PURITY AND IMPURITY

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Purity and Impurity

Frimpong, A.D.
2011
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Frimpong, A. D. (2011). Purity and Impurity: Menstruation and its Impact on the Role of Akan Women in the
Church.
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CHAPTER TWO: THE AKAN RELIGIOUS-CULTURAL SETTING
2.1 Introduction
The focus of this chapter is to provide the background information needed to situate this
study within a context.
To begin with, a brief description is presented of the main features of Akan traditional
religion. This is to enable the reader to fully appreciate the influence of religion on the
lives of the Akan in order to understand them as a people. The next major section of this
chapter is devoted to the Akan people. The discussion in this section will, specifically, be
focused on examining who the Akan people are, what constitutes Akan worldview, what
notions they hold about the human person, the mother-child bond, the father-child bond
and the God-human bond. These areas will be focused on because they are also crucial to
understanding the traditional worldview, which is, to a large extent, resilient and which
underpins most of the spirituality, practices and taboos associated with menstruation.
Again, a discussion of the Akan worldview will help us locate the role and value of
women in the Akan traditional religion in the next section of this chapter. We shall also
briefly discuss the Akan concept of the sacred and profane – a topic that will throw light
on the reasons why the Akan consider female blood as profane and dangerous.
The last section of this chapter will be devoted to a brief discussion of the essence of
blood in Akan/Africa religious culture. This discussion will expose the reader to how
crucial issues relating to menstrual blood are to the Akan, what is the traditional way of
dealing with profanity and why the role of women in Akan society is ambivalent.
2.2 The Akan Traditional Religion
The proof for the statement that the Akan have a religious worldview lies in the belief
that people are surrounded by hosts of spirit- beings- some good, some evil which are
able to influence the lives of the living for good or for ill. 55 This Akan concept of the
1 C. Omenyo, Pentecost Outside Pentecostalism: A study of the Development of Charismatic Renewal in

Mainline Churches in Ghana, Zoetermeer: Boekencentrum, 2002, 26.
24
supernatural, ideas about man, society and nature, form a system which gives meaning
and significance to the Akan and for that matter the African.
At the root of all these ideas lies a particular notion which runs through Akan culture.
The unseen is as much a part of reality as that which is seen; the spiritual is as much a
part of reality as the material, and there is complementary relationship between the two,
with the spiritual being more powerful than the material. 56 For example, the Akan
conceives of a person made of i. body (honam), ii. Spirit (sunsum) and iii. Soul (okra).
Again, the community in Akan is made up of both the living and the dead and the reality
of this concept is concretized in libations and other sacrifices to the dead whose
participation, involvement and blessings are sought, as continuing members of the
community. 57 With regards to nature, there is also a similar belief that behind visible
objects lay essences, or powers, which constitute the true nature of those objects.
A close observation of Akan and its societies reveals that religion is at the root of Akan
culture and is the determining principle of Akan life. We share Kofi Asare Opoku’s view
that ‘it is no exaggeration, therefore, to say that in traditional Akan, religion is life and
life is religion.’ 58 Akans/Africans are engrossed in religion in whatever they do- whether
it is farming, fishing or hunting; or simply eating, drinking or traveling. Religion gives
meaning and significance to their lives, both in this world and the next. Religion is
therefore part of an everyday life. Thus in the Akan/Africa indigenous thought system,
culture and religion are not distinct from each other, the sacred and the secular, the
spiritual and material, the natural and the supernatural. Therefore culture and religion in
Akan/Africa is one and the same thing. 59 They embrace all areas of one’s total life. There
is no sphere of existence that is excluded from the double grip of culture and religion.
The presence or absence of rain, the well being of the community, sexuality, marriage,
birthing, naming children, success or failure, the place and form of one’s burial, among
others, all come under the scope of religion and culture. 60 Religion in Akan/Africa is
made up of a set of beliefs and practices which are a consequence of, the beliefs.
56
C. Achebe, Morning yet on Creation Day: Essays, London: Heinemann, 1975, 93- 103.
57
K. Asare-Opoku, West African Traditional Religion, 8.
58
K. Asare-Opoku West African , 1.
59
M. R. A. Kanyoro, Introducing Feminist Cultural Hermeneutics: An African Perspective, New York:
Sheffield Academic Press Ltd. 2002, 14.
60
Kanyoro, Introducing Feminist Culture, 14.
25
Geoffrey Parrinder has classified the four main categories of West African religions as:
The supreme God, divinities or gods, ancestors and charms or amulets 61 Kofi Asare-
Opoku on the other hand classifies them into 6 main categories as: The supreme God, the
ancestral spirits, supernatural entities or lesser deities, totemism agents of witchcraft,
magic and sorcery and charms, amulets, and talismans. 62 Our discussion will follow
Asare -Opoku’s categorization.
The Supreme Being
Common to Akan traditional worldview as well as all African worldviews is the

widespread belief in an all- powerful God who is known by various local names. He is
essentially a spirit for there are no images or visible representations of Him. He is
regarded as the creator (obooadee) and the owner of (asaase wura) of the world. Power,
justice, beneficence, omniscience and eternity are attributed to Him. He is the source of
all power and has power over life and death. He rewards human beings and also punishes
them when they do wrong. He is thought to be immanent as well as imminent. Thus he is
believed to be present and active in the affairs of humans. The Akan conceive of God as
the preserver of the world and he is known principally in terms of what he is believed to
do for humankind. Thus there are such descriptions of God as giver of sun (amowia),
giver of water (amonsu), giver of rain (totrobonsu) and the reliable one (twereampong).
There are traditional names, attributes, myths, symbols, proverbs greetings, and everyday
sayings that together express God’s omnipotence, omniscience, goodness, dependability,
immortality and other beliefs in him. He is not worshipped directly. However, he is called
upon for help in times of crisis. Thus there are very few approaches to God. There are no
regular and formal cults to God. It must however be mentioned that, in the past, most
Ashanti houses had small shrines in the form of a pot in the fork of a particular tree
(Nyame Dua, God’s tree), which was dedicated to God (Nyame). The Asante 63 have
sometimes thought of God (Nyame) as both male and female. Thus his name obaatanpa-
capable mother-, an image derived from the natural and biological roles of women as
61
G. E. Parrinder, West African Religion, London: Epworth Press, 1949, 16ff.
62
K. Asare-Opoku, West African, 9-10.
63
The Asante are a major Akan ethnic group in Ghana who speak Asante, an Akan dialect.
26
mothers. The female principle is symbolized by the moon which created human beings
with water. The sun symbolizes the male principle. The sun shot life-giving fire into the
human veins and made human beings live. 64
God is generally viewed as transcendent. Thus he requires intermediaries through whom

he functions and humankind also approaches him through these means- deities and
ancestors.65
Ancestral Spirits
A significant category of Akan traditional Religion is the place of the ancestors

(Nananom nsamanfo). John S. Pobee observes, ‘The most potent aspect of the Akan
religion is the cult of the ancestors.’66
All reputable scholars who have written on the Akan share this opinion. Pobee says that
the term ancestors refers to those in the Akan community ‘who have completed their
course here on earth and are gone ahead to the higher world to be the elder brothers of the
living in the house of God.’67
Kwesi Dickson notes, however that,
In African thought those who became ancestors must have lived

exemplary lives; it is not everyone who dies who becomes ancestor, so
that the cult of the dead is not to be equated with that of the
ancestors. 68
‘The ancestor is, according to Emmanuel Asante, 69 therefore a saint in the Akan
community, one who is perceived as a moral example worthy of emulation.’ The ancestor
is an ideal Akan, an immortal, dignified and venerated person who is believed to mediate
God’s Kingship and to maintain the bond of relationship between the individual Akan
64
K.K. Anti, ‘Women in Africa Traditional Religions,’ http://www.mamiwata.com/women.htm . Retrieved
on May 30 th 2005.
65
C. Omenyo, Pentecost, 26.
66
J.S. Pobee, Toward an African Theology, Nashville: Abingdon, 1979, 95.
67
J.S. Pobee, Toward an African Theology, 52.
68
K. Dickson, Theology in Africa, London: Longmans &Todd, 1984, 198.
69
E. Asante, Toward an African Christian Theology of the Kingdom of God, 124.
27
and the community at large. Dickson remarks ‘the African sense of community requires
the recognition of the presence of the ancestors as the rallying point of the group’s
solidarity.’ 70 Thus ancestors are treated with reverence and held in awe.
The ancestors are part of the Akan community. They are believed to be the custodians of
its land, laws and customs. As custodians of law and morality, they are believed to
possess the divine power to ‘punish or reward in order to ensure the maintenance of the
group’s equilibrium.’ 71
The ancestors can be contacted by putting food on standards that represent them, for it is
believed that the ancestors continue to live the same kind of life they led when they were
on earth and they require food and drink to sustain them, in their spiritual state of
existence. Thus, offerings are made to them either by individuals daily, or by religious
officials who perform on behalf of the entire society during festivals or rituals. 72 The
Asante, who symbolize their royal ancestors with black stools, believe that by smearing
these stools with blood (the seat of life) they are brought into close contact with the
ancestors who are symbolized by the stools. 73 Akans have festivals such as Adae, Apoo
and Odwira during which the dead are remembered and venerated through their stools
(apunnua) that are “cleansed” and “anointed.” 74
In the Akan religious culture the ancestors worshipped/venerated appear to have been
always male ancestors. Although descent among the Akan is traced in the female line,
female ancestors are scarcely mentioned during the pouring of libation. For example,
when a member of the royal clan marries, libation is poured on the stools to ask for
children and happiness for the new couple. If the girl belongs to “a stool” then the bride-
price is given to the linguist for the chief. The chief gives one-half to the parents and uses
part of what is left to buy a sheep to be offered to the ancestors. The prayer is:
O grandfather spirits, here is wine for you… your grandchild…has

married. Her husband has paid his head wine or bride price and this is
70
K. Dickson, Theology in Africa, 70.
71
72
K. Asare Opoku, West Africa, 37.
73
74
M. Gilbert, ‘Akan Religion’ in: Mircea Eliade (ed.), Dictionary of Religion, New York: Macmillan,
1987, 165-168.
28
your share.. Give them good health, good and happy marriage, and
when she bears children let them survive. 75
In the pouring of libation during Akan festivals or when a chief enters the stool-house, 76
the ancestors are usually addressed as Spirit Grandfathers 77 and so it appears that men
pour libation to male ancestors. Again Pobee commenting on the ancestors as we have
seen above, spoke of ancestors as elder brothers of the living at the house of God.
Mention is not made of grandmothers in the pouring of libation nor are ancestors spoken
of as elder sisters.
However, female ancestors, especially queen mothers are recognized in Akan Religion.
This is seen on special occasions like Adae festival (the most important festival in honor
of the ancestors) when the queen mother “feeds” the ancestors. As she puts the Eto78 on
the stool79 during special festivals, she addresses the ancestress saying:
Give me health and strength, and give health also to the king and the
people of B-and to the women of B-and to strangers in this town. May
women bear children and men gain riches. Anyone who wishes evil to
the town may that evil fall upon him.80
In addition, Akan ethnic group is matriarchal and so believes in the existence of a

