Asase Yaa

Akan · earth, fertility, farming, truth

Also known as Asase Afua, Asase Ya

Documented traditional beliefs, sourced from real ethnographic and religious-studies scholarship — not a complete pantheon, and not a claim about what any individual believes today.

In Akan tradition, Asase Yaa is the earth deity, second only to Nyame, and is held to be the first deity Nyame created. She is invoked in libations immediately after Nyame, and no tilling of the land is permitted on her sacred day — Thursday among the Asante, Friday among the Fante. She is regarded as the upholder of truth and is associated with fertility, farming, and the resting places of the dead. In some tellings she takes two forms: Asase Yaa, an elder figure governing barren land and the deceased, and Asase Afua, a youthful figure of fertile, farmed land.

Source: Akan cosmology, cross-referenced across Encyclopedia.com's "Akan Religion" entry and Wikipedia's Asase Ya/Afua article (itself citing Dennis M. Warren 1973/1975, Edith Clarke 1930, and Molefi Kete Asante)

Other documented Akan traditional beliefs

Nyame

In Akan tradition, Nyame (also called Onyankopon, "the only great one," and Odomankoma, "the creator") is understood as the supreme being — the omniscient, omnipotent creator of the universe and the giver of rain and sunshine. Having created the world, Nyame is held to have withdrawn to the sky, governing through the abosom (intermediate deities) rather than acting directly. The name Nyame itself is glossed as "the one who knows and sees everything."

Tano

In Akan tradition, Tano — whose deeper name is held to be Ta Kora — is one of the abosom, the intermediate deities who govern specific domains of the natural world on Nyame's behalf. Tano is associated with war, thunder and lightning, and above all with the Tano River, and some traditions regard him as the foremost of the abosom. He is venerated among the Asante and other Akan peoples of Ghana as well as the Agni people of Ivory Coast, with shrines, priests, and festivals — including the Apoo festival held at the river's sacred grove — maintained into the present.

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