ABSTRACT
This chapter uses history, memory and interdisciplinary evidence to investigate ?k?mfo Anokye, local spirit practice and cognitions of freedom. Gold Coast regional cultures defined spirit, earth and the cosmos. Local priests professed interpretations of unknowable spiritual realms and propagated real world support or opposition of polities and royals. Akwantu, akoma and odehye opontumi elucidate some aspects of idealized and real priestly practice. They reflected the practitioner’s exegesis of spirit knowledge that was “authoritative and absolute” but also “individualized, accommodative and adaptive.” Cultural transfer whereby West and West Central African social practice and belief were remade in American environs like Jamaica and New York constitute a key feature of Black Atlantic and diaspora history. That Akan, Guan, Ga and Ewe spirituality and worldview coalesced in Akanized Anansi tales, naming, oath making and priestly practice in West Africa attested to the validity of Atlantic cultural transfer. Gold Coast regional spiritualists were real historic actors in pre-colonial Afro-Atlantic worlds.
