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DR MPHUTLANE WA BOFELO explores shared spiritual origins across faith traditions, urging compassion, unity and light beyond religious difference.
December is a season of light, yet also a season of debate. Among Muslims, some see no harm in wishing Christians a merry Christmas or joining their festive tables, while others recoil, deeming such gestures impermissible.
Within Christianity, similar divisions exist — between those who freely greet Muslims during Eid-ul-Fitr and Eid-ul-Adha and join their tables, and those who recoil at the very thought.
One spirit is generous, expansive and tolerant. The other is narrow, dogmatic and fearful. What the latter misses is that faiths differ more in form than in essence.
Humanity has always sought to name its beginnings, to clothe mystery in story, to give form to the ineffable. Across cultures and epochs, myths of origin differ in language yet converge in meaning.
The Tswana-Sotho remember Ntswana-tsatsi, the rising sun of creation, mohlakeng — by the reeds. The Nguni tell of emergence from the reeds, umhlanga.
Genesis speaks of the Spirit hovering over the waters. The primal symbols are the same: water and light. Water is the womb of life, the matrix of fertility. Light is the effulgence of consciousness, the energy that awakens form into being.
From these sources, humanity is born — not merely as flesh, but as emissaries of the Eternal Effulgent Light. Our purpose is not survival alone, but the embodiment of divine qualities: love, peace, justice, compassion, mercy and grace. These are not abstractions but living forces, the very breath of existence.
Every tradition remembers a first human: Tlake among the Basotho, Adam in Abrahamic texts, Atum in Egypt, Adapa in Mesopotamia, Nommo in Dogon mythology. These figures are not simply ancestors; they are archetypes of potential — clay moulded by divine breath.
Alongside them stands the Perfect Person, the exemplar of what humanity can become: Jesus in Christianity; Muhammad (peace be upon him) in Islam — especially in Sufi thought as al-insan al-kamil; Osiris in Egypt; Krishna and Buddha in India.
In African spirituality, the ‘perfect person’ archetype is not about flawlessness in the Western sense, but about embodying harmony, balance and connection. This is expressed through the concepts of ma’at, ori and ubuntu. The figure who empties themselves to become the perfect person surrenders ego and individualism, allowing divine energy, ancestors and community to flow through them.
Each embodies the virtues of the Eternal Light, showing that the human journey is not only about origin but also about fulfilment — about becoming a mirror of divine qualities.
Every culture also remembers the sage who ascends, bridging heaven and earth: Mohlomi, the philosopher-seer of the Sotho-Tswana; Nomkhumbulwane among the Nguni, embodying mystical connection to fertility, rain and divine balance; Enoch in Judaism, who ‘walked with God’ and became Metatron; Idris in Islam, raised to a high station; Thoth in Egypt, the divine scribe; Hermes Trismegistus in Greco-Egyptian lore; and Adapa in Mesopotamia.
These sages remind us that humanity’s highest calling is wisdom — received from the Eternal, translated into law, philosophy and art, and transmitted for the flourishing of society.
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Strip away the names and garments, and the vision is unified. Humanity arises from water and light. Its purpose is to embody divine virtues in the world. Its journey moves from the first human, to the perfect exemplar, to the ascended sage.
The myths remind us that existence is not random, but radiant with meaning. We are emissaries of the Eternal Effulgent Light, called to live as vessels of love and justice, guided by the wisdom of sages who walked before us.
Whether we speak of Ntswana-tsatsi or Genesis, of Mohlomi or Idris, of Thoth or Metatron, we are speaking of the same truth in different tongues.
The stories differ in form, but in essence they proclaim this: humanity is born of light, sustained by water, and destined to embody eternal virtues. Our ancestors, sages and exemplars remind us that the human journey is a sacred pilgrimage — from origin to fulfilment, from clay to consciousness, from earth to the Eternal.
Dr Mphutlane wa Bofelo is a poet, essayist, playwright and political theorist. He entered the world of socio-political and cultural activism in the early 1980s through the Black Consciousness movement in Zamdela Township in Sasolburg. His works, including Transitions: From Post-Colonial Illusions to Decoloniality and Bluesology and Bofelosophy, express creativity and analysis through a unique synthesis of intellectual traditions, integrating critical and subaltern theories, Black Consciousness, Sufism and socialist humanism.
