibia, describes Nne Agwu as the mother Agwu, of which all other forms of Agwu are offspring, and Ebo Agwu as the Agwu of a particular family lineage. A dibia possessed by Ebo Agwu works within the gifts of that lineage, while a dibia possessed by Nne Agwu serves the whole community, and such healers are said to be very rare.

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