Critically examining conceptions of secrecy in African spiritualities facilitates an appreciation of kinds of secrecy, such as the distinction between what is secret bcs it is deliberately concealed from others, by those who know,what I describe as 'social esotericism', and what is secret bcs it cannot be known without the cultivation of cognitive faculties that are beyond the conventional focus of attention in society, what I identify as 'epistemic esotericism', implying the knowledge is not so much being kept secret from one but one is simply unable to perceive it.
This latter perspective, on 'epistemic esotericism', could be seen as suggested by Lawal's pithy but very rich depiction of the cognitive spectrum, from the conventional to the unconventional, from the physical to the spiritual, encompassed by the Yoruba concept of 'oju inu', 'inward eye, vision or perception' and 'oju okan', the 'inward mind', as different from 'oju lasan', basic perception, in his 'Àwòrán : Representing the Self and its Metaphysical Other in Yoruba Art', a description complemented by John Umeh' description of Igbo Afa theory of perception in After God is Dibia: Igbo Cosmology, Divination and Sacred Science in Nigeria, of ose naabo and ose ora, the eyes with which one perceives the physical world and the eye with which one perceives both the physical and spiritual worlds.
One could also refer to the withholding of the information required to learn how to cultivate such cognitive faculties.
Wonderful! In the various female figurine figures depicting the sculptures in various contexts you wrote onile. Did you mean onile as guardian or owner of the house or onilę as in earth Goddess?
In my youth the Ogboni has been represented to me ( a la influence of Christianity) as a secret dangerous society that captures footlose youngsters and bewitched them into money making gnomes ( a motif explored by Adebayo Faleti in Won Ro Pe Were Ni and also Akin Ogungbe the Yoruba dramatist.) Hence anytime I ran errands past their Iledi near my neighbourhood ( usuallybTuesday evenings around 7pm)I was always hyper apprehensive
My take on the Osugbo then was an object with mystical powers which members place on their shouldersvfor mutual recognition. Does the wordhave two meanings?
Linguistically Osugbo supports the diaspoiric movements of Imesi Ipole (Ekiti) people to coastal Ijebu settlements in antiquity.
The aspect of reworking the belief to individual usage which is the main source of interest has not been developed enough.
OAA
Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.
-------- Original message --------From: Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju <toyin.adepoju@gmail.com>Date: 02/10/2018 20:12 (GMT+00:00)To: usaafricadialogue <USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com>, Yoruba Affairs <yorubaaffairs@googlegroups.com>Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Reworking the Yoruba Origin OgboniEsoteric Order: From the Two to the Three : Multiplicity and Unity in anEarth Centred Spirituality and Philosophy
Reworking the Yoruba Origin Ogboni Esoteric Order
From the Two to the Three
Multiplicity and Unity in an Earth Centred Spirituality and Philosophy
Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
Comparative Cognitive Processes and Systems
"Exploring Every Corner of the Cosmos in Search of Knowledge"
Abstract
This essay lays the foundations for a philosophy and spirituality of nature through an elucidation of Yoruba origin Ogboni philosophy and spirituality. The essay is organised in terms of an enquiry into the value of Ogboni nature philosophy in relation to nature centred thought and art across continents, concluding with an outline of how Ogboni philosophy and spirituality can be adapted to a contemplative and ritual practice, in which images are engaged with as emblematisations of ideas representing realities that can respond to being addressed.
This exploratory strand is juxtaposed with a correlative visual and verbal exposition of Ogboni philosophy by reflecting on the aesthetic and symbolic potency of great examples of Ogboni art, demonstrating the integration of this art within the unified framework of classical Yoruba thought.
This essay is part of a series adapting classical African esoteric systems to individualistic use, as described in the introduction to an essay in the subordinate series to which this belongs "Reworking Ogboni and Gelede: Transposing Yoruba Female Centred Spiritualities in an Individualistic Context".
