Abosom

Also Known As: Akan/Twi, singular obosom; rendered “gods”, “deities” or “lesser gods”; the word is often parsed as bo, “stone”, plus som, “serve, worship”, a reading that is disputed
Region/Culture: West Africa
Mythos: Ghanaian Mythology, West African Mythologies
Primary Type/Nature: Gods and Deities
Mythical Attributes: They are the spirits of rivers, lakes, rocks, trees and the sea, who come down when called into a brass-pan shrine and speak through a possessed priest.
Role in Mythos: They are the children and lieutenants of the Sky God Nyame, graded beneath him from great river gods such as Tano down to the edge of the suman charms, and they handle the daily business he leaves alone.
Relation to Humans: A town, a lineage or a single family may have its own obosom, consulted for healing, for finding witches and lost people, and for settling the truth under oath. The abosom reward good conduct with rain, food and children, and punish wrongdoing with drought, famine, disease, infertility and death.

In a temple at Tano Oboase, in northern Ashanti, a priest sat on his stool with only his heels touching the cloth spread beneath him, a wooden head-rest on his crown and a brass pan balanced on top of it. Nobody spoke. For about a minute the room held still. Then he began to twitch from head to foot, raised his right hand and slapped the side of the pan with his flat palm, and the old priests around him knew the god had come: down into the pan first, and out of the pan into the man.

The god that day was Ati Akosua, whose shrine was kept in the temple of Ta Kora, the spirit of the Tano River, and the stranger watching was R. S. Rattray, the British colonial Government Anthropologist, whose book Ashanti (Oxford, 1923) is the fullest early record of these gods, written from what he saw at the shrines in 1921 and 1922. Abosom (singular obosom) is the Akan word for the gods who stand between people and Nyame, the Sky God. It names a whole order of beings rather than one of them, and there are a great many. Rattray wrote of the hundreds with which the land is filled.

The Akan account of where they came from is short. Nyame is too remote, perhaps too mighty, to deal in person with the affairs of men, so he delegated his powers to lieutenants. In the version the Ghanaian scholar Brigid M. Sackey gives, Onyame withdrew from humankind and then sent these spirits to attend to people’s immediate needs. A proverb she quotes puts the family plainly: abosom nyinaa ye Onyame mba, all the abosom are children of Onyame. The greatest of them are rivers and lakes, counted as sons of the Supreme Being, and the greatest river is Tano, from whom countless lesser gods descend as his children. Ta Yao, the goldsmiths’ god, is one of Tano’s many sons.

An obosom has no body of its own. The abosom live in trees, rocks, hills, rivers, the sea and some animals; they may be male or female, and some are represented by human images. “Tano is as the wind,” the old priest told Rattray. Ta Kora once lived in the rocks and caves near the river’s source, and he was given a brass pan and a temple only after the war against Gyaman. Even now, the priest said, he comes into the pan only when he is called. The pan is a resting place, not a portrait, and Rattray insisted that the only correct English for obosom is “god”, or “shrine” when the brass pan itself is meant.

One of them did walk. Long ago, near the village of Hantase, a nameless old woman lived alone beside Lake Bosomtwe, a leper with no husband and no children. Out of the lake stepped an obosom in the form of a man, called Twe, and he courted her. She objected that if she bore a child she could not fetch her own food, firewood or water, so he told her to crawl down to the shore whenever she was in need and knock upon the water, and fish would come to her. She bore a son, Twe Adodo, and every Sunday afterwards Twe came up out of the lake to sit among his followers. The lake, people in the north told Rattray, had once lain far away beside the Bosomtwe Rock, and moved only because it could not get on with its brother Tano. Even gods have neighbours.

New abosom can still arrive. Rattray describes a spirit seizing a man so that he seems mad, sometimes for a year, until the priest of some powerful god discovers what has come upon him. The possessed one dances to drums for as long as two days, then leaps into the air and catches something in both hands, or plunges into the river and comes up holding it. He clasps it to his chest, water is sprinkled on it to cool it, and it is thrust into a brass pan and covered. Clay from a sacred river such as the Tano goes in with it, and pounded leaves and bark: a root that crosses a path, a stump that trips passers-by, leaves that quiver on the tree when no wind moves them, a nugget of gold that has never been spent. On a sacred Friday the village elders install the god by name and ask it for long life, for life to those who bear children, and not to let them “get Death”. Then the blood of the sacrifices falls on the contents of the pan.

