Onionkupón

Yoruba threshold spirit

Onyankopɔn, also written Nyankopon and rendered Onionkupón in the ROHO universe, is the supreme sky god of the Akan of Ghana, and in particular of the Asante and the Fante. His name is understood as the great one, the shining one, the only great one. Source of life and guarantor of the order of the world, he receives no daily cult: the abosom, the deities of rivers, forests and places, handle the affairs of the living, and the ancestors carry requests to him. In the early twentieth century Rattray recorded the story of his withdrawal: the sky once stood close to people, an old woman pounding fufu struck it with her pestle, and the sky drew back out of reach. He has been approached through intermediaries ever since, without ever ceasing to be present. Akan proverbs say the same thing another way: no one needs to point out the sky to a child. Authors differ on his relation to Nyame and Odomankoma, sometimes three names of one god, sometimes three faces of one power, the sky, the creator and the everlasting. ROHO follows the second reading. The idea of a Yoruba threshold guardian should be set aside: the name does not belong to the Yoruba corpus, and that reading came from a confusion, corrected in September 2026.