Contents
What is Distinctive about Ogboni Earth Centred Spirituality?Image : Embodiment of WisdomA Global Framework on Nature in Relation to Ultimate MeaningImage : From the Two to the ThreeAfrican Contributions to Understanding Nature in Relation to Ultimate MeaningImage : The Ancient Mother
Questions on the Character of Ogboni Nature Philosophy and Ogboni Esotericism
Image : The Supplicating AndrogyneReconstituting Ogboni Philosophy and RitualImage: Quietly majestic edan ogboniInvocations and Meditation Inspired by Ogboni Art and ThoughtImage : Sacred Structure of the Iledi, Ogboni Meeting HouseInvocationsImages : Onile Figures
Concluding Meditation
Sources for Invocations
Inspirational Quote on Ogboni ArtSubordinate Series to Which this Essay Belongs
What is Distinctive about Ogboni Earth Centred Spirituality?
The constellation of city lights around me reflect human ingenuity, evoking nature's creativity in the luminosities of the stars overhead. Surrounded by these luminosities as I take a walk, I ask myself-in the world of nature spirituality in general and veneration of the earth in particular to which Ogboni belongs, what makes this group distinctive?
Image:
Embodiment of Wisdom
A wonderful expression of an ideal of self containment, often projected through Ogboni art, at times amplified through alignment with cosmic symbols, as in this figure.
Babatunde Lawal in "À Yà Gbó, À Yà Tó: New Perspectives on Edan Ògbóni" sums up a part of this aesthetic: "A typical edan [ A central symbolic and functional form of Ogboni, a pair of male and female figures signifying masculine/feminine unity as central to human biological, social and spiritual existence, ] has a serene, dignified, and somewhat withdrawn look, communicating the composure and self-discipline expected of an Ogboni".
The stately presence of the figure above may suggest a deeply embedded knowing around which constellates the calm dynamism evoked by the secondary structures associated with the central form- the edan ogboni pair he holds, indicating the unity of male and female as children and expressions of Ile, Earth, the great mother/father, and the configuration of crescents and concentric circles resonating with the richly elegant beard and cap, the beard "signifying...age,experience, knowledge,and wisdom" as indicated by Lawal.
Crescents of lunar rhythms signifying regeneration and newness and concentric circles of creative transformation, increase and dynamic motion,motifs suggesting the rhythm of life and identified with the motion of a whirlpool, expansive powers associated with the mediation between entities and between states of being enabled by the orisa, the deity Eshu and by the orisa Olokun, identified with the creativity, depth and scope of the ocean, symbols aligning the human person with cosmic rhythms, constellate around the central frame, as these structures are identified in the almost verbatim summation in this paragraph of Lawal's description of these symbolic images in "À Yà Gbó, À Yà Tó". The bulging eyes, in one view, suggest in Yoruba art the ability to see beyond reality as conventionally understood.
Structural concentration is achieved in this sculpture as these various visual expressions converge on the tubular central form, a structural multiplicity and integration amplifying the self possessive calm of the face, like thoughts held in balance by a controlled mind.
The correlation of inward centring with an elegantly sinuous minimality of body is akin to the other forceful projections of contemplative self possession in sculpture demonstrated by pensive Buddha and Boddhisatva figures, Buddhist symbolisations of ultimate wisdom, exemplified by a supreme example of contemplative sculpture, the Bodhisattva Maitreya of the Japanese Asuka period in the Tokyo National Museum, an achievement to which the Ogboni sculpture is comparable in its quality of conceptualization and execution .
Peter Morton-Williams in "The Yoruba Ogboni Cult in Oyo" complements Lawal's summation on edan ogboni aesthetics quoted earlier in a description of an Ogboni cognitive ideal that resonates with the image above: "The senior grade of Ogboni will collectively know all that pertains to the orisa cults. They will also have been active participants in them and many will have gone deeply into their esoterica. The ritual of the orisa ceases to captivate the most thoughtful of them ....through their experience, age, and closeness to death they have transcended the ordinary orisa 'truth'-the conceptions expressed through the cults-leaving only Earth as the absolute certainty in their future. [ An ideal of ] judgement and wisdom [ inspiring the Ogboni priest who] carries himself with an air of cool detachment [ his attention including] the well-being of the community [ along with a realization that ] his own self-assurance is founded on something deeper [ the] immutability [ of ] the deified Earth".
