Pan-Esotericism in African Religious Tradition: Roots of the “Divine Spark”

The “divine spark” refers to the inner divine principle that makes a being fully human and capable of ultimate spiritual realization. The claim made by certain European racist occultists (e.g., some 19th–20th century esoteric racists) that Black Africans or people of African descent lack the “divine spark” (the Logos, Atman, Nous, scintilla animae) is philosophically, historically, and theologically baseless. Such a claim is just as baseless as the effort by Christians and others to demonize the beliefs of the ancestral traditions. They are baseless on account of the fact, that ancient African Philosophical and Religious Traditions explicitly affirm a divine spark in every human-being, with no hierarchical divisions according to race, or tribe.

I will provide sources and bibliography for the concepts in ancient African philosophical religious tradition such as Egypt, Yoruba, Bantu, Dogon and Akan with close dates of their origins pre-Europe from scholarship. What I write here are thoughts, that have emerged in the previous article and other writings years ago into my reflections from Greece. This was also inspired by a class I took in my very early years at DePaul University on an Introduction of African Religious Traditions. If we want to be masters of philosophy over the racist distortions about us, then do so; and create new philosophy and analysis built on the teachings that have come before.

In Ancient Egypt, the concept of the KA (the immortal divine spark or double) and the BA (the mobile soul that returns to the divine source) was believed to exist in every human being, regardless of ethnicity. Pharaohs and commoners, Nubians and Libyans, and Egyptians all possess Ka and Ba.

The Pyramid Texts and Coffin Texts (a collection of ancient Egyptian funerary spells from the beginning of the First Intermediate Period of Egypt c. 2181 BCE–c. 2055 BCE) repeatedly state that any justified person, whether Black, brown, or otherwise can become an AKH (transfigured, immortal spirit of light formed by the union of Ka and Ba after death) and say: “I am yesterday, I know tomorrow…I am pure, I am pure.” This is absent of racial exclusion.

The earliest textual evidence for predynastic and early Dynastic periods is around 3100–2686 BCE, but are fully articulated in the Pyramid Texts of the Old Kingdom (c. 2400–2300 BCE). These are the oldest religious texts in the world, inscribed in pyramids for pharaohs but later democratized in the mentioned Coffin Texts (during Middle Kingdom, c. 2050–1800 BCE) for commoners. On pre-European contact, these teachings are entirely indigenous, predating Greek and Roman influence by millennia.

• Raymond O. Faulkner, The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts (Oxford University Press, 1969) shows that Ka, Ba and Akh are universal principles.
• James P. Middle Allen, Egyptian: An Introduction to the Language and Culture of Hieroglyphs (Cambridge University Press, 2014) details soul concepts in context.
• Also see John H. Taylor, Death and the Afterlife in Ancient Egypt (University of Chicago Press, 2001), Louis V. Žabkar, A Study of the Ba Concept in Ancient Egyptian Texts (University of Chicago Press, 1968), and Gertie Englund, Akh – une notion religieuse dans l’Égypte pharaonique (Uppsala, 1978).

In West Africa, the Yoruba teach, that every person has an Ori (inner head) chosen in heaven before birth, and an Emi (breath of life or divine spark) given directly by OLODUMARE (the Supreme Being). The Ifá corpus states explicitly:

“A human being is born with a complete destiny and a portion of the divine asẹ.”

There is no distinction between African or non-African in this teaching, and the divine portion is universal.

The Yoruba cosmological concepts of Ori, Emi, and Aṣẹ as Divine Principles can be traced to southwestern Nigeria and Benin. Every human receives Emi (the breath of life or divine spark from OLODUMARE, the Supreme Being), Ori (inner head, destiny chosen in heaven, seat of personal divinity), and a portion of Aṣẹ (or divine dynamic power or force). These are universal, and no human is born without them.

The origins of these teachings are rooted in oral tradition predating writing. The core myths are preserved in the Ifá corpus (Odu Ifá) and practiced continuously since at least the founding of Ile-Ife around 500–1000 CE (but tracing to earlier migrations). Pre-colonial evidence from archaeology and oral history places Yoruba city-states (e.g., Ife) from c. 800 CE onward, with their religious concepts being considered far older. Pre-European contact was fully documented in nineteenth-century indigenous accounts, before major colonial disruptions occurred in the regions.

