Adae (Akwasidae)

The sacred day of the Akan calendar on which the ancestors are honoured.

Adae is a sacred day in the Akan calendar, set aside to honour the ancestors. The Akan count time in cycles of 42 days, and each cycle has two Adae: Akwasidae, which falls on a Sunday, and Awukudae, which falls on a Wednesday. Akwasidae is the best known, and in Asante it is marked with special ceremony at the court of the Asantehene.

On Adae the chief, with elders and attendants, enters the stool house, where the blackened stools of earlier rulers are kept. These stools hold the memory, and in Akan thought the presence, of the ancestors who sat on them. Food and drink are offered, the ancestors are addressed by name, and drummers recite the history of the line. Afterwards the chief often sits in state, and people come to greet him. It is a day of remembrance and of renewing the bond between the living and the dead, not of mourning.

The Adae cycle also builds towards Odwira, the great yearly festival of purification and new yams, in which the whole community and its ancestors are cleansed and renewed.

In dreams, the days around Adae carry extra weight in an Akan reading. A dream of an ancestor, of an old stool, of drumming or of a gathering of elders that falls close to Akwasidae is often taken as a sign that the ancestors are near and attentive. It is read as remembrance rather than as a warning, and families may simply mention the ancestor by name at the next libation. For anything that troubles you, an elder of the family is the person to ask.