What  is this Journey?

 

A journey through the cosmos, with Nyornuwofia Agorsor's images of cosmic being and process and the Adinkra symbol Adinkrahene.

It is based on the artwork of Nyornuwofia Agosor from her Facebook photo album the Cosmos Series and her explnanations of the meanings of two of the  paintings in the series. 

The album is a series of seven paintings that depict cosmic being and process- a metaphysical and spiritual conception of the structure and progression of existence.

 

I superimpose those paintings on the Adinkrahene symbol from the Ghanaian symbol system Adinkra.

I then wrote a text that takes the reader on a journey through the cosmos using the locations of her paintings on the concentric circles of Adinkrahene as a guide, the voyager eventually transcending even those exalted summations and disappearing into the cosmic centre represented by the empty centre of the concentric circles. 

A journey that draws upon Nyornuwofia Agosor's explananations of the meanings of two of the works-as we await her further explanations-  and the motif of the cosmological journey.

 

The website is structured to facilitate the visual and mental journey,  the journey being conducted through progressive circumambulating of the rings of the Adinkra symbol Adinkrahene, moving eventually into its empty centre, where all the preceding visualisations and conceptions, having taken the navigator to the acme of cosmic perception, are assimilated, fused and transcended in the Absolute, beyond all conception, unmanifest even as the most abstract concept. 

 

This visual, cognitive and navigational structure is derived from the motif of the cosmological journey, in the writings of the English occultist Dion Fortune, Hindu and Buddhist mandala and yantra theory and practice as geometric cosmographic forms, particularly as demonstrated in the great Hindu ritual, the Sri Devi Khadgamala Stotram, the Hindu text also being built upon the motif of the cosmos in the image of a circle into which one travels,  on Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy and the writings of Eckankar founder Paul Twitchell,  and concepts of ultimate reality in terms of emptiness of conceptualisable   content, no master how abstract.

 

The Dion Fortune influence, the Hindu and Buddhist inspirations,the stories of Dante and Twitchell and concepts of the ultimate as transcendent of human understanding are related in terms of the idea of a journey through stages of increasingly  profound and sophisticated  engagement with God and cosmic being, until in  Dion  Fortune's account,  the aspirant, having passed through a succession of rooms displaying increasingly  recondite images of the Godhead, is faced with an empty room, as the initiator  whispers in his  ear "there is no God", the paradox evoking the idea that God as known to the limited faculties of humans does not exist, the concept "God" at best suggesting  a mystery beyond human conception and imagination, the entry into the empty room being evocative  of Catholic theologian Karl Rahner's description of the 'the blessed goal of knowledge that comes to itself when it is with the Incomprehensible  one" and St. John of the Cross on " transcending knowledge with my thought", processes of human transformation through encounter with cosmic essence correlative with cosmic evolution- emanation from a centre-and involution-movement towards a centre-as explicated by Nyornuwofia Agosor, resonating profoundly with ideas of cosmic process and perception in Hindu and Buddhist thought in relation to imaginative navigation of cosmic being through images, specifically yantras and mandalas.

 

 

The Journey 

 

 

Your eyes travel round the visually mesmerising arms of Adinkra circles,   interacting with the visualisations of cosmic processes at each  circuit of your visual and mental journey.

 

 

Your sight rests on the depiction  Inside the Cosmos at the centre top of the circular path, inviting you to voyage within the internal configuration  of this enigma within which you find yourself, the cosmic totality.

 

 

Your vision  travels to the centre bottom,meeting a depiction  of the Permanent Life that is the eternal essence of cosmic being.

 

 

Moving to the left, you encounter at the bottom left the Creative Essence through which being undergoes transformation.

 

 

Your eyes moving upward take you to the middle left, into contact with the injunction to Listen to the Cosmos.

 

Moving opposite that you confront the question Can You Smell the Cosmos?

 

 

What does it mean to smell the cosmos?

 

 

Travelling upward in enquiry, you come face to face at the top right with the Principle of Conception, the conception of all, and of you, and perhaps of your perception at this moment as you make this voyage with the aid of images that take you beyond space and time.

 

 

Again, you encounter Inside the Cosmos as you travel left to the top centre.

 

 

Looking carefully within this portal, what do you see?

 

 

You are directed by the teacher to perceive various forms in dynamic interaction, the serpents of cosmic evolution and involution, their coiling and uncoiling  motions the process of cosmic expansion and contraction, the Ka, That Which Is, the Primal Life Force, streaming from within the Womb of Gbe, the Mother Goddess, as the Primordial Sound, manifesting as Akla, That Which Becomes, embodied, multiplying through the variety of forms that constitute being, sands of existences stretching across space, as brilliant green,sharp red, powerful brown, electric blue and potent black, suffuse and shape the space of your experience, bringing alive the sheer vitality and power that is cosmic being as a palpitating and vigorous presence.

