Ɔkra
Divine spark from God — crown
Ɔkra — the divine soul, the spark of Onyame (God) given to each person at the moment they take destiny. Danquah (1944, ch. IV) identifies the ɔkra with the breath of God breathed into the new person; Gyekye (1995, ch. 5) refines this as the bearer of nkrabea — the destiny each person agrees to before birth. The ɔkra is the part of the person that is most directly accountable to God and that returns to God at death. Its ritual seat is the head, and Akan head-rituals (notably the bathing of the head with sacred water, kɔrabea, on the eighth day after birth and on certain festivals) are addressed to the ɔkra. The ɔkra is also each person's nkrabea-bearer — the soul that 'speaks the word' before God concerning what kind of life this person will live; Akan funerary practice insists that the ɔkra cannot be polluted by the manner of death because it returns to God prior to any post-mortem judgement. We anchor the rendered point at the crown vertex, the canonical Akan head-locus.
Point 1 of 3 in Akan Three-Soul Schema — Ɔkra / Sunsum / Ntoro
Cross-tradition overlaps
No overlapping points are registered for this point.
Sources
J. B. Danquah, The Akan Doctrine of God (primary_canonical)
“The ɔkra is that divine essence which God breathes into a man at conception, that in him which is of God and unto God returns.”
Kwame Gyekye, An Essay on African Philosophical Thought (secondary)
“The ɔkra is the bearer of nkrabea, the destiny that each person speaks before God prior to birth.”