common ancestress through which all clan members, both male and female trace their
lineage. Thus though the Akan believe in the existence of female ancestors, they, like
their living counterparts, are relegated to the background.
75
Sarpong. The Sacred Stools of the Akan, Tema: Ghana Publishing Corporation, 1971,82.
76
Stool house is a special room in the chief’s palace where the stools of all dead chiefs are kept. The stool
resting in its stool house, is the point where the living and ancestors meet.
77
P. Sarpong, The sacred Stools, 57, 58.
78
Eto is special food prepared from mashed yam or plantain, palm oil and eggs)
79
Apart from its real meaning as a wooden seat, the word “stool” is used to denote the office of the
traditional ruler or the king. To say “The Ashanti stool” means the same as saying “the Ashanti throne”.
Every traditional ruler and every queen mother in Akan has a stool he or she occupies and this represents
his or her throne. He or she also has in his or her possession a number of stools of important chiefs and
queen mothers who have died. These stools are kept in the palaces and are given food on special festivals
like Adae festivals.
80
P. Sarpong, The Sacred Stools , 59
29
Divinities/Deities and Spirits
The Akan worldview also has a belief in non-human spirits, some of which are
personified in the form of deities. They are believed to manifest themselves into various
tangible forms such as water, rocks and caves, house deities and other natural objects. 81
Generally, these divinities are perceived to provide solutions to many social problems,
personal problems and mishaps as well as to reveal witches and to witness to the truth of
an event. They are also believed to have powers that can destroy. The popularity of a
deity depends largely on its reputed ability to perform by way of providing material and
spiritual prosperity. Such deities attract devotees from far and near. However, they are
abandoned if they fail to meet specific needs of groups or individuals.
The general belief concerning the divinities in Akan society is that they were created by
God to fulfill specific functions and that they did not come into existence on their own
volition. As creatures, the divinities share the limitations of all other creatures. Their
power is limited to the performance of specific functions and none of them enjoys the
unlimited powers ascribed to God. The Akan society regards some of them as children or
messengers of God, while others are regarded as His agents. The divinities may be male
or female, good or evil, and they are given places of abode in the environment, such as in
hills, rivers, trees, rocks and even certain animals. They however remain ‘essentially
spirits’, and are distinguishable from the habitats. Thus the trees, rivers or stones must not
be confused with the spirits which dwell in them. The spirits have unlimited mobility and
can come and go from their places of abode. They are therefore not confined to the
palpable objects of the environment in which they reside.
These divinities are known in Akan as Obosom (singular), Abosom (plural). Because of
their nature and function, the divinities are placed above human beings. They are
believed to have wider powers; yet each has his or her area of competence and
jurisdiction. Hence, there are gods of war, fertility, epidemics agriculture and various
other spheres of human endeavor. In this area of specialization, to which they have been
assigned by the Creator, the deities have full powers to act. Sometimes, however they fail
81
E. Asante, Toward an African Christian Theology, 119.
30
men in their expectations. So the attitude towards them is ambivalent. They are treated
with respect when they fulfill human expectations but may be despised when they fail. 82
We now turn to a discussion of some of the principal divinities in Akan and their role in
the religious life of the people.
Spirit of the Earth- ‘Asaase Yaa of the Akan’
In Akan society, the earth is given a feminine image and is regarded as a goddess. Among
the Akan she ranks after the Supreme Being and the second deity to be offered a drink
during worship (libation). Her day of rest is Thursday in Asante and other Akan areas and
so she is called Asaase Yaa. She is called Asaase Efua among the Fante (an Akan ethnic
group near the coast) and so for them Friday is her day of rest. These days are specially
set-aside for her by these tribes and severe punishment was meted out in the past to those
who infringed this taboo for it was feared that evil might befall the entire society if this
rule was not rigidly observed. It was also believed that anyone who ventured into the
forest on these special days would encounter the most unpleasant things imaginable and
might not even survive to tell his or her experience. 83 There are no temples, shrines nor
priests dedicated to her, because her bounty is accessible to all.
Besides she is not an oracular deity whom people may consult in times of crisis. The
Akan say: Asaase nye bosom, onkyere mmus: the earth is not a deity, she does not
divine. 84 This puts Mother Earth in a class of her own.
Like the other deities, the Spirit of the Earth receives offerings and sacrifices at the
beginning of the planting season. The land generally cannot be farmed without asking for
her permission. When a grave is about to be dug the spirit of the earth is offered sacrifice.
This is to ask for permission to dig a hole so that a child of Asaase Yaa may be buried in
her “womb.” Asaase Yaa is a deity who abhors the spilling of human blood. Whenever
this occurs, enormous sacrifices have to be made to appease her. It is believed that untold
calamities will befall the community if she is not appeased.
82
A divinity who fails is simply replaced by a more powerful one or one who promises greater satisfaction.
83
K.K. Anti, ‘Women in Africa’, 6.
84
K. Asare-Opoku, West Africa, 56.
31
Asase Yaa is also known to be a keen upholder of truth.85 Whenever the truthfulness of a
statement is questionable, the person who made it would be challenged to touch the tip of
86
his tongue with some soil to prove that he or she is telling the truth. Aside the Earth
goddess, several other deities are found residing in bodies of water.
Asaase Yaa is the queen of the underworld, is venerated as the owner of men and
custodian of public morality with the ancestors 87 because she gives birth to fruits that
feed humankind. In the same vein, the woman in Akan is respected for her childbearing
abilities and also seen as the owner of the children she bears. Thus the Akan is
matriarchal. However, unlike Asaase Yaa whose day (Thursday or Friday is recognized
and respected, because she needs rest, the menstruating woman who also needs rest as
she prepares to conceive to give birth is seen as dangerous and impure. Mother earth is
sacred and there are taboos to protect her sanctity from being violated because she gives
birth. Women also give birth and before a woman can give birth she has to menstruate.
However, the phenomenon associated with childbearing by a woman, namely
menstruation and child birth blood are seen as impure unlike the Earth deity who is
always seen as sacred and venerated.
Spirits of Water
The Akan community believes that there are deities inhabiting the waters, great and
small. They are regarded as beneficent deities, who preside over the rivers and lakes,
which are crucial to the life of the people. Hence, these divinities, wherever they may
dwell, are treated with great reverence. Some of the water divinities are worshipped at
shrines and have specially appointed priests who perform elaborate rituals. Others are
only invoked when protection is sought for those who have to cross waters or travel over
them.
Kojo Anti has said that the allegation that the sexual identity of spiritual beings suggests
that female deities like their human counterparts, ordinarily have domestic rather than
85
K. Asare- Opoku, West Africa, 56-57.
86
.K. Asare- Opoku, West Africa, 57.
87
F. A. Arinze, Sacrifice in Ibo Religion, Ibadan: Ibadan University Press, 1970, 15.
32
communal orientation is untrue.88 Evidence at our disposal, however does point to the
subordination of female deities to the male deities. According to a young man called
Kwasi Boateng 89 who is very conversant in Akan traditional region that the writer
interviewed, River Tano 90 is a male spirit while all the other river spirits in Brong Ahafo
are females. It is said that because the Tano river spirit is a male, it is the most powerful
river spirit in the area with all the other female river spirits serving under him. Tano who
is believed to be a Son of God is still an important deity and is consulted in times of
crisis. 91
Evil Deities
Almost all the gods of Akan are believed to be kind and their favor always assured when
sacrifices and appropriate acts of worship are offered them. However we find that there
are certain spirits or deities, which are said to be specifically evil. These deities have
many sides to them. They are feared, but they are also worshipped so that their
malevolence may be warded off. They are regarded as evil because they are antagonistic
towards man and can cause untold misery. Yet they can come to man’s aid when their
assistance is sought against enemies. We discuss a few of these evil deities.
Sasabonsam
The Akan believe in an evil spirit called Sasabonsam, which literally means “evil spirit,”
who can assume the identity of a forest monster. Sasabonsam is said to live in trees such
as odum (chlorophora excelsa) and onyaa (ceiba pentandra.)
Sasabonsam is a monster of frightening appearance. It has the head of an animal with

long black hair, a flaming mouth and a long tongue which sticks out most of the time. It
has hoofs and a long tail which ends in the head of a snake and which coils around the
trees on which it sits. Sasabonsam has wings with which it flies about in the deepest
88
K.K. Anti, ‘Women in Africa’, 10.
89
The writer interviewed Mr. Kwasi Boateng on the 3rd of December 2005 at his work place in Ghana
Institute of Management and Public Administration.
90
River Tano is the major river in the Brong Ahafo an Akan Tribe.
91
K. Asare- Opoku, West Africa, 65.
33
recesses of the forest, terrorizing unwary travelers and hunters who may venture into the
forest.
Sasabonsam, being evil by nature, always associates with witches, who inflict disaster on
92
society.
Mmoatia
Other spirits believed to assume personalities are the mmoatia or “little animals.” These
particular spirits are not wholly evil, since they have their creative aspects. They can
however inflict punishment. Like Sasabonsam, the mmoatia live in the forest. They are
believed to be very short in stature, standing not more than one foot high, and have
curved noses and yellowish skins, while their feet point in the opposite direction. The
Mmoatia communicate with each other through a whistle language and their favorite food
is bananas. 93
The mmoatia have their camps in the forest but their favorite sites are rocky places where
they take those who venture into their territory. They are believed to overwhelm the
trespassers by beating them and taking them to their camp, usually feeding them on
bananas. Such people are never kept there permanently. They are released after a while
and sent back to their homes.
The mmoatia are credited with a phenomenal knowledge of medicines which they impart
94
to herbalists or medicine men or women.
92
Almost all the deities of Akan are believed to be kind and their favor always assured when sacrifices and
appropriate acts of worship are offered them. However we find that there are certain spirits or deities,
which are said to be specifically evil. These deities have many sides to them. They are feared, but they are
also worshipped so that their malevolence may be warded off. They are regarded as evil because they are
antagonistic towards man and can cause untold misery. Yet they can come to man’s aid when their
assistance is sought against enemies.
93
94
K. Asare-Opoku. West Africa, 3.
34
Totemism
Besides the natural objects that are believed to be the habitats of the lesser deities, some
African societies also regard animals and plants as emblems of hereditary relationship.
This is what is implied by the term totemism. Usually the animals and the plants are said
to have played a crucial role in the survival of the forbears of a particular society.
Therefore a sacred relationship is formed between the objects and the descendants of
these people. The general attitude of these African societies therefore ascribes a certain
power to objects in nature that calls for periodic acts of propitiation.
Witchcraft, Magic, and Sorcery
In addition to the divinities or supernatural entities, there is the recognition of the

existence of other mystical forces in the universe. Some of these forces, according to
traditional belief, can be tapped by men and women who have the knowledge and ability
to do so. These other spirits or mystical powers are recognized and reckoned with for
their ability to aid or harm man. Among these are agents of witchcraft, magic and
sorcery. There is a distinction between witchcraft and bad magic or sorcery. In the latter,
the magician or sorcerer may prepare a magical substance to kill or injure a person; in the
former, however, no such method is used. The victim suffers only when the witch thinks
harm of him, and this fact about witchcraft has led to its being described as an “imaginary
offence.” Evans- Pritchard wrote: ‘Witchcraft is an imaginary offence because it is
impossible. A witch cannot do what he is supposed to do and has in fact no real
existence.’ 95 Yet, the experience of the victims of this strange and frightening power
which has left its indelible marks on them, as well as the claims made by those who
possess the power, should caution a more guarded assessment of the witchcraft and its
consequences. 96 Belief in witchcraft and its effect on human beings in society may be
95
E. E. Evans- Pritchard. Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic among the Asante, London: Oxford University
Press, 1937, 35.
96
35
regarded as part of the religious heritage in Akan. 97 Witches are usually women, although
one occasionally encounters confessed witches who are men and children.
Charms, amulets, and talismans (Suman)
In Akan, what is usually referred to as suman, or man-made objects such as charms,

