The Adinkra system was originally developed in the Gyaman and  Akan nations of West Africa, the members of which now belong to the states of Cote d’Ivoire and Ghana, respectively[1]. A number of claims exist as to primacy of the system between the Gyaman and the Akan, but none of these seems to be conclusive. The designs were originally used as designs for clothes worn at funerals. They have been described as expressing ideas about the meaning of life, dramatised in the visual display of the symbols on funeral garments at the threshold between life and death symbolised by the activities embodied in funeral rites. Adinkra could be understood as related both to the intelligence or message which each kra, as the eternal essence of the human being is understood in Akan thought, takes with it from the Supreme Being when it obtains leave to depart to earth, as well as to the distillation of understanding that emerges from the experience of living and which is consummated in the transmutation of death[2].

ADINKRA SYMBOLS

 OWUO ATWEDEE, HE WON HYE, NYAME  NWU NA M’AWU AND  GYE NYAME

This understanding of life as a continuity from life on earth to life beyond death is suggested in the Adinkra symbol Owuo Atwedee which represents death as a ladder which the individual climbs to ascend into a further existence, thereby dramatising the undying existence of the immaterial essence of the human being. The ladder is  at times shown as silhouetted against an empty space which becomes evocative of the space before birth and the space after death, which are identical, since the kra experiences birth and death as aspects of the same process[3].

Kumorji visualises the ladder of Owuo Atwedee as hanging towards the sky, each of its four rungs representing the progression of human life in terms of the transitional stages of childhood, adolescence, adulthood, and old age. The last, invisible rung is death, its mysterious continuity with life evoked by the translucent blue of the sky against which the ladder is silhouetted[4].

The ladder of death is suggestive, therefore, of a cyclic conception  of human existence, understood in its totality as a dynamic reciprocity between life and death, a totality attested to by Adinkra symbols such as He Won Hye, “The Unburnable” or “That Which Cannot be Burnt”, its form evocative of a sliver of light between two embryos, themselves alcoved within a soaring structure seemingly poised for flight and robust with the fecundative possibilities embodied by the embryonic forms; the entire structure reminiscent of the  spaces flanking the central passageway of the fecundative portal of vaginal space; the total form  symbolising the dynamic timelessness of the self, which projects itself from to lifetime to lifetime through the portals of birth and death, actualising possibilities latent within the varied patterns of experience of each lifetime;  

HE WON HYE

or Nyame  Nwu Na M’awu  “Could  Nyame[the Supreme Being] die, I would die”, which bears a relationship to   the proverb from Twi, the central language of the Akan,  “Onyankopon nkuni wo na odasani kum wo a,wunwu da “Unless you die of Nyankapon [another name for the Supreme Being], let living man kill you, and you will not perish”.

                                   
                                                 NYAME  NWU NA M’AWU 

These symbols and the philosophic expressions with which they are related explicitly characterize the conception of the eternal nature of the self, a continuity, however, not suggestive of mere repetition, but of the opportunity to grow into a range of knowledge and skill through experience, a wisdom and active capacity evoked by the range of ideas evoked by the symbolism of Adinkra[5].

The paradoxical indestructibility of Benghalensis, “a small, inextirpable, trailing plant”, evoked in the name of the Adinkra symbol Nyame Nwu Na M’awu, is invoked to bear witness to the paradoxical continuity between the apparent mutability of the self and its undying nature[6].The relationship between apparent mutability and persistence of being emerges within a context evoked by the form and rhythms of the Adinkra symbol Gye Nyame.

GYE NYAME

GYE NYAME

VISUAL FORM AND SONIC EVOCATIONS IN GYE NYAME AS SUGGESTIVE OF ONTOLOGICAL CONCEPTIONS

Gye Nyame is enigmatic and abstract, its composite form  bearing no relationship to any form in nature, being at best a hybrid juxtaposition emerging from the depths of an unfettered imagination It is both amoeboid in its plasticity and muscular in its suggestion of the graceful but powerful thrusts of the horns of a rhino framing the liquid centre of the shape. 

