Cougar Trickster of Zulu
Among the Zulu people of South Africa the cougar trickster represents a spirit that inhabits swampy lowlands and transitional wetlands that the Zulu call amaxhaphozi. While the cougar is not native to southern Africa, in Zulu spiritual cosmology the term refers to a big-cat spirit entity with similar characteristics to the ingwe leopard spirit but with distinct trickster qualities. This being belongs to the complex Zulu spirit world that includes the ancestors, nature spirits, and the creator god uMvelinqangi. The cougar trickster operates in liminal wetland environments where water, earth, an