Lawal, in "À Yà Gbó, À Yà Tó" suggests how such a mental orientation is attained: "Much of the society's authority derives from its role as the vital link between the community and the Earth that sustains it. Membership, which brings power and prestige, is restricted to a few individuals who have attained distinction in their professions and have proven to be people of high integrity and mature judgment. In the course of participating in various deliberations, a member gains considerable insights into human nature as well as local politics, traditional lore, religion, and philosophy. Above all, membership provides access to certain occult knowledge and powers for coping with the vicissitudes of life".
A Global Framework on Nature in Relation to Ultimate Meaning
"Why do I care?" I challenge myself. I care because in my journeys in search of ultimate meaning, I have encountered the incomparable correlation of the elements and the ground of being from the Indian Brihadâranyaka Upanishad, the magnificent vistas of cosmic transformation sweeping through nature in the poetry of the English thinker William Wordsworth and its corollary in the stupendous Starry Night, an iconic painting by Dutch/French painter Vincent van Gogh, French poet Charles Baudelaire's exquisitely mystical "Correspondences" in which nature is a mysterious companion of humanity, the marvelous elemental invocations of the English origin Golden Dawn esoteric order rituals, the sensitive beauty of Ayi Kwei Armah's evocation of Akan nature philosophy in The Healers, complemented by Owosu-Ankomah's distillation of Akan nature sacralisation in conjunction with abstract symbolism navigated by human forms in his visual art, the magnificent elemental evocations of Michael Scott's novelistic series The Alchemyst:The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel, the intuitive and yet carefully structured aesthetics of Japanese gardening and Zen Buddhism, in which huge landscapes and cosmic vistas are evoked through carefully contained space, the magnificent juxtaposition of the human form and nature in classical Chinese painting and the wonderful poetry and nature centred life of Japanese poet Matsuo Basho along with the sublime nature sensitivity of the Yoga of Amazement of the Trika Shaivism of Hinduism, among other verbal and pictorial journeys, as well as having engaged first hand in exploring sacred spaces in Nigeria's Benin-City, where a configuration of sacred trees in harmony with human constructs and activity mutually configure the urban landscape.
Image:
From the Two to the Three
Aesthetic power and symbolic force coalesce in the austere elegance and lyrical economy of this delicately shaped but majestic work which demonstrates all the marks of great art. An example of an edan ogboni, the binary constitution of human biological and social order and cosmic harmony expressed through dialogue between the gendered pair, both primordial and recurrent, archetypal and individual, a unified expression of Ile, Earth as primal androgynous matrix. The delicately molded genitalia and the tender grasp of her breasts by the female figure testifies to the procreative and nurturing imperative of the human couple that enables the perpetuation of the species.
Edan are "icons that represent simultaneously all men and women, the community, the founders of an Osugbo [Ogboni] [ iledi, central sacred space and meeting house] and its living female and male members [thus they are known as ] onile, 'owners of the house'-"Henry John Drewal, "The Meaning of Osugbo Art : A Reappraisal"
"a senior female Osugbu member from Ijebu [ stated] : 'Before people call someone Onile (Owner of the house) that person must be Onile, the owner of the land on which the house stands.' In other words, both terms refer to the same phenomenon, and to beings associated with the Earth or the underworld."- Lawal, "À Yà Gbó, À Yà Tó",
"According to Abiodun, Drewal and Pemberton (Yoruba Art and Aesthetics?)1991: 22-23), 'the Osugbo society [is] a society of female and male elders of a community. Osugbo probably had its origins in the sixteenth or seventeenth century among the Ijebu-Yoruba in the southern, coastal area. It subsequently spread west to the Egba-Yoruba and north to the Oyo-Yoruba where it is known as Ogboni. […] Among the Ijebu-Yoruba, paired bronze figures found in the Osugbo meeting house are known as Onile, 'Owner of the House', a reference to the meeting house (iledi), to the female and male elders of the community, and perhaps ultimately to the founding couple and the 'house of the world' (ile aye). In the Ife, Oyo and Igbomina areas Ogboni elders salute Onile, 'Owner of the earth' who is viewed as complementary figure to Olodumare, the High God [ the male pole of the ultimate creator, according to Lawal's in " Ejiwapo: The Dialectics of Twoness in Yoruba Art and Culture" ].' "- Note from Sotheby's. for "Yoruba-Ijebu Terracotta Head from an Osugbo Shrine", Nigeria.