The movement of lines within space that constitutes the visual form of the symbol could be seen as evocative of both inscrutability and cognitive dynamism. Inscrutability in that its abstract form could be understood as suggestive of the ontological conception represented by the notion of ultimate being embodied in the idea of Nyame. 

This abstraction could be perceived as being neither a distortion nor a contortion of known forms but as representative of a unique formal universe, suggestive of something outside the boundaries of human perception and fashioning; the   gyrations of its thrusting forms enclose liquid permutations, creating enigmatic, abstract rhythms that evoke sonic resonance through visual space.

VISUAL FORM IN GYE NYAME AS EVOCATIVE OF CONCEPTIONS OF ONTOLOGICAL AND TEMPORAL TRANSCENDENCE

The difference between the visual abstraction represented by Gye Nyame and conventional shapes could suggest the distance of identity, the ontological remoteness, between the divine subject the abstractions evoke and the total field of existence. The subject evoked by the abstractions is neither This nor That definite form[7], conceptual or visual, but, in a sense, demonstrates a protean plasticity of expression that enables it to become whatever the conceiver or perceiver wants It to be.

This notion of transcendence of being and cognitive possibility is correlative with the suggestion of a cognitive dynamism evoked by the  Classical Akan religious understanding of the Creator as the eternal witness of existence Who subsumes the transformations of being into Himself. Within this context the universe is conceived in terms of a transformative process perceived in its totality only from a central point of consciousness which constitutes its origin, as expressed in the Twi proverb “Abode santann yi firi tete;obi nte ase a onim ahyease, na obi ntena ae nkosi ne awie, Gye Nyame” “This great panorama of creation dates back to time immemorial; no one lives who saw its beginning and no one will live to see its end, except Nyame.”[8].

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[1] Give and compare sources; particularly Idi Ankrah presentation of various hypothesis. Then state your own speculation and your rationale for it.

[2] Relate to Danquah source for first part, to Kunene on Zulu thought on the Gods learning from human beings. And to Fortune in Cosmic Doctrine.

[3] The characterisation of the empty space against which the ladder is silhouetted comes from my sister Ifuemi Adepoju in private conversation. Refer to Soyinka’s inspired reflections on this space and passage in Myth, Literature, and the African World  which he calls the abyss of transition and how it is referred to in the introduction of Death and the Kings Horseman.

[4] Give Ida Kumorji refrence

[5]

[6] Compare with Owen Burnham’s description of the significance of the Fonio plant to the Bambara and the Dogon: “The importance of plants for humanity began when Fonio, the smallest seed, fell to the earth and spread the consciousness of the creator to all. To the Bambara and Dogon peoples of Mali the value of Fonio is immense. It is at once both the smallest and the greatest. In Fonio we hear the echoes of the past, and sitting in a field of these fragile plants listening to the wind it is truly possible to understand the spirituality of plants. Fonio   ‘is all the wisdoms’ for the Balanta Kanja people. It is the embodiment of the creative spirit, the giver of life, the gentleness of being, the entwined fragility of life and death, for it is a weak, easily broken plant, yet strong enough to bend in the wind without breaking” in African Wisdom: A Practical and Inspirational Guide (London:Piatkus,2000)43-44.

[7]

[8] Give all sources for these characterisations. Plus note the manner in which your appreciation of the implications of the plant symbolism was amplified/facilitated by the wonderful characterisation of the plant in African Wisdom

ADINKRA COSMOS ONE : ABUA IYEN’S BREAKTHROUGH IN ADINKRA RESEARCH

From the 22^nd December 2011 edition of the Ghanaian intellectual magazine Gye Nyame:

Abua Kofi-Iyen, a specialist in the philosophical  implications of visual forms at the University of Legon, announced yesterday  at a lecture held to promote his new book, Adinkra  Symbolism as Integrative Hermeneutic, that his research project  of twenty-nine years  into Adinkra has uncovered conclusive evidence that this symbolic system represents a visual language that integrates a broad range of symbol systems in sub-Saharan Africa.

