S1E20 - Mwindo: Medicine for Being Forged by What Opposes Us

In this episode of Story Medicine, we explore Mwindo from the oral tradition of the Nyanga people of the Democratic Republic of Congo. This is a living epic about the son a father tried to destroy, and what that son became because of it.

Mwindo is born already singing, and already carrying the symbol of his purpose. His father seals him in a drum and throws him in the river. What follows is a journey through the underworld, a confrontation in the sky, and a homecoming that refuses revenge.

This story speaks to anyone still carrying a wound from those who should have welcomed them, anyone who has wondered whether an ordeal has made them or broken them, or anyone learning what it means to hold the difficult parts of their story without being defined by them.

The episode includes the complete story told in full, depth psychology analysis revealing the archetypal patterns and symbolic meaning, and three practical integration exercises to help you embody the medicine.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to Story Medicine. I am Joe Summerfield. For over 20 years I've been working to better understand and support people in navigating this human experience. I've come to believe that stories are encoded with the collective wisdom of all who have come before us, that they bring us into connection with the collective unconscious and contain treasure waiting to be decoded. This podcast explores traditional tales through that lens. Each episode offers a story told in full, an exploration of the medicine it may be offering, and practices to help you to integrate that medicine. Today's story comes from the oral tradition of the Nayanga people of the Eastern Congo, a living tradition performed in song, dance, and percussion in the mountain rainforests of the Kivu region. The version I'm drawing from was recorded and translated by the anthropologist Daniel Biberk and linguist Kahombo Matine in 1969, working closely with the great Nianga storyteller Sheikh Harisi Rureke, who performed this epic over twelve consecutive days. So this version of the story has been abridged, and I must ask you to forgive some of my pronunciation if I don't get it quite right. I come to this tradition as a respectful outsider, offering what medicine I can find with deep gratitude to the Nianga people who have kept this story alive. Part one The Story Long ago, in a village called Tubondo, in the high forest country, there lived a chief named Shemwindo. He was powerful and proud, and he had seven wives. One day his counsellors brought him a prophecy that one of his wives would bear a son who would one day take his throne. Shemwindo heard this and instantly made a decree. His wives would only bear daughters, any son born would be killed. Six of his wives gave birth to daughters, and his seventh wife, his favourite, Nyamwindo, felt her child move within her, and knew that he was unlike any other. The child would be a son, and he would not come into the world the ordinary way. When he came he emerged through his mother's navel, already walking, already talking, and already singing. And in his small hand he held a conger, a ceremonial fly swatter that is the symbol of a chief. The song that he sang was thus I am Windo, the one born walking, the one born talking. My father does not want me, my father tries to kill me. But what can he do against me? Shemwindo heard the singing and came to the house. He saw the boy and threw his spear. Mwindo raised his conger, and the spear fell short. So Shemwindo called his counsellors and had his son buried alive. By morning the singing could still be heard from the underground, and when they dug down, Mwindo was gone. Finally, Shemwindo sealed his son inside a wooden drum and laced it tight with antelope hide and threw it into the river. The drum was not carried downstream as you might have expected. Instead it floated against the current upriver, away from the village, toward the place where Mindo's aunt lived, his father's sister, Iangura, who had had no part in the decree. Even inside the sealed drum, in total darkness, Mwindo was singing, and the direction of the song was toward the one who would receive him. Iangura heard the singing from the water. She came down to the bank, dragged the drum out onto the land, and cut it open, and out stepped Mwindo, holding his conga and singing. She wept. She held him. She told him what she knew. Your father has wronged you, and you must find him. But what you do when you find him, that is what will make you who you are. Mwindo gathered his uncles and went to Tubondo. His father saw him coming and fled, out through the back gate, down through the roots of a fern, and into the cold grey land of the gods underground. Mwindo followed. The underworld in the Nianga tradition is much like the world above, still the same paths, the same villages, but without the sun or the moon. Cold and grey and still. The dead live there, and so do the gods. Before Mwindo reached the god of the underworld, Muisa, who he knew was