In this paper I will discuss the origin and evolution of sacredness attributed to natural sites by examining sacred groves found in Ghana and sacred mountains in Japan. While I plan to consider them as representatives of categories of sacred space and practice rather than unique phenomenon, I will specifically use examples from Mount Hachioji in Japan and groves found in Northern Ghana. Ultimately, I will argue that the common themes present in the evolution of these sites reveal that their divinity and associated religious sacralisation occurred directly in relation to the economic needs of agrarian societies.
Ghanaian Groves
Major tribes found today in present-day Ghana such as the Akan, Ashanti, Akwa, and Ewe have traditionally held strong religious ties to natural environments, including bodies of water, forests, groves, and rocks. These indigenous tribes share similar belief systems relating to the religious framework of the universe and the sacredness of natural environments, particularly clustered groups of trees forming groves. To this day groves remain entrenched in religious practice as there are estimated to be over 2,000 sacred groves remaining throughout the country.
Archaeological evidence suggests that groves were an important cultural site for early Ghanaian traditions. Sections of groves were sectioned off as chieftain burial grounds, others as prohibited areas in which deities and ancestral spirits resided, and finally as locations of agricultural festivals. They were perceived as the habitat of the ancestors and gods, rendering it taboo to enter them or cut down trees that grew within. Even today, many tribes consider cutting down trees within sacred groves to result in curses of infertility.
If we consider the savannah landscape found in many areas where these traditions arose, the relative scarcity of trees – particularly groups of trees – becomes apparent. While trees are scarcely found in the flat-lands, they are generally isolated and long-lived, enduring species. The savannah land tends to be too dry to accommodate vast swaths of trees complete with a thriving undergrowth ecosystem. Agricultural activity took place in flat-plains, which is where villages arose. Interestingly, groves were seen to improve the fertility of the land – or perhaps more plausibly, groves happened to reside on land that was naturally more fertile and had sufficient sources of water. As a result, villages arose in flat-land areas near groves, as did cultural norms prohibiting the cutting of already scarce trees by outright forbidding entry into groves.
Further considering their role as burial grounds, it is unsurprising that they soon transcended their anthropological significance to sacred status. The flat plains were the realm of the living and groves became the realm of ancestral spirits and deities. Given their importance to agricultural fertility, it seems natural that they became home specifically to deities of land and human fertility. In Ghanaian traditions, ancestral spirits do not become deities, but they rise to a higher status in the spiritual hierarchy. They can ‘petition’ to natural deities on behalf of their human kin, effectively becoming intermediaries. While it is unclear in what order these beliefs developed, this provides another explanation for why tribe chiefs in particular were buried in sacred groves.
Entry to sacred groves was permitted only during annual festivals that occurred in alignment with the agricultural season. In these festivals, many of which still exist today albeit outside of the context of sacred groves, offerings were made to both ancestral spirits and the deities of fertility. These areas were enshrined typically by a sacred tree or rock indicating the location at which spirits previously visited during ritualized festivals. Animals with agricultural significance (traditionally chickens) were sacrificed, and communal singing and dancing took place. Importantly, these rituals and libations (alcoholic offerings) had less to do with worship and more with getting the attention of ancestral spirits, who were symbolically invited to join the festivities. This was effectively a form of appeasement in hopes of getting the ancestors to petition the deities to bring about a prosperous agricultural season. Furthermore, the festivals served an important political function – reminding the people of the legitimacy of the chieftains and their implied spiritual importance in gaining favour with their influential ancestors. Exclusive burial of the familial line of chieftains effectively monopolized the spiritual capital of the sacred grove.