mascots, amulets, juju, aduro, etc. all fall under the category of magic, because they
signify the means through which occult forces are generated into action. These forces are
used both for good or beneficial purposes, and for bad or injurious ends. 98 Those who
practice good magic use their power for the welfare of the community. Such people may
be diviners, herbalists or medicine men and women.etc who through their activities can
heal diseases and offer protection against the effect of witchcraft on individuals and the
entire community. 99
The general Akan/African belief concerning man is that he is made up of material and
immaterial substances and although there may be variations of this idea from one
\African society to another, the fundamental assumption among them is the unity of the
personality of man. 100 Man is a biological (material) being as well as a spiritual
(immaterial) being. It is the material part of man that dies while the spiritual (the soul)
continues to live. Death therefore does not end life; it is an extension of life. 101 There is
the firm belief that a community of the dead exists alongside the community of the living
and that there is a mutually beneficial partnership between them. Human society,
therefore, has an extra human or supernatural dimension to it because the dead remain
part of it. The dead, the living, and the yet unborn, form an unbroken family.
97
For further discussions on witchcraft among Akans, see H. Debrunner, Witchcraft in Ghana, Accra:
Presbyterian Press, 1959; K. Appiah Kubi, Man cures, God heals, New York: Osman & Co., 1981, 13; K.
A. Dickson, Theology in Africa, 62-64.
98
99
100
101
36
With regard to man’s relation to society, we notice that man’s membership of a
community is emphasized more than his individuality. 102 John Mbiti points this out by
saying that ‘to be human is to belong to the whole community, and to do so involve
participating in the beliefs, ceremonies, rituals and festivals of that community.’ 103
Society is based more on obligation than on individual rights; one assumes his or her
rights in the exercise of his or her obligations, which makes society a chain of
relationships. In addition man’s life is a cycle of birth, puberty, marriage and procreation,
death and the afterlife. One cannot stay in one stage of existence forever; he/she must
move on to the next, and in order to make the transition smooth, special rites are
performed to ensure that no breaks occur and movement and regeneration continue
perpetually.
2.3 Religion and Society
One of the typical aspects of the Akan/Africa traditional religion is its ubiquitous role or
what J. O. Lucas described as its “absorbing character,” 104 where the whole life is
wrapped up in religion. This pervasiveness alone, however, does not exhaust what may
be said about religion in Akan/Africa societies. Religion binds man to the unseen powers
and helps him form right relations with these non-human powers’. Religion also binds
him to his fellow human beings. In addition religion acts as cement holding our societies
together, and provides the necessary support and stability for our societies.
In effect, religion rounds up the totality of Akan/African culture. Normally, a person does
not need any special instruction in religion. He/she picks it up as he/she grows and begins
to participate in the communal rituals and ceremonies. It is only priests, chiefs or leaders
of religious associations who require special instructions. Although a particular society
may recognize the need for leaders who have special powers or training, or both to
officiate on some important religious occasions, one finds that generally in Akan/Africa,
religious leadership is diffused or widely spread. 105 The head of a family or lineage often
102
103
J. Mbiti, African Religions and Philosophy, London: Heinemann, 1969, 10.
104
J. O. Lucas, Religions in West Africa and Ancient Egypt, Apapa: Nigerian National Press, 1970, 40.
105
37
acts as the religious head of the household. Among others, the regular and conscientious
performance of ancestral rites and sacrifices is a prime duty of the head of the family, and
the respect and the reverence paid him is due, in no small measure, to his role as priest of
the household. Naturally, he needs to manifest superior wisdom and strength in addition,
but the primary basis of his authority takes its source from spiritual considerations. As
further proof of religion forming the totality of Akan/African culture, we find the social
bonds that unite Akan/African families together are usually also identical with religious
ties, and the family becomes not only a social unit but also a cultic one.
Traditional rulers and kings play a dual role in Akan/African societies. They are the
political or administrative officials as well as religious personages. Queen mothers play
subsidiary role. K.A. Busia points out that the chief derives his authority from the fact
that he sits on the stool of the ancestors. He is also the religious official who represents
his people before their ancestors, and in the context of Akan society, the chief is a
Pontifex Maximus, an ‘intermediary between the royal ancestors and the tribe.’ 106 Busia
further wrote:
From the moment that the chief is enstooled his person becomes
sacred. This is emphasized by taboos. He may not strike, or is struck
back by anyone, lest the ancestors bring misfortune upon the tribe. He
may never walk bare- footed, lest when the sole of his foot touches the
ground some misfortune befall the community. He should walk with
care lest he stumble. If he stumbles, the expected calamity has to be
averted with a sacrifice. His buttocks may not touch the ground. That
would also bring misfortune. All these taboos remind the chief and
everybody that he, (the chief) occupies a sacred position. He is the
occupant of the stool of the ancestors. For this reason, he is treated
with the greatest veneration 107
106
K. A. Busia, The Position of the Chief in the Modern Political System of Ashanti, London: Frank Cass
and Co., 1968, 26.
107
K.A. Busia, The Position of the Chief, 26- 27.
38
The Akan traditional ruler has to officiate at the Adae festival, - the most important
festival for the Akan when the ancestral spirits are offered food and drink. This festival is
celebrated twice every 42 days. As a servant to the ancestors, the Akan chief offers them
food and drink. The traditional ruler also plays a principal role in the annual Odwira
festival and makes periodic sacrifices to national deities. In times of emergency or
misfortune too, the chief has to perform special sacrifices. 108 It is very rare to find a
woman chief in Akan society since in the Akan tradition women do not lead men.
According to Asare- Opoku, the distinctive feature of traditional Akan/Africa religion lies
in its being a way of life, and the purpose of religion is to order our relationship with our
fellow –men and with our environment, both spiritual and physical. At the root of it is a
quest for harmony between man, the spirit world, nature and society. 109 Asare-Opoku
again writes that the Akan/Africa traditional religion represents our forefathers’ effort to
explain the universe and the place of human beings in it in their own way, and that they
did this through myths or supernatural stories. 110
2.4 The Akan People: Who They Are
On the basis of language and culture, historical geographers and cultural anthropologists
classify the indigenous people of Ghana into five major groups. These are the Akan, the
Ewe, Mole/Dagbane, the Guan, and the Ga-Dangbe.
Akan is the ethnic name of the Twi-speaking peoples of the Guinea Coast of West Africa.
They consist of Ahanta, Akwapim, Akyem or Akim, Agni or Anyi, Asante or Ashanti,
Asen or Assin, Bono or Brong, Brusa, Chokosi, Fante, Guan, Kwahu, Nzima, and Wasa
or Wassaw. The Akan inhabit the Eastern part of the Ivory Coast, the Southern half and
part of the North of Ghana and the North of Togoland. Thus the Akan people occupy
practically the whole of Ghana south and west of the Black Volta. 111
Historical accounts suggest that Akan groups migrated from the north to occupy the
forest and coastal areas of the south as early as the thirteenth century. Some of the Akan
108
109
110
111
K. Asante, Toward an African Christian Theology, 74.
39
ended up in the eastern section of the Cote D’Ivoire, where they created the Baule
community. Though the Akan consist of many autonomous sub-groups, their culture and
religion exhibit a fairly uniform and common pattern. They are linked together by
language, social institutions and religion. 112
The Akan philosopher, Joseph Boakye Danquah, 113 traces the origin of the Akan from the
“kush” races in the North-east of Africa. But K. A. Dickson disagrees with Danquah’s
understanding of the Akan’s origin. 114 Eva L. R. Meyerowitz argues, ‘The ancestors of
present Akan aristocracy were Libyan Berbers.’ 115 Although the origins of the Akan
cannot be discerned with any certainty, the scholarly consensus is that they migrated to
their present settlement from somewhere in the North.
Patrick Akoi states that:
[The] exact origin [of the Akan] is difficult to determine, there being no
documentary evidence available. It has been held for some time that
some of them, the Ashanti emerged from the ground in a grove near
Asumengya (in Ashanti). Annual sacrifices are still offered in that
grove in honor of the first Ashanti. But a study of their oral tradition,
folk stories, myths, customs and crafts, as well as their religion would
incline one to support the hypothesis that their original home was in
the north when they migrated southwards. 116
When the Europeans arrived at the coast in the fifteenth century, the Akan were
established there. The typical political unit was the small state under the headship of an
elder from one of the seven or eight clans that composed Akan society. From these units
emerged several powerful states, of which the oldest is thought to be Bono (also called
Brong). Due to military conquest and partial assimilation of weaker groups, well –known
political entities, such as Akwamu, Asante, Akyem, Denkyira, and Fante emerged before
the close of the seventeenth century. Asante, for example, continued to expand
112
113
J.B. Danquah. The Akan Doctrine of God: A fragment of gold Coast Ethics and Religion, London: Frank
Cass, 1968, 51.
114
J.B. Danquah, The Akan Doctrine’, x-xi.
115
E.L. Meyerowitz, The Akan Traditions of Origin, London: Faber &Faber, 1950, 124.
116
P. Akoi, Onyame in Akan Sacred Royalty Rome: Pontifical Urban University, 1969, 9, n.1.
40
throughout the eighteenth century and survived as an imperial power until the end of the
nineteenth century, when it succumbed to British rule. 117
Akan World View
Willie E. Abraham correctly notes that ‘the Akan thought very much about the world,
not, indeed, as the world inside which he found himself, but as the world of which he
formed a part.’118 In this view of the world, which is shared by all Africans, reality is
both relational and international. 119 K. C. Anyanwu expresses this view of the world and
of reality when he treats of the wider context of Africa as a whole:
The African culture makes no sharp distinction between the ego and the
world, subject and object. In the conflict between the self and the
world, African culture makes the self the center of the world. Since the
African world is centered on the self, every experience and reality itself
are personal. In other words, whatever reality may be, it must have
reference to personal experience. 120
W. Abraham observes that the Akan did not have an attitude of externality to the
world.’ 121 Like all Africans, the Akan makes no sharp distinction between the self and the
world, man and nature, subject and object. 122 For the Akan these are one inseparable
reality. This Akan view of the world and its basic cultural assumptions about the world
and reality underlie the Akan theory of knowledge. K. Anyanwu confirms that the
African culture did not assume that reality could be subordinated to human reason alone.
Imagination, intuitive experience and feelings are also modes of knowing. This is why
the deepest expression of African cultural reality has been through art, music, folksong
and myths rather than logical analysis. Through these procedures, the African culture
117
http://www.beepworld.de/members18/shika-gold/ashanti.htm, Retrieved on September 25, 2006.
118
W.E. Abraham , The Mind of Africa, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1962, 46
119
E. Asante, ‘Ecology: Untapped Resource of Pan-Vitalism in Africa’, The African Ecclesial Review, 27
(1985), 290-305.
120
K.C. Anyanwu, ‘The African World View and Theory of Knowledge’ in: E. A. Ruch and K. C.
Anyanwu (eds), African Philosophy: An Introduction to the Main Philosophical Trends in Contemporary
Africa, Rome: Catholic Book Agency, Officium Libri Catholici, 1981,86-95.
121
W.E. Abraham, The Mind of Africa, 46.
122
K.C. Anyanwu, ‘The African World View’, 88.
41
constructed an edifice of truth that enabled the people to achieve a relative balance with
the environment. 123
The Akan attitude of mind is, therefore, intuitive, essentially unanalytic and unscientific.
In light of this view of the world and this mode of understanding, the traditional Akan,
like other Africans, experience as living what the Western mind takes to be merely an
inert or lifeless material world. To the Akan the material world is animated, Trees,
forests, rivers, stones, animals, etc., have spirits in them. These tress and so forth are,
then, forces and energies to be reckoned with in life. Matter and spirit are understood as
inseparable. Underlying the various forces and energies of the material world and,
indeed, of the whole of the universe, is a Vital Force, who gives meaning to these forces
and energies. What K. Busia said with reference to the whole of Africa is true of the
Akan:
Their cosmologies were based on the existence of a Supreme Being who

was Spirit and Creator, and source of all power and energy. He
granted existence to all created things. He animated the gods, the
spirits, and human beings, animals, rivers, trees, rocks and all matter.
Their metaphysics conceived the Creator as a universal vital Force that
animated and energized all created things whose real essence consisted
not in matter but in the energy and power infused into them by the
Creator. 124
The Akan understanding of reality as animated or energized by the creator conceived of

as the universal Vital Force establishes an ontological relationship among all things in the
context of a hierarchical (bi da bi akyi) order of things. The assumption that there is such
a hierarchically ordered ontological relationship among all things does not allow the
Akan, or other Africans, to see things in isolation. It has been noted that in the mind of
the Akan, as in the mind of all Africans reality is both relational and interactional. This
understanding of reality affects their understanding of the human person. Anyanwu
123
124
K.A. Busia, Purposeful Education for Africa, 3rd ed., The Hague: Mouton, 1969, 90.
42
observes correctly that the African denies the existence of the individual as an isolated
entity unrelated to others. 125 In the same vein, Busia notes:
The African feels, thinks that he can develop his potential, his
originality, only in and by society, in union with all other men indeed
with all other beings in the universe. 126
In general, the African is, in self-consciousness and overall existence, a relational and
related being. 127
The Human Person
For the Akan, the human person is a tripartite being with three inseparable components,
one biological and two spiritual. This conception of the human person finds its expression
in the Akan belief that the human person is formed from three elements, namely, mogya,
and “blood” from the mother, ntoro, “patrilineal spirit” from the father, and okra or kra,
“soul” from onyame. 128 This belief establishes three sets of bonds, namely, the blood or
the maternal bond, the spirit or the paternal bond, and the soul or the theological bond. 129
The Mother-Child Bond.
At the same time as making a wider group, her clan, as every lineage belongs to one of
seven clans in Ashanti. 130
The blood bond is the mother-child bond. Apart from the Akwapim of Larteh and
Mampong, who are patrilineal, by and large the Akan are matrilineal. 131 Underlying this
matrilineal understanding of lineage is the belief that it is the mother who transmits blood
(mogya), one of the elements that constitute the Akan human person, to the child.
125
126
K. A. Busia, Africa in Search of Democracy, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1967,4.
127
128
K. A. Busia ‘The Ashanti’ in: D. Forde (ed) African Worlds: Studies in Cosmological and Social Values
of African Peoples, London: Oxford University Press, 1954, 196- 197.
129
130
C. F. Rattray, Ashanti Law and Constitution, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1929, 18.
131
J.S. Pobee, Toward An African Theology, 44.
43
According to K. A. Busia, the Akan believes that the blood so transmitted provides the
bridge between one generation and another. Consequently, descent is traced through the
mother’s lineage. This lineage consists of all descendants of both sexes, including the
dead and the yet to be born, all of whom trace their genealogy through the female line to
a common ancestress. 132 Therefore the blood bond establishes the individual Akan as a
relational being. The individual Akan understands her or himself as one who owes her or
his individuality to the collective. As J. S. Pobee notes: The Akan worldview is the
sensus communis. Whereas Descartes spoke for Western man when he said cogito sum –
I think, therefore I exist – Akan man’s ontology is cognatus ergo sum – I am related by
blood, therefore I exist, because I belong to a family. 133
The “house” or the family from which she or he comes identifies this relational being, the
individual Akan. All individual Africans share this understanding of the self as relational.
134
Max Assimeng observes that:
Groups are interrelated with one another in affinal, juridical,

economic, political, and religious-mythical orders. Such groups live in
localities of adjoining and socially interrelated homesteads. One way
to identify an individual in such societies is to ask from what ‘house’
does he come, or as the Akan … would ask: ofi ofie ben mu? 135
The point is: the Akan, like all Africans, define the individual’s identity in terms of her or
his relationship with the collective. To be an outcast (opanyifo) or one without a family
(kontekro) is to lose one’s identity as an individual. Therefore, the Akan fear falling into
such conditions. The blood or the maternal bond ensures that the Akan individual is
always related to a family. Therefore, the maternal bond is very important for the Akan,
as can be seen from the following Akan maxim: Wo na wu a wo abusua asa, when your
132
K.A. Busia, ‘The Ashanti’, 196.
133
J.S. Pobee, Toward an African Theology 49.
134
135
M. Assimeng, ‘Crisis, Identity and Integration in African Religions’ in: H. Mol (ed). Identity and
Religion: International Cross-Cultural Approaches. London: International Sociological Association, 1976,
99-112.
44
mother dies, it is the end of your family, or your family is terminated’. ‘For then, there
will be no more increase of your blood relatives.’ 136
Despite the matrilineal focus of Akan societies, men hold most traditional leadership
positions. Male succession to inherited positions is, however determined by relationship
to mothers and sisters. Consequently, a man’s valuable property is not passed on to his
children, but to his brother or sister’s son. A man may also be expected to support the
children of a maternal relative, whether deceased or alive, an expectation that may
conflict with the interests of his own children.
The Father-Child Bond
In contrast to the mother-child bond, which the Akan consider to be a biological one, the
father-child tie is regarded as spiritual. Besides inheriting her mother’s blood, every
person is believed to receive a sunsum and a kra. The kra is a life principle, a small
indestructible part of the Creator (Obooadee), which the latter gives to a man when he is
about to be born, and with a destiny, and which returns to the Creator when the person
dies. A father also directly transmits the sunsum to his child. This is what is thought to
mould the child’s individual personality and character. The child cannot thrive if its
father’s sunsum is alienated. Hence, a priest sometimes traces the cause of a child’s
illness to the grief of its father’s sunsum.
According to K. A. Busia, the ntoro determines an individual’s sunsum or ego. 137 The
Akan father is therefore responsible for his child’s moral behavior. It is believed that the
father transmits his ntoro through his semen during sexual intercourse. The Akan word
for semen is ho. 138 This word is translated as being, self or personality. It is believed that
the ntoro mingles with the blood transmitted by the mother to bring about a child’s
conception. After a child’s conception, the ntoro continues its creative functions,
136
P. Akoi, Onyame in Akan, 72
137
138
E. Asante, Toward An African Christian Theology, 78.
45
moulding and building the embryo, mota, in the womb. 139The ntoro continues with the
child after its birth as the child’s character-determining spirit.
The ntoro also links the individual Akan to her or his father and to the father’s ntoro
division. Busia refers to members of the same ntoro divisions as a “spirit-washing or
cleansing-group.”140 Just as every Akan belongs to a clan, so every Akan belongs to an
ntoro group. The latter consists of a group that shares the same spirit. A person’s sunsum
is a child of her/his ntoro; and all who belong to the same ntoro are believed to have
similar sunsum. Hence it can be rightly said that a man transmits his ntoro to his children.
There are about seven of these ntoro divisions. It is believed that each of these seven-
ntoro divisions is under the aegis of a god (obosom). As a “sprit-washing” or “cleansing-
group” under the aegis of a particular obosom or god, the ntoro presents to the Akan a
spiritual context within which her or his biological nature, as defined by the mogya or
blood transmitted by the mother, is widened and extended into a biological-spiritual
being. The ntoro element transmitted by the father, then, allows the Akan to belong to
two lineages. But it also allows for the spiritual heightening of the Akan human person.
Here the homo Akanus becomes a biological-spiritual being.
Jural rights over a child lie with its matrilineage members. But as it is believed that by
reason of the spiritual bond, dissatisfaction on the part of its father could be fatal to his
child, conflicts between him and his child’s matrilineage members are kept at a
minimum.
In connection with this, Rattray says: ‘It (The ntoro spirit) might possibly resent any too
highly handed action, based on their strictly legal claim, on the part of the mother or
mother’s clansmen, to children of their own blood.’ 141
Thus is established an equilibrium between avuncular rights and paternal affection.