sheltering his father, he came to a young woman drawing water. It was in fact Cahindo, Muisa's daughter. She should have been beautiful. She was the goddess of good fortune, but she was covered in sores, and her body was neglected and in pain. Muindo stopped. He washed her wounds carefully. He tended to her across two days, without being asked. In gratitude, Cahindo gave him what he needed most, counsel. She told him that her father would offer him food and drink. Refuse it, she said. It will trap you amongst the dead. So when Mwindo stood before Muisa, he refused the food. He refused the drink. Muisa tried to kill him twice, and twice Mwindo's conga, his living scepter, came to his defence and brought him back. Each time Muindo's song rose again from the grey underground air. But Shemwindo was not there. He had escaped again, back up to the surface, and then up further again into the sky, into the village of Nkuba, the god of lightning. Mwindo climbed out of the underworld, crossed the earth, and found the stairway up into the clouds, and he kept going. In the sky village, Shemwindo was brought out. He stood before his son and named every wrong he had done, the decree, the spear, the burial, the drum. He offered to surrender his throne entirely to Mwindo, to give him everything. And Muindo looked at his father and said Come home. He would not accept the full abdication. He brought his father back to Tubondo. He used his conger to restore the village and to raise back to life all those who had fallen. And then he had three thrones made. His own would sit in the centre, his aunt Iangura to one side, and his father Shemwindo to the other. And there they sat together. But the story is not finished. Sometime later, Mwindo, powerful now, his name known across the world, killed a dragon that lived near the village. It was a creature dear to Unkuba, the lightning god who had helped him reach his father in the sky. So Uncuba came down, and he took Mwindo up through the burning heat of the sun, through the terrible cold of the rain, through the white silence of the moon, through every extreme of the cosmos, every register of experience that Mwindo had not yet passed through. And when that journey was done, Unkuba set him back down on the earth. Mwindo gathered his people and spoke the laws by which Tubondo would live from then on. May you grow many foods, may you live in good houses, may you live in a beautiful village, do not quarrel, do not harm the creatures of the earth, do not mock the one who limps through the village, and fear the chief, and may the chief also fear you. And from that day the Nianga say, Mwindo ruled in peace. Part two The Medicine. Let's explore the medicine that this story may be offering us. Before we start, if you know somebody who might appreciate this story's medicine right now, please share this episode with them. And if you're enjoying the podcast and would like to help others to find it too, please consider subscribing and leaving a review. Thank you. The story begins with Mindo's father, before the hero is born. A prophecy arrives. Shemwindo's son will take his throne. And rather than coming to terms with or preparing for his son's arrival and the inevitable transition, Shemwindo's response is a decree. No sons will be born. He tries to prevent fate from unfolding. This is a fear of succession wielded as power. It's the terror of a man who has built his identity entirely around his position and his authority, and who can't come to terms with the prospect of his offspring becoming potent. So he acts against it before it can become real by attempting to eliminate his offspring. We see aspects of this dynamic in our world. We must all come to terms with our shifting roles in society and with impermanence, with succession. More specifically, parents mustn't take for granted that we are entirely at peace with our children developing. Feelings of loss, pride, competition, or displacement may be hard to accept. So this story invites caution, as do many others, including that of Oedipus, from a tradition on the other side of the world. Equally, we as people who are or have been children may have been touched by this dynamic in one way or another. We don't have to look too far to see the parent who can't see or bear the child's growing autonomy, and so works subtly or not so subtly to keep them small. Or the leader who dismantles those beneath him to prevent their rise, or the part of us that kills off nascent possibilities before they're strong enough to survive, because they threaten the order that we have built. Shemwindo's decree is an expression of the fear of being superseded. So, in a broader sense, I think this is an invitation to us not to reject the feelings that we find difficult, or to act to impose our will on the world around us in accordance with challenging feelings. If we can't address our shadow aspect in relation to our fears or insecurities, then there is a likelihood that we will resist or obstruct the right order of things and the unfolding of our destiny. And then it turns out to be his