The explicit development of a masculine/feminine dialectic in relation to the primordial primogeniture of Earth is at the core of Ogboni philosophy. Earth is a fundamental certainty of human being, a primary enablement of the only existence humans are certain about. Within this terrestrial matrix, the primary unit generating human existence through the perpetuation of society across time and space is the unity of women and men, a unity superbly projected in edan ogboni, a binary cluster of the figurine of a man and of a woman, often linked by a chain that enables the artifact to be worn around the neck as a demonstration of intimate identification with the principle it presents, a principle subsumed in the pair being collectively known as Ile, Earth, the androgynous parent of humanity, as described in Babatunde Lawal's "À Yà Gbó, À Yà Tó".
"Two Ogboni, it becomes three", the Ogboni expression goes, as depicted in Morton-Williams "the Yoruba Ogboni Cult in Oyo'" suggesting "a sign of incompleteness [ in terms of continuity of development ] and therefore a concern with process and time", the emergence of a third principle from the conjunction of the number two, enabling the eventual multiples of four,eight and sixteen, as demonstrated, for example, in the structure of the odu organisational system of Ifa, a central Yoruba knowledge system.
"the number two (eeji) suggests harmony or equilibrium; hence ejire (an epithet for twins) means 'the friendly and compatible two.' The number three (eeta), on the other hand, signifies dynamic power (agbara), both physical and metaphysical, a compelling force [associated] with ase, the 'power to make things happen', empowered at creation by Olodumare to link cause with effect, the physical with the metaphysical, the visible with the invisible, and the human with the superhuman. Thus the mystical union implicit in threeness transcends the intimacy and equilibrium commonly associated with twoness. Threeness in Ogboni symbolism alludes to a dynamic force uniting two elements toward a common purpose. In addition to its association with dynamism, occultism, secrecy, and spiritual bonding, the number three connotes completeness with regard to the span of life: childhood (morning), the prime of life (afternoon), and old age (evening)' ", the "evening" enabling entry into-post terestrial existence [thus edan ogboni] represent "a vision of life in terms of its completeness and transcendeence of time"-From "the number two to "old age(evening)" is a quotation from Lawal's "À Yà Gbó, À Yà Tó", slightly modified by removing intervening sentences so as to distill the core of the section. From "a vision" to "time", the last quote, is from William Fagg and John Pemberton, Yoruba Sculpture of West Africa, quoted by Rowland Abiodun in Yoruba Art and Language: Seeking the African in African Art.
Thus, another translation or version of the same expression reads "Ogboni meji l o mo idi eta", "Two Ogboni know the meaning and matter of the three", as rendered by Henry John Drewal in "The Meaning of Osugbo Art: A Reappraisal" an expression which may also be translated as "Two Ogboni grasp the foundational significance of the three or of the triune principle", 'idi' in 'idi eta' signifying the bottom in a physical sense, transposed, metaphorically, in this expression, to refer to a foundation on which a phenomenon rests as its pivot.
The explicit Ogboni expansion of the binary to include a third principle suggests the actuality in thought and human biology of the emergence of a generative outcome from the coming together of the binary, as in the conjunction of Odu, the feminine matrix embodying the essential identities of phenomena and Orunmila, the foundational intelligence underlying cosmic creativity, as this husband and wife pair may be described, generating the 256 permutations mapping all possibilities of existence in Ifa metaphysics.
An ultimate evocation, incidentally confluent with the explicit Ogboni vision and the implicit Ifa actualisation, of this man/woman/father/mother matrix in enabling animate existence on earth, an expression of the dynamism of the cosmos, a central vision of the Hindu and Buddhist strand known as Tantra, as represented by such works as the Saundaryalahari, the Billowing Waves of the Ocean of Beauty, the Vijnana Bhairava Tantra and a centuries persistent tradition of visual art complementing the verbal expression, in such texts, of dialogical relationship between the God Shiva, a masculine principle representing all men and the Goddess Shakti, a feminine dynamic embodied by all women, is dramatised by 10th century Hindu thinker Abhinavagupta, who opens a number of his books, such as the Tantraloka, Light on the Tantras and the Paratrisika Vivarana, The Secret of Tantric Mysticism, with this sublime concretisation of the ultimate significance of the sexual union of a loving couple coming together to conceive a child:
"May my heart, the core of my being which is the core of all beings, the innermost awareness that animates all manifestation, shine forth, the product of the exuberance of emotion due to the mating of my father and mother, embodying the bliss of the ultimate, one with the state of absolute potential made manifest in the fusion of these two, my father as Shiva, the foundation of being complete in himself, whose zest in creativity is manifest in her, my mother, as Shakti, the universal Divine Energy which expresses its stamina in ever fresh creativity, radiant in ever new genesis, my mother Vimala, whose greatest joy was in my birth and my father Simhagupta, when both were all embracing in their union. May my heart, which is the emission of vibrance from the couple and therefore full of the supreme nectar, shine, expand as the totality of the bliss of the Absolute".