Although the authorities realize that the ntoro groupings underlie the importance of the
father’s in role among the Akan, nevertheless they tend to think the Akan are most
139
R.S. Rattray, Religion and Art in Ashanti, 3rd ed., London: Oxford University Press, 1959, 51
140
141
R.S. Rattray, Religion and Art in Ashanti, 8.
46
profitably considered together with matrilineal societies. 142 Fortes says of
“complementary filiations” that, it provides the essential link between a sibling group and
the kin of the parent who does not determine descent but that,
Most far far-reaching in its effects on lineage structure is the use of the
rule of complementary filiations to build double unilineal systems…
This applies to the Akan though in their case the balance is far more
heavily weighted on the side of the matrilineal lineage than of the
jurally inferior and noncorporate paternal line.143
In Akan, although there are two descent groups, inheritance occurs only in the matrilineal
unilineal groups with named complementary unilineal descent groups.144
Thus the Akan believe that the human person is also made up of the father’s ntoro,
“patrilineal spirit.” This ntoro or patrilineal spirit is believed to be the defining factor of a
person’s character and personality.
The God-Human Bond
When we speak of the soul or the theological or God-Human bond, we are concerned
with the relationship existing between the individual Akan and the Supreme Deity
referred to as Onyame. 145 As noted, the Akan believe that a person has a soul, okra (or
kra), and that this soul comes directly from Onyame. Meyerowitz defines the Akan
concept of okra, ‘soul’, in terms of a ‘man’s vital force, the source of his energy, his great
reservoir or strength and sustenance.’ 146 This definition of the Akan concept of okra finds
support in Kwame Gyekye:
The okra is considered to be that which constitutes the very inner self
of the individual, the principle of life of that individual, and the
embodiment and transmitter of his destiny. It is thought to be a spark of
142
J. Goody, ‘The Classification of Double Descent Systems’, Current Anthropology, 2/1(1961), 3-25.
143
M. Fortes, ‘The Structure of Unilineal Descent Groups’, The American Anthropologist, 55/1/(1953), 34,
77.
144
J. Goody, ‘The Classification of Double Descent’, 11.
145
146
L. R. Eva Meyerowitz, ‘Concepts of the Soul among the Akan of Gold Coast,’ in Africa: The Journal of
the International African Institute , London: Oxford University Press, 21/2/1951/24-31.
47
God (Onyame) in man. It is thus divine and has an ante-mundane
existence with God. The okra, therefore, might be considered as the
equivalent of the concept of soul in other metaphysical systems. 147
Although this is the basic definition of the Akan concept of okra, as Wright correctly
observes, ‘The conception of okra as the life principle in a person, his vital force, the
source of his energy, is linked closely with another concept, namely Honhom.’ 148
Honhom means “breath.” It is derived from the Akan verb home, “to breathe.” When a
person passes away the Akan say: ne honhom ko, his breath is gone’, or nekra afi ne ho,
‘his soul has withdrawn from his body’. In these two statements, honhom and okra or kra
express the same thing, namely, the death of a person. ‘The departure of the soul from the
body, says Gyekye, means the death of a person, and so does ceasing to breath.’ Yet
honhom is not to be identified with okra or soul. According to Gyekye, The okra is that
which “causes” the breathing. Thus, the honhom is the tangible manifestation or evidence
of the okra. The honhom’s departure from the body evinces the soul’s departure from the
body to enjoy post-mundane existence with Onyame. The okra is undying. 149
The linkage of the okra, that divine element in a person, with the honhom, or “the breath”
of a person expresses the Akan’s belief in Onyame as giver of the Akan’s soul Onyame is
the one who animates the individual and makes life possible. The human person is non-
alive (in the sense of mundane of this worldly existence) without this okra element that
comes directly from Onyame. The okra is also connected with a person’s nkrabea,
“destiny” or “manner of being.” Nkrabea is derived from the verb kra, which means: a) a
farewell meeting in which the one about to travel is blessed and advised by her or his
parents, kinsmen and friends on how to behave on arriving at a destination; b) a message
sent to a person through another who is traveling to where that person is. The Akan
believe that, when a child is about to be born, what is to be the divine element in the
child, that is, the kra or soul parts with onyame, where it has enjoyed ante-mundane or
pre-worldly existence, and carries with it a message which is prescriptive of what the
147
K. Gyekye, ‘The Akan Concept of a Person’ in: R. A. Wright (ed) African Philosophy: An Introduction,
3rd edition. Lanham,MD: University Press of America, 1984, 201.
148
K. Gyekye, ‘The Akan Concept of a Person’, 201.
149
48
child is to become and to do in this world. A person’s nkrabea or ‘destiny’ then defines
not only what one is to be, but also one’s life project here in this world. Through the
concept of nkrabea purpose or meaning is given to the individual human life. So for the
Akan, the human person has a God-given project to carry out here in this world. This
project can be flouted by the human but it can never be bypassed because of destiny is
part or humanity. The Akan say: “Onyame nkrabea nni kwatibea.”(There is no bypassing
to Onyame’s or God’s destiny.) 150
All that has been said about the Akan concept of okra underscores that, in the mind of the
Akan, the individual person is directly bonded to God through her or his soul. This direct
relationship between the individual and God implies obligation. The individual’s life is
not meaningless or purposeless. Every Akan has a God-given destiny, including a God-
given project to be carried out in this world. Pobee succinctly expresses the Akan
conception of a person:
A man is a compound of mogya (blood, sunsum, also called ntoro

(spirit), and kra (the soul or individual personality). The mogya he
inherits from the mother, it symbolizes his material aspect. The blood
makes him a biological being; it gives him status and membership
within a lineage, and obligations as a citizen. The sunsum and kra
make a spiritual being. “As a spiritual being a man receives two-fold
gift of the spirit: that which determines his character and individuality
he receives through his father [i.e., sunsum or the ntoro]; but his soul,
the undying part of him, he receives from the Supreme Being [i.e.,
kra].” It is important to emphasize that by virtue of the sunsum he
belongs to his father’s kinship group. Thus an Akan belongs by birth to
two kinship group. From birth to death, through puberty and
marriage, the kinship group is involved with him and him with them. 151
For the Akan, the human person is a being in relationship with others. She or he is an
inseparable body-spirit being who is ontologically constituted in relationship with all
150
P. Akoi, Onyame in Akan, 9.
151
J.S. Pobee, Toward An African Theology, 49-50.
49
things in the universe. Therefore the Akan see, feel, imagine, reason or think and intuit at
the same time. This being in relationship with all things is defined by or rooted in the
existence and the presence of a “Universal Vital Force,” a Supreme Deity or Being
referred to as Onyame, who is believed to be the Creator-animator of all things. This all
means, then, that society is not structured along individualistic lines. Rather, according to
traditional Akan understanding society is looked at in essentially communal terms.
However, the traditional attitudes of the Akan have undergone some change. Too much
has happened since their contact with the outside world – the Arabic world, Europe,
Islam and Christianity – for their world and religious worldview to remain untouched. 152
Contact with other Cultures
K. A. Busia, documents that Christianity was a source of conflict in Akan. He quotes

from the 1905 British Colonial Reports on Ashanti: “Native converts cut themselves so
completely adrift from the rest of the community that the chiefs are afraid to encourage a
movement that experience tells them will, in course of time, undermine their power.”153
Busia also quotes the Colonial Official Report showing that there was a conflict between
Christians and the traditional rulers:
The tendency of Christian converts to alienate themselves from the

communities to which they belong is very marked, and is naturally
resented by the chiefs, who claim their hereditary rights to make the
converts [i.e. converts to Christianity,] in common with their fellow
tribesmen obey such laws and orders as are in accordance with native
custom. 154
In speaking of Ghana as a whole the Ghanaian sociologist Max Assimeng also states,
152
E. Asante, Toward An African Christian Theology, 80-81.
153
K. A. Busia, Colonial Reports: Ashanti, The Position of Chief in Ashanti, London: Oxford University
Press, 1951, 133-134.
154
K .A. Busia, Colonial Reports, 34.
50
The traditional attitudes of Ghanaians to their former gods and the
whole conception of religious association, religious leadership and
organization, and the very functions of religion in society have been
modified as a result of Christian missionary activities in the provision
of western education and medical technology. 155
What Assimeng say concerning Ghana in general can be said as well of the Akan of
Ghana in particular. In fact, numerous changes have occurred with regard to the religious
outlook, life and practice of the Akan since their culture came in contact with the outside
world and particularly with Western Europe. In the view of C. G. Baeta, Africans were
swept off their feet by their contact with Europe, and became, if anything, only too
enamored of the material things brought to them, and the new ways of life to which they
were introduced. 156 The Akan’s contact with the West, through the spread of Christianity
by Western missionaries, Western education, the introduction of a Western style cash
economy, Western culture and technological artifacts and other factors, 157 has weakened
traditional institutions. Robert A. Lystad observes:
Where once birth and growth to adulthood in a royal lineage conferred

honor and opportunity, now the acquisition of literacy, education, and
greater economic wealth places a man in a strong position to gain
prestige and even to manipulate royalty and to challenge the
traditional royal claims to political leadership. 158
Lystad further notes, ‘There is an almost magical quality to the desire for schooling
which is accelerating [social] changes. It is as if the familiar maxim had been altered to
read: ‘in schooling there is power any schooling and as much as possible.’ 159 The role of
education in the weakening of traditional Akan institutions is also pointed to by Kwame
Arhin, who notes in his study that,
155
M. Assimeng, Social Structures of Ghana. Tema: Ghana Publishing Corporation, 1981, 49-50.
156
C. E. Baeta, Theology as Liberation: Four Contemporary Third World Programmes, Accra: Ghana
Academy of Arts and Sciences publications, 1983, 35.
157
E. Asante, Toward An African Christian Theology, 81-83.
158
R. Lystard, The Ashanti: A Proud People. New York: Greenwood, 1968,125.
159
R. Lystard, The Ashanti, 26.
51
Two elements of the European presence were of decisive significance
as factors in the dissolution of the Fante ‘traditional’ rank system.
These were European styles of life as an alternative status index, and
the progress of formal Western education, which reinforced wealth as
the basis of the emergent class system. 160
Western education challenged traditional institutions, but Christianity challenged the

Akan’s very sense of community. Assimeng writes ‘Christianity gave Ghanaians a sense
or feeling of independence, arising out of individual appeal to the Bible and the
subsequent legitimating of the autonomy of the individual conscience.’ 161
The introduction of a Western style cash economy has altered the traditional land tenure
system and weakened the lineage system. In the traditional system the ancestors owned
the land from which the individual earned a living. 162 The yields of the land, therefore,
were therefore all members of the lineage to enjoy. The prosperous member of lineage
was seen as a channel of blessing to the whole lineage. With the introduction of a
Western cash economy, however, the traditional land tenure system has been affected and
economic individualization engendered. 163 In relation to West Africa as a whole, Philip
Garigue states:
New occupational groups appeared, and the development of cash crops

created a number of problems relating to ownership of land. The
traditional system of land tenure, in which rights were vested in the
lineage, has tended to disappear, especially in areas of cash-crop
cultivation and in the vicinity of towns. New forms of land ownership in
which money payment figures prominently are gradually replacing it.
The emergence of the concept of individual wealth has meant a
weakening of the lineage system. Reluctance on the part of members of
lineage groups to pool wealth, and the rise of occupational
160
K. Arhin, ‘Rank and Class among the Asante and Fante in the Nineteenth Century’, Africa: Journal of
the International African Institute, 53/1 (1983)1-22.
161
M. Assimeng, Social Structures, 4.
162
M. Sarba, Fanti Customary Laws, London: Clowes & Sons, 1897, 100.
163
C. Oppong, Middle Class African Marriage: A Family Study of Ghanaian Civil Servants, London:
George Allen & Unwin, 1981, 41-42.
52
differentiation, has meant the breaking up of the localized lineage
group. The direct ownership of land has also meant that the landowner
no longer cared to recognize the authority of the lineage head as to its
use or disposal. Changes in occupational distribution have produced
an urban professional group, which together with some of the wealthy
farmers has formed new economic elite. 164
The Western style cash economy has engendered an economic individualization that was
hitherto unknown among the Akan. And this economic individualization has in turn
created a situation where the lineage or the family system with its inherent obligations to
one another can be undermined. Through this economic individualization the individual
Akan can now live outside the context of her or his lineage. With the introduction of a
Western style cash economy into the Akan world, the Akan’s experience, expressed in
terms of the dictum, Cognatus ergo sum, “I belong to a family therefore I am,” is
challenged. The Asantes were right when they said kookoo sei abusua, meaning Cocoa
destroys the lineage system. A new definition of the individual has arisen alongside the
Akan definition of the individual in terms of the collective. This new definition defines
the individual in terms of her or his economic achievement and worth. Now of course not
only the maternal and paternal bonds determine relationship, because money too attracts
blood relationship or as the Akan say: Sika fre bogya, ‘money makes a family.’ 165
We have pointed to the changing situation of the Akan as a warning against any
understanding of the Akan in terms of fossilized communities with static religio-cultural
traditions. What J. S. Pobee says in relation to the whole of Africa is appropriate here:
In Africa there has been the impact of westernization expressed

