Asase is the personified Earth in Akan cosmology and is paired cosmologically with the male sky deity Nyankapon. She is described as mother of important river/forest/land deities (Bia / Bea / Tano) and in some traditions is named as mother or stepmother of Anansi. Akan tradition recognizes two linked local identifications: the Asante and many other Akans call her Asase Ya / Asase Yaa (linked to Thursday), while the Fante and some other groups call her Asase Afua / Efua (linked to Friday). Both names denote the same single being with complementary aged and youthful personalities rather than two separate gods.
Akan sources present Asase primarily as two complementary personae of one deity. Asase Yaa (also called Aberewaa by the Asante) is pictured as an old woman associated with barren places and the realm of the dead. Asase Afua is pictured as a youthful, very beautiful woman associated with fertile land, farming, love and procreation. Symbolically Asase Afua is represented by animals such as the antelope and earlier or variably by the goat; descriptions record horn-coil numerology (e.g., ten coils on one horn and eight on the other, or variants with eight coils each) as symbolic elements tied to fertility and astronomical symbolism.
Asase governs the fertility of the land and agricultural abundance, receives human bodily remains (honam) and blood (mogya) at death, and functions as guarantor of truth and social peace—lying is a taboo against her. She must be propitiated before altering or using land (libation consent) and is invoked in naming/outdooring ceremonies, funerary libations (ayie) to permit graves, and other domestic appeasements (for example before house construction). Her dual aspects link her to both cultivation and the ancestral realm (Asamando), and she appears as an authoritative moral and ecological force within Akan society.
Weaknesses
- conditionNone given — Asase is not described as adversarial; vulnerabilities are not specified in the source
Wards
- ritualAbstention from tilling on Asase's day
- ritualPouring libation to Asase before changing or agitating land
- ritualTouching lips or tongue to the soil while reciting the Asase Ya Prayer-Poem (oath/truth ritual)
- ritualKnocking upon the earth before planting (acknowledgement/permission)
- ritualAppeasement sacrifice to Asase before building a house
Tano (Ta Kora)
Tano (also written Tanoɛ), identified in one source as Ta Kora (also Tando in Fante), is an Abosom in Akan/Asante religion associated with war and strife and, in Asante accounts, with thunder and lightning. The supplied materials treat Tano primarily as a named member of the Akan Abosom category rather than providing extended mythic narratives or iconography.
Anansi
The spider trickster god of Akan folklore — cunning, mischievous, and wise. Keeper of stories and teacher of human beings, brought through the slave trade into Caribbean and African-American tradition.
A ƭat Roog
A term attested in the vocabulary surrounding Roog within the Serer religious system; the provided sources do not supply a clear definitional account of an entity by this exact name. Material available situates the term in the wider context of Serer cosmology in which Roog is the universal supreme deity and ancestor cult (pangool) and priestly mediation (o yaal pangool) structure ritual life.
Abena Mansa
A name attested in a single contemporary Ghanaian blog anecdote as a 'mysterious being'; available sources do not establish Abena Mansa as a coherent, traditional supernatural figure or provide corroborating ethnographic detail.
Abonsam
Abonsam is a malevolent spirit name used in accounts from the Gold Coast (modern Ghana) to explain community-level misfortune such as accidents and disease. When local ritual specialists diagnose Abonsam as the cause, communities perform a prolonged communal expulsion ritual intended to drive the spirit into the sea.
Adze
A vampiric firefly of the Ewe people of West Africa — a spirit that takes the form of a firefly by night and a malicious possessing being by day, drinking the blood of sleeping children and spreading disease.
Adze (Folklore)
Vampiric being in Ewe folklore, transforming into human shape upon capture. (Note: 1. Power tier should be Greater, as "deity-level" powers are implied by the ability to possess humans. 2. Add sensory cues (e.g., glowing lights) based on its firefly form. 3. Add weaknesses and wards)
Agbọghọ Mmụọ Masquerade
An Igbo masquerade category—literally 'Maiden Spirits'—in which masked (traditionally male) dancers embody the spirits of deceased unmarried girls, performing idealized adolescent feminine comportment and beauty in annual dry‑season civic ceremonies and at funerals and initiation rites in the Nri–Awka region.
Alusi
Alusi (also spelled arusi) are spirit-agents or divinities in the traditional religion of the Igbo people, each responsible for specific domains such as health, agriculture, rivers, justice, and the sky. They are worshipped and served through localized cults with priests and devotees and are distinct from clan ancestors (Ndichie).
Anansi
The spider trickster god of Akan folklore — cunning, mischievous, and wise. Keeper of stories and teacher of human beings, brought through the slave trade into Caribbean and African-American tradition.
Asanbosam
The Asanbosam (also Sasabonsam, Asasabonsam) is an Akan folkloric humanoid creature that dwells in trees and is described as vampire-like, feeding on people who enter its forest territory and enforcing localized rules of the woodland.
Asase Yaa
Asase Yaa (also Asase Afua, Asaase Yaa, Asaase Afua, Asase Efua, Asaase Aberewa) is the Akan personification of the earth in Ghana and Ivory Coast, regarded as an earth-mother figure associated with fertility, procreation, love, peace, truth, and the dry and lush earth. She is also described in sources as the 'Mother of the Dead' or Mother Earth, occupying a central moral and material place in Akan thought.
Asiman
A nocturnal, shape‑changing predatory luminous spirit known from West African accounts; presented in sources as the Dahomey counterpart to the Ashanti obayifo, capable of inhabiting humans by day and manifesting as phosphorescent lights or a flying ball of light by night.
Ayida Wedo
Ayida Wedo is a primordial rainbow-serpent loa of Haitian Vodou (with counterparts in Fon and Ewe vodun) associated with water, the rainbow, and the elemental forces; she often appears paired with Damballa as the dual cosmic serpent that assisted the creator in forming and upholding the world.
Community Record
- [1]Asase Ya/Afua. Wikipedia: 'Asase Ya/Afua' entrywiki