Akan Tradition

Sky, earth, and the abosom

Akan religion recognises a supreme sky god, Nyame (also Onyame or Onyankopon), and the earth, Asase Yaa, who is honoured rather than served through shrines and priests. Between people and the sky god stand the abosom, powers associated with rivers, lakes, and other features of the land, such as Tano of the Tano River, and the ancestors (nsamanfo), whose presence is central to Akan religious and political life. Akan religion is a living tradition in Ghana today, alongside Christianity and Islam.

Rattray and the record

Much of the written record comes from R. S. Rattray, a British colonial anthropologist in the Gold Coast, whose Ashanti (1923), Religion and Art in Ashanti (1927), and Akan-Ashanti Folk-Tales (1930) recorded Asante belief and storytelling, the last with the Twi text beside the English. Rattray worked through colonial structures and his interpretations should be read critically, but the tales he printed were told to him by named and unnamed Akan speakers. Akan scholars such as J. B. Danquah, in The Akan Doctrine of God (1944), wrote about the same tradition from within it.

Anansesem

Akan folktales are called anansesem, 'spider stories', whether or not Kwaku Ananse appears in them, because of the tale Rattray printed as the account of how all stories came to belong to the spider: Ananse buys them from Nyame by capturing the python, the leopard, the hornets, and the forest fairy. Tellings traditionally open and close with set formulas disclaiming literal truth. Ananse stories travelled with enslaved Akan people to the Caribbean and the Americas, where he survives as Anansi, Anancy, and Aunt Nancy.

Dates

The tradition has no recorded founding date; Akan states such as Bono and later Asante emerged between roughly the 13th and 18th centuries, but the religion is older than any one state and this site does not assign it a start year.