The work that follows is mostly healing and problem-solving, carried out through the okomfo, the priest or priestess who comes to the office by the god’s own call. Sackey records that a possessed okomfo usually remembers nothing afterwards, so a custodian who is never possessed interprets what the god has said. A deity set in a field kept thieves out; one thief who went in anyway found himself weeding the farm for three days. In 1987, in her own matrilineal home, Sackey watched the family obosom, the community obosom and the great obosom of the sea work together to find a missing relative. They do not squabble the way the Greek gods do. Each keeps to its own jurisdiction, and they collaborate when asked.

They also kill. In the oath Rattray calls abosom nom, “drinking the gods”, water that had been poured over a god was carried in a little bottle, mixed with rum and poured into a cup of twisted leaves. A chief raised it to a priest’s lips three times while a bell rang over his head, and told him that if he did not speak the truth, these gods would slay him. The priest shook from head to foot until it was over.

Their limits are real. The abosom are never placed on a level with Onyame, and they can be reached only through a medium. Every obosom keeps its own list of taboos, and a god may refuse a king: Ta Kora turned his back on Bonsu Panyim because he was a ninth child, hateful to the god, and while promising him victory over Adinkira of Gyaman also foretold his death forty days later. A shrine can lose its hold on its spirit, and then water from the Tano is sprinkled over it to bring the virtue back. At the bottom of the scale the gods shade into the suman, spirits housed in small man-made charms, and Rattray met at least one priest whose god looked to him more suman than obosom. He also judged that the ancestors, not the hundreds of gods, weighed most in everyday Ashanti religion.

Outsiders have long read the word itself as bo, stone, and som, to serve: “stone worship”. Sackey calls that an error, since most abosom do not live in stones at all. Osofo Okomfo Damuah, a former Catholic priest who founded the Afrikania movement, turned it round to boasom, “helping worship”. Sackey prefers som bo, “to be precious to”, the phrase behind mo bosom, “my precious one”, which an Akan mother calls a child she is praising.

At the Asubonten ford, where part of Tano’s spirit lives, the fish were called Tano mma, children of Tano, and in the old days anyone who caught or ate one was killed. An Ashanti army crossing there would halt and make offerings, and the priest would call the fish. The largest came half out of the water to lay their heads on the sand and vomit sand and water into a brass pan pushed under their mouths. The priests sprinkled it over the captains, and if it dried white on their skin, the campaign would go well.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the abosom?

The abosom (singular obosom) are the gods of Akan religion in Ghana, often called lesser gods or deities. They rank below the Sky God Nyame, who is said to have delegated his powers to them, and they live in rivers, lakes, rocks, trees and the sea. People reach them through priests and priestesses called akomfo.

Who is the greatest of the abosom?

The Tano River is the greatest obosom in Ashanti tradition, and countless lesser gods are counted as his children. The most famous abosom are rivers and lakes, described as sons of the Supreme Being. Ta Kora, the spirit of the Tano, was consulted by an Ashanti king before a war.

How do the abosom communicate with people?

The abosom speak through a possessed priest or priestess called an okomfo. In one ceremony the priest carried the god’s brass-pan shrine on his head, and a slap of his palm on the pan showed that the god had entered the shrine and passed into him. Because the medium often remembers nothing afterwards, a custodian who is not possessed interprets the message.

How is a new obosom shrine made?

A new shrine begins when a spirit possesses someone, who dances for up to two days and then catches something from the air or brings something up from a river. That object goes into a brass pan with clay from a sacred river such as the Tano, special leaves and roots, and a nugget of unused gold. The village then installs the god by name on a sacred Friday and offers sacrifices over the pan.

What does the word abosom mean?

Abosom is usually parsed as bo, “stone”, plus som, “serve”, which gave outsiders the reading “stone worship”. Brigid M. Sackey rejects that reading because most abosom do not live in stones, and connects the word instead to som bo, “to be precious to”. Osofo Okomfo Damuah, founder of the Afrikania movement, reversed it to boasom, “helping worship”.