He claimed that his research demonstrates that the symbolism conventionally attributed to Adinkra, a famous system of visual symbols developed by the Gyaman of what is now Cote d’Ivoire  and the Akan of present day Ghana, represents only a top layer of a complex network of associations to which the conventional meanings give access, but only if certain "keys of knowledge" as he called them, are available to the inquirer. He claims that  Adinkra symbolism has often been studied in isolation from its origin in an esoteric framework of knowledge which enables access to its range of meaning  because the custodians of this esoteric structure were not convinced that society was ripe for the transgressive character of the insights  the symbols make possible.

Kofi-Iyen claims that he has always been intrigued by the description of the significance of the Adinkra motifs in J.B  Danquah's The Akan Doctrine of God. Danquah describes them as representing the messages embodied by the individual soul as its own bequest as it takes leave of God to depart to earth. Danquah concludes that the motifs suggest a reflection on relationships between life before birth and life after death, between those on earth and those beyond, between time and non-time. Kofi-Iyen described himself as deeply intrigued by these pregnant comments. This led him to track down all research into Adinkra, to question as many Adinkra creators as possible, and to reflect at length upon the motifs. He says that this effort, after about eight years, at last led him to run into a particular corpus of Adinkra interpretations which differ from the conventional in that they represented a significant elaboration upon the conventionally understood significations. At times theses changes even involve an iconoclastic modification of the conventional understanding of the motifs, as if reflecting the development of a counter tradition to the conventional understanding.

He says that he traced the source of these interpretations and discovered them as occurring most frequently in an area around the Suhuma forest near Kumasi. The interpretations were the work of a group of Adinkra scholars, who, working as the heirs of  an endogenous tradition that had created the motifs in the first place, had developed them far beyond the meanings normally attributed to them. He says he won their trust after five years of dedicated effort and from them was able to gain the knowledge that constitutes the crowning glory of his work. His book describes what he learnt from them about the relationship of Adinkra symbolism to a continent wide knowledge system, which includes  such systems as the Nigerian Ifa, Afa and Oguega, the Dahomean Fa, Dogon thought and Bambara philosophies, among others. He describes Adinkra as embodying the apex of a pyramid of interpretation which integrates these and other systems, a central matrix of knowledge that enables the unity of the others to be understood.

He argues that the design motifs of Adinkra, its mathematical forms which demonstrate aspects of fractal geometry, its use of particular colour schemes, its employment of non-representational iconography, demonstrate a complex network of associations that correlates the verbal, visual and mathematical forms of a broad range of systems of knowledge in  Sub- Saharan Africa.

Response to Kofi-Iyen's research has been mixed. Some fellow scholars who have been following his work claim scepticism about his claims about a hidden tradition of Adinkra interpretation but some give credence to the logical validity of the interpretations of Adinkra in his book.The sceptics counter, however, that those interpretations do not need a story about hidden custodians of knowledge to validate them. The issue is complicated by the fact that, pressed to identify his sources, the proto-Adinkra community, as someone has described them, he claims that an inviolable condition of his learning from them was the promise not to divulge their identity. He claims, however, that they do not constitute a group different from other members of society but are simply ordinary people who have devoted themselves to a lifetime's exploration of the deeper possibilities of Adinkra that go beyond their conventional usage.

Can this story be true?

If it can be true, or cannot be, what factors make that the case?

If it can be   true, would that make its truth factual?

Gye Nyame : To Transcend

I love this image.

This is the Adinkra symbol Gye Nyame.It belongs to the Adinkra corpus  developed by the Gyaman of Cote d'Ivoire and the Akan of Ghana.

Rather than state its meaning as it  is conventionally understood I prefer to describe why I find it so compelling.This might be stimulating to curiosity to find out that meaning,and perhaps my response to the power of the image might prove helpful to an appreciation of that meaning.

It suggests something inscrutable.

It strikes me this way because it resembles no form I have ever come across.It has no similarity to other symbols I am acquainted with,whether from Africa,the Arab world,Asia,the West and the indigenous peoples of the Americas,of Australia and New Zealand.It stands alone  within its own design universe.

It suggests to me my understanding that there are aspects of the universe and possibilities of understanding that cannot be accommodated by conventional cognitive processes.Like the design of this symbol  bulges and twists in unusual contortions the mind might need to be reshaped to acclimatise itself to such possibilities.