through art, science, technology, learning, and social contact, In any
case, as a result of Christianity becoming a part of European culture,
African man after colonialism acquired laws, learning art, and a
concept of the state that was shaped by Christendom. Thus homo
Africanus of 1976 is different from homo Africanus of 1876. The
164
P. Garigue, ‘Changing Political Leadership in West Africa’, Africa: Journal of the International African
Institute 24(1954) 220-221.
165
E. Asante. Toward An African Christian Theology, 83.
53
communication and scientific revolution of our day means that even the
most “primitive” African has advanced from his pristine stage to
something else, precisely what we do not know. In other words, the
question is, how indigenous is indigenous? How traditional is
traditional? This warns against fossil culture and fossil religion. 166
In addition, Akan/African regions and cultures have had to contend with new political
realities, the formation of new identities, and interaction with the surrounding and new-
contact cultures and religions.
Despite such encounters, it is amazing to see how alive and well cultural practices in
Akan/Africa are alive and well in spite of their hospitality to new encounters.167
Continuity of Culture
The changes discussed above with regard to the Akan traditional ways should be taken
neither as indications that the Akan have completely abandoned their religio-cultural
traditions nor as a call to reject all past Akan traditions. As Assimeng writes, ‘traditional
conceptions of religious behaviour and the attitudes [of Ghanaians and for that matter the
Akan] have not changed entirely.’ 168 Asante has stated that: ‘The ancestral principles are
[still] working like metaphysical principles in the mind of [Asantes or the Akan].’169
According him, kinship relations are still crucial between the Akans, and underlying this
crucial importance of kinship relations is a strong belief in the ancestral spirits. 170 Asante
also notes:
Modern forces such as education, industries and urban living have not
changed the basic core of kinship relationship. Rural dwellers and
urban migrants interact with kinsmen. They refer to their original
homes as natal homes. There is a strong religious commitment and
166
167
R.M.A. Kanyoro, Introducing Feminist Cultural Hermeneutic, 14-15.
168
K.A. Busia, Social Structures, 49.
169
E. Asante, Toward an African Christian Theology, 7. Ashanti are used as a paradigm of the Akan –
speaking peoples.
170
E. Asante , Toward an African Christian Theology, 206.
54
attachment to natal homes, the origins in the worship of lineage
ancestors. Rural folk must cooperate to survive. The urbanite must
depend on his relatives for psychological and socio-economic reasons.
To the urbanite too the village remains the real home. Periodically he
visits his relatives to help with harvest to take part in ceremonies or to
find a woman to marry. 171
In the same vein, Busia maintains that,
Traditional religious rites continue, and there is evidence that converts

to Christianity or Islam participate in them, and resort to practices
which are part of their [traditional] religious heritage even if they
imply beliefs denied by their new faith.172
Such controversial elements of life in Akan, such as culture, sexuality, rituals and rites of
passage are part of the Akan religion. Although the Christian church has struggled to
replace them with other possibilities that passed for Christian culture, these Akan
elements did not just survive the Christian onslaught- they adamantly resisted being
touched. 173
What we have seen so far allows us to say that when we use the expression ‘Akan religio-
cultural tradition’, to borrow Pobee’s words, we refer to the Akan peoples and their
religio-cultural traditions in the flux and turmoil of the modern world. 174 We wish the
Akan to be understood in the inseparable context of their past, present and future. This
temporality of past, present and future is understood against the wider horizon of the total
Akan experience of life.
2.5 The Role of Women in Akan Socio-Cultural Religion
We wish to examine the place and the role of women in Akan socio-cultural religion. The
position of women in Africa today- both within the wider society and within religion- is
171
172
K.A. Busia, Africa in Search, 14.
173
R.M.A. Kanyoro, and. Oduyoye (eds), The Will to Arise: Women, Tradition and the Church in Africa,
Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 2000, 1-2.
174
55
normally prescribed by what is deemed to be beneficial to the welfare of the whole
community of women and men. Unfortunately, most of the prescribing tends to be carried
out by male authorities, and the resulting role of women tends to be circumscribed by an
unchanging set of norms enshrined in a culture that appears to be equally unchanging. 175
A proverb from Ghana declares that: ‘A woman is a flower in a garden; her husband is
the fence around it.’ 176 This proverb is a picture of women in Akan society and basically
sums up the condition of women across the Ghanaian nation. Women are the center of the
society, most women keep the families together, and they bear the enormous
responsibilities for their families. Economic activities such as trading are more often than
not in the hands of women. Women also constitute an important reservoir of wage
earning agricultural labor and are in general the backbone of the socio-economic
activities in Ghana.
However, women in Akan society are generally considered the weaker sex and inferior to
men. 177 With respect to Africa as a whole, Peter K. Sarpong observes that the woman ‘is
considered only as a second class citizen, the mother of man’s children.’ 178 Akan women
in our view are at par with their male counterparts. This is prominent in the agricultural
sector where male and female farmers toil their lands. Women are the most important
actors in the food chain, which begins from production on the farm, distribution on the
market and within the households. They are therefore the center- piece of food security
and hold the key to a sound and healthy economy. 179 It can be said literally that women
actually feed the nation. Available data on the role of women in agriculture suggests that
women form an estimated 52% of the agricultural labour force and produce 70% of the
175
M. Oduyoye, ‘Women and Rituals in Africa’ in: M. A. Oduyoye and M. R. A. Kanyoro (eds.) The Will
to Arise, 10-21.
176
J.Y. Bannerman, Mantse- Akan Mbebusem (Ghanaian Proverbs), Accra: Asempa Publishers, 1974, 19.
177
Akan women are generally placed second to men, despite the claim of some African scholars to the
contrary. See for example Kofi Appiah-Kubi, ‘The Indigenous African Christian Churches: Signs of
‘Authenticity’ in: K. Appiah-Kubi and S. Tottes (eds.) African Theology en Route: Papers from the Pan-
African Conference, Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1979, 117-125.
178
P. K. Sarpong. ‘Christianity meets Traditional African Cultures’ in: G. H. Anderson and T. F. Stransky
(eds), Mission Trends No5: Faith Meets Faith, New York: Paulist Press, 1981, 58-75.
179
B. A. Duncan, Women in Agriculture in Ghana, Accra: Gold-Type Ltd., 1997, 34.
56
subsistence crops. Women also constitute 90% of the labor force in the marketing of farm
produce.180
In the Akan society where relationships go by blood every person is considered to

belong to his/her mother. In this case without the woman the man is without foundation
because one belongs to the mother’s family. Because of this central role, women are also
economically potent because they inherit property and hand it over to their children. So
basically women in the society have the economic independence, economic potency and
the social standing that recognizes their value because they are the people that create and
hold society together. This value of women is however attached to motherhood and
motherliness which are generally connected with domesticity with the woman’s ability to
cater for her husband and her husband’s children by another wife, 181 and with her ability
to tend the issues of her marriage. 182 As a result of this, the statement that the Akan
society is a male-dominated matrilineal may sound like a contradiction, but it is a fact. 183
Women also play a central role in Akan/ African religion, mythology and proverbs. In the
Akan mythology the earth itself is considered a woman (Asaase yaa).
Through the myths of origin, we get a picture of the woman as someone

placed by God in a special position. She shares with Him the creative
process of life. In some ways her position and her role in these myths
eclipses the position of the husband (male). She is in a real sense the
mother of human beings, the dispenser of life, howbeit as an agent of
God. At the same time the woman shares in the misfortunes, suffering
and death that in various ways came into the world. 184
Mbiti goes on to say:
It is clear, that women both participate in the religious activities of

