THE CIRCLE AS EVOCATIVE OF RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN FREEDOM AND DISCIPLINE

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THE ADINKRA COMMUNITY

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One could argue, however, for a community of interpretation in relation to Adinkra symbolism that is not bound by any conventions apart from those imposed by the capacities of the human mind. This possibility of interpretive freedom arises from the relatively unelaborated character of Adinkra symbolism. I have not come across more than one effort, for example, to relate the form of the designs to the ideas they are meant to symbolise. That lack of elaboration implies that the symbolism has not been significantly fixed or reified, as has been done by the elite class of the priesthood in most religious traditions or by the weight of convention emerging from a broader based social symbolisation, as emerges from some symbol systems that are not necessarily religious,as with natural language. The kind of interpretive community I am advocating, one that is not bound by interpretive conventions, would be something like the open source model in computer programming, but would be something ev...
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THE MATHEMATICAL SYMMETRIES OF ADINKRA AS MENTAL VEHICLES FOR THE EXPLORATION OF THE UNKNOWN

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The mathematical symmetry of Ifa and Adinkra take me into the exploration of shapes and patterns, patterns that describe the world without and the world within, real and imagined, visual and mental, static and dynamic, abstract patterns, numerical patterns, patterns of shape, patterns of motion, patterns of behaviour , from the material and the social worlds, from the depths of space and time, from the inner workings of the human mind [1] . Adinkra are visual symbols of which there are hundreds of distinct examples. Each one has a distinctive shape associated with a distinctive symbolic meaning. One Adinkra I find particularly intriguing is known as Kuntunkantan. It combines most evocatively the correlation of mathematical, literary, philosophical and religious possibilities that the multivalent African systems demonstrate. Kuntunkantan is particularly intriguing on account of its evocation of universes of association in amplifying the symbolic possibilities of a circle by co...
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EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION

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This work came into my hands on account of my interest in Classical African cognitive processes and systems. I have long been fascinated by the approaches to developing, managing and using ideas developed by people on the African continent. It is likely to be the fact that I have a number of blogs on this subject that led the author to contact me and urge me to assist with editing his work and getting it published. I was reluctant at first, since I have quite a significant workload, on account of the fact that I am doing a PhD on which I am behind in strategic areas. I was struck however, by the innovative character of the work and the range of its applicability to various areas of knowledge. This led me to take up the project. The book you hold in your hands is the first effort known to me to explore in depth that indicates its potential wealth of ideas one symbol from an ancient and yet contemporarily vibrant system of knowledge known as Adinkra. The system is made up of hundreds of ...
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