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Mema mo Adae tɔkye!
Over 300 years ago, Okomfo Anokye, the priest or traditional healer of the Ashanti empire, who was then a friend and advisor of Osei Tutu (the Ashanti king at the time), called a meeting of all the heads of each Ashanti clan.
The agenda was to unite under one of the chiefs whose stool would be greater than all the other stools, and any chief enstooled by any of the states was to swear the oath of allegiance to him.
Oral history has it that the meeting was also Osei Tutu’s carefully thought-out plan to overthrow the Denkyira, a neighboring kingdom and a highly developed Akan state that was quickly growing and gaining dominance over other southern states in the 16th and 17th centuries.
During the meeting, Okomfo Anokye conjured a mysterious golden stool from the heavens which landed on Osei Tutu’s lap, meaning that he had been chosen by the ancestors and the gods as the “unquestionable king of the kings of the Asante Nation.”
Okomfo Anokye told the chiefs that the gold stool contained the spirit and soul of the Asante Nation.
Osei Tutu took the oath of allegiance to the Golden Stool and all the chiefs took an oath of allegiance to Osei Tutu and the oath never to raise arms against the Golden Stool.
That was the beginning of the Asante Kingdom (or the Ashanti Kingdom). Osei Tutu was, therefore, made the first King of the Asante Kingdom.
The Asantes would later go to war against the dominant neighboring kingdom, Denkyira, in 1699 and would succeed with the help of Okomfo Anokye.
The Akwasidae festival of the great Ashanti Kingdom which commemorates the time that the Ashanti Golden Stool was magically brought down from heaven and worships ancestral spirits is celebrated once every six weeks on a Sunday. Occupying a significant place on the traditional calendar of the Asante, every paramount chief in Asanteman (Ashanti Kingdom) in Ghana’s city of Kumasi observes the day in his own jurisdiction, however, the main event is held at the Manhyia Palace. There, the Asantehene (Ashanti king) sits in state for his subjects and other visitors to pay him homage.” – Ghanaweb.com
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