parable.school
Sumi-e ink brushwork of a single spider figure beside a clay pot, alone in empty space

Anansi the spider decided he would gather all the wisdom in the world into one pot. Then he alone would have it. Then he would be the wisest.

Sumi-e ink brushwork of a spider figure beside a clay pot with curling wisps rising from it

He traveled. He gathered. From every village, every elder, every leaf and every river-stone, he took a piece of wisdom and put it in the pot.

Sumi-e ink brushwork of a tree with a spider figure and a separate clay pot at its base

When the pot was full, he carried it home, and decided to hide it at the very top of a tall silk-cotton tree, where no one could reach it.

Sumi-e ink brushwork of a spider figure with a round clay pot under the spider’s body

He tied the pot to his belly and began to climb. The pot bumped against his legs. He climbed slowly, awkwardly, slipping.

Sumi-e ink brushwork of a small child standing at the base of a great tree, looking up

His son Ntikuma stood at the foot of the tree, watching.

After a while the boy called up — gently, so as not to startle his father —

Sumi-e ink brushwork of a small spider-like child with one limb raised in respectful question, looking up at a higher figure on a tree

“Father, would it not be easier to tie the pot to your back? Then your legs would be free to climb.”

·
Sumi-e ink brushwork of a clay pot alone in empty air

Anansi was so astonished that his small son had a piece of wisdom he himself had not collected — the pot slipped from his hands.

Sumi-e ink brushwork of a broken clay pot on the ground, fragments scattered, alone in empty space

It struck the ground and broke.

Sumi-e ink brushwork of small wisps of mist scattering outward in many directions from a broken pot, alone in empty space

The wind caught the wisdom and scattered it across the world.

Sumi-e ink brushwork of many elongated wisps drifting in every direction across open empty space

Which is why wisdom now lives in pieces, in every place — and no person, ever, has all of it.

nyansa
n-yan-sawisdom

lineage

Anansi — Kweku Anansi, the spider — is the great trickster of Akan oral tradition, native to the forests of what is now Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire. His tales are called anansesem, “spider stories,” and they form the spine of Akan folk literature. Anansi is sometimes wise, sometimes foolish, often greedy, always cunning. He is the one who, in many tellings, brought stories themselves into the world.

nyansapɔ

“The wisdom knot.” — the Akan adinkra symbol of wisdom, ingenuity, and patience.

Anansi crossed the Atlantic in the holds of slave ships. He became Brer Anancy in Jamaica, Kompa Nanzi in Curaçao, Ananse in Suriname, and the long shadow behind the Brer Rabbit tales of the American South. In every place he kept his cunning, and his refusal to be solemn.

The pot of wisdom is one of his older tales. It is a story that knows what to do with a hoarder: it sends a child to ask one quiet question that the hoarder cannot have considered. The pot falls because pride cannot hold a small correction.

The Akan word nyansa is older than the parable. The parable explains why it had to be broken up. Wisdom, once gathered in a single pot, is too heavy to climb with.