USA Africa Dialogue Series - STRATEGIES OF ESOTERICISING KNOWLEDGE : A FACEBOOK DIALOGUE BETWEEN MOYO OKEDIJI AND TOYIN ADEPOJU ON IFA

 

                                                                                                                        STRATEGIES OF ESOTERICISING KNOWLEDGE 

 

                                                                                                    A FACEBOOK DIALOGUE  BETWEEN MOYO OKEDIJI AND TOYIN ADEPOJU

 

                                                                                                                                                ON

                                             

                                                                                                                                                IFA

 

 

 

This is a discussion on the Ifa system of knowledge, best known as a divinatory system, which has has its  origins in Nigeria's Yorubaland but has spread beyond that point to becoming almost a global phenomenon.

 

The discussion centres on one set of the 256 odu, the Ifa  symbolic markings on the opon ifa, the Ifa divination tray.

 

 

 ·  ·  · 28 April at 18:29

• You, Oyekan Lawson and 8 others like this.
• • 

    Moyo Okediji Tajudeen Sowole, This is Iwori Otura. It is an Odu.

    28 April at 18:30 ·  ·  3
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    Kofi Gamamiwosror Agorsor may the peaceful energy of Tula-Woli be with us at all times.......Tsetulawo.....

    1 May at 09:42 ·  ·  4
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    Kofi Gamamiwosror Agorsor Tsetulawo

    3 May at 23:15 ·  ·  3
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    Toyin Adepoju 

    Thanks for explaining, Moyo. There is a lot published on the literature associated with these odu markings. I have seen very little, however, on how these markings and literature are interpreted by the Ifa diviners, the odu being Ifa symbols. One can read up on the meanings of the trigrams of the Chinese divinatory system the I Ching and even learn how to use the system. In my exposure to Ifa so far, which I dont think is current, I am yet to see significant how-to manuals. Even if the Ifa babalawo-adepts of Ifa's esoteric knowledge-insist on initiation to be able to use this knowledge, they should at least pass on the knowledge and let us do whatever we can with it and as we learn, we could be motivated to get initiated and get further training by the experts.I would appreciate any guidance I can get on this information without having to commit myself to an apprenticeship that might not suit me.

    4 May at 00:02 ·  ·  2
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    Moyo Okediji The way it works is systematic. When the Babalawo casts the seeds/nuts, he makes one or two marks. Ifa works on the basis of combining one and two marks. I have to ask if I may mention more than this. If allowed, I will.

    4 May at 00:12 ·  ·  1
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    Toyin Adepoju Ese o, baba. Please allow me to be presumptuous and ask whom you are going to ask and why you need to ask. I beg, no vex.

    4 May at 00:15 ·  ·  1
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    Moyo Okediji Is the code for nuclear physics available to all and sundry? Some weapons are best kept in responsible hands.

    4 May at 00:20 ·  ·  3
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    Toyin Adepoju 

    Ese oooo. Jo ma binu, please dont be offended if I state are our people not taking this issue of responsible management of knowledge too far? You know that one can learn much about nuclear physics from public sources. One might not be able to develop a nuclear device but at least one is likely to understand the fundamental principles. Cant the babalawo at least release these principles in their own discipline? Does knowing them mean that one can use them the way the babalawo are reputed to do?

    4 May at 00:34 ·  ·  2
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    Moyo Okediji In fact, I know nothing about these things.

    4 May at 00:35 ·  ·  1
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    Toyin Adepoju I beg, allow me to be bothersome and ask why you state you know nothing when a few minutes ago, you mentioned the possibility of revealing more if you are permitted?

    4 May at 00:46 ·  ·  2
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    Moyo Okediji If one said one's ancestral Egungun will perform, and the performance got canceled, so what?

    4 May at 00:53 ·  ·  2
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    Toyin Adepoju hmmmmmmm...........

    4 May at 01:05 ·  ·  1
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    Toyin Adepoju It seems you are one of Them......

