THE CONVERGENCE OF IFA AND KUNTUNKANTAN IN TERMS OF THE INTERSECTION OF POSSIBILITIES


The interlaced circles of Kuntunkantan, to Atua Kofo, represented a sublime home for the flexible and yet vast intersection of possibilities that is Ifa. The dance of circles emerges as the dialogue between the selves of the human being through the Odu. The entire structure of circular forms in unceasing motion around a centre that integrates them all evokes the play of meanings between the human self in its double but united selves and between these and the universe of possibility represented by the human world, and the world beyond the world immediately accessible to human beings but which shapes it, the world where dwell the Orisa, the underlying animating forms of the universe.

She also visualised the circles of Kuntunkantan as representing the actualisation of human possibility through the four basic lines from which all possibilities in the Ifa system are developed. Extrapolating from the traditional framework, Atua Kofo saw these four basic lines as evoking the divisions of existence in terms of mind, matter, space and time and the actualisation of existence through their interaction. Without matter, space and time, a material structure would not exist for conscious being to operate in, but without the existence of conscious being, who would perceive the play of matter, space and time?

The blank space beyond Kuntunkantan becomes the notion of unbounded possibility or the larger set of possibilities from which the particular structure of possibilities at play in a system are abstracted-the system ranging from the universe as a whole to particular human situations. The circles represent the structuring of the particular subset of possibilities at play within that system, whether perceptual or situational, or particular ontological or biological forms. The intersection of all the circles in the central circle symbolises the integration of these factors in terms of a central point of manifestation.

Atua Kofo also saw the space beyond the circles of Kuntunkantan as the primordial Wisdom in which the Ifa system is grounded, the Wisdom, which, coming before time, encapsulates all that could be and now is, and enables an understanding of what could be. To her, the circles evoked the organisation of this unstructured, unbounded, timeless Wisdom in terms of particular interpretive and integrative structures. The intersection of circles is the point of manifestation where the time bound, concrete manifestation of this Wisdom is actualised through the concrete particulars of existence. These particulars are subsumed in the Odu, who embody the speech of Ifa, a speech that incorporates the voices of humans, animals, plants and spirits, and, is therefore, the womb of Iya Nla, the earth, on which and through whose sustenance all terrestrial beings live.

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