Asase Ya

Asase Ya (or Asase Yaa, Asaase Afua) is the Earth goddess of fertility of the Ashanti people of Ashanti.

She is the wife of Nyame the Sky deity, who created the universe. She gave birth to the two children, Bea and Tano. Bea is also named Bia.

She is also the mother of Anansi, the trickster, and divine stepmother of the sacred high chiefs.

Asase Yaa is very powerful, though no temples are dedicated to her, instead she is worshipped in the fields.

Her favoured people are workers in the fields and planet Jupiter is her symbol.

The Abosom in the Americas(Jamaica)

Worship of the goddess was transported via the transatlantic slave trade and was documented to had been acknowledged by enslaved Akan living in Jamaica. Jamaican slave owners did not believe in Christianity for the African and left them to their own beliefs. Hence an Akan spiritual system was dominant on the plantation. According to Jamaican historian and slave owner Edward Long, creole descendants of the Akan coupled with newly arrived Akan joined in observation and worship of the goddesses Asase Yaa and Asase Afua (the British recorded erroneously as 'Assarci'). They showed their worship by pouring libations and offering up harvested foods. Other Akan Abosom were also reported to be worshipped. This was the only African spiritual system on the island, as other African identities in the 18th century was obliterated because of the large population of enslaved Akan in Jamaica, according to Long and other historians who observed their slaves.