 

 

You perceive the Primordial Womb of the Great Mother, who, bringing to a conclusion a cosmic cycle having run through aeons of time, goes into Helu,  withdrawing  all her powers of creation, suspending throughout the cosmos all  vibration, all rhythm, all motion.

 

 

All the attributes of her fertilising male fall into sleep in the process known as Sodorlor.

 

 

Kakpo, involution or end of time has come.

 

 

 Everything is withdrawn into the Mother Womb, Kpogo.

 

 

 Everything recharges itself in the Mother Womb and becomes renewed.

 

 

Again  at her own will, she wakes up and sets herself again in vibration, rhythm and motion.

 

 

Dazed or immersed in serene elevation at this vast insight into the being and becoming of the totality, within which your role is akin to that of a grain  of sand in the immense sweep of the bottom of the sea,  your journey of discovery takes you to the upper left of the cosmic image, to encounter, through the direction of another teacher,the Cosmic Transformer, Trupetsomgbe, cosmic transformer and life, the dynamic motion erupting from the Mother Womb and propagating all, transforming all through various  states of being, the serpent whose motion is a dazzling spiral expressed in the manifestation of life, law and order  that maintains existence in equilibrium, a balance represented by the harmony of polarities expressed in the paired single and double digits of Efa/Ifa symbolism, as indicated in the mid-top left panel,  the river of knowledge from which you drink as you navigate the totality.

 

 

 

The march of single digits on the left, one after the other in a unit of four, corresponding to the double rhythms on the right, one vertical notation inserted into the sequence of doubles indicating a modification in the rhythm  of transformations that sustains being, a unity in variety that is Trupetsomgbe, cosmic transformer and life, the abstract form of the vertical digits visualised in the lyrical motion of the serpent in its spiral and circular formation on the top right panel; the   sequence of paired digits on the upper top left panel indicating the absolute harmony that is Yekumedzi; the rhythm of one, two, two and one that is the life,  law and order represented by Gbedi, the unity of the principles Gbe and Di into an even more  profound unity, as shown in the mid-left panel, more expressions of these abstract visualisations unfolding as the panels scroll downwards, the insight opened to your gaze only accessible through this  division  and unification of compartments of knowledge, manifestations in the clarity of white light pulsating from depth of fecund darkness, rivers of compelling and yet soothing blue calming your heart throbbing with the magnitude of the experience, as crimson vitality floods the space of interaction with the core of cosmic dynamism, within such profound zones, the vitality of life predominates, the river into which you are being immersed by this summative experience.

 

 

"Open your mind, ears and heart, listen to the cosmos" is the injunction that reverberates within you as your journey  takes you again to the mid-left portal in the all embracing arms of Adinkrahene, peace, love, humility, freedom and happiness, well up within you as the panorama of cosmic evolution and involution, of Kagbo and Kakpo, as the cognitive rhythms reach you from the multi-ontological teachers, unifiers of various forms of being in themselves, half humanoid, half aquatic, figuring forth externally, the half concrete, half aquatic constitution of the human being, leading you further to enter deeper, in the bottom left portal, the Creative Essence of being, manifest through the eight forces that subsume being and becoming, all that is, was and can be, Loso, Gbe, Sa, Chi, Ka, Di, Akkla and Abbla, names that blaze into your brain in the illumination of the top right panel, unfolding into precise meaning in the mid-left panel, in the cosmic motion that is the rhythm of Habla to Abla, the creative force driving from Hakla to Akla, the Awakener that is Chi, the Primal Life manifest as Ka, the Law and Order that is Di, the Absolute Source of Soul that is Loso and Gbe, Life, all these principles subsumed in the sphere that is the mother womb of the bottom right panel,ringed by seven lines of being as the creative essence palpitates, flowing into the world from its pure potency to manifestation in existence as forms of Medzi, the Manifester, Losomedzi, manifestation of soul in the awareness and life inhering in all being,   Dimedzi, the manifestation of law and order that enables stability amidst change, the flow of life into being that is Gbemedzi,the welling up of life from its source, the primal life shaping all being that is Kamedzi, all these possibilities expressed as the creative force that turns semen and egg to human beings, matter and energy reactions to stars that is Aklamedzi,the whole integrated  in the movement over space and time that is Ablamedzi, the density of knowing you are  becoming, the cognitive sphere you are  being transformed into mirroring the uncompromising black of the spaces from which knowing emerges and configurates,  the potency of this cognitive transformation calibrated and stabilised by framing within a dense blanket of blue, an ocean of crimson vitality the space of motion in which, on which, the the transformative energies of being are experienced as palpitations of your being, as cosmic processes are experienced as your own processes, your own being experienced as both a part of the cosmos and a microcosm of the totality.