society and make contributions for the spiritual welfare of their lives,
180
National Population Policy Document, 1994, 3.
181
It has to be noted that the Akan recognizes polygamy as an acceptable practice.
182
The Akan upholds the value of both motherhood and motherliness, yet a case can still be made that the
Akan society is a male-dominated society.
183
E. Asante, Toward An African Christian Theologyy, 36.
184
J. Mbiti, ‘The Role of Women in African Traditional Religion’. http:www.africaworld.net/afrel/atr-
women.htm Retrieved on 18 May, 2005.
57
their families and the society at large. The prayers are small window
that opens into their spirituality, which indeed is the spirituality of all
human beings. As they share with God in the great mysteries of passing
on life, so they share also in giving human life a spiritual orientation.
They are truly flowers in the garden. They give life beauty, scent and
seed. 185
We now consider some specific roles of women in Akan/Africa traditional Religions
Women as Priestesses
In the activities connected with the worship of the deities, there is in Akan, a very highly
developed tradition of priesthood. Individuals do not become priests by their own choice;
the initiative rests entirely with the deities. Each candidate therefore receives a call to the
priesthood. For this reason, a person cannot independently work his or her way into the
priesthood.186 The priesthood, which is a highly respected office in Akan societies, is
open to both men and women. 187 As a rule they are formally trained and commissioned
after receiving the call. Spirit possession usually indicates a call. It is the duty of the
priest 188 who has received special training, to serve as an intermediary between the
divinity and the devotees and she/he is often called upon to perform rituals and
ceremonies. Her/his function however, is not restricted to religious matters alone, for
every aspect of human life is a concern of hers/his. The training therefore includes
instructions in the laws, taboos, dances, songs and the idiosyncrasies of the divinities, as
well as general priestly duties. The initiate also acquires knowledge of herbs and roots
and other medical values of the environment. There is also training in traditional methods
of psychiatry. 189The priests and priestesses fulfill their obligations as intermediaries
between their people and the spirit world. In Larteh at the Akonedi shrine 190 for example,
185
J. Mbiti, ‘The Role of Women’ , 5.
186
J.D.K. Ekem, Priesthood in Context, Hamburg: Verlag an der Lottbek, 1994, 48.
187
J.D.K. Ekem, Priesthood, 43.
188
Okomfo is the Akan name/word for a fetish priest.
189
J.D.K. Ekem, Priesthood, 43.
190
Akonedi shrine is one of the most powerful shrines in the whole of Ghana but it is a female spirit and
she possesses only females. This is a well-known fact in Ghana confirmed by the people of Larteh.
58
and other places, special convents are established where only women are trained to
become priestesses and these are accorded great respect in the society. 191
Women as Traditional Doctors
Women like men, also train hard to become traditional doctors, healers, or herbalists.
They are often wrongly described as witch doctors. ‘These are well trained in the
traditional medical practice, psychology and psychiatry and symbolize the hopes of their
society; hopes of good health, protection and security from evil forces, prosperity and
good fortune, and ritual cleansing when harm or impurities have been contracted.’192
Every village in Africa has a medicine–man or woman within reach. As friends of the
community they are accessible to everybody and at all time. They are concerned first and
foremost with disease, sickness and misfortune which in the Akan experience are caused
by mystical forces. The traditional healer has therefore to diagnose the nature of the
disease, discover the cause of the sickness and apply the right treatment, together with a
means of preventing its re-occurrence. Here, both physical and spiritual methods are
applied to assure the sufferer of good health. Furthermore, they protect people from
witchcraft and sorcery by supplying charms and other medications. It is important to note
that many diseases especially those related to mental disorders which cannot be cured in
the modern hospitals are being treated in the homes of these traditional healers.
Women as Mediums and Diviners
In general, women practice as mediums and diviners. Through mediums and diviners
spiritual beings make their wishes known to human beings. They relay messages from the
other world and also reveal the secrets of the past, present and the future when their
deities possess them. People resort to them freely for both private and public consultation
and when in crisis or stress. Like the traditional doctors, they are regarded as friends of
their community. They play the role of counselors, judges, advisors, fortune-tellers and
191
For details in the training of priests and their functions see K. Asare- Opoku, West Africa, 74-90.
192
K..K.. Anti, ‘Women in Africa’.
59
revealers of secrets. They are highly respected in the community and cannot be described
as “inspired auxiliaries.”
Much has been said to suggest that the participation of women in Akan/African religion
is adequate. It has also been suggested that equality as a concept cannot be applied to
Akan/African culture, since role differentiations in Akan/Africa are clear and are not
meant to be valued hierarchically. Although it is true that, in Akan custom, women are in
charge of shrines and cultic centers, it is also observable that there are more women in the
secondary roles of mediums and cultic dancers than there are women who serve as high
priests of shrines or as healers. Even more obvious is the fact that more women than men
are clients of the divinities of the cults. These can be explained by the fact that traditional
193
taboos associated with menstruation exclude women from sacred roles.
Musical Role of Women in Traditional Religion
A lot of festivals abound in Akan traditional religions. Many of these are in honor of the
most important divinities and ancestors. The phenomenon of singing and dancing by
well-dressed women, form a major part of the festivals. Although the songs and dancing
add color to the celebrations, they have a veiled but most important effect of curbing
recalcitrant and criminally minded members of the society who had broken the norms,
convictions, and customs prevalent in the community during the year. The songs are
deliberately composed to highlight the abuses and crimes committed and expose the
criminals. 194 The singing groups, protected by the community’s traditions, perform the
role of “the people’s court” to whose verdict the culprits and their relations cannot
pretend to be indifferent and against which they have to appeal. This has been a very
significant and effective mechanism of social control in Akan.
193
M. Oduyoye, ‘Women and Rituals’, 12.
194
K.K. Anti, ‘Women in Africa’.
60
2.6 The Value of Women in Akan Culture/Society
Women are extremely valuable in the Akan society. Not only do they bear life, but also
they nurse, they cherish, they give warmth, they care for life since all human life passes
through their own bodies.
The value of woman begins already when she is born and not when she gets married.
Already at birth the woman’s destiny is to be married. In Akan society, this entails a
bride-wealth in the form of expressions of marriage contract. Before a marriage is
effected, gifts are normally exchanged between the families of the bride and the groom.
However, what the groom provides is always substantially higher in value than what is
provided by the bride. 195 Furthermore, the woman will bear children and thus enrich her
husband and the wider circle of relatives from both sides. 196
In Akan worldview, the unmarried woman has practically no role in society. Thus it is
expected that all women get married. This thought is bound up with the value of bearing
children. The childless woman goes through sorrows in Akan society. If a woman has
everything else, except children, she would have no cause or joy to give thanks. The
sentiment is expressed in Akan society that the more children one has the better. So the
Akan say ‘A serviceable wife is often blessed with the birth of a tenth child, the ‘Role of
Women bees!’ 197 This means that motherhood is a woman’s fulfillment as far as the
Akan is concerned.
The important roles women play in the Akan society is that they help to uphold
community by acting as guardians of lineage and morality and through their womanhood,
they are the procreators and nurturers of the community.
Although women play significant roles in the Akan traditional society and religion both
as ritual specialists and upholders of community norms and traditions, many of these
roles that women play in the religion and society seem to be somewhat ambivalent and
viewed as both helpful and detrimental to society. Rosalind Hackett best describes this
idea of ambivalence when she states: ‘Women are respected for their procreative powers
195
F. A. Dolphyne, The Emancipation of Women: An African Perspective, Accra: Ghana University Press,
1991, 7.
196
J. Mbiti, ‘The Role of Women ’, 16.
197
K.K. Anti. ‘Women in Africa’.
61
and nurturing role, and their links with the earth and the ancestors. However, in some
societies, women may be regarded as the purveyors of evil and misfortune, often in the
guise of witches, and polluters of the sacred.’ 198 It is very clear that apparent prejudices
are shown to women in religion and society by virtue of their sex in Akan society.
2.7 Women and Ritual in Akan
Importance of ritual
Edet has said that ritual is a means by which humanity controls, constructs, orders
fashions, or creates a way to be fully human. Edet maintains that rituals give meaning to
the world, renews, and makes things right. It saves, heals and makes whole again. For this
reason, ritual is essential for our lives. 199 Akan rituals are religion in action. They are
rites, ceremonies and symbols through which the Akan express humanness. Since the
Akan operate with an integrated worldview that assigns a major place to religious factors
and beliefs, Akan rituals have an import that is at once psychological, spiritual, political,
and social. 200
For the sake of the community as a whole, Akan religion gives a major role to rites of
passage. An individual’s path through life is monitored, marked, and celebrated from
before birth to death and thereafter, and the events in the life of a community echo this
same cycle. Throughout a person’s life several rituals may be celebrated. Starting a new
farm, a new business, a journey, a building-new venture demands a foundational ritual.
Rituals include supplication rites for rain, good health, and children. There are also
purification rites to expunge negative influences and contaminations that one has
acquired in daily interactions with other people, animals, or objects that are taboo. There
are thanksgiving rites for harvest, and other accomplishments ad festivals to celebrate
201
significant events of a community.
198
R Hackett, Women in African Religions: Religion and Women, Albany: State University of New York
Press, 1994, 65.
199
R. N. Edet ‘Christianity and African Women’s Rituals’, 26.
200
M. Oduyoye, ‘Women and Rituals, 9.
201
M. Oduyoye, ‘Women and Rituals ’, 9.
62
We agree with Edet’s view that women’s rituals in Africa and for that matter in Akan
society fall under ideology which aims at controlling, in a conservative way, the
behavior, the mood, the sentiment, and values of women for the sake of the community as
a whole. 202 Elaborate ritual ceremonies for women include puberty, childbirth and
widowhood. A brief examination of key rituals and festivals in Akan societies can give us
insight into how religion informs and shapes women’s lives, and to some extent how life
shapes religion.
Birth
Birth is marked as a passage from the spiritual world to this one. Among the Akan, all the
rituals of this stage apply equally to boys and girls. On the eighth day, infants of both
sexes undergo operations with sexual connotations of beauty and potency. Girls may
have their ears pierced and boys are circumcised. Though belonging to the Akan group,
the Asante touch neither boys nor girls, as a person deformed in any way is unfit to
perform religious rites. Despite changing fashions, some people from traditional ruling
families take care to observe this taboo in order not to jeopardize the chances of their
progeny to assume traditional rule in the community.
On the eighth day, a ritual separation from the spiritual world is effected as the baby is
introduced to this world and to the human community of which she or he has become a
part. A family name is added to the soul name associated with the day and given to the
child at the same time of birth. Family names are derived from the generation before
one’s own parents and may be the masculine or feminine version of a grandparent’s
name.
When the men and the women of the community have assembled for the ritual of naming,
the father pronounces the name of the child for all to hear. The mother and all other omen
have no role in selecting the name. The oldest member of the father’s family performs
the actions of the namegiving ceremony, those of carrying the baby and putting water and
202
R.N. Edet ‘Christianity and African Women’s Rituals’, 26.
63
wine into its mouth, and a woman may participate. When paternity is disputed, the whole
ceremony is usually performed by the mother’s family. 203
Puberty
Puberty rites are rites that in some cultures include circumcision for either males or
females, mark the passage from childhood to adulthood. The Akan performs special rites
for their girls when they reach puberty. These rites celebrate blood as dangerous/salvific,
life/death and contagious/efficacious. 204 No other ritual or rite in the life of a female in
the olden days was of greater importance than the puberty rites referred to in Akan as
Bragro which takes the form of a social activity that manifests itself in the drumming,
joyous dancing and singing and the schooling which the novice is given in social
behavior and womanhood. In the ritual sense however, it is a period during which the
novice conceived as “profane” is ushered into “sacred life” through performance of
purificatory rites. The purification tends to eliminate all vestiges of menstruation or any
bodily defilement. Once she has gone through purification rites, the novice has to submit
to a set of ritualistic observances. The point above all is to become separated from the
profane world in order to make possible the penetration of the sacred world without peril.
There are still numerous prohibitions on the novice many of which are connected with the
sacred places, objects and personalities. When these rites are performed, a young person
becomes a member not only of her family but also of the whole community, and takes on
adult responsibilities, including that of replenishing the race.
The basic belief underlying most of the prohibitions on menstruation is that menstrual
blood, besides being profane or impure is also dangerous or potent to any sacred being or
object, which has direct or indirect contact with it. It is because of the impurity that is
associated with a menstruating woman that she is made to undergo purification rites.
Non-adherents to menstrual prohibitions in the olden days were socially ostracized for the
simple reason that they were antagonistic to anything sacred, especially the earth
goddess, the gods of the land and the ancestral spirits. It was also conceived that if
203
M. Oduyoye, ‘Women and Rituals, 12.
204
For more information on puberty rite, see P. K. Sarpong, Girls’ Nubulity Rite in Ashanti.
64
Bragoro was not performed, it jeopardized a girl’s chances of having a happy marriage as
the protection of the god’s and ancestral spirits was withheld from her. This made parents
(especially mothers) compel their daughters to undergo the Bragoro rites without
compromise.
Among the Akan, pregnancy is an abomination if the puberty rites have not been
performed, and the prospective father and mother may be banished.
In Akan societies, puberty rituals are performed for women by women and for men by
men. This according to Oduyoye is the beginning of the bifurcation of the Akan
society. 205 The ritual for girls includes fertility rites, while for boys the rites elicit
evidence of bravery. Among the Asante, it is significant that one of the euphemisms for a
206
girl’s first menstrual period is that ‘she has killed an elephant’. In a similar way, a
woman who has given birth is described as ‘one who has returned safely from the battle
front.’207 For women, coming face to face with one’s own blood is itself an act of bravery
and part of what it means to be a human being. In Akan, a man does not have to kill a
lion to be biologically male, but some African societies require this or some comparable
achievement before a man is admitted to the rank of “husband.” 208
Marriage
The Akan recognize a young person as matured only when she or he is married. By
marrying the individual accepts the responsibility of childbearing and rearing publicly.
The marriage ritual is one of bonding. It is the physical bonding of two individuals as
sexual partners and the covenantal bonding of two families. The ritual performance
however emphasizes the transfer of the woman from the spiritual power of the father to
that of the husband. (The spiritual bond of the father is treated in detail later in this
chapter). The Yoruba performs ritual of crossing–over with a washing of feet at the
threshold of the husband’s house. 209In connection with this Oduyoye has said that the
205
206
207
208
209
65
bride’s old self is buried with the marriage ceremony as she begins a new life in the
husband’s house. This transition then becomes more significant for the woman than the
man, as the threshold ceremony is also a definition of territory by the husband’s family.
The new bride is “hedged in” by him and his people. 210
The Akan’s main interest in marrying off a daughter is in the daughter’s duty and
capacity to become a channel for ancestors to return through her offspring. 211
Birthing
For the Akan a marriage is not truly stabilized until all the prayers and the rituals have
been completed and a woman gives birth. The birthing chamber and in some cases, the
house where a birthing is taking place are taboo to men. Men are strictly forbidden to
share the secrets of childbirth. If the birthing is normal, no special rituals are required
except for thanksgiving rites and soul washing to congratulate the soul of the woman for
a job well done. Her husband and relatives shower the new mother with gifts. If however,
birthing is complicated, the woman in labor is encouraged to confess her sins. She may
be accused of adultery and she will be asked to mention the name of the illicit partner.
Sacrifices may be made on her behalf to ensure safe delivery. 212 A lot of deaths have
undoubtedly resulted from what is essentially a religious belief.
Death
The final ritual of passage, death, comes to women and men alike and–apart from
elaborate mourning by husbands-women’s funerals are meticulously performed as men’s
funerals. In Akan society departed spirits of both men and women are equally powerful
and so an improper funeral for either might call down a great deal of trouble for the
living. Since both male and female ancestors will be reincarnated, men and women must
be equally honored in the prescribed manner so that they might return. Women’s souls
210
211
212
66
however do not demand the humiliation of their husbands for them to rest in peace. 213
But men’s souls do.
Widowhood Rites/Mourning
The death of a spouse marks another stage in the life of the individual, and separation
rites are performed to terminate the coital rights of the deceased partner. Little has been
recorded of rituals for the death of a wife, as these practices are minimal. Oral evidence
indicates that a widower is encouraged to obtain a sexual partner as soon as possible in
order to disgust the spirit of the deceased wife, who will then never again visit him.
On the other hand it is assumed that a husband’s soul will not rest until the widow, going
through complex mourning rites, has been purified. It is only then that she can remarry
safely. For the Akan woman, mourning a husband is an extremely intense period. The
separation ritual intended to free the widow from her deceased husband’s soul is marked
by purification rites that may involve acts like walking to a stream for a pre-dawn bath.
There are hair care rituals where the hair is shaved in weeping and wailing rituals. The
hair is sometimes kept uncombed for one to twelve months. There are also wailing rituals
where the widow wails twice a day morning and evening from eight days to six months.
She must accompany anyone who comes wailing; even if she is eating she must stop
eating and wail.
In sitting and sleeping rituals the widow sits on a mat on the floor and sleeps there, or she
sits in one position until the burial day.
The widow can remarry only after completion of a formal mourning period followed by
‘decent” length of time. Even at this stage the widow may not have a choice of husbands,
as provisions may have been made for her to be inherited by her deceased husband’s
successor. If the widow refuses, she receives no material benefit from the marriage.
The loss of a husband in Akan societies is viewed as extremely inauspicious, and this
inauspiciousness is so contagious that prior to purification none of the people who stream
213
67
214
in to mourn with the bereaved family can shake hands with the widow. Oduyoye has
written that widowhood in African religion and for that matter Akan religion usually
involves three factors.
1. Surviving a husband attaches negative influences to the widow who may then
contaminate others. This necessitates purification of the woman.
2. The spirit of the deceased husband stays with the widow until rites are performed
to separate them. This separation is needed so that she can safely be passed on to
another man. The unspoken assumption is that a woman must always be married.
3. A man’s soul can rest peacefully only when his spouse has meticulously observed
all the rites of widowhood. Before his spirit can rest in peace, a deceased man
requires not only proper burial but also a thoroughly dejected widow who at times
is thoroughly humiliated by her in-laws.
Several groups have opposed these demeaning rites demanded of widows over the years.
Although the rites have been modified over time, the fundamental religious belief of
inauspiciousness still remains, as do the socioeconomic and legal consequences of a
system that give widows no official status. Oduyoye’s view that in most African
societies, female sexuality has no autonomous value outside of marriage and motherhood
applies also to Akan societies. 215
Rituals: A matter of Religious Belief
At every stage in this passage through life, a principle of religion is involved. Since
religion plays such a key role in enforcing societal norms and ethics, each stage has a
social significance and reflects the status of women in the society and the relationship
that exist between men and women. Participation in society is thoroughly imbued with
these religious beliefs, even if they are not explicitly stated. Generally, Akan societies
have more rituals for women than men. However there are no Akan rituals to mark
214
215
68
menopause or special purification rites after child birth whether the child is a boy or a
girl.
2.8 The Taboo of Menstruation in Akan Religious Culture
A taboo against women during menstruation is common in Akan communities. Menstrual