favourite wife who bears the son. This might come across as a passing detail in this telling of the story, but I feel it's an important one. Of course it's the one most in relationship with him, most trusted, most beloved that will deliver the thing that he fears so immensely. This feels to me like an important teaching about what genuine partnership actually is. The person who loves you the most is not the person who protects you from what you need or who subordinates. Sometimes, perhaps in the deepest or the most fruitful partnerships, he or she is the one who brings the challenges that you need the most. In the Old Testament Book of Genesis, when God creates Eve, he does so because he identifies the need to create, in Hebrew, an aza conegdo. This translates as something close to oppositional partner, a complementary counterpart, someone whose challenge is necessary for growth and balance. So the child, the necessary medicine for the masculine counterpart, comes through Niamwindo, and he arrives already walking, already talking, and already singing, and he carries the conga, the chief's sceptre, in his hand. From his very first moment, Mwindo's primary instrument is his voice used in song. Traditionally, in the telling of this story, the song is performed as a call and response. The song reaches outward towards connection and is met. So the first thing Mwindo does is declare himself in a form that invites acknowledgement or response. I am here, who will receive this? And the Conga carries its own significance. It's the symbol of chieftainship, but in this story it is also alive. It defends him, and it restores him when he falls. So what he arrives carrying is not just authority, but it's a living restorative power. What this suggests for us is that there's something that arrives with us, a song, a purpose, a capacity that has the power to restore us. The drum cannot silence it, the spears can't kill it, the burial can't contain it. Whatever was most essentially ours at the beginning remains ours throughout. And here the story offers something further. It is this very thing, the original song, the innate purpose, that conga that we come into the world holding, that restores us when we fall. When the underworld tries to keep Mwindo, it is his conga that brings him back, and it is also his conga that restores all of the people of the village, the living symbol of what he was born to do. Our deepest purpose is not only what we are here to give, it is also what revives us when we have lost our way. Shemwindo continues to avoid what is unfolding, and he exhausts his options. He can't spear the child, he can't bury him, so he finally seals him in a drum and throws him in the river. And instead of floating downstream, the drum floats against the current towards the aunt, towards the one who will receive him. So Muindo navigates in the darkness by relationship. She exists outside of the system that wounded him. She is not bound by the decree, and she gives him the most important thing she could possibly give. She didn't try to solve or eliminate his challenge, but she offered a framing for it. You must find your father, but when you do find him, that is what will make you who you are. So she is telling him that the journey ahead is not about retribution or justice. It's about formation. What he does in the moment of confrontation will determine who he becomes. The wound is the initiation, but it is not the destination. What medicine does this offer us? When we've been sealed in by what others have done to us or by the challenges of life, the guide who truly serves us is not the one who helps us win. It's the one who redirects our attention from what has happened to us to who we are becoming in response to it. The wound is the occasion. The formation is the point. That is our journey. So down into the underworld, and Muindo finds Kahindo. Kahindo is the goddess of good fortune. That's her identity in the Nianga tradition, luck, grace, and the quality of fortune. And Muindo finds her diseased, covered in sores, and sitting neglected at the entrance to her father's realm. Her father is Muisa, greedy, manipulative, dishonest, the god who rules the underworld through deception and corruption. And in this realm, the goddess of good fortune is sick and untended. The story doesn't tell us why she's so unwell. I wonder if it speaks to the notion that grace, luck, and fortune are qualities that cannot flourish in an environment governed by power and self-interest. Under Moisa's kind of authority, they wither. It feels significant to me that this encounter is different in quality from what Muindo found with Iangura. Iangura gave to him, she opened the drum, she held him, she oriented him. He was the one in need, and she was the one with the resource, with the nourishment. The relationship was essentially maternal. But here with Cahindo it is reversed. He has power, and he gives, without knowing what it will return. This is the first time in the story that the feminine encounters Muindo as a man, and vice versa. He arrived in the underworld