Cagn

The Mantis Creator

Domain: Creation, Cunning & Transformation
Alignment: Chaotic Good
Element: Earth
Relics of Power: Magic Tooth of the Eland

Speak with Cagn

The full Codex

5 sections of this entry are open to everyone: the summary, the people, the symbols, the lineage and the sources. The other 9 (Name and epithets, In the ancient sources, The myths, Worship and archaeology, How the god was depicted, What scholars debate, After antiquity, Did you know?, Codex relic) are part of the full Codex: PRO opens the whole study of all 500 deities, and without a subscription you can read one full entry a day, just like in the app.

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The People

People

African peoples

Region

Sub-Saharan Africa

Period

antiquity – present

These deities gather traditions of various Sub-Saharan African peoples, from the Bantu to the Akan and Dogon. Worshipped through ancestral rites, masks, and drums, they bind communities to the spirits of nature and the ancestors. Many of these beliefs remain alive both in Africa and in the religions of the diaspora.

Mask societies, such as those of the Dogon and Bambara, give body to the spirits in ceremonial dances. Initiation rites mark the passage to adulthood, and offerings of water, grain, and animals keep the bond with the ancestors and the spirits of nature.

At a glance

Cagn (transcribed phonetically by linguists as |Kaggen or /Kaggen) is the supreme divine trickster, transformer and primordial creator in the mythology and worldview of the San peoples (the |Xam and related groups) of southern Africa, especially in the Maloti-Drakensberg mountains and in the semi-arid basins of the Cape Province and the Kalahari. First recorded in the 1870s by the colonial official Joseph Millerd Orpen through the native narrator Qing, and documented in parallel in rigorous phonetic script by Wilhelm Bleek and Lucy Lloyd from |Xam informants, Cagn appears in the form of the praying mantis, although he has the power to take the appearance of a hare, a snake, a vulture or a man. A paradoxical and many-sided figure, Cagn combines cunning intelligence and traits of comic naivety with immense supernatural power. He is the creator of the eland (Taurotragus oryx), the great sacred antelope brought into being from a sandal soaked in water, of the Moon (shaped and hurled into the night sky from a shoe or from the gall bladder of his prey), and of countless edible plants; he tirelessly protects the game animals from the arrows of the deadly hunters.

7 min read · Reviewed on September 28, 2026 · How we research

Sacred symbols

The praying mantis, the eland antelope, the moon and the bow

Family

Siblings

Blue Crane (ǀHáo)

Cagn

Unions

Coti / ǀHúnntu!katt!katten (The Rock Hyrax)

Children

Cogaz (Eldest son)The Porcupine (ǃXóë - adopted daughter)

Genealogy according to Joseph Millerd Orpen (1874); Wilhelm H. I. Bleek & Lucy C. Lloyd (1911); J. David Lewis-Williams (1981, 2000)

Sources and further reading

Primary sources

Orpen, Joseph Millerd, A Glimpse into the Mythology of the Maluti Bushmen. translation: The Cape Monthly Magazine, Vol. 9, July 1874, pp. 1-13. read
Bleek, Wilhelm H. I. & Lloyd, Lucy C., Specimens of Bushman Folklore. translation: London: George Allen & Company, Ltd., 1911. read

Studies

Lewis-Williams, J. David, Believing and Seeing: Symbolic Meanings in Southern San Rock Paintings. London: Academic Press, 1981.
Lewis-Williams, J. David, Stories That Float from Afar: Ancestral Folklore of the San of Southern Africa. Cape Town: David Philip / Texas A&M University Press, 2000.
Guenther, Mathias, Tricksters and Trancers: Bushman Religion and Society. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999. open
Biesele, Megan, Women Like Meat: The Folklore and Foraging Ideology of the Kalahari Ju/'hoan. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993. open

Name and epithets

The theonym Cagn is the form adapted to the Latin alphabet used by Joseph Millerd Orpen in 1874 to record the pronunciation of the informant Qing.

In the ancient sources

A Glimpse into the Mythology of the Maluti Bushmen, 1874. Pioneering article published by the magistrate Joseph Millerd Orpen in Cape Town, transcribing the mythological accounts and the explanation of the rock painting…

The myths

The Creation of the Eland from the Leather Sandal. According to the account recorded by Orpen in 1874 and detailed by Bleek and Lloyd, Cagn took one of the leather sandals belonging to his companion Kwammang-a and place…

Worship and archaeology

Unlike the agrarian societies with organized temples and priests, the traditional religion of the San hunter-gatherers offered Cagn no formal votive cults, no periodic sacrificial rituals and no submissive prayers.

How the god was depicted

The visual expression associated with Cagn and his mythological universe reaches its high point in the rock shelters of the Maloti-Drakensberg mountains, in South Africa and Lesotho.

What scholars debate

The Nature of the San Trickster: Supreme Deity versus Primal Mischief-Maker. Nineteenth- and twentieth-century anthropologists debated whether |Kaggen should be classed as a supreme god disfigured by folk imagination or…

After antiquity

In global anthropology and in the history of prehistoric art, the myth of Cagn and the Bleek and Lloyd archive are regarded as documentary heritage of universal value, inscribed by UNESCO in the Memory of the World Regi…

Did you know?

When a San hunter shot a poisoned arrow at an eland, it was believed that Cagn tried to distract the hunter by turning into annoying insects or swift hares, so as to allow the wounded animal to escape.

Codex relic

Magic Tooth of the Eland. The tooth of the sacred antelope that carries the power of creation and binds him to the first animal he made.

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