The Way of the Calabash 4: Kumadze and the Interior Cosmos of Becoming

[Oluwatoyin Adepoju]

                                                                                                                                                      

                                                                                   

                                                                                       The Way of the Calabash 4

                                                                   

                                                                              Kumadze and the Interior Cosmos of Becoming

                                                                                                       

                                                                                                           

                                                                                                                                  

                                 

     

                   

                                                                                   Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
                                                                                               Compcros

                                                                    Comparative Cognitive Processes and Systems

"This journey we have embarked upon", I ventured to ask my guide as we walked on, ''what are its stages, its progressions? What will its conclusion be like?" 

She looked at me in response but did not reply. Her eyes, both still and mobile with a cosmos of possibilities, seemed to be both within me, looking into me, as well as looking at me from across the space between us. Something within me throbbed in reaction, a vibration in rhythm with my speech, as if activated by my questions.

An image appeared in my mind's eye, a muscular figure moving through a space palpitating with symbols,  shapes ablaze within an expanse suffused by the blue of ocean depths.

I felt cocooned by the gentle pulse of blue, a creature in primeval waters beginning its long journey from a single celled organism  to the complex of nerves and brain that is the human being- a miniscule identity throbbing with a sense of infinite possibility, potential nevertheless beyond the horizon of awareness of the tiny being  about to play such a great task in the cosmic symphony.

''You are entering Kumadze'' my guide explained, my mental state clear to her, ''your own sacred, secret, mysterious place where your ultimate potential communes with you.''

Her voice took my mind back to my childhood wanderings in green places, surrounded by awesome trees, yet fascinated with the minute creatures underfoot, life in its amazing variety blooming in those quietly sublime spaces, the blue sky seemingly infinite in its exhilarating expanse, the star patterned night sky alive with the chirping of insects,  a majestic dome over those enclaves where silence spoke, an almost fearful solemnity where emptiness resounded into presence.

Circles of gold and white assumed enchanting shapes as the vision expanded. A figure that was both myself and yet more than myself as I knew myself was outlined against the glorious expanse as those circles played against the symmetry of symbols patterning the palpitations of blue. A glorious sweetness poured into me, delicious as the purest, thickest honey. The universe began to converge within me as something within myself opened to receive this surge even as this wonder was balanced by fear.

''We must be still and still moving, into another intensity, for a further union, a deeper communion'' lines singing within me as this experience unfolded.''The wave cry, the wind cry, the vast waters of the petrel and the porpoise. In my end is my beginning''.

Whose words were those? They seemed to formulate themselves out of a space both within and beyond my mind. 

Were the vision and the words an answer to my questions?

What is Happening Here?

The journey of the lost traveller continues as he seeks to understand the progression and ultimate destination of his journey. The expedition unfolds as a movement from inquiry into vision, from conceptual questioning into symbolic immersion. 

The emergence of the Kumadze state marks a transition into an interiorized cosmology—a space where perception becomes generative, and consciousness encounters itself as potentiality.

Images reminiscent of Ghanaian artist Owusu-Ankomah's sequence of male figures outlined against symbol dense expanses emerge, evoking the taveller's journey in terms of  Ankomah's figures in quest of  the artist's  Microcron concept, the totality of all possibilities, visualised as a ring of white and gold circles, a symbolic grammar suggesting a cosmology structured through recurrence, unity, and expansion.

The story is inspired by convergences between Nigerian artist Chiagoziem Nnaemeka Orji's self-portrait Onye Kwe, Chi Ya Ekwe, ''I Agree and My God Affirms'', an expression from indigenous Igbo cosmology depicting a dialectic between human and divine will, in which human will (onye kwe) and divine affirmation (chi ya ekwe) operate in dynamic reciprocity, and the art and thought of Owusu-Ankomah.

This synergy is evoked by the collage integrating  Ankomah's work,  Orji's  self-portrait and a painting by Anthea Epella from the cover of Toyin Falola's In Praise of Greatness: A Poetics of African Adulation, used by Falola in suggesting infinity, employed here to also evoke generative possibility.

The collage thus functions as a visual epistemology—an interface through which multiple knowledge systems converge: indigenous cosmology, contemporary African art, and global poetic metaphysics

This visionary progression culminates in resonance with Anglo-US poet T.S. Eliot's vision, from  Four Quartets,   of spiritual progression visualised as  aquatic voyages unifying destination and commencement.The phrase “In my end is my beginning” becomes not merely literary reference but experiential insight, arising spontaneously within the visionary state. The Kumadze experience may be interpreted as the interior theatre in which this dialogue unfolds—not as abstraction, but as lived, visionary immediacy.

This is part 4 of the Way of the Calabash, a visual, narrative and expository sequence inspired by Oriji's self portrait Onye Kwe, Chi Ya Ekwe.Thus, this stage of the sequence situates Kumadze as both origin and horizon: a locus of emergence where the self encounters its own infinitude, and where the journey’s destination is revealed as already present within its beginning.

                                                                                                           Abstract

This narrative meditation, the fourth part of The Way of the Calabash, charts a visionary journey into the self, guided by the enigmatic figure of a spiritual mentor.

The traveller's questions about the stages of his path provoke a cascade of symbols: a primordial blue ocean of potential, a figure etched against a cosmos of signs, and a ring of white and gold circles that forms at the convergence of all possibilities. 

Drawing inspiration from the metaphysical art of Owusu-Ankomah’s Microcron concept, the self-affirming cosmology of Chiagoziem Nnaemeka Orji’s Onye Kwe, Chi Ya Ekwe, and the timeless poetic structure of T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets, the piece explores the sacred dialogue between human volition and cosmic unfolding. It is an arrival at Kumadze—the secret place where one’s ultimate potential communes in a silence that speaks.

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Exploring Indigenous Igbo Spirituality and Philosophy and its Arts blog

Part 1: "The Woman in the Forest: Chiagoziem Nneamaka Orji's 'Onye Kwe, Chi Ya Ekwe' and Bruce Onobrakpeya's 'Akporode' " 

(  Linkedin, USAAfrica Dialogues Series, Exploring Indigenous Igbo Spirituality and Philosophy and its Arts blog, Facebook,  )

Part 2: ''The Way of the Calabash: Part 2: Chiagoziem Nneamaka Orji, Victor Ekpuk and Bruce Onobrakpeya''

( LinkedIn, USAAfrica Series, Exploring Indigenous Igbo Spirituality and Philosophy and its Arts blog, Facebook).

Part 3:  ''From the Chi Calabash to Shevirat ha-Kelim, a Vision of Creative Tension: Between Chiagoziem Orji and Vincent van Gogh: The Way of the Calabash 3'' ( USAAfrica Dialogues Series, LinkedIn, Exploring Indigenous Igbo Spirituality and Philosophy and its Arts blog, Facebook)