God and Sacrifice in the Traditional Religions of the Kasena and Dagaba of Northern Ghana

Abstract

In accounts of African traditional religions, anthropologists have tended to stress view that Africans do not sacrifice directly to God but to their ancestors.1 In sacrifices, whether communal or personal, it is who are invoked, and who are called upon to accept sacrificial offerings. God plays little or no role at all in communal cults of these religions. Prayers are rarely addressed to him independently and although he is thought to stand behind at ritual or religious occasions he is not directly or immediately concerned in sacrifice.2 Following this general line of approach in studies of sacrifice in African traditional religions, both Meyer Fortes and Jack Goody have tended to see more of role of than of God in sacrifice in religions of peoples of Northern Ghana. In their accounts of sacrifice among Tallensi and LoDaga, God does not enter into traditional forms of of these people.3 Neither author even mentioned fact that God could be approached indirectly through ancestors, or implicitly through some given rituals as was found among Nupe of Nigeria.4 According to Goody, the Earth is always addressed first in any sacrifice (among LoDaga), because it is said that all shrines rest upon earth. Similarly, in to any shrine, names of are also called, since it is from one's forebears that all sacrificial objects, or means of obtaining them, have been inherited. The earth and thus enter into of all kinds. 5 There is no mention in Goody's account that God also enters into these sacrifices, or that he is in any way associated with them. Thus both authors wrote of the of ancestors or ancestor worship and sacrifices to ancestors without attempting to see any link between sacrifice and God. They thereby overlooked two significant aspects of in traditional