Ashe is the animating power that makes things happen — the capacity for existence and effect — and it is in people, words, rivers, medicines, and the orisha alike. It is not moral: ashe can be concentrated, transmitted, and used well or badly, and much of Yoruba religious practice is about accumulating and directing it. The concept has traveled with the diaspora into Santería (aché) and Vodou, and it is the closest thing the tradition has to a unifying metaphysical term.