There are two clearly distinct meanings of the word chi in Igbo. The
first is often translated as god, guardian angel, personal spirit, soul,
spirit-double etc. the second meaning is day or daylight but it most commonly
used for those transitional periods between day and night or night and day.
Thus we speak of chi ofufo meaning daybreak and chi ojiji,
nightfall. We also have the word mgbachi for that most potent hour of noon that
splits the day in two, a time favoured in folklore by itinerant spirits and
feared by children.
I am chiefly concerned here with the first meaning of chi, a
concept so central in Igbo psychology and yet so elusive and enigmatic. The
great variety of words and phrases which has been put forward at different
times by different people as translations of this concept attests to its great
complexity and lends additional force to the famous plea of Dr. J. B. Danquah
that we pay one another’s gods the compliment of calling them by their proper
name.
In a general way we may visualize a person’s chi as his other identity
in spiritland – his spirit being complementing his terrestrial human being;
for nothing can stand alone, there must always be another thing standing beside
it.