Sacred Mountains in Shintoism
Mountains are among the most sacred sites in indigenous Japanese Shintoism, the reasons for which are strikingly similar to the sacralisation seen in the sacred groves of Ghana. The topological landscape throughout much of Japan is dominated by mountains. They have been regarded as awe-inspiring, magnificent natural structures with the power to give and take life since ancient times. The fertile plains in which agriculture has thrived in Japan are typically valley systems created by mountain ranges. The mountains – as weather creating machines – have the power to induce rains and create resultant bodies of water necessary for cultivation, but also the temperament to form devastating storms. For solely meteorological reasons, it is clearly in the best interest of any agrarian society located in the proximity of a mountain to worship it as a deity – if indeed one does exist, the benefits of worship far outweigh the consequences of negligence. Naturally, then, several religious aspects related to mountains arose in agrarian Japanese society.
In addition to their relationship with fertility, mountains were commonly used as burial grounds. This was due to the practical sanitation benefits of segregating human remains from living areas, but likely also due to the ability of the mountain sub-climate to inevitably speed up decomposition. Their inaccessibility and challenging sub-climates coupled with burial ground status led to a belief in the separateness of valleys, where people lived and farmed, and the towering peaks in the distance, that ultimately transcended practical relevance and gained religious significance. And like the sacred groves in Ghana, they became fertile grounds for the cultivation of ancestrally-tied agrarian deities.
In traditional Shinto belief, upon death, human spirits undergo purification and become deities known as kami. Many of these deities reside on, or symbolically become sacred mountains and have the power to regulate all aspects of human life – most importantly agricultural fertility. Unlike Ghanaian ancestors that became intermediaries, the spirits of revered ancestors achieved god-like properties. Their establishment in relation to a mountain began with some form of enshrined object (typically a rock or tree located near a body of water) that was believed to be the ‘landing point’ of the deity upon arrival to the mountain. Mount Hachioji for example, houses two shrines built in-front of a large protruding rock surrounded by trees (that effectively symbolically soften the deity’s landing).
Like Ghanaian groves, sacred Japanese mountains were realms for the dead and therefore unfit for human entry. Separateness of the environment had to be bridged (for both cultures) by ritualized festivals. While Ghanaian rituals took place inside of the grove, Japanese festivals occurred near rather than on the mountain, probably for the practical purpose of convenience – groves are easier to access than steep slopes. As demonstrated by Mount Hachioji, Japanese festivals (and major deities) were undoubtedly also deeply tied to agriculture. A shrine exists at the foot of the mountain serving as the location for the spring festival, to get the attention of deities and call them down (akin to river flow), while another shrine exists at a distance to the mountain and hosts the autumn festival, when deities ceremonially return to the mountain. If present day Japan is any indicator, whereby ritualized festivals serve the important social functions of uniting people and implicitly legitimizing societal hierarchy (kami rituals tend to be led by political figures), traditional festivals surely also featured elements of political appropriation of the sacred.
Conclusion
We may not intuitively see traditional animistic Ghanaian religions as being similar to Shinto practice in Japan, but closer analysis of the primordial roots of the sacred grove and divine mountain reveal multiple shared characteristics. They support the notion that practical agrarian motives are the fertile land on which the sacredness of these sites blossoms.
First, both sacred spaces are from the human perspective geographically incongruent and plainly in-sight. Towering mountains are visible for obvious reasons, whereas the trees similarly stick-out above vast, flat plains. When scanning the landscape, they are noticeably unlike the immediately relevant land upon which crops are cultivated. Second, they are both understood to directly influence agricultural prosperity, creating a strong economic incentive to consider their spatial relation to village settlement. Their centrality naturally influences the amount of mental bandwidth a group of people attributes to them, ultimately resulting in being deeply ingrained into said group’s shared psyche. Third, both sacred sites are characterized as realms of the departed – a clear product of indigenous burial practices. This tenet plays a key role in the transcendence of these sites from utility to divinity. The decomposing bodies effectively provide the necessary metaphorical fertilizer for the cultivation of deities. Finally, ritualized festivals arise probably out of the helpless necessity of inconsistent agricultural cycles, and collaterally serve as the holy water – the final ingredient needed for deities to sprout.