Juok (also Jwok, Jok)

The mud on the banks of the White Nile comes up black and heavy, and a god once knelt in it with his hands full. He had already worked white sand in a far country and red river silt in Egypt, and now he pressed the dark clay of the Shilluk homeland between his palms and began, once more, to make people. This was Juok, and making was the thing he did.

He is the high god of the Shilluk, the cattle-herding people the White Nile threads through in what is now South Sudan, and he belongs as well to the Dinka, the Nuer, the Anuak, and other Nilotic peoples strung along the upper river. He has no shape. No story gives him a face or a body, because he is held to be everywhere at once, a spirit running through all places and all times, closer to a breath moving over the water than to a figure standing on it. That breath is not a figure of speech to those who tell it. Juok’s breath is what quickens a living thing, and when it is withdrawn the thing stops.

The clay is where he is easiest to picture, because the clay is where he worked. Wandering the earth, he made each people from the ground he found beneath him. In the land of the pale foreigners he came upon white sand and shaped white people out of it. In Egypt he took the brown mud the Nile lays down every year and made from it the red and brown peoples of the river. Last he came home to the Shilluk country, found the black earth there, and out of it made black people. The differences between the peoples of the world were, in this telling, simply the different colours of the dirt that lay ready to hand.

What makes the story unusual is what he did next, and why. When Juok built the human body he built it for a job. He gave a man legs, so that he could walk out and run across the open fields. He gave him arms, so that he could break the ground and cultivate the millet. He set eyes in the head so the man could see that millet growing, and a mouth so he could eat it once it was grown. He fixed a tongue in the mouth, not only for eating but so the man could speak and sing and shout and dance. And he cut ears into the skull last of all, so that the man would be able to hear the noise of the dance and catch the speech of great men. Every part answered a need. The body was not a divine portrait but a tool kit for the life the Shilluk actually lived, out among the sorghum and the cattle and the long ceremonies.

There is a plainer coda that the tellers keep. Having shaped his people one by one and grown tired of the labour, Juok gave them the organs of sex, so that afterward they could make more of themselves and leave him out of it.

He is not a god who lingers in the foreground. Once the making was done, Juok stepped back to the edge of things and stayed there, vast and quiet, holding the destinies of all creatures without fussing over them daily. The Shilluk do not generally address him head-on. Between the people and their remote creator stands Nyikang, the first king, the culture hero who led the Shilluk to their land and who is called on as the go-between when the high god’s attention is wanted. Cattle, goats, and sheep are killed for Juok in sacrifice; the smoke and the blood are the language in which a formless god is spoken to.

A distinction matters here, and the Nilotic peoples keep it carefully. The word behind Juok, the root jok, does not mean the same thing everywhere along the river. For the Shilluk and their close neighbours it names the one supreme creator. Further south, among the Acholi and the Lango, the related word jok is used instead for lesser powers, local spirits and the ghosts of ancestors, plurals rather than a single most high. The same syllable carries a whole sky in one place and a crowd of small hauntings in another.

His powers are the powers of a maker and a sustainer. He shaped the first of every kind, and the breath by which they live is his to give and to take. He is present everywhere, which means nothing is hidden from him and nothing lies beyond his reach; the fate of every animal and every person rests, in the end, with him. His limits are the limits that come with being that large and that far off. A god who is everywhere in general can be hard to reach in particular, which is why the ordinary business of worship runs through Nyikang and through the slaughtered beast rather than straight up to Juok himself. He does not walk into the stories to fight or bargain or fall in love. He made the world practical and then let it run, and the people he shaped from three colours of earth have been talking toward his silence ever since.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Juok?

Juok is the supreme creator god of the Shilluk people of South Sudan and of other Nilotic peoples along the upper White Nile, including the Dinka and the Nuer. He is a formless, omnipresent spirit believed to have moulded the first humans from earth and to sustain all living things through his breath.

How did Juok create human beings?

According to Shilluk tradition, Juok wandered the earth and shaped people from the clay he found in each land, using white sand, the brown mud of the Nile, and black earth to make the world’s different peoples. He then built the body for practical use, giving humans legs for walking, arms for farming millet, eyes and a mouth to see and eat, a tongue to speak and sing, and ears to hear.

Why does Juok have no physical form?

Juok has no fixed shape because he is understood as a spirit present in all places at all times rather than a being with a body. Shilluk belief describes him as invisible and omnipresent, animating life through his breath, which is why he is never depicted with a face or figure.

How do the Shilluk worship Juok?

The Shilluk approach Juok through sacrifices of cattle, goats, and sheep, and often through the intercession of Nyikang, their legendary first king. Because Juok is remote and formless, Nyikang commonly serves as the intermediary between the people and their creator.

Is Juok the same as the “jok” of other Nilotic peoples?

Not exactly. For the Shilluk, Dinka, and Nuer, Juok names the one supreme creator god, but among peoples such as the Acholi and the Lango the related word jok refers instead to lesser local spirits and ancestral ghosts. The same root can mean the high god in one tradition and a group of minor spirits in another.

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Amma, Unkulunkulu, Nyame, Ala, Anansi, Khnum, Ptah, Atum, Prometheus, Enki, Adam, Pangu, Viracocha, Bochica