Naaŋmin is the supreme God and creator in Dagara religion, an omnipotent and benevolent sky-being whose name joins the words for 'chief' and 'God/sun'. He is identified with the sun, the sky and the life-giving rains, and in the Bagre recitations he presides over a heavenly dwelling thronged with animals, insects and plants. Yet Naangmin is a withdrawn God: having created the world he retired from it and keeps no shrine, so that no direct cult or sacrifice reaches him. The Dagara link this remoteness to the problem of evil, holding that were God still active among them disease, misfortune and death could be banished. In practice worship is directed instead to the Earth and to the ancestral dead, who mediate between humankind and the distant creator.