having been held, and now he moves through it, capable of holding. This is a maturation threshold, and it's worth pausing on. But Muindo is on an urgent mission. His father is somewhere in this grey world, and every moment that he delays is a moment that his father might escape. So he has every reason to press forward without stopping. But instead he tends to Cahindo across two nights. Each night, after completing one of Muisa's tasks, he returns and tends to her again. The first morning she looks a little better, and the second morning she's completely healed. The restoration runs alongside the quest to find his father, night by night. His care and his mission happening in parallel are each feeding the other. Because she in turn gives him what he needs the most, knowledge. She knows her father's traps, the poisoned food and drink, a paralyzing seat. The neglected goddess of fortune, tended back to herself, becomes the guide through the realm of the corrupt father. Perhaps there's rich medicine here for us. The capacity to pause mid quest and tend to what's suffering is what opens the doors in the deep places. Mwindo doesn't tend to Kahindo because he knows that she'll help him. He tends to her because she's suffering and because he can. And in doing so he restores the goddess of fortune. So for us, perhaps the quality of grace, the sense that the world is somehow with us, that things open rather than close, is not something that we can pursue directly. It tends to appear as a consequence of how we move through difficulty. When we remain open to what we might encounter on the way, when we can still be moved by suffering even in the middle of our own urgency, when we remain in touch with our humanity, something shifts in the texture of our own journey, and we may find that doors open around us as a consequence. And then to the confrontation. Shemwindo has fled from the village to the underworld and then up into the sky, and when he's finally brought before Mowindo, he offers to give up everything. Mwindo refuses the full abdication, and he doesn't banish or kill his father. Instead, he invites his father to come home. To banish or punish or simply accept the full surrender might have felt just, but that's not what this story is about. Mwindo chooses something harder and wiser. He honors his father and their relationship without surrendering his power within it. He's not pretending that nothing happened or giving his father the throne, but he refuses to let the original rupture be the last thing said between them. The relationship continues on new terms defined by Muindo. So Shemwindo is given one of three thrones alongside his son and alongside the aunt who received that son. The arrangement carries significance. Iangura, who had nourished and oriented, holds one position, and Shemwindo, who had wounded and initiated, holds the other. And Windo, the new chief, sits between them. That image of the three thrones, I think, is a map of integration. Wholeness is not the elimination of the wound. The father who tried to kill him is there as a part of the picture. He remains a witness to what the son became without his blessing, and perhaps even because of the ordeal. That his opposition created. If we try to make difficult parts of our story disappear, we risk losing parts of ourselves in the process. The part that was forged in the encounter with them. Equally, if we restore them to the position that they once held, we don't move forward. What we can do, and what Mwindo does, is hold them in their right place while remaining in relationship. The scar remains and perhaps serves as a reminder of the process that brought about the new. The medicine for us is perhaps that the graduation into mature authority is not marked by the defeat or by the elimination of what opposed us. It's marked by the capacity to hold the wound and the nourishment side by side, and to rule from the center of both. And then, when it seems that the story is over, Mwindo kills a dragon. He's powerful now, and his name is known across the world. He's survived the drum, the descent into the underworld, he's confronted his father, and he's restored his village. He acts, perhaps, as somebody who has earned the right to act without checking. So when he kills the dragon, Nkuba takes him up into the sky. And the sky journey creates a three-part structure that the whole epic has been building. The drum was enclosure, total darkness, no sight, sealed in. The underworld was inversion, cold, grey, the world below the world, the realm of the dead. And the sky is exposure, all seeing perspective, no shelter, bright light. Together, drum, underworld, and the sky are the full range of experience. Mwindo has inhabited now every level of the cosmos, above, below, and the sealed darkness that precedes orientation entirely. This is why his authority as king carries weight. He knows what it is to be sealed in darkness, singing towards an unknown reception. He knows what it is to descend into the cold grey world and still be moved by suffering. And he knows what it is to be