This can be learned from:

• Wanda Abimbola, Ifá: An Exposition of Ifá Literary Corpus (Oxford University Press, 1976).
• E. Bolaji Idowu, Olódùmarè: God in Yoruba Belief (Longmans, 1962) emphasizes Emi as divine breath from God.
• Rowland Abiodun, Yoruba Art and Language: Seeking the African in African Art (Cambridge University Press, 2014).
• Jacob K. Olupona, City of 201 Gods: Ilé-Ifè in Time, Space, and the Imagination (University of California Press, 2011).

In Ghana and the Ivory Coast, for the Akan, every person has a Kra (the soul or life-force that comes directly from Nyame and returns to It at death) and Sunsum (the spirit or spark).

The Akan proverb reflecting the same teaching in the Pand Namak i Zartusht (or “The Book of the Counsels of Zartusht”; see The Manifestation of Divine Light) to the youth says that:

“All persons are children of Nyame; no one is a child of the earth.”

Among the Akan (in Ghana and the Ivory Coast), the Kra (or Okra) is the divine soul (or spark) directly from Nyame (Supreme Being), bearer of destiny (nkrabea). Sunsum is the personal spirit or character; and Honhom is divine breath. These teachings have their roots also in oral tradition. Akan states (e.g., Bono) are c. eleventh to thirteenth century CE, while the Asante empire is from the seventeenth century. However, these concepts are traced to proto-Akan migrations (c. 500–1000 CE). Pre-colonial manuscripts and oral histories collected in the early twentieth century confirm their antiquity. There is documentation of pre-colonial contact from R.S. Rattray in the 1920s interviewing elders recalling pre-1800 traditions.

These sources include:

• R.S. Rattray, Ashanti (Oxford University Press, 1923) and Religion and Art in Ashanti (1927), because it is seen as foundational ethnographic work on Kra as divine spark.
• Kwame Gyekye, An Essay on African Philosophical Thought: The Akan Conceptual Scheme (Temple University Press, 1995) provides a philosophical analysis of the Akan and Kra as “divine particle” very similar to classical Indian atomism.
• Anthony Ephirim-Donkor, African Spirituality: On Becoming Ancestors (Africa World Press, 1997).
• Kofi Asare Opoku, West African Traditional Religion (FEP International, 1978).

In Mali, the Dogon teach, that the Nommo (amphibious creator beings from the cosmic egg) place the nyama (life force) and the twin spiritual principles in every human. The Dogon creation myth, as in that of the Book of Dzyan insists the first humans were androgynous beings (or twins) containing the full divine seed. The origin of this teaching is oral, and its core myths were collected in the 1930s–1940s, but it is traced to Dogon migration to Bandiagara cliffs around the thirteenth to fifteenth centuries, with beliefs likely older. The Dogon beliefs have a connection to the ancient Mali Empire and Ghana Empire traditions. In terms of pre-European contact, French anthropologist Marcel Griaule’s informants insisted their knowledge was ancient and secret, predating Islam and Christianity. Later critiques, e.g., from Walter E.A. van Beek in 1991 question some astronomical details, though van Beek affirmed core soul (force) concepts as authentic Dogon beliefs.

• See Marcel Griaule, Conversations with Ogotemmêli (1965) for a primary source on Nommo and Nyama; Marcel Griaule & Germaine Dieterlen, Le Renard Pâle (Paris, 1965) on a detailed Dogon cosmogony; and Germaine Dieterlen, Essai sur la religion bambara (Paris, 1951) for a comparative study of the nyama concept shared regionally.

Within the broader Bantu-speaking traditions, the concept of the vital force (as Ntù/Muntu) and Divine Principle span across Central, Southern and Eastern Bantu groups. The core ontology is “vital force” as divine essence in all humans (sometimes called ntù or bumuntu), hierarchically from God through the ancestors and to all beings. Humans possess the highest vital force after God. The origins of these teachings are rooted in Proto-Bantu expansion (c. 1000 BCE–500 CE), with concepts being universal in Bantu languages and cultures by the medieval period. In Placide Tempels’ work Bantu Philosophy (1945), they are synthesized from the Luba but are still recognized as pan-Bantu.

This is provided in the works of Tempels, Kagame and Mulago.

• Placide Tempels, La Philosophie Bantoue (Bantu Philosophy) in 1945 explains, that the vital force is the divine essence in all humans.
• Alexis Kagame, La Philosophie Bantu-Rwandaise de l’Être (Brussels, 1956) positions the vital force within a hierarchy.
• Also see Vincent Mulago, La Religion Traditionnelle des Bantu et Leur Vision du Monde, (Kinshasa, 1973).

