He was nine years old when he met it on the alley path.
Under a full moon in Akaboukwu, Uruagu, Nnewi, a small boy set out before dawn to gather fallen pears. What came rushing towards him from the great iroko tree left him unable to move or speak, and ill for almost a year. The elders said no eye sees the Umunadi and lives.
He lived.
Decades later, Dominic C Ndulue asks the question that night left behind: what protected him?
Igbo wisdom says every person carries a chi, a personal share of the Great Chi, Chukwu. The ancient Gnostics taught that a spark of the hidden God, the Monad, lives within every soul. Are they speaking of the same light?
Weaving a true story with careful scholarship, The Chi Within sets Igbo spirituality beside the secret teachings of Gnosis:
• Chukwu and the Monad: the far God of two traditions
• The chi and the divine spark: the light within every person
• The alusi and the Archons: guardians or jailers?
• Ilo uwa and the cycle of return: rebirth as homecoming, or as prison
• The dibia and the Gnostic knower: what kind of knowledge truly saves
• Ogbanje, mmanwu, sacred groves, the ofo and the women of power
Drawing on the Nag Hammadi texts, the work of Igbo scholars and the author's own life, from caring for his blind grandmother as a boy to carrying an ozo elder's ofo in the courts of Oraifite, this is a book about where two great spiritual paths meet and where they part.
Honest, personal and deeply researched, The Chi Within is for Igbo readers seeking the world behind their names, for readers drawn to Gnosticism, and for anyone who has met something in the dark they could not explain.
It is a journey back to the light that may already be within you.