The master of Konigsberg,who spent ten years in reflecting  on the possibilities of human reason before writing the following words,has this  to say about the struggle to know:

Human reason,in one sphere of its cognition,is called upon to consider questions,which it cannot decline,as they are presented by its own nature,but which it cannot answer,as they transcend every faculty of the mind.

It falls into this difficulty without any fault of its own.It begins with principles, which cannot be dispensed with in the field of experience,and the truth and sufficiency of which are,at the same time,insured by experience.With these principles it rises,in obedience to the laws of its own  nature,to ever higher and more remote conditions.

But it quickly discovers that,in  this way,its labors most remain  ever incomplete, because new questions never cease to present themselves; and thus it finds itself compelled to to have recourse to principles which transcend the region of experience,while they  are regarded by common sense without distrust.

It thus falls into confusion and contradictions,from which it conjectures the presence of latent errors,which,however,it is unable to discover, because the principles it employs,transcending the limits of experience,cannot bes tested by that criterion.The arena of these endless contests  is called Metaphysics.

Immanuel Kant,Preface to first edition,1781,of The Critique of Pure Reason.trans.J.M.D Meiklejohn.New York:Dover Publications.vii.

Image from J.B.Danquah,The Akan Doctrine  of God.

WHAT IS THIS SHAPE AND WHAT DOES IT MEAN? : VISUAL AND EPISTEMOLOGICAL PUZZLES

An amoeba,as suggested by its near shapelesness,amoeboids being "unicellular life-forms characterised by irregularity of shape" ?A topological form,topology being the mathematical field that studies spatial properties that remain invariant even when the shape of the form changes?The plasticity of the human mind,as suggested by the empty space at the centre of a shaped exterior?The void between the celestial bodies,evoked by the empty space that holds together the external mass as the gravitational forces operating in the distance across celestial bodies, causes them to maintain orbits in relation to each other? A virus,as depicted by its amorphous shape? A meme, a cultural form that propagates widely across culture,as suggested by the plasticity of the shape, suggesting the capacity for diffusion and contextual adaptability of cultural forms?

As suggested by the hole at the centre of the shape around which flows the amorphous mass,could it represent the empty spaces that contain very few or no galaxies,existing between filaments,the largest scale structures in the universe which act as boundaries of gravitationally bound galaxies?The bending of light by gravity,and a hypothetical shaping of gravity by light,as indicated by the manner in which the hole at the centre and its surrounding shape seem to configure each other?

Could it be a visual restatement of Susanne Wenger's question in relation to the Yoruba Orisa Iya Mopo, whom she describes as both pot and potter,patroness of women's activities,including their erotic vocations of conception and child birth: "Which comes first,the pot or the hole inside it?",the empty space within the form or the form surrounding the empty space?

A black/white hole,a yet to be discovered astronomical phenomenon,which replicates in the observed form in deep space the internal configuration of the observing mind,thereby indicating the symbiotic configuration of mind and cosmos?

In the light of the previous suggestions,could it be seen as a response to Nnedi Okorafor's "Is Africa Ready for Science-Fiction?"

Is its significance limited by how it is described at its source or can it mean something else,perhaps one or even all of the suggestions presented above?

If you click on the links in the mail they will take you on a survey through biology,astronomy,mathemat

ics,physics,philosophy and psychology,all courtesy of this intriguing shape.

Copy and paste this shape onto a Word document and rotate it it 180 degrees and see what happens.

Anybody who can identify what this is should give themselves a prize.

SchoolArts - October 2007

SchoolArts - October 2007

Power
Crossways of the cosmos

Vision

Unification of Perception

Centred

Integration,Balance,Mobility

Vehicle of Spirit

Rhythms-hidden but manifest
Open but secret

Spiral intensification

Dynamic Balance

Loops of Power

Stability

Convergence

Completeness

Flames of transformtaion
Winds of renewal

Sow my seeds among mankind

Circles of unity
Open ended-evocative of the dynamic vs the static,of open vs closed systems and patterns,of the possibly of escape from established patterns and the creation of new ones,of complexity vs the simplistic

Dance of the universe

Portal of vision
Gateway of transformation

Time and the shaping of history

The conjunction of universes