My rendering of those lines amalgamates various translation and interpretations of the passage, guided by Bettina Baumer's Abhinavagupta's Hermeneutics of the Absolute: Annuttaraprakriya: An Interpretation of his Paratrisika Vivarana, which integrates, among others, Jaideva Singh's translation of and commentary on the Paratrisika, which I have also used, and Alexis Sanderson's translation and extensive commentary on a version of the lines in question in"A Commentary on the Opening Verses of Tantrasara of Abhinavagupta".
These verbal and sensual experiences in relation to nature have taken me far in constituting my own encounter with what Baudelaire in "Correspondences" describes as a unity tenebrous and profound, adapting William Aggeler's translation. This insight emerges for me through immediacy of encounter and imaginative and intellectual correlation of a breadth of exposure to the magnificence of the universe.
African Contributions to Understanding Nature in Relation to Ultimate Meaning
What is the contribution of my immediate biological ancestors, my fellow Africans, to this dynamic? What do they weave into the tapestry of conceptions of the relationship between nature and the meaning of existence?
The most compelling accounts I have seen so far, apart from Ayi-Kwei Armah and Owosu-Ankomah's adaptations of Akan nature philosophies, include Germaine Dieterlen's description of Peul pastoral initiation in terms of a correlation between the terrestrial world and its cosmic envelope as cognised though the patterns formed by the colouring of the skins of cattle, a conception underlying a cosmological navigation culminating in an encounter with Gueno the creator of the universe, as presented in "Initiation Among the Peul Pastoral Fulani" from her edited African Systems of Thought, expanded in Koumen, her book with Ahamdou Hampate Ba, Owen Burnham's depiction, in African Wisdom, of the relationship between the fragility of the plant Fonio and ultimate wisdom in the classical thought of an ethnic group he identifies as the Balanta Kanja of Senegal, to whom Fonio is "both the smallest and the greatest" ."It...fell to the earth [ spreading] the consciousness of the creator to all". "[Rippling in the wind, its music] evokes the "creative spirit, the giver of life, the gentleness of being, the entwined fragility of life and death...a weak, easily broken plant, yet strong enough to bend in the wind without breaking", Mazisi Kunene's account, in his Anthem of the Decades, of Zulu epistemology and cosmology in terms of animal symbolism and the significations of the ubiquitous traditional African artistic form and implement, the calabash, his evocation of vast temporal cycles in terms of the undulations of the snake resonating with snake symbolism in Igbo thought,aligning with the visual and ideational similarity between serpentine symbolism and the symbolism of the spiral in Igbo uli , Nigerian Cross River Nsibidi and Yoruba sculptural expressions, expressive possibilities emblematised by Victor Ekpuk's painting Sunrise, which adapts an Nsibidi symbol meaning journey, but also signifying the sun and eternity, a summation of human aspiration to transcend temporality through its terrestrial journey defined by the life enabling presence of the sun as depicted at the site of the Inscribing Meaning exhibition on scripts in African art. Uli spiral symbolism is also developed in Obiora Udechukwu's majestic painting Our Journey, in which motion, time and space within a metaphysical context is projected, another inspiring depiction of spiral symbolism being Babatunde Lawal's inimitable depiction of recreative power in terms of the spiral symbolism of Ogboni art in "À Yà Gbó, À Yà Tó".
