THE SYMBOLISM OF KUNTUNKANTAN IN RELATION TO OTWEADUAPON NYAME,THE ANCIENT ONE


The understanding of Otweaduampon Nyame as the pivot of the cosmos is symbolised in Akan drum language by the expanse of the terrestrial and celestial worlds. Kwabenia Nkentia’s translation of Akan drum poetry illustrates this:

Otweaduampon Nyame, the Ancient God,

The Heavens are wide, exceedingly wide,

The Earth is wide, very, very wide.

We have lifted it and taken it away,

We have lifted it and brought it back,

From time immemorial.

Within the esoteric level of meaning often encoded in Akan drum language and not previously accessible to the uninitiated, the notion of lifting the earth, taking it away and bringing it back, evokes the process of combining various interpretive possibilities of phenomena, deconstructing and reconstructing them. The transformative processes made possible by human cognitive capacity become a lever for “lifting” the earth, taking it away and bringing it back, metaphorically speaking. The earth is conceived here as the cognitive image that constitutes each person’s understanding of the world. The act of lifting and taking it away is embodied in the process of examining its components, dismantling them, as it were, deconstructing them in order to examine their relative validity in relation to each other or to an overarching conception of truth or reality, or even as an demonstration of an understanding of the contingent character of human understanding as being contingent on factors that are incidental to environmental circumstances, and, which, in various environments, make possible diverse interpretive possibilities.

So the person who would lift and take away their own world examines its constituents in the light of that understanding, and possibly reconstitutes them so as to imagine what it could be to experience other perspectives on existence, in its specifics and particulars, that could be inspired by environmental possibilities different from those that have shaped their own conceptions. The person therefore opens a window into other possibilities of seeing the world within the otherwise significantly homogenous and endogenously grounded conceptions of the world that characterise human thought in various cultures.

The act of “bringing back the world” which had been “lifted and taken away” involves a process of reassembling the constituents of one’s view on the world, in relation to whatever modifications have occurred within it in relation to the exercise of re-examination of its constituents and general/overall structure, and or/of imaginative participation in other cognitive universes.

Within these cognitive exercises, the conception of Otweaduampon Nyame as the pivot of existence can be variously understood. It could be approached as a cognitive tool that facilitates efforts to develop a relational integrity in ones understanding of the universe, an integrity demonstrated in terms of a functional relationships between various aspects of consciousness where one they do not act at cross purposes, as well as in terms of the truth value of one’s conceptions, and in terms of a sensitivity to differing conceptions of the world in its particulars and as a whole, unity. Integrate ones understanding of the universe.

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