There are other sources used here, that detail pre-colonial concepts of the Divine Principle in African Traditions, such as:

• John S. Mbiti, African Religions and Philosophy, Heinemann, 1969.
• Geoffrey Parrinder, African Traditional Religion, SPCK, 1954/1974.
• Jacob K. Olupona (ed.), African Traditional Religions in Contemporary Society, Paragon House, 1991.
• Molefi Kete Asante & Ama Mazama (eds.), Encyclopedia of African Religion, Sage: 2009 (see entries on soul concepts).
• Philip M. Peek & Kwesi Yankah (eds.), African Folklore: An Encyclopedia. Routledge, 2004.

These traditions are far older than any European esoteric racism and unambiguously affirm the presence of a divine principle in Black bodies.

Along the same tract, Western esoteric and philosophical traditions used by the racists also actually affirm the universal nature of the divine spark. In Hermeticism (the tradition most often cherry-picked by European occult racists), The Corpus Hermeticum (Poimandres, Treatise I) states:

“Man is a being of divine nature. . .he has in himself the nature of the All.”

Neoplatonism (Plotinus, Proclus, Iamblichus) teaches that every soul, regardless of the body it inhabits, descends from the ONE and contains the same noetic spark. Plotinus explicitly teaches, that the sage can appear “Ethiopian” (i.e., Black) in one life and something else in another, yet the inner divinity is unchanged (see the Enneads I.6.5). In the Christian mysticism of Meister Eckhart is the concept of the “scintilla animae” or spark of the soul, wherein Eckhart states:

“There is something in the soul that is uncreated and uncreatable. . .this is the divine spark.”

The Catholic Church (which Eckhart belonged to) declared in 1441 at the Council of Florence and repeatedly thereafter, that Black Africans have immortal rational souls capable of salvation, which directly contradicts later and contemporary racist pseudo-theology. Many of the traditionalists have revealed themselves to hate this and are running to the Orthodox Church. Lastly, in Theosophy as we well know, H. P. Blavatsky (who is often misquoted) stated, that the “monads” (divine sparks) are identical in all human beings across all races, who are all evolving through the same root-races in successive incarnations. Blavatsky and her teachers explicitly rejected the idea and categorization of humans into superior and inferior races.

The racist occult denial originated as nineteenth-century pseudoscience, not ancient tradition. The idea that Black people lack a divine spark almost always traces back to post-1780s polygenist anthropology (through Gobineau, Knox and Chamberlain) claiming separate creations or “soul-less” races. It is secondly traced to misreadings of Guénon or Evola, neither of whom ever denied the metaphysical presence of the INTELLECT (the universal divine principle) in any human group. Although, Evola held prejudices about Black people and their place in European society. Evola rather believed that the divine spark was most clearly and powerfully manifest in the “Aryan” tradition and its descendants. They both criticized modernity and certain cultures, with Evola developing hierarchical conceptions. This is the same point of entry for many racists today. Thirdly, it is traced to modern neo-Nazi or “Hyperborean” esoteric Hitlerism, which simply invented the claim to justify the Holocaust.

None of these racists can cite a single pre-modern European, African, Asian, or Indigenous text that denies the divine spark on the basis of melanin, and so when they learn this they pivot. There is this empirical absurdity within their own frameworks.

If the divine spark were truly absent in an entire race, then no African could ever achieve gnosis, theosis, or liberation. Yet history records African Christian saints (e.g., Moses the Black, Fulgentius of Ruspe, Zeno of Verona), African Neoplatonic philosophers (Augustine of Hippo the Numidian or Berber), and living African masters in Sufism, Ifá, and Vodun who demonstrate the highest spiritual states by any criteria.

Reincarnation-based systems common in European esotericism become incoherent, because then we must also ask, why would “higher” souls never incarnate in Black bodies across millions of years? The assertion that Black people lack the divine spark is not an ancient esoteric doctrine, but a modern political fabrication hiding beneath mystical language. Every major philosophical and religious system, African and non-African alike teaches of a divine principle in man. This principle affirms its presence in every human individual, without racial exception. The racist occult denial falls the moment it is confronted with the actual texts and living traditions it claims to represent.

All these traditions predate European contact by centuries or millennia, preserved orally and in writing. As already addressed in regard to Zulu Unkulunkulu cosmology, the Bantu, Vodun and so on, the “divine spark” or life-force (soul) from the Supreme Being is universal and lies within every human regardless of ethnicity.