blood is seen as “dirty”. Not only are women considered to be ‘impure” during these
periods, but in danger of communicating their impurity to others. Thus though the onset
of menarche is celebrated in Akan communities, the general trend is to stigmatize the
event. Menstruation is not mentioned by name in many Akan communities. It is referred
to in some local languages as oko afikyire (“she has gone outside the house,”) wabu
nensa (“she has broken her hands”) and nensa aka fam (“she has touched the ground with
her hands.”) 216
Although women are regarded as producers of life, they are also seen as spiritual sources
of danger. The ritually “dangerous” nature of women is expressed in notions about the
polluting nature of blood, especially the blood of menstruation and childbirth. It is such
notions of pollution, which underlie rituals intended to separate “unclean” women from
contact with others or to neutralize the sources of pollution.
Thus in connection with religious functions menstruating women are banned from the
shrines, neither are they allowed handling or touching of religious objects or
personalities. For instance, among the rules to be observed by trainee priestesses is one,
which stipulates that she should voluntarily absent herself from the shrine for seven days
each month during her menstrual period. This ban stems from the belief that menstrual
blood is impure and dangerously harmful to sacred objects. Hence during this period
women are banned from entering palaces, shrines, and other places where rituals are
performed. This taboo must be rigidly upheld and severe penalties are levied if it is
infringed. 217
216
K. Agyekum, ‘Menstruation as a Verbal Taboo among the Akan of Ghana’, Journal of Anthropological
Research, 58/3/(2002), 367-385.
217
69
It is interesting to note that though women serve as mediums, a virgin, preferably before
she attains puberty, is chosen for this office. Otherwise, a woman of advanced age or one
who has ceased from childbearing and cohabitation is qualified to hold this office. 218 Sex
with a woman in her period is also forbidden. In the olden days (and even now in some
rural areas), menstruating women have to move to an outer house meant for those
regarded as “ritually unclean.” They were also forbidden to cook for their husbands.
To illustrate this position of women, we consider an Akan proverb that says, “A woman
does not pour libation on a stool.” If she does the stool will become polluted. The stool is
regarded as an important element in Akan traditional spirituality. It is seen as the
embodiment of the ancestors. Hence there is the need to avoid its contamination in order
to avert any disastrous consequences on the victim and her community. This proverb
therefore stresses the need to safeguard the solidarity of the group that is symbolized by
the stool. A similar proverb states that a woman does not climb a tree. If she does the tree
will die. The principle here, as well is that the woman in her impure state may pollute the
tree and cause it to die.
In her paper at the Pan African Conference of Third World Theologians in Accra,
Oduyoye remarks ‘as far as the cultic aspect of religion goes, women now as before, are
relegated.’219 She said in most traditional religious festivals, the only active participation
of women is in providing the dishes for feasting that accompanies the rituals. Oduyoye
again stresses that, women doing the dancing and cooking for festivals do not compensate
for their exclusion from the “Holy of Holies” in the festivals. She cited an example of the
Oro cult of the Yoruba where women are totally excluded from the ritual.
With the Asante (A major Akan ethnic group) of Ghana, only menopausal women, or in
certain cases those who are willing to live asexual life seem to be admitted for religious
rituals. In traditional religion, women are declared unclean by the natural flow of blood
associated with procreation. One is seen to be unclean by the very fact that one is a
218
K..K.. Anti, ‘Women in Africa’.
219
M. A. Oduyoye, ‘African Theology En Route’, A paper presented at Pan African Conference of Third
World Theologians’ in December 17-23, 1977.
70
woman. Women are excluded from sacred rituals until they become men. 220 Women we
know, become men when they no longer menstruate.
Most rituals are performed either on women or because of women. Among the Akan for
example, naming children is the prerogative of men because only men are deemed to
have the capacity to be spiritual protectors. A second principle to be followed is that
persons who are free from any flow of blood must prepare food and drinks for the spirit
world. Blood in Akan has a dual character; it is holy but it is also inauspicious when
found where it should not be. As a result, women’s participation in this ritual as in others
is often limited. 221
In family rituals, men usually officiate, and menopausal women do so in extreme cases or
in supportive roles.
Among the Akan, women feature prominently in ritual dances and singing, as in
mmommome, a war support ritual of singing that is specifically a female activity. When
rituals are being performed to show unity with the ancestors, women join in feasting and
dressing up, but not in sacrificing. There is a prohibition, however, against women
wearing masks, even when the ancestor being represented is a woman. Men have
arrogated to themselves the prerogative of representing the spirits that shaped the history
and the destiny of the community. The exclusion of women from such community rituals
has obvious political and social implications and may lie behind men’s unwillingness to
have women in positions of responsibility that include authority over men. 222 Purification
rituals for women are more frequent. Women may undergo purification after a man’s
failure to accomplish a task, after a husband’s death, or after childbirth. These
purification rituals are very often prescribed by men diviners and performed on women
by women. 223
As one can see, the potency of menstruation looms large in African traditional thinking
and is therefore an important factor for rejecting women’s ordination (position in the
church). In her study of the Asante, Oduyoye gives an impressive list of taboos
220
M. A. Oduyoye, ‘Naming the Woman: the Words of the Akan and the Words of the Bible’, Bulletin De
Theologie Africaine. 3/5/ (1982), 81-97.
221
222
M. Oduyoye, ‘Women and Rituals’, 17-18.
223
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constricting the life of women in their prime. She said for most ritual meals, the cooks
were male, although sometimes the senior wife of the traditional ruler (Ohene) would be
responsible. Old women fetch the water for the ancestors to wash their hands at the
Awukudae festival early in the morning, and the food cooked by men. All this is done in
order to prevent the possibility of having the participation of menstruating women in
religious rituals. Menstruation is believed to have such potency that it is able to annul all
prayers and render rituals ineffective. 224
According to Oduyoye, the fear behind all these taboos and injunctions begin to be
apparent when one analysis why brafo (woman in her period) must not touch a Suman
(talisman). A male suman or ritual object that becomes involved with menstruating
women is in danger. To be in contact with brafo is to have all one’s powers annulled. She
renders one vulnerable to evil spirits because she annuls all other powers. 225
The menstrual blood makes women unclean and dangerous as G. Nantakyiwah writes:
The basic belief underlying most of the views on menstruation,

especially, is that the menstrual blood, besides being unclean, is also
considered as dangerous, potent, so that any direct or indirect contact
with it is believed to render all powers weak, impotent and
interactive. 226
In the Akan society in Ghana, blood is a symbol with a paradoxical character; good it
symbolizes life, power, strength and dignity of inheritance; evil, it symbolizes death. Too
much blood loss leads to death. It is also ominous. Therefore blood taboos are dealt with
ceremonially.
The question is why has it always been accepted that blood from women is impure? In
Akan/African culture and religion, female blood impurity has both religious and cultural
implications. Religiously female blood is impure because it is split outside the sacrificial
act. Culturally, any act that sheds blood except within a sacrificial act is considered
224
M. Oduyoye, ‘African Theology’, 7
225
M. Oduyoye, ‘African Theology’, 9.
226
S. Y. Nyantakyiwah- Gyimah, Women and Priesthood. A Case Study of the Presbyterian and Methodist
Churches of Ghana. A dissertation submitted to the department of African Studies, University of Ghana,
Legon in partial fulfillment of the Master of Philosophy Degree, 1987.
72
impure. The feelings of female blood impurity was handled both religiously and
culturally in the Akan/African societies through rituals. The ritual elements consist of
segregation or separation, purification, exhibition, celebration and incorporation.
2.9 The Akan Concept of the Sacred and the Profane
In Akan thought, certain objects and beings with distinctive characteristics have the
potential of affecting life positively or negatively; these include natural phenomena,
animals, mediums and spirits. Those, which affect life positively and have pervasive and
persuasive characteristics, are what the people conceive as distinctively sacred; whilst
those that affect life negatively and have dissuasive characteristics are profane. 227
Behind the sacred and the profane is a life-power or vital force that makes them
contagious and essentially ‘dangerous.’ In religious terms, the sacred assumes a superior
position to the profane. It is that which is separated from the profane and secular; and it is
that which is respected and protected.
One would notice that a particular stone, for instance, which has been identified as
distinctively sacred is separated from the rest. Such a stone may be placed in an obscure
place, and may be fenced with barbed wire or hedges to designate its uniqueness.
Sacrifices, libation and prayers offered to such a stone might signify that the stone is not
a mere physical object but an impersonal force.
Even though the religious factor gains ground primarily through rituals and customary
observances, the striking question as to why the stone is said to be sacred remains
unanswered. 228 One may be told that a traditional ruler, for instance is sacred and
therefore restricted by a number of prohibitions without being told the basis of his
sacredness; or that a menstruating woman is profane without knowing what impure blood
implies or the basis of its profanity.
227
H.J. Ofosuhene, The Kwahu Traditional Concept of the Sacred and the Profane, A dissertation
submitted to the department or the study of Religions, University of Ghana, Legon in partial fulfillment the
Master of Philosophy Degree, March 1993, 2.
228
H.J. Ofosuhene, The Kwahu Traditional Concept, 2.
73
Radcliffe-Brown provides a clue to why certain objects and beings are avoided or feared.
He asserts that certain objects and beings such as a newly-born infant, a corpse or the
person of a chief are forbidden simply because they are taboo; they are in a state of
danger. Thus they are often restricted and isolated. The inference is that they constitute
the supreme temptation and the greatest of dangers. They are dreadful and command
caution. 229
Among the Akan, the mysterious power that manifests in a being or an object helps
differentiates it from the “ordinary”. Such a being or object is classified as taboo and
what is taboo is what they may conceive as sacred or profane which is expressed almost
exclusively through taboos.230 However the sacred and the profane represent two poles of
a dreadful domain, they are mutually exclusive and contradictory in every sphere of lie. It
is therefore imperative to create water-tight compartments between them since they
cannot co-exist without one losing its unique characteristics. The contagious of the
profane, for example, always causes it to debase, degrade and destroy instantaneously the
essence in terms of which the sacred is defined. The sacred is therefore placed outside
common usage, guarded and protected by restrictions and prohibitions. 231 A traditional
ruler for example by virtue of the ancestral stool he occupies is said to be sacred and
therefore taboo. He has to observe a number of restrictions as custom demands. For
instance, he may not talk to certain persons directly. The clothes he wears, the bowl he
eats from and uneaten food should not be used by anybody except perhaps his own wife
and children who share his sacredness since this could lead to illness or even death. 232
The traditional ruler is regarded as being in a state of danger if he fails to observe the
restrictions or does not take cultic and customary precautions. It is believed that
automatic and immediate punishment or disaster will be meted out to him if he breaks
any of the taboos. 233
229
A.R. Radcliffe- Brown, Structure and Function in Primitive Society, London : Routledge & Kegan
Paly, 1979, 133- 134.
230
231
232
233
74
A sacred realm is established wherever there is mystical divine manifestation and
consecration. This is related to certain objects (items of the cult), certain persons (chiefs,
traditional priests, diviners), certain places (shrines, groves, forests, rivers), certain times
(Thursday, Sunday, Friday, days for the deities and the ancestors, purification days,
festivals etc.).234 It is worth noting that the Akan are interested in the divine manifestation
of a being or an object more than the being or the object itself. Eliade observes that what
is involved in veneration is not the veneration of the being or the object itself; rather, it is
the sacrality manifested through the mode of being of the say the stone that reveals its
true essence. 235 According to Eliade, sacred trees and sacred stones are not adored as
trees or stones. They are worshipped precisely because they are hierophanies (the act of
manifestation of the sacred, they show something that is no longer tree or stone but
numinous). The object becomes something else, yet it continues to remain itself and
participate in its surrounding cosmic milieu. 236 A sacred stone thus remains a stone;
apparently nothing distinguishes it from all other stones. But for those to whom it reveals
itself as mystical and sacred, its immediate reality is transmitted into a supernatural
reality. The inference is that a being or an object is sacred only by negating itself in
pointing to the divine of which it is the true medium.
As for the profane, the sacred must always guard against it; its debasing, degrading
destroying essence prompts the sacred to shun it. Once the sacred comes into contact with
the profane it loses its spiritual powers and sanctity. ‘This occurs through instant transfer
of efficacious negative properties which are contagious.’ 237 In this sense, the profane is
conceived as distasteful, horrible and terrible. Defilement occurs when there is interaction
or contact between the sacred and the profane. A traditional ruler who comes into contact
with a menstruating woman or a corpse is defiled. This is because the profanity of the
profane is transferred to him and this renders his vital force inefficacious and he tends to
234
235
M. Eliade, The Sacred and the profane, The Nature of Religion, (Translated by W. R. Trask), New
York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1961, 118.
236
M. Eliade, The Sacred and the profane, 9- 11.
237
R. Cailous, Man and the Sacred, (Translated by Meyer Brash), Illinois: The Free Press of Glencoe,
1959, 2.
75
lose his sacred essence. 238 It is believed that he can get ill. He therefore takes precaution
and goes through purification rite.
What constitutes the profane?
In Akan life and thought, the profane has undesirable religious connotations. In the ritual
sense, it is anything whose nature or spiritual force could destroy the sacred essence of a
being or an object and thereby renders it valueless or powerless. On account of its
dangerous influence or destructive nature, the Akan refer to it as akyieade (that which is
unclean) or akumde (that which pollutes).
The belief is that once the profane comes into contract with any “ordinary” or sacred
being or object, the ‘ordinary or sacred is contaminated. There is a multiplicity of profane
objects and beings. In the normal sense, natural phenomena and natural species, which
not personified or treated with reverence or used for ritual purposes are conceived as
(ordinary.) However, those, which are conceived as extremely dangerous and could, alter
both the sacred and the “ordinary,” are what the Akan term profane. Menstrual women
fall into the category of profanity. 239
2.10 The Significance of Blood in Akan Religious Culture
Nature is traditionally conceived in Ghana’s worldview as mystical and sacred, yet there
are certain objects and beings that are singularly conceived to be more mystical and more
sacred. This assertion is based on the assumption that nature provides unequal life force
or potential power.
In their attempt to explore the forces behind nature, Akans have categorized objects and
beings as valuable or non-valuable, mystical or non-mystical, sacred or non–sacred,
profane or non–profane. This has been done in order to establish a close relationship with
them or avoid them.
238
239
76
Blood is one of the elements used in assessing and categorizing beings as sacred or non –
sacred, profane or non-profane. It is normally linked with vital force. It is that which
sustains or preserves biological life. Blood is not conceived as a mere substance but as a
spiritual active force. It signifies that which has the act of existing-an existing “thing,” –
which is endowed with spiritual power or life force. It is the qualitative and not the
quantitative that the Akan uses in assessing it.
Blood is life and blood is a very cardinal element in sacred rituals. It is used as a medium
of contact with the ancestral spirit world and also as medium through which the vital
force of a person is vitalized (e.g. a chief). It could therefore be said that blood is the
source of life.
In the spiritual sense, blood has other mystical properties apart from insuring ‘sacred
life’. It restores life, it cleanses, it heals and it purifies. The curative function of blood is
attributed to the belief that blood has power to nullify everything mystically. It is
conceived as having potential power to nullify disease or chase out evil spirits that may
cause sickness. Blood is also thought to have purifying potential power. Psychology plays
a part in the use of blood in rituals.
Blood (besides its biological function) that flows out of the body or is accumulated in it
represents pollution or contamination. It is said that once blood ceases to function
biologically by any means, its physical element disintegrates and its spiritual power or
vital force is rendered valueless or impotent. And this will negatively influence and
damage the sacred essence of any being or object on contact.
Two things emerge from the concept of impure blood:
1. The diffusion of its impure energy renders its destructive influence efficacious
and contagious to the sacred.
2. It is a common belief that it is fed upon by witches and is influenced by other evil
forces. Blood oozing from any part of the human body is considered as losing
vital force. It is said that evil spiritual forces, which are often attracted to it,
contaminate such blood. And on account of contamination, the person is ritually
classified as “unclean.” He should thus not approach, touch, or talk to any sacred
77
being. He should likewise not perform any sacred ritual or be present at its
performance. He is thought to exert a profane vital influence on the ritual by his
mere presence. 240
Among the Akans, a chief who experiences bleeding for the first time should be purified
without delay to avoid profaning or contaminating the sacred stools. 241 If the bleeding
persists, then he has to be destooled and all other sacred objects he has come in contact
with in the palace have to be purified with the blood of a sheep. It is believed that blood
offered in such a situation tends to fully bridge the gulf, which has been created between
the ancestral spirits and the community (which the chief represents) as a result of the
profanity of the bleeding. 242 At the same time the blood offered revitalizes the spiritual
force of the stools in the palace representing the ancestors. The ritual implication is that
when blood profanes an object or a being, a more vital blood is ritually used to neutralize
it. This is to say that, the ritual blood is able to neutralize the diminishing or dead life
force of the contaminated person or being.
Circumcision, which entails the shedding of blood, implies diminishing life’s vital force
in Akan belief. Since blood represents life, to shed blood by any means is to terminate
life or reduce the life span. Therefore circumcision has no ritual significance for the
Akan. It is alleged that whilst uncircumcision increases life’s spiritual potency and
reproductive powers of man, circumcision, on the other hand, tends to destroy the
genitals and reduces the vital force. Thus the royals of Ashanti of Akan were forbidden to
mutilate their bodies or shed their blood, since the royal blood represented the soul of the
nation. 243
In the perception of the Akan people, circumcision does not make one ritually sacred;
neither does it ally one to the supernatural spirits nor serve as a ritual sign of belonging to
them. Since circumcision does not enhance ritual or sacred value, but tends to diminish
the vital force before the enstoolment of a traditional ruler, an inspection of the genitals
240
241
Every Akan chief has a special stool he occupies symbolizing that he is a ruler and a sacred person
because the stool he occupies is believed to be the resting place as well as the symbol of the chief’s soul.
The stool also represents the spirit or soul of the kingdom. See The Sacred Stools of the Akan by P. Sarpong
242
243
H..J. Ofosuhene, The Kwahu Traditional Concept, 90.
78
of the chief-elect is made privately by the “chief-makers” to ensure that the traditional
ruler to be is ritually unblemished by circumcision. 244
Because blood is used to establish links with the spirit world, some societies in Africa
practice female circumcision and clitoridectomy (now banned as a violation of human
right.) In such societies, the circumcision blood is like making a covenant, or a solemn
agreement between the individual and his people. Until the individual has gone through
the operation, he/she is an outsider. Once he has shed his blood he/she joins the stream of
his/her people, he/she becomes truly one with them.
If there is any one belief, which is considered to be peculiar to women with regard to
profanity, it is the one regarding the flow of blood. Even though women bear and nurture
children and thus preserve life, they are by virtue of the natural flow of blood, considered
to be a source of defilement or a source of danger.
In the normal sense women’s genital organs are said to have potential powers to defile
the sacred. They are endowed with negative properties that can alter and cause the sacred
to lose its very essence. Since women’s genital organs have been conceived as a source of
danger or defilement, anyone who comes into direct contact with them becomes profane.
It is for this reason that those who have sex and have not taken a bath are forbidden to
touch approach or communicate with the sacred or forbidden to take part in any cultic
ritual.
A menstruate is believed to be in a “destructive state.” She is said to have lost or wasted