Image:
The Ancient Mother
I doubt if there exists, in world art, a more unusual and yet powerful image of the maternal. What vocabulary can account for this blend of stylized and representational art? Solemnity and maternal nurturing coalesce in the arcane. A nurturing mother, as suggested by her holding the child sucking at her breasts, and yet loaded with strange powers, as dramatized by her beard and forcefully dynamic stylisation. This is the female half of the male and female pair of an edan ogboni, embodying the unity of men and women in generating and perpetuating human life, as demonstrating Onile, Owner of House and Earth, the persona of Ile, Earth, in her joint masculine and feminine identity.
What may be seen as the creatively atavistic power of some female edan is echoed in the section of an Ogboni initiation described by Morton-Williams in which the initiate "bends forward and touches the edan with his forehead and with his lips. The assembled initiates hail the Earth: 'Mother! Powerful, Old!' ".
These examples, verbal and visual, are comparable, in visionary scope and expressive power, with the most powerful of the gamut of responses to nature I have encountered in my cognitive treks across the globe, from the Inuit of the Arctic to animists in the Amazon in Joan Halifax' edited Shamanic Voices, to the awesome meditations of the German philosopher Immanuel Kant on the Sublime in The Critique of Judgement and his verbal painting of conjunctions between "the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me" in The Critique of Practical Reason.
Questions on the Character of Ogboni Nature Philosophy and Ogboni Esotericism
What is the contribution of Ogboni to these ideational and artistic developments? What does the group project into the patterns created by human exploration of the continuity between humanity and nature, between the mutuality of existence and of meaning demonstrated by these constituents of Earth? Ogboni art and spiritual culture suggest some distinctive insights into and engagement with nature and its powers, perspectives more evoked than stated, more dramatized than spelt out in the existing literature.
Ogboni veneration of the Earth , tantalizingly suggestive of profoundly arcane depths, is so painstakingly coded, the expressive system it embodies so carefully filtered as, concealing its depths, it passes in its surface expression to the outside world, that the spectator is reduced to the character in Franz Kafka's novel The Trial, who, after years of patient but perplexing waiting at the entrance to the combination of human structuring and cosmic order that is the Law, achieves no more than witnessing a radiance emanating from its depths, with no clue as to how to penetrate further, unless he is to walk through that entrance, membership in organizations, however, being responsibilities that such a solitary investigator as myself is not keen on, though I am inspired by those organizations.
What metaphysics and epistemology are demonstrated by Ogboni philosophy of nature? How does this fit within Yoruba philosophy and spirituality? Does Ogboni nature philosophy demonstrate Yoruba philosophy's combination of concreteness and abstraction with adaptive flexibility and potential for precise and more general correlations with other schools of thought across time and space? What is the relationship between Ogboni esotericism and Yoruba and non-Yoruba esotericism, esotericism understood as an acknowledgement of the mysterious range of human knowledge, a quest for the depths of a bottomless well, a quest intimately related to conceptions of the nature of the human being in the framework of the character of the cosmos?
What is the link between Ogboni philosophy of nature and Ogboni esotericism in relation to the understanding of esotericism, awo, in Yoruba thought as projecting a network of concepts, such as 'oju inu', 'ori inu' and 'alase' which develop the conviction that the human being embodies a range of perceptual capacities, from corporeal perception of the readily accessible surface of phenomena to levels of insight that include the extrasensory and the power to create effects that are not directly explainable through conventionally understood laws of nature, ideas implying a world of arcane knowledge and the human capacity to penetrate this world, a world uncharted by most people though engaged with by many at various levels of access, as well as methods of expanding engagement with this re-perception of the universe at the intersection of the known and the unknown?
How can the cognitive darkness represented by the inaccessibility of the penetralia of Ogboni knowledge be penetrated or reconstructed, thus achieving integration with one's understanding of the world's complex of approaches to the beauty and power of nature? Can deductions from the character of Ogboni art and the cognitive surface demonstrated by the range of Ogboni ideational structure publicly available take one a significant distance towards this destination?
Image:
The Supplicating Androgyne
Who, in the name of Olodumare, the creator of the universe as understood in Yoruba thought, could this possibly be? The artist remains within the bounds of the basic structure of the human form but has chosen to make that form unrecognizable as human. Amplifying the sense of the arcane the figure generates is the combination of a woman's breasts with an elongation between the sculpture's legs that looks like a penis, an unusual kind of penis, but one anyway.
Are we thus observing a