The unknowable character of gods' names illustrates power and secrecy beyond human imagination or conception. Ancient names express the inexplicable nature, character, essence, and attributes of a being who is an almighty, all-powerful, ever-present creator, and who is supreme in all senses of supremacy. Examples are Ol ód ùmar è of the Yoruba of Nigeria and Mulungu of the Bantu-speaking peoples of East Africa. Ancient or primary names are those that are generally used by older and elderly members of the communities. Generally, the names used for the supreme being of every African people are classifiable into two groups: the ancient or primary local names, and the descriptive or secondary names. Most of these names are encoded in etymologies which describe the qualities and functions of such supreme beings. Within some nation states there are more than 250 languages, as in Nigeria, within others more than one hundred, as in Tanzania, and within some others more than forty, as in Kenya. The names of African supreme beings reflect the different African language groups. They are often told in traditional language by priests of indigenous religious traditions and by elders.
Many of the myths are handed down through many generations. This is the general notion on which rests the concept of an intermediary in African religion, which is also reflected in African social and political setting. Thus, the entire creation is held to be dependent upon the supreme being, who is acknowledged to be at the apex of the cosmic structure. Most of the myths affirm that the supreme being delegated to lesser spiritual beings the responsibility of creating the local universes of Africa, and the supreme being is always credited with the creation and allotting of what each community considers to be the essence of human beings (including destiny and predestination). In some sense, cosmogenic and cosmological myths serve the social and political functions in the diverse traditional political groups of African communities, particularly the ways in which different ethnic groups came into existence. Most mythic narratives of African peoples hold the supreme being responsible for the creation of their universe, including the earth and sky, human beings, and spiritual beings. The three interrelated elemental dimensions -the sky, the earth, and the underworld (beneath the earth) -are believed to be peopled by different categories of spiritual and physical beings, and all are connected in certain relational ways to the supreme being. Africans' perceptions towards supreme beings, though varying from one people to the other, express certain basic patterns that reflect African social organization and hierarchical structures, including relationships between elders and youths and humans' interconnections with natural phenomena. The different groups of Africa have developed myths around their supreme beings' transcendence and immanence. The diversity of cultural forms and linguistic differences of Africans, notwithstanding the relationships of African supreme beings to the created order (including the human, spiritual, and other entities), reveal to a great extent a certain uniformity and similarity in the nature, attributes, and powers of the supreme beings. The indigenous concepts and conceptions of most African supreme beings have been retained by the adherents of the religions that were introduced into Africa in the ritual practices and the translations of the sacred texts (Bible and Qur ʾ ān) of those religious traditions. The African supreme being is usually associated symbolically with the varieties of indigenous cultures of the peoples. The nature, characters, and attributes of the African supreme being reflect indigenous religious orthodoxy prior to the introduction of, and in spite of, the influence of Christianity and Islam, and these qualities reflect the continuing diversity of the African peoples' traditional sociopolitical structures and languages within the current modern nation-states. Supreme beings carry a distinct and unique quality in African cosmology as creators with all other supreme attributes in the theocentric universe. Belief in a supreme being is universal among most of the over sixty peoples of Africa.
African supreme beings are spiritual beings or divinities who are as varied as the peoples of sub-Saharan Africa, the world's second largest continent after Asia.
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