Libation in Ga Ritual1)

In recent years there has been a resurgence of interest in the anthropological analysis of religion, in general, and of ritual symbolism, in particular. 2) This paper is intended as a contribution to his growing body of literature. It presents a descriptive analysis of libation as a sacrificial act in order to elucidate certain ideas about the ordering of the universe and about the meaning of sacrifice in one West African society, the Ga of southeastern Ghana. The Ga, a cognatic Kwa speaking people who number about 236,ooo, inhabit a series of coastal towns and villages on the Accra Plains. Traditionally fishermen and cultivators, the Ga constitute a highly modernized. group within the contemporary Ghanaian population Nevertheless, aspects of the traditional social system persist even within Accra, the capital of Ghana. In this paper I am concerned with traditional Ga religious conceptions and relations as they are expressed in the ritual of the kpele cult, which Ga believe to be their indigenous religious system.