COMPLEXITY FROM SIMPLICITY:RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN KUNTUNKANTAN AND IFA SYMBOLISM


A keen sensitivity to the architectonic power of Ifa, the sense it gives of a form extending into infinite space but which is shaped into intelligibility through numerical and verbal configurations, led Atua Kofo to interpret the Ifa system in terms of Kuntunkantan so as to integrate her understanding of Ifa through a simple but powerfully evocative symbol, a symbol recalled with ease but which would encapsulate Ifa’s vast universe of explicit and implicit meanings.

She had been pondering her experiences with Ifa and was amazed by the manner in which the system developed a complex architecture of meaning, like a building with an infinite number of rooms, but, which, paradoxically, can be viewed as a single building, whose outline could be discerned and its structure mapped and explored, if one looked at it from a particular angle.

What she also found particularly impressive was the development of vast complexity, of infinite possibility of meaning and interpretation, from a very simple base. A base constituted by four lines. No more.

It seemed to her like an infinite structure, made intelligible and accessible to navigation by being built up from four rooms which are progressively elaborated into an infinity of rooms, but which, looked at from a particular angle, have a finite number. Through studying the finite number, the infinite possibilities represented by that finitude could be accessed.

Various universes of being communicate with each other within these rooms and through the passages between them. The language they use is in communication is known as the Odu of Ifa.

That language itself represents in a nutshell the wondrous character of Ifa as a structure that integrates the panoply of the cosmos, a structure that folds the universe into itself and unfolds it to make possible by human beings a cognition of the wondrous interaction between various aspects of the cosmos.

Within this language all possibilities of existence can be discerned. Each word in that language is the name of a particular possibility of existence, already existing or yet to exist.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

THE ADINKRA COMMUNITY

Image
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
Read more

SPECULATIVE RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN ADINKRA SYMBOLISM AND FULANI COSMOGONY

Image
Kofi Abua-iyen argues that the impetus for the development of this symbol in terms of macrocosmic relationships with conceptions of the human person emerged from contacts between Akan traders and Fulani pastoralists. The pastoralists introduced to Akan traders their sophisticated methods for generating conceptions of integration between discrete units in their environment with increasingly larger units so as to arrive at an integrated conception of the universe. The genius of this integrative technique constituted, among other striking factors, in its use of classifications of the various patterns in the coats of their cattle. These patterns were elaborated in terms of a symbolic scheme where they served as templates for integrating a broad range of observations of and conceptions on the nature of the universe, from the materiel and non-material constitution of the human person to the metaphysical constitution of the cosmos. Akan thinkers eventually developed in abstract terms this t
Read more

THE MATHEMATICAL SYMMETRIES OF ADINKRA AS MENTAL VEHICLES FOR THE EXPLORATION OF THE UNKNOWN

Image
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
Read more