Kalunga Line

The Kikongo word for "threshold between worlds" is Kalunga. For people of Africa who ended up in the slave trade ports of New Orleans and Charleston, the Kalunga Line was specifically the Atlantic Ocean. They believed the soul after death traveled the path of the sun as it set in the west. The enslaved believed they were being taken to the land of the dead, never to return. Thus the Kalunga line became known as a line under the Atlantic Ocean where the living became the dead and the only way back to life was to recross the line. Some religions today still make reference to the Kalunga Line believing that the soul of an African-American travels back to Africa upon death and re-enters the world of the spiritually living although the body has passed on.