Asamando

Before an Asante man drinks, a few drops go onto the ground. The wine darkens the red earth for a second and is gone, taken by whoever from below happens to be standing nearby. The anthropologist R. S. Rattray, who recorded the custom in 1916, noted that food is set aside for the same guests, and that when a chief’s stool is carried in procession the bells fixed to it are tinkled to call a spirit up from asaman, the world below. The bearers sway from side to side as they walk. The spirits, people told him, are pushing them.

Asamando is where those spirits live. It lies under the earth, not in the sky. Rattray was emphatic on this point: the sky belongs to Onyankopon, the supreme being, and he found “absolutely no trace” of a belief that the dead go up to live with him. Onyankopon has power over them all the same. In the accounts Rattray collected, a dead person’s spirit first has to report itself, some said to Onyankopon, others to a powerful shrine called Brukum east of the Volta, and is told whether it may go below. Onyankopon could also send a soul back into the world of the living, which is how Rattray’s informants explained rebirth.

The fullest early picture of the place comes from Alfred Burdon Ellis, a British army officer who wrote up the religion of the Twi-speaking Gold Coast in 1887. He spelled it Srahmanadzi, the land of ghosts, and what he described was a mirror held at an odd angle. Asamando has towns, villages, forests, mountains and rivers, the same furniture as the world above, but it is less bright. Day and night are reversed, so that when the living world is dark the land below is lit. A proverb Ellis recorded sums up the general opinion: “A corner in the world is better than the whole of Srahmanadzi.”

Everyone keeps their job. The farmer farms, the fisherman fishes, the chief remains a chief and the slave remains a slave. That last rule had a terrible consequence in the old kingdom. When a chief or other important person died, wives, attendants and slaves were killed so that their spirits could go on serving him below, and Rattray noted that each victim was assigned a duty in the next world before death. Ordinary graves were filled with food and drink for the journey, and with gold dust, cloth and trinkets for the arrival. Ellis observed that breakable things were smashed before burial so that grave robbers would find nothing worth taking, since only the spirit of each object was expected to make the trip.

The road down is not the same for everyone. Ellis was told that people who die of old age or illness go straight to Asamando, finding the way plain, though they may need two or three years there to recover their health. Those cut off suddenly, in battle or by accident, linger near their old homes for a month or two first, and are sometimes seen in white with white clay streaked on them. For them the road is dark and gloomy and hard to find. Rattray’s informants went further: someone killed before his destined hour might not be received below at all. Of a ghost that kept being seen, people said, “The Supreme Being has driven him out, the spirit folk have driven him out.” Rattray added that ghosts were usually reported in white, and that a spirit close at hand could be recognised by its smell.

Once inside, the dead change. In Ellis’s account an old man becomes young, a young man a boy, and a boy an infant, and each then grows again to the prime of life and stays there, never weakening. He noted that many people held a different view, in which every ghost simply stays the age it was at death. The tradition never had a single official version. Ellis said so himself: in these matters there was no standard of orthodoxy.

The Akan have stories set at the edge of the place. In one Asante folktale published by Rattray in 1930, a girl named Ata Kuma brings home a looking-glass and tells her twin that whoever looks into it will see their mother, who is in asamandoo. The twin grabs it, it slips from her hand and breaks, and the chain of demands that follows ends with her trampled to death among elephants. A better-known tale, carried in modern reference works such as the Encyclopedia of African Religion (2009), concerns Kwasi Benefo, a farmer who loses wife after wife and finally walks out past the burial ground until he reaches a river he cannot cross. There he meets Amokye, the old woman who keeps the way into Asamando, and she lets him over though he is still alive. On the far side the spirits of his wives tell him to go back and marry again. He does, and this time his wife lives. Neither Ellis nor Rattray’s 1916 notes mention Amokye, and her story reaches English readers through these later retellings rather than through the early field record.

Modern Akan scholarship frames the journey in terms of the person’s parts. Yaba Amgborale Blay, writing for the Encyclopedia of African Religion and for Britannica, explains that at death the body and blood return to Mother Earth while the spiritual elements go back to the creator, and the spirit travels to Asamando to wait for recognition as an ancestor. The Akan calendar runs on a cycle of forty to forty-two days, and that interval gives the spirit time to finish leaving. The funeral rites are what make the departure work. A family that neglects them risks turning its dead into something restless and harmful instead of an ancestor.

What Asamando grants is continuity. A family’s dead stay family, keep their standing, and keep watching the town from below, which is why they are fed, poured for and called up by the bells of the stools. Its dangers are the ones its own rules create. The door can be shut on those who died too soon, the badly buried may never arrive, and even the welcome dead live in half-light. A Rattray proverb puts the place in its proper size: “If the spirit world possesses nothing else, it has at least the power of its name.”

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Asamando in Akan religion?

Asamando is the Akan and Asante land of the dead, the world where the spirits of the dead live and where they are recognised as ancestors. It lies beneath the earth, not in the sky, which belongs to the supreme being Onyankopon. The dead there are called nsamanfo.

What is Asamando like?

According to A. B. Ellis’s 1887 account, Asamando has towns, villages, forests, mountains and rivers like the living world, but it is less bright, and its day and night are reversed. The dead keep the rank and occupation they had in life, so a chief stays a chief and a farmer keeps farming.

Who can enter Asamando?

People who die of old age or illness go to Asamando directly. Those who die suddenly may linger as ghosts for a month or two first, and R. S. Rattray recorded the belief that someone killed before their destined time might not be received at all. Proper funeral rites are needed for the spirit to complete the journey and become an ancestor.

Who is Amokye?

Amokye is the old woman who keeps the way into Asamando in the Asante tale of Kwasi Benefo. She lets the grieving Kwasi Benefo cross the river into the land of the dead while still alive so that he can meet the spirits of his wives. Her story comes through modern retellings and reference works rather than the early accounts of Ellis and Rattray.

Why do Akan people pour libations for the dead?

Libations are poured because the spirits in Asamando stay connected to the living and are thought to be nearby. Rattray recorded that Asante people pour a few drops on the ground before drinking and set food aside for the spirits, and that stool bells are rung to summon ancestral spirits from Asamando on ceremonial occasions.

Related Entries

Nyame, Asase Yaa, Abosom, How Death Came into the World, Anansi, Obayifo, Asanbosam (Sasabonsam), Tano, Bia, Egungun, Duat, Mictlan, Yomi, Tuonela, Sheol