Roog

Roog or Rog is the Supreme God and creator of the Serer religion of the Senegambia region.

Names and titles

In Serer, roog means sky or the heavens.
Roog is sometimes referred to as Roog Sene which means Roog the Immensity, or by extension, the merciful god. Other titles which are used outside of prayers include Roog Dangandeer Seen, Roog o Caaci’in Seen, Roog o maak Seen , Roog a yaal'in Seen, Roog o Ndimaan Seen, and "The Master of the World".
The name Roog is probably a corruption of the deity Koox. This may stem from the Serers of Kaabu or Tekrur after their exodus in the 11th century from Takrur following their religious persecution.
According to the oral tradition of the Cangin, the original name of the supreme being was Kooh.

Beliefs

Roog is the Supreme being and Creator God of the Serer pantheon. Roog is the source of life and everything returns to Roog. Roog is "the point of departure and conclusion, the origin and the end".
The practitioners of the Serer traditional religion do not directly pray to Roog, choosing instead to pray through ancestral spirits known as pangool, and as a result Roog has no place of worship. It is considered blasphemous to make images of Roog.

Gender

The Serer believe that Roog is an incorporeal and hermaphroditic being, possessing both a female and male nature. Depending on the situation, an individual may attempt to evoke its female or male side by using whichever pronoun is appropriate, although in scholarly works written in French and English the masculine pronoun is usually used. Saltigues refer to Roog as "father and mother" during their consecration rituals, while in the Serer creation myth it is both grandfather and grandmother, with the grandmother aspect giving birth to humanity.