Things Fall Apart Superstition

Like any good religion, the Igbo religion comes with many superstitions.
Personal chi is one of

the superstitions in the Igbo tribe. Chi can be a personal fragment of the Supreme Being, unique
for each individual. It determines much of a person's success and character. "When a man says
yes his chi says yes also" (19). But at the same time a man does not challenge his chi. "The evil
you have done can ruin the whole clan. The earth goddess whom you have insulted may refuse to
give us her increase, and we shall all perish" (22). Ezeani said this to okonkwo in response to his
challenge against his chi, by beating his wife during the week of peace. Okonkwo BECAME
THE EXAMPLE OF A person challenging his own chi. His desperate desire to succeed his chi,
does not let him go any further than failure, destruction and death. Chi is simultaneously a
destiny and an internal commitment, WHICH cannot be denied. �� The Igbo religion has
a tendency to symbolize numerous amounts of divine gods. They HAD a god for every different
natural phenomenon that occurred. These things of worship were things such as trees, pieces of
wood, hills, caves etc. � For every symbolic god there was a being in the clan that represented it.
Ezeani the priestess, of the goddess of the earth, represented the goddess of earth (Ani). The clan
seeks knowledge from the god through the oracle of the hills and caves. Other symbols in the
Igbo religion are the sacred silk cotton tree and the evil forest.
1. Okonkwo commits a great sin when he beats his wife during Peace Week (Chap.4); it is
believed that evil will fall upon the whole clan, so he must repent.
2. If a child is stillborn, it is an ogbanje, a wicked child who when it died, would enter the
mother's womb again to be reborn (Chap.9).
3. Since Ezinma is thought to be obanje, even though she has lived, she is always sick, so another
superstition is to dig up her iya-wa, the stone which is the link between Ezinma and the spirit
world.
4. They also believe in Ogbu-agali-odu, an evil essence loosed upon the world through secret
medicines (Chap.11).
5. The tribe believed in evil spirits. "Their clan is full of evil spirits of these unburied dead,
hungry to do harm to the living."
6. Members of the tribe that suffered from infirmities were seen as unclean. These people would
not be buried, but be cast into the Evil Forest.
Chapter 1
Religion 1: The ritual of the kola nut is one of hospitality among the Ibo. The nut is passed between host
and guest, each insisting that the other should be the one to crack the nut, but the host eventually does
the honors. They say that he who offers the kola brings life, and that is one of the predominant rituals of
the story. They do this to please their gods and ancestors.
Chapter 2
Religion 2: Okonkwo goes to negotiate a settlement with Mbaino because that is the ritualistic first act
before one tribe declares war on another. The gods demand atonement for sins against members of the
clan, and the offending village offers the traditional compensation -- a native boy and a virgin to be used
in whatever way the gods see fit.
Chapter 3
Religion 3: Consulting Agbala, the Oracle of the Hills and Caves, is a ritualistic part of the Ibo religion.
Whenever villagers have questions about the source of their misfortune or the future, they consult the
oracle and learn the answer through its priestess. Agbala's words do not go unheeded.
Chapter 4
Religion 4: Okonkwo is so carried away in his anger at his youngest wife that he forgets the ritual of the
Week of Peace and breaks the rules of kindness and gentleness that all the villagers are supposed to
exhibit to one another during that week before planting begins. Because he broke one of the sacred
laws of their religion, Okonkwo is forced to make a sacrifice to the earth goddess in repentance. This is
another ritual of the religion of the Ibo tribe.
Chapter 6
Religion 5: Although women are viewed as the property of first their fathers and then their husbands,
they can be assigned very important roles in the religion of the tribe. Chielo is the priestess of the
powerful god, Agbala, although she was an ordinary woman of the village.
Chapter 7
Religion 6: Nwoye remembers passing the Evil Forest on his way home from the fields when he
overheard an infant's cry from the woods. That's when he realized that twins actually were left in the
forest to die because their religion declared twins bad luck for the parents.
Chapter 8
Religion 7: Obierika warns Okonkwo that the earth god destroys entire families for sins like the one
Okonkwo committed when he killed Ikemefuna because the boy had become part of Okonkwo's family.
Chapter 9
Religion 8: The religion dictates that a woman who bears child after child only to see them die is
besieged by the spirit of an evil child who will re-enter its mothers womb only to be born and then die
again. The cycle can only be broken if the child's iyi-uwa, the stone that links it to the spirit world, is
found and destroyed. Sometimes medicine men would try to discourage the child from returning by
mutilating the dead body and burying it in the Evil Forest, but occasionally, the children were known to
return with the scars of that mutilation at their birth.
Chapter 13
Religion 9: Okonkwo was forced to leave his home and have his property destroyed because he
accidentally killed a boy. Obierika didn't understand why such means were necessary for an unintended
offense, but their religion did not answer his questions. He was only certain that if they did not send
Okonkwo away to appease the earth goddess, all the tribe would suffer for the sin.
Chapter 16
Religion 10: Missionaries came to Umuofia and began converting the Ibo tribe members. They preached
that the religion of the tribe was only superstition and that they were in error to worship the earth
goddess and the god of the sky because there was only one, true God. Many of the people of Umuofia
did not believe the missionaries and considered them mad, but Nwoye found solace in the beliefs that
they offered, and so he joined them. The elders of the villages and the leaders of the clan were
saddened by the derision of those who converted, but they believed that the white man's religion would
fade away in time.
Chapter 22
Religion 11: For a while, Christianity and the tribal religion were able to co-exist in relative peace, but
the actions of a zealot brought them into conflict. Enoch was trying to start a religious war by so
degrading the tribe's religion that they had no other choice but to fight. It didn't work that time,
however.

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Like any good religion, the Igbo religion comes with many superstitions.

Personal chi is one of

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