The History and Significance of the god Abassi

African mythology and the deities that were worshipped today in Africa have not received much attention from the general public. The west has appeared to focus on the mythology from ancient Greece, Rome, China and Japan. One of the reasons for this is that we seem to have more sources of information from these ancient cultures which is more easily available to the public.

Another reason for the lack of information or even understanding could be attributed to the way the African people were seen when the Europeans started to become a permanent presence in Africa. The Europeans, especially the British, French and Portuguese, subjugated the African people and tried to convert them into the Christian religions. This conversion destroyed the religious and to a large extent, the social way of life that the African people once enjoyed.

Only a few missionaries and scholars during the European history in Africa noted down the native deities. As the missionaries were more interested in ‘civilizing’ the people in the Christian way, a lot of their rich religious history has been lost to us. However, we are still able to gain a small insight into the religious history of the African people.

Abassi is a native god of the Anang (also spelt the Annang and Anaang) who are an ethnic group in south-eastern Nigeria on the west coast of Africa. Unlike the majority of Africans who continue to worship their native gods, the Anang are monotheistic. In this then, Abassi is the supreme god, the only god that they worship.

He was seen to be a sky god who “who is assisted in his task of governing the universe and man-kind by over thirty spirits residing on earth in shrines, and by souls of the dead awaiting reincarnation in the underworld. Most shrines are diminutive replicas of the Anang hut, but individual trees, groves, rocks, and ant hills serve to house spirits, and it is before these [shrines] that prayers and sacrifices are offered to the deity to be carried skyward by the [thirty spirits] residing within. Although Abassi is thought to be both omniscient and omnipresent, either directly or through the earth spirit, he lacks ultimate omnipotence, for ghosts, witches, and the spirit of evil magic possess powers over which he sometimes exerts no control. The Anang do not know where these malignant forces originate, and they must be combated with preventive magic”.

The certainty that Abassi will punish freewill behaviour contrary to the tenets of his moral code is the most powerful mechanism of social control in Anang society and it is said that he gives permission for souls of the dead to be reincarnated.

It is wonderful that despite the European subjugation and ‘civilization’, there is still the worship of ancestral deities worshipped in Africa today. For the study of these gods, goddesses and spirits give us a valuable insight into African religious history.

Bibliography:

Messenger, Jnr., John C. (1960) Reinterpretations of Christian and Indigenous Beliefs in a Nigerian Nativist Church, American Anthropologist, Blackwell Publishing on behalf of the American Anthropological Association.