 

 

 

You remerge into Permanent Life  in the bottom mid-portal of Adinkrahene as the image of the cosmic tree predominates,  earthy brown evoking its roots in primordial nourishing at the ground of being, streams of light and dark blue giving the balance of wisdom that recognises equilibrium between opposites necessary to sustain the cosmos as a variegated unity, knowledge configurations coruscating from  wells of darkness where forms undergo transformation to emerge as ordered knowledge, patterns of vitalistic green, deep blue, vigorous brown and a penumbra of deep brown and red in harmony indicating the ordered profusion of  forms of being,  the life force that is Gbemedzi running through all existence as the sap of this tree, a force vivified in you through perception of the cosmic source and flow of this phenomenon of which you are a drop of water in an infinite ocean , waves dancing in blood red rhythms in the mid-centre panel of this stage of your journey of illumination.

 

 

Can You Smell the Cosmos? Can you see the Cosmos? are  the questions that alternately thunder, alternately thrum sweetly to your inner ear as you ascend again to the top middle portal of the concentric circles of Adinkrahene, forms seeming to bend in obeisance at the borders of your perception, perhaps  perceptors like yourself overwhelmed by the tenderly or fiercely awesome onslaught of the holy  , of the Transcendent Other, compelling yet distant, coalescing within the encounter with ultimacy, the mysterious numen demonstrating that being is Presence, that Presence is the consummation and elevation beyond conception of all that is conceivable, in a purity of essence beyond words.

 

The teacher, whose form reflects the various stages of growth of cosmic knowledge, marked as it is by the triangles of unification and the crescents of perception, wants to know if you have assimilated the experience you have been privileged to be initiated into.

 

 

"I saw it!" you affirm.

 

 

"Did you smell the food of the spirits?", is the question that follows, the food that is raw being, being in its essence, unconcealed  behind forms, the rivers of red running through each portal of illumination, as you begin to assume the form of the interlaced upward and downward pointing triangles flashing into being, the triangles indicting perfect union of complementarities as your initiation into ultimate being leads you to embody the axis of totality that is the cosmos.

 

 

Rising to the top right portal of Adinkrahene, the river of red blazes forth in splendour in space from which shimmer the glow of  stars as the teacher of the Principle of Conception guides you through a process of integration of all you have experienced so far, unifying the two dimensions of existence within awareness filtered through an expansive experience of intellect, the cosmic divine knowledge palpitating through you in a synaesthetic unity of ideation and the pulsating power of colour that is the unity of being, deep green suffusing you with a sense of life giving power, amplified by the earthy ruggedness of spots of black, as strong blues agitated by dense black and swirling whites project dynamism within tranquility, red and yellow waves, white,  orange and  red indicating motion both turbulent in its force and ordered in its ultimate progression, as your being becomes a concourse of awareness,  a depth of black from which well the visual projections of what you know and are becoming, the two apexed triangle, facing downward and upward, unifying the half spheres, the soul of man as integration of matter and spirit, the intersecting spheres of the two dimensions of existence, Logo and Logosu, spirit/mind and matter, the entire ensemble of awareness cascading over you in  the sheer bliss and divine joy of knowledge, as from   remotest distances of possibility, the ultimate forms of knowledge to coalesce in you, the ladder of four rungs, leading up to absorption in ultimacy.

 

 

Your journey continues as all forms fall away, even of the most rarefied knowledge, symbols of totalistic awareness are assimilated and transcended, burnt into your being to vanish within you as steam vanishes in air, the pull from the centre of the concentric circles of Adinkrahene taking you into a zone uncognisable in terms of anything that can be expressed in images, no matter how subtle or complex, that cannot be bodied forth in words, no matter how profound or sensitive, the moth fused to the flame becoming other than it was, and in its new state unable to speak its being to the watching moths, breathlessly awaiting news of the transformation,  only silence remains, only white darkness suffuses, the cosmos continues in motion,  planetary orbits progressing in relation to solar nuclei, the stars continuing to orbit galactic centres, matter expanding continuously  outward in cosmic space propelled by  the primal explosion from the Ultimate Nothing, beings on earth continually gaze upward to wonder at the meaning of the river of stars and of their place within the magnificent concourse of revolutions, but you are gone beyond all that.

 

 

Where are you?

 

 

We do not know.