Akom

Akom is the traditional religion of the Akan of what is now Ghana, and in 1337 the Bono state, Bonoman, practised it. It is built around a distant creator, Nyame, who made the world with Asase Yaa, Mother Earth, and left the daily work to lesser gods, the abosom.

The abosom are tied to rivers, mountains and forests and are served by priests, the akomfoo, who fall into trance and speak for them. A god is housed in a shrine, a brass pan holding river stones, and honoured with libations. Bono tradition holds that their ancestors emerged from the sacred hole at Amowi, a memory kept alive at the Apɔɔ festival in Takyiman.

The Asante conquered Bono Manso in 1723, and Akom spread widely on slave ships: in Jamaica, the enslaved Akan kept the names of the abosom.