taken into the extremes of the sky and return humbled to earth. And what the sky teaches him specifically, what the drum and the underworld could not, is this that power without restraint harms what it loves. Even the just man, even the initiated man, even the man who has forgiven his father and restored his village, is capable of harm when he stops checking himself against the broader impact of his actions. For this he needs oversight. And so Moindo comes back down from this journey into the sky and speaks the laws that he has identified. Amongst them, do not harm needlessly, and fear the chief, and may the chief also fear you. It's worth sitting with that last line. Real authority is not freedom from accountability, it's the willing acceptance of it. The mark of genuine authority is the willingness to keep being taught, even after we've earned the right to rule. And in this understanding, the Son has truly earned his place in his father's throne. Part three. Here are three practices to help you to integrate this story's medicine. First practice finding your conger. Mwindo arrives already carrying what he needs, his purpose, his innate capacity, his song. And it is that same thing that restores him when the underworld tries to keep him. So take twenty minutes with your journal. We're going to work through this practice in three steps. First, write on your page, what did I arrive with? Not what you were taught or what you earned or what was given to you, but what was already present. The quality, the capacity, the way of being, the unique song that has been yours since the beginning, even when circumstances tried to contain or silence it. Once you've identified your conga, ask yourself, in what ways has this thing revived me? When did it bring me back? And write about specific moments as opposed to writing in the abstract. The conga doesn't reveal itself through general reflection, but through particular memories of return. And then, as a final step in this practice, ask yourself, what can I do to bring that thing more present in my life? And where does my conga want to take me? Second practice, the formation question. Instead of consoling Muindo on what was done to him or hiding him away, Iangura frames his journey for him. What you do when you find him, that is what will make you who you are. In that she transforms ordeal and possible retribution into initiation. This week, bring to mind a wound or a challenge that you're carrying, something done to you or something lost, or something that hasn't yet been resolved. And draw three mind maps on a piece of paper. Around the first, describe the wound as you normally carry it, what happened, what it cost, what was taken. Around the second, write what has nourished and oriented you through it, the people, the practices, the experiences, the qualities in yourself that have held you through this challenge. And then around the third, write what journey this challenge is inviting. In what ways does facing this challenge stand to make you who you will become? This is a practice in asking Iangura's question, and in recognizing that wound, nourishment, and formation all belong in the picture together. Third practice, the father's fear. Shemwindo receives a prophecy and makes a decree. Rather than preparing for what's coming, he organizes his life around preventing it, and in doing so, he harms what he loves, he loses what he was trying to protect, and he nearly destroys the thing that would have completed him. Take twenty minutes with your journal, and at the top of the page, write, What am I afraid of? But don't stop at the surface answers. Sit with it. Go beneath the obvious. What is the thing, the outcome, the loss, the change, the danger, the person, the version of yourself that you are most quietly organized around avoiding? Then you could ask yourself an even harder question. In what ways has that fear become the architect of my choices? Where has it shaped what you pursue, what you refuse, what you keep small, what you don't allow to grow, what you choose to show the world? In what ways are you living, Shemwindo's decree? And then, because the story doesn't let Shemwindo off lightly, ask who else is living with the consequences of that organization? Who is that mwindo in your life? What nascent thing, what relationship, what future possibility might you be sacrificing? This isn't a comfortable practice, but Shemwindo's story suggests that the cost of living organized around our fear is always greater than the cost of turning to face it. Mwindo descends into the darkness singing. He tends to what suffers on the way. He brings his father home. He is taken to the sky and he is returned humbled to the earth. The wound and the nourishment sit beside him on their thrones, and he rules from the centre of everything that shaped him. This is what it looks like to become what you were always meant to be. The wisdom in these old stories waits patiently. I hope this one's medicine found you where you need it. Thank you for listening to Story Medicine. I am Joe Summerfield. Until next time.