Heart Of Darkness:
Eat to Live:
While the eater cult would remain restricted to the Mwene himself and to the Kongolese warrior class, quickly becoming eclipsed by the Averronians in terms of religious influence on the mass of people dwelling within Kongo, it would remain a vital engine of the empire. To understand the durability of the cannibal cult in Kongo, one must understand the advantages it gave to a growing imperial power.
Firstly it gave fear. Every man knew "to fight the eaters is to be eaten". Far better to negotiate than to see your tribe consumed in the campfires of the eaters, and the tribe's children sold into slavery. Though once negotiation failed, it did mean that enemies fought the eaters twice as hard.
Secondly it gave cohesion. The eaters who served in the Kongolese army were united in knowing themselves the elites of the food chain, linked to their comrades by the mystical bonds of eating the flesh of their enemies together, as well as the flesh of their own fallen or retired comrades. Further, the army was much more than the gaggle of individuals that Central African armies had consisted of before the First Eater had come, more, even, than a band of brothers - it was one soul filling many bodies. Because each man was simply an incarnation of this great soul, each man also believed that his life mattered much less than the health of the army as a whole. And because the ritual of eating dead comrades was so important, it also meant that the eaters were of unparalleled determination to retrieve their comrades - indeed the greatest stories of the period - such as the "Ghat Cycle" of the 16th Century poets - often concern enemies who manage to eat a comrade, and thus take on the strength of an eater as well as a portion of the wisdom of the "army soul". Unlike in European armies, where cohesion was brought to the soldiery by terror and mindless repetition, in the army of the eaters, drilling, marching, ritual dances and cannibal stews all wove together making an army where discipline was a means of expressing religious devotion.
Thirdly, it greased the wheels of assimilation, even as it provided a solid basis for a pan-Kongolese identity. No other society in the world adopted cannibalism to such an extent as did the Kongolese. Even Kongolese who had never tasted human flesh knew that
this was what the First Eater had given to them to make them special. Yet it also increased the identification of the army with an all-empire identity. When an eater ate a friend or an enemy, he became a member of their tribe, father to their children, husband to their wives son to their parents. While the eater armies would take a gruesome toll on the military and civilian populations while they were conquering them, it also meant that after that toll, the eater armies rarely looted or raped their new subjects, and more often made arrangements to look after the welfare of their new family members. And it made the army the first place for people of alien cultures to get ahead in the empire, as once that ate of the flesh of the army, they were no longer an alien, but rather part of the army-soul.
Fourthly, it encouraged the moral rectitude and good health of the eaters. In the beliefs of the cannibal cult, impure flesh could not be eaten. Meaning that a sick man, or man of deviant morality, would not be allowed to add his soul to the army soul once he died. Also, the portion of the army-soul that filled a man would be lost if he could not be eaten, so a man who failed to keep himself healthy, or who committed immoral deeds, would have failed his duty to the army-soul. As a result, the eaters were the biggest health-nuts since the Spartans of Europe, and almost as puritanical.
Fifthly, the eater cult, in the incarnation of the First Eater, was a driver of imperial expansion. As the story goes, the entire reason for the Kongolese government's enthusiasm for following Tripoli and Ethiopia on their African adventures was because it would get the First Eater as far from Africa as possible.
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