THE SYNERGISTIC UNITY OF KUNTUNKANTAN AS EVOCATIVE OF THE UNITY OF THE SELF WITH ITSELF AND WITH ITS PERSONAL UNIVERSE


In relation to this, Okrapon Bosomafi sees the origin of Adinkra as possibly the outcome of meditations on the imprint on the okara, of the “small bit of the Creator that lives in every person’s body”, as described by Busia,of the intelligence or message the person brings with them from Otweaduampon Nyame when taking leave of Nyame,to adapt Danquah’s words. Whatever the origins of Adinkra might be, Kuntunkantan can be used in evoking a sense of ultimate purpose, and the integration of the disparate endeavours of ones life into a unity, a unity related to the evocation of the totality of one’s possibilities as springing from the ground of ones being. This understanding of human possibility is correlated with the two hundred and fifty six Odu of the Yoruba Ifa and the Dahomean Fa,to represent an understanding of the variety of ways of organising one’s life in terms of a centre of purpose, one central concept being represented by one Odu. All the Odu representing not one unique possibility but a possibility of combination of various possibilities in one unique way. It is undtstood that these possibilities could be relevant for one stage of a persons life to give way fro another only to remerge at later stage, or constitute guiding centre fro an entire life time, with the other possibilities operating in relation to this central possibility.

In terms of the possibilities of the self, the Adinkra symbols could be meditated on as expressions of the potential of the self which are enfolded within its innermost embrace, in the manner in which the petals of a flower are folded within it before they are unfolded, or as the realisation of possibilities that emerge ion the course of living and which are not inherent to the self but constitute an informed choice from the realm of possibilities that open up to the individual in the existential context of their lives. Along those lines, contemplation of the Adinkra symbols could be understood as a means of entering into the presence of the Okara so as to experience the totality of its possibilities or as a means of integrating the totality of possibilities encountered or even envisaged in the course of one life or at a particular point of that life, a practice that could lead ultimately to an achievement which the Adinkrahene-the Adinkra community-correlated with Zulu thought, where, as described by Mazisi Kunene

After creation, man was endowed with two minds: the precision mind and the cosmic mind. While the precision mind analyses and reorganises the details of the material environment, the cosmic mind synthesizes fragments of information to create a universally significant body of knowledge. Man can live quite happily using the precision mind, but he can only attain knowledge through a balanced functioning of the two aspects of reason. At the highest point of reasoning, significant units of information merge with universal concepts pulled together y a unique form of intellectual power.

When the cosmic mind grinds its elements of experience into a totality of knowledge, it acquires a discipline which by its horrific power erases the boundaries between the past and the present, the living and the dead, the physical and the non-physical. The individual initiate acquires, like the chameleon’s all round vision, the capacity to conceptualise the totality of life at once. Such wisdom is enshrined in the rounded calabash of symbolic cosmic power.

Contemplation of Adinkra, therefore, enables one to range over entire universes of understanding, whether already encoded in relation to Adinkra symbolism or not. Such meditation, to adapt Kunene’s description of cognition, is milking the cow of experience, it is a distillation of understanding through the fire of effort and non-effort, through active thought and non-thought, the latter being the concentrated abstinence from thought that leads to understanding, guided by the evocative designs of Adinkra symbolism, as in Kuntunkantan which evokes the unity of the many in the one.

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