the precious life contained in the fluid discharged. The conception is that while the blood
flows, life runs out. This makes her destructive. The redoubtable force that is put into
play in menses and childbirth and the contagious nature of the impure blood that is
discharged have led Akans to believe that the menstruant or the parturition woman has
exceptional potential power which is destructive in essence.
In many spheres of life menstrual blood is considered as repulsive (Akyide) or filthy

(afide). This has led to the exclusion of menstruating women from participating in some
244
79
religious activities. Due to the adverse effects of the menstruation (bra) it is not openly
talked about especially among the sacred.
Customarily, women in their menses are made to stay away in the “menstruation house”
(bra fie) or menstruation room (bradan mu). This is to ensure that menstruation blood
gets to the bad bush. She is socially isolated.
It has also been observed that menstrual blood, when it comes into direct contact with any
foodstuff, mystically transfers its destructive power to it thus profaning and making it
dangerous for consumption. Menstruating women are thus forbidden from cooking for
their husbands or any other male adult.
By the high degree of potency and destructive force, which can vitiate any other spiritual
force and render the sacred profane, one, is inclined to argue that menstrual blood has a
strong unfavorable flavor in Ghanaian traditional belief and philosophical thought. Most
of the cultic taboos or prohibitions evolve around or relate to menstruation.
Another negative aspect of the flow of contagious blood is seen in the phenomenon of
childbirth. During childbirth a woman sheds blood, which is traditionally considered
“impure”. This compels the African to exclude both the mother and the newly born baby
from social and religious life for at least the first seven days (that is often the cessation of
the flow of blood). They are not allowed in any sacred place or to approach or address a
sacred being or object or come into contact with any sacred person. The belief in
profanity explains why a nursing mother is not summoned before the chief or the queen
mother or the traditional priest or any sacred person.
It is a social and ritual practice to confine both mother and the newly born for 7 days after
which a purification rite is performed to revitalize the mother’s life for which she has
been weakened during the childbirth and to enable her regain her last sanctity. Although
the flow of blood in childbirth is associated with profanity, yet prolific childbearing is
cherished because it ensures the continuity of life.
From the foregoing one realizes that in Akan, blood is not conceived as a mere matter or
substance, but as a spiritual force, which the Akan use as a basis of categorizing and
80
assessing biological beings as sacred or profane. Secondly blood could undergo changes
or alterations by which it could lose its mythical and sacred essence.
Blood is normally linked with vital force. It is that which sustains or preserves biological
life. Blood is considered as a spiritual active force. It signifies that which has the act of
existing- an existing thing that is endowed with spiritual power or life force. 245 Blood in
Akan is a very cardinal element in sacred rituals. It is used as a medium of contact with
ancestral spirit world.
2.11 Towards a Re-interpretation of Menstruation in Akan Culture
The above is a brief overview of the Akan religio-cultural tradition, which is crucial for a
good understanding of the Akan as a people, their worldview, the value of women and
their role in the Akan society, the Akan idea of what is profane and non-profane as well
as the essence of blood in the Akan society.
As we have noted above, the Akan perceive the universe as an arena of both benevolent
and malicious spirits that influence the course of human life for good and ill respectively.
Quite apart from seeking good relationship with the human community, the Akan focuses
on seeking a harmonious relationship with the mystical powers that control and bestow
life with vitality. It is believed that this is realized through sacrificial rites for
propitiatory, expiatory, reconciliatory purposes as well as guarding against the profane.
Since menstrual and child bearing blood is classified as profane dangerous and something
that exhibits negative influences and contaminations, traditional taboos exclude women
from certain sacred roles and rites. Thus, Akan traditional religion is found to inform and
shape women’s lives in Akan societies.
It was identified that the leading purpose of Akan religious culture is to make certain that
harmony exits between the living and the ancestors. For the Akan, a good society is one
in which there is peaceful coexistence between the living, the gods and the ancestors.
Having children is a good sign that one has a good relationship with the ancestors. The
living communicates with the ancestors through blood sacrifice which is usually poured
245
81
on the ground. In this way, the living supplies blood which the ancestors lack and so the
ancestors are appeased and in turn bless the community or an individual. Menstrual blood
is also poured onto the ground (where the ancestors “live”) through washing. Menstrual
blood is human blood and so can be considered as more precious, suitable and desirable
as sacrifice to the ancestors than animal blood since they were once human beings. If
menstrual blood can be considered as very important to ancestors and a source of regular
blood supply for the ancestors so as to maintain the continuous contact/relationship that
the living Akan community seeks with the ancestors, then it will no longer be seen as
impure. Akan communities may then be able to see the menstruating woman from a
different perspective. She can be viewed as one who makes sacrifices on behalf of the
community, one who makes contact with the ancestors on monthly basis and so she
cannot be considered as impure. Menarche which is a special period in every Akan
woman’s life but also seen as a period that the woman becomes “unclean” would then be
viewed as a period when a young woman is first connected with her ancestors through
shedding of her first blood so that she will also be blessed with many children. Again, it
was recognized that the Akan believe that daughters are the media for ancestors to come
back to the earth as human beings. This is possible because daughters menstruate.
Because in the Akan worldview women are the ones that are connected to a common
ancestress through whose help the extended family members came into existence, it
becomes easy to link menstruation with purity and divine. The menstruating woman can
then be accepted as a medium of communication between the living and the divine. If it is
menstrual blood that connects the living to the divine and ancestors, then it can no longer
be seen as impure but something that will be celebrated and looked forward to. The
period of separation of menstruating women then becomes necessary not by reason of
menstruation but because they need to be secluded for effective communication with the
ancestors to be made. This is reasonable because, in Akan religion, priests and priestesses
go into seclusion whenever they have to communicate with the divine so as to eliminate
noise and disturbances and concentrate on the communication. They also abstain from
sexual intercourse on the days on which rituals are to be performed for the deities in order
82
to be pure to perform rituals. 246 If the Akan has this new outlook toward menstruation,
the menstruating woman will become very suitable for cultic leadership at all times.
In the context of Christianity the shedding of menstrual blood can be viewed as a sacred
and natural phenomenon where a woman lays her life down as a sacrifice to become a co-
partner with God for procreation to bring into existence human beings who are not only
physical but spiritual beings as well. Thus a woman is spiritually connected with God the
creator during menstruation. She therefore becomes a medium through whom God
propagates the creation of human beings. If God links with a woman during
menstruation, then it can be deduced that she is pure and not impure during menstruation.
She is fit to administer the Holy Communion at this time since she is already connected
to God. Menstrual blood can therefore be viewed as pure and not impure.
2.12 Conclusion
The Akan is found to be very religious. Their cult of the ancestors is the most powerful
aspect of the religious life in traditional Akan society. 247 In connection with this cult is
the belief that it is through one’s mother (who the Akan believe is connected to a
common ancestress in the spiritual world) that one has his or her spiritual connection.
The Akan’s identity is therefore traced through the mother-bond since children are gifts
from this common ancestress. However, menstrual blood which is highly associated with
child bearing (something that is highly valued and at the same time coming from the
ancestors in Akan culture) is considered impure, potent and dangerous in the Akan
religious culture.
We have suggested that menstrual blood can be viewed as something positive, something
that should be of better value to the ancestors than animal blood that the Akan use as
sacrifice in order to have a connection with the ancestors. The ancestors who were once
human, we suggest, need human blood to come alive and communicate with the living
and not animal blood. Menstrual blood which is human blood and also connected with
child bearing can be the blood that the ancestors need. We reason that, menstrual blood
246
K. Asare –Opoku, West Africa, 77-78.
247
K. Bediako, Jesus in African Culture: A Ghanaian Perspective, Accra: Asempa Publishers, 1990, 21-22.
83
and ancestors from this perspective have one thing in common, both are linked to
childbearing, something that the Akan value above all else because it ensures the
continual survival of the Akan society. When ancestors receive menstrual blood as a
sacrifice from a woman, they in turn bless her with children. Therefore menstrual blood
cannot be associated with impurity and danger.
If it is women whose blood connects both men and women in a family to a common
ancestress, (the mother-child bond is the blood bond) 248 then it should not be out of place
to believe that women shed blood regularly to make sacrifices for the well being and for
the continual survival of the community. Viewed this way, the state of the menstruating
woman should rather render her more fit for cultic leadership than any other time of her
life as it is at this time that she can connect with the common ancestress in the spiritual
world to receive children from her. The menstruating woman would thus be playing a
mediating role during this period of her life.
It then stands to reason that menstrual blood cannot be viewed as dirty since it is needed
in a woman’s life before she can make a connection with the spiritual world. The
ancestors are venerated or worshipped and so they cannot be connected with anything
that is filthy or impure. Therefore, if menstrual blood is seen to be needed before this
very important connection can be made, then it can no longer be viewed as dirty.
Menstruating women can also not be viewed as “impure” just because she has to handle
or touch menstrual blood that is supposed to connect the spiritual and physical worlds.
They should rather be seen as pure as they will be communicating with the ancestors at
this time. If purity is what is required to participate in cultic leadership, then the best time
for women to engage in it is when they are menstruating.
One should be interested in knowing what Christianity says about the problem of
menstrual “impurity” and church leadership in order to help Akan Christians who
continue to experience the encounter between the gospel and their culture. Therefore a
study of biblical and Jewish approach to “purity” and “impurity” could serve as a sound
basis for a study of this nature.
248
See Chapter 2 of the research for more information on mother-child bond.
84

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2.2 The Akan Traditional Religion

1 C. Omenyo, Pentecost Outside Pentecostalism: A study of the Development of Charismatic Renewal in

The Supreme Being

Common to Akan traditional worldview as well as all African worldviews is the

God is generally viewed as transcendent. Thus he requires intermediaries through whom

A significant category of Akan traditional Religion is the place of the ancestors

Kwesi Dickson notes, however that,

In African thought those who became ancestors must have lived

O grandfather spirits, here is wine for you… your grandchild…has

In addition, Akan ethnic group is matriarchal and so believes in the existence of a

Spirit of the Earth- ‘Asaase Yaa of the Akan’

Sasabonsam is a monster of frightening appearance. It has the head of an animal with

Witchcraft, Magic, and Sorcery

In addition to the divinities or supernatural entities, there is the recognition of the

Charms, amulets, and talismans (Suman)

In Akan, what is usually referred to as suman, or man-made objects such as charms,

2.3 Religion and Society

2.4 The Akan People: Who They Are

Patrick Akoi states that:

Akan World View

Their cosmologies were based on the existence of a Supreme Being who

The Akan understanding of reality as animated or energized by the creator conceived of

The Human Person

The Mother-Child Bond.

Groups are interrelated with one another in affinal, juridical,

The Father-Child Bond

Thus is established an equilibrium between avuncular rights and paternal affection.

The God-Human Bond

A man is a compound of mogya (blood, sunsum, also called ntoro

Contact with other Cultures

K. A. Busia, documents that Christianity was a source of conflict in Akan. He quotes

The tendency of Christian converts to alienate themselves from the

Where once birth and growth to adulthood in a royal lineage conferred

Western education challenged traditional institutions, but Christianity challenged the

New occupational groups appeared, and the development of cash crops

In Africa there has been the impact of westernization expressed

In the same vein, Busia maintains that,

Traditional religious rites continue, and there is evidence that converts

2.5 The Role of Women in Akan Socio-Cultural Religion

In the Akan society where relationships go by blood every person is considered to

Through the myths of origin, we get a picture of the woman as someone

Mbiti goes on to say:

It is clear, that women both participate in the religious activities of

We now consider some specific roles of women in Akan/Africa traditional Religions

Women as Traditional Doctors

Women as Mediums and Diviners

Musical Role of Women in Traditional Religion

2.7 Women and Ritual in Akan

Rituals: A matter of Religious Belief

2.8 The Taboo of Menstruation in Akan Religious Culture

A taboo against women during menstruation is common in Akan communities. Menstrual

The basic belief underlying most of the views on menstruation,

2.9 The Akan Concept of the Sacred and the Profane