Asase Yaa

Region/Culture: West Africa (Akan/Ashanti, Ghana)
Mythos: Ghanaian Mythology
Primary Type/Nature: Gods and Deities (earth goddess)
Mythical Attributes: Goddess of the earth, fertility, truth, and the boundary between the living and the dead.
Role in Mythos: Second only to the sky god Nyame, she owns the land itself, lends the living the right to farm and to bury, and stands as the witness behind every oath.
Relation to Humans: Humans depend on her for the ground beneath them, for the fertility of their crops and bodies, and for the right to open the earth at all, whether to plant or to bury. She brought humanity out of herself at the beginning and takes every person back into herself at death.

Before the first hoe breaks ground at the edge of a Ghanaian forest, a few words go into the soil. A mouthful of palm wine, poured out where the roots begin, and a quiet acknowledgment that the land about to be opened belongs to someone. The farmer is borrowing. The earth under his feet is not his, has never been his, and will take him back when he is done with it. Her name is Asase Yaa, and she was there before the seed and will be there after the harvest.

Among the Akan she stands second only to Nyame, the sky god who made the world, and the two of them are spoken of as a pair: the heavens above and the ground below, husband and wife in the oldest sense, between them holding up everything that lives. Her full name carries a small calendar inside it. Yaa is the name given to a girl born on a Thursday, and the Akan say Nyame shaped the earth on a Thursday, so the earth is a Thursday-born woman. That day belongs to her. On Thursday the hoes stay in the corner of the hut and the ground is left to rest, untouched. To drag iron through her on the one morning she is owed is an insult no careful person commits.

She has no temple. No priest serves her, no shrine holds her image, no drummer calls her down, and she gives no oracles, because she is not one of the lesser gods a person can summon and bargain with. What she gives instead is everything. The yam swelling underground, the cocoa pod, the child carried to term, the grave that closes cleanly over the dead, all of it passes through her. She brought humanity out of herself at the beginning and feeds it for as long as it lasts, and there is no negotiating with that arrangement.

There is a gesture that belongs to her. A man accused of lying, cornered and disbelieved, bends down, takes a pinch of earth, and touches it to his lips. The soil itself becomes his witness. To speak a falsehood with her dirt on your tongue is to offend the one power no one escapes, and so the Akan hold that lying is not merely wrong but a thing done against Asase. Truth lives in the ground.

At a funeral the libation goes to her by name. Before the diggers begin, palm wine is poured and her permission asked, both for the wound about to be made in her and for the body about to be laid inside it. She is asked to receive the dead person, to hold and protect what is given back. The same earth that lent the farmer his field takes the farmer in the end. Mother of the living and mother of the dead, she does not treat the two as different jobs.

She is hard to picture, and the Akan rarely try, since she is less a figure than the field itself, the red laterite and the black loam and the dust that rises behind a passing foot. Where she is personified, two faces appear. The Asante know her as Aberewa, the old woman, ancient and stern, presiding over the barren and stony places and over the country of the dead. Among the Fante she shifts a day and a generation, becoming Asase Afua, born on a Friday, young and beautiful, goddess of the soft fertile ground where things grow easily. Old age and youth, the worn-out land and the rich, are the same goddess seen in two seasons.

Her marriage to the sky produced sons. Tano, who became a great river, and Bia, and the stories tell that the division of their inheritance went badly, the better lands passing to the wrong brother through a trick. In some tellings she is also mother to Anansi, the spider whose cleverness threads through Akan storytelling, though the genealogies disagree and more than one figure has claimed her as a parent.

Her power is total within her sphere and almost absent outside it. She owns the ground and everything rooted in it, governs fertility and the success of every planting, guards the boundary the dead must cross, and enforces honesty by simply being the surface every oath is sworn upon. But she does not act like the smaller gods. She sends no visions, possesses no dancers, answers no divination, and grants no favors in exchange for sacrifice. Her authority is enormous and strangely patient. She withholds rather than strikes, and the worst she does is refuse. A barren field, a failed crop, a death that arrives when it arrives. To stay right with her costs little. Pour the libation, ask before you dig, keep off the fields on Thursday, and do not lie with your feet planted on her. The terms have never changed.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Asase Yaa?

Asase Yaa is the earth goddess of the Akan people of Ghana, second in power only to Nyame, the supreme sky god. She represents the land itself and presides over fertility, truth, and the dead. The Akan regard her as the mother who brought forth humanity and who reclaims every person at death.

Why is Thursday sacred to Asase Yaa?

Thursday is sacred to Asase Yaa because the Akan believe Nyame created the earth on a Thursday, and her name “Yaa” marks a female born on that day. In her honor, traditional Akan farmers leave the land untouched on Thursdays and do not till or break the ground. Working the soil on her day is treated as an offense against her.

Does Asase Yaa have temples or priests?

No. Asase Yaa has no temples, no shrines, and no priests, and she gives no oracles, because she is not one of the lesser deities (abosom) that people consult through divination. Instead, the Akan honor Asase Yaa directly through libations and prayers, especially at planting time and at funerals.

How is Asase Yaa connected to truth and oaths?

Asase Yaa is the upholder of truth, and lying is regarded as a taboo committed against her. When an Akan person is disbelieved, they may touch a pinch of soil to their lips to swear they are telling the truth, making the earth itself their witness to honesty.

What is the difference between Asase Yaa and Asase Afua?

Asase Yaa and Asase Afua are two manifestations of the same Akan earth goddess. The Asante call her Asase Yaa, “born on Thursday,” and picture her as an old woman who rules barren land and the dead, while the Fante call her Asase Afua, “born on Friday,” a youthful and beautiful goddess of fertile ground. Together the two faces express the earth’s continuous cycle of life and death.