    4 May at 01:05 ·  ·  1
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    Toyin Adepoju Can I write up our exchange as an essay? " Strategies of Esotericising Knowledge : A Dialogue with Moyo Okediji on Ifa" no problem if you are not keen. At least, one would be able to get that since one cannot enter the gate yet.

    4 May at 01:11 ·  ·  2
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    Moyo Okediji I cannot tell you something I don't know, Dr.Toyin Adepoju. Why don't you ask me questions about art? Prof. Rowland Abiodun has a good essay on the topic. It is titled, "Ifa Art Objects: An Interpretation Based on Oral Traditions," Yoruba Oral Tradition, Ile-Ife, Nigeria: University of Ile-Ife, 1975, pp. 421-469.

    4 May at 01:11 ·  ·  2
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    Toyin Adepoju 

    Thanks. I would be most pleased if you were to expound on Ifa in relation to art, as Abiodun does. How realistic would it be, though, to separate Ifa epistemology and metaphysics, its modes of symbol interpretation and action on the world, which we have been discussing, from art? Is the babalawo not an artist? Is he/she not an interpreter of the arts? How does one describe a professional who works by deciphering symbols in terms of literature, Ifa literature, the odu ifa? Even if this literature is seen as magical? Roy Thomas claims that magical language, incantations, is the origin of poetry. From discussing incantations, one may move to Rowland Abiodun's splendid works on the Yoruba concept of ase as an aesthetic category in Yoruba art, and which he exemplifies with reference to Yoruba verbal and visual arts.
    
    I have read the fine essay by Abiodun which you mention along with almost everything he has written about the Orisa tradition and Ifa, that essay you mention being one of his earliest and a gate opener in his oeuvre, being presented for a conference very significant in Yoruba studies, where, under the aegis of Wande Abimbola, scholars who subsequently became authorities on Yoruba studies emerged with decisive works. 
    
    Abiodun's position in African arts studies generally achieved prominence with what I understand to be his landmark essay on the need to interpret African art in terms of aesthetic concepts drawn from classical African cognitive cultures, exemplifying his thesis with concepts drawn from classical Yoruba aesthetics, thereby theorizing his practice in the essay on the mounted figure sculpture, an essay that brought into arts studies the methodology used by Bolaji Idowu in Olodumare : God in Yoruba Belief, on classical Yoruba religion/s. 
    
    Abiodun's essays on the Yoruba concept of ase as an aesthetic and metaphysical category are particularly impressive examples of his scholarly approach and this approach has been splendidly developed by Babatunde Lawal whose essays are indispensable for understanding the central Yoruba conceptions of igba iwa, opon ifa, Ogboni, Gelede, edan ogboni, polarity in classical Yoruba thought and the place of the feminine principle in classical Yoruba thought. 
    
    I look forward very much to reading your own ideas, which seem to be present largely in your books, and where you seem to have taken classical Yoruba aesthetics beyond exposition and application to the study of Yoruba art to a reinterpretation, creating novel aesthetic theory that may be relevant beyond the space of Yoruba culture.
    
    Thanks for the 'Dr'. which we hope to get soon.

    4 May at 01:50 ·  ·  3
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    Moyo Okediji 

    ‎Toyin Adepoju, the 1975 conference that you described took place when I was an undergraduate. Wande Abimbola was my Yoruba professor, and he taught courses on Ifa divination, which I had the opportunity to take. There were no departments o...See more

    4 May at 02:12 ·  ·  4
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    Toyin Adepoju 

    Correction- Ifa literature is more precisely described as "ese ifa" while "odu ifa" may be more precisely understood as the organising categories of Ifa, categories organized in terms of the binary units Moyo describes, units that through successive permutations between one and two, reach a total of 256 symbols. 
    
    These units are populated by ese ifa, Ifa literature, which can be described as the central method of presenting ideas in Ifa. 
    
    The literary volume of Ifa makes it one of the world's most extensive bodies of literature, one that continues to grow in the Americas, as evident from new ese ifa created by at least one babalawo who distributes his compositions via his Yahoo group. 
    
    I will not add my own attempts at composing new ese ifa or creating hybrid ese ifa, expansions of existing ese ifa since I dont know yet how to classify them since I work outside the body of formally initiated students of Ifa.I wonder if even the veritable libraries constituted by the longest epics, the Indian Mahabharata and the Tibetan Ghesar of Ling, described as the world's longest epic, can rival the volume of Ifa literature. To be expected, since associated with each of the 256 odu are an unknown and potentially infinite number of poems/and or stories, the largest translations of these known to me being the work of Cromwell Ibie and Bascom and some others I dont have in mind now. 
    
    But all these are a fraction of the whole, being collected in specific localities it seems rather than through an effort to scour all Yorubaland, as Bascom worked there, or all Benin city and its environs as Ibie seemed to have got his Ifa stories there. When one factors in developments in Cuba and the US and possibly other locations as far as the Ukraine, where Ifa certainly is, as far as I know, then the potential widens almost infinitely. 
    
    What is the transition from interpreting the symbols as they are cast to prognosis on human issues brought to the babalawo? I have had two readings by a babalawo on strategic issues in my life which turned out accurate, to a significant degree. A traditional Nigerian diviner I knew was able to predict that a person known to me would have a child by Caesarean section decades before the incident took place, making the prediction while the person in question was still a very young girl. 
    
    How are such things possible? 
    
    I dont think coincidence is good enough to explain such a sample of incidents.
    
    In reading about Asian esotericism one learns of their experiences and methods, but on Ifa I have seen little beyond some writings by Awo Falokun Fatumnbi, some of them on Scribd, the free text archive.
    
    I would appreciate any corrections or clarifications on the pints I have made.

    4 May at 02:22 ·  ·  1
  • 

    Toyin Adepoju 

    Thanks, Moyo, for giving us a moving recapitulation of that historic moment in Yoruba studies and to some degree, the study of African art, and of its influence on you. 
    
    One hopes that Nigerian universities will continue to play a global leadership roles in scholarship. There is a fat book published from that conference, containing presentations at the conference but I have forgotten the title. I will look for it online. 
    
    The University of Ife has produced quite a few scholars of international renown in various disciplines, Toyin Falola in history, Carol Boyce Davies in Black Studies, if I may so put it, having completed her BA and MA in the US to leave to Ife for her PhD, and other scholars who studied there.

    4 May at 02:33 ·  ·  2
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    Moyo Okediji Ifa is a knowledge system about which I am ignorant. I am just a baby playing with sand where Ifa is concerned. Thanks for your wonderful insight.

    4 May at 02:35 ·  ·  2
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    Toyin Adepoju 

    Ese oooooo....
    
    Forgive me if I mention that the awareness of one's limitations in relation to a body of knowledge is sharpened or even made possible by one's level of understanding of the implications and perhaps the contents of that body of knowledge.
    
    In a world where traditional knowledge systems like Ifa are outside the canonical systems that are part of the globally dominant educational system, and yet a scholar like yourself trained significantly in that globally dominant system is willing to publicly admit that there is much to know about the marginalized system that he does not know, in fact, that what is to be known is so significant that he is reduced to infantile incomprehension in comparison, even after having risen to the heights of a career in the globally dominant cognitive system, then something must be happening which is unknown to most.
    
    Isaac Newton used the same child playing with sand metaphor in describing his own cognitive limitations and yet we continue to stand on his shoulders. 
    
    Why is Ifa so highly respected by some scholars? 
    
    Thank you very much for your time which you have given generously to this discussion in the midst of your myriad interests in art and your perpetual work at the University for African Art.

    4 May at 02:48 ·  ·  3
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    Toyin Adepoju I dont necessarily expect an answer to my last post since this is only one of your interests and perhaps not a major one. I am simply happy that this discussion has taken place.

    4 May at 02:49 ·  ·  3
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