Asase Yaa

The Mother Earth

Domain: Earth, Truth & Fertility
Alignment: Lawful Good
Element: Earth
Relics of Power: Soil of Truth

Speak with Asase Yaa

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4 sections of this entry are open to everyone: the summary, the people, the symbols, the lineage and the sources. The other 9 (Name and epithets, In the ancient sources, The myths, Worship and archaeology, How the god was depicted, What scholars debate, After antiquity, Did you know?, Codex relic) are part of the full Codex: PRO opens the whole study of all 500 deities, and without a subscription you can read one full entry a day, just like in the app.

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The People

People

African peoples

Region

Sub-Saharan Africa

Period

antiquity – present

These deities gather traditions of various Sub-Saharan African peoples, from the Bantu to the Akan and Dogon. Worshipped through ancestral rites, masks, and drums, they bind communities to the spirits of nature and the ancestors. Many of these beliefs remain alive both in Africa and in the religions of the diaspora.

Mask societies, such as those of the Dogon and Bambara, give body to the spirits in ceremonial dances. Initiation rites mark the passage to adulthood, and offerings of water, grain, and animals keep the bond with the ancestors and the spirits of nature.

At a glance

Asase Yaa is the Earth venerated by the Ashanti, an Akan people of present-day Ghana. In Ashanti (1923), Robert S. Rattray notes that the Ashanti regard the Sky and the Earth as their two great deities: the Sky God is Nyame, and the Earth is called Asase Ya, Aberewa, 'Old Mother Earth'. According to the same author, Thursday is her day, and the farmer does not turn the soil on it. There is no temple or image; her cult appears in prayers, in offerings made in the field and in oaths. The accessible primary material comes almost entirely from a single colonial observer, so this study is short.

The ancient sources on this deity are scarce. This study gathers only what is on record.

6 min read · Reviewed on October 14, 2026 · How we research

Sacred symbols

The cultivated earth, the soil, Thursday and the hoe

Sources and further reading

Primary sources

Robert Sutherland Rattray, Ashanti. translation: Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1923. read
Robert Sutherland Rattray, Ashanti Proverbs (The Primitive Ethics of a Savage People). translation: Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1916. read

Name and epithets

Rattray records the name as Asase Ya and glosses it as 'Aberewa', 'Old Mother Earth'. According to him, Ya is a female personal name which, given to women, shows birth on a Thursday; hence the expression 'Thursday Earth…

In the ancient sources

Rattray, Ashanti, 1923 (Rattray's fieldwork in Ashanti, 1920s and earlier years). Main passage: the Sky and the Earth as two great deities, the name Asase Ya, the Thursday rest, the offering at the start of planting.

The myths

The Earth as the origin of lineages. Rattray writes that, according to one of the best-known Ashanti myths, part of the aristocracy of the clans sprang from the Earth itself.

Worship and archaeology

Rattray states that no temple or other object is raised to the Earth, but that her power is universally acknowledged.

How the god was depicted

Rattray describes no image or cult object for the Earth: he says that no temple or object is raised to her. The site's data (symbols of the hoe and the soil) have no support in the open source consulted and are not trea…

What scholars debate

Marriage to Nyame and children. Modern popular texts present Asase Yaa as the wife of Nyame, the Sky God, and mother of deities such as Bia and Tano.

After antiquity

In the literature on the Akan, Asase Yaa is remembered above all for the Thursday rest and the agricultural prayers. That image comes largely from Rattray's description.

Did you know?

The proverb Tumi nyina wo asase so, 'all power is in land', is, according to Rattray, known to every Ashanti and tied to the land-tenure system that sustained the confederacy.

Codex relic

Soil of Truth. The sacred earth upon which oaths are sworn, touching the ground so that she may bear witness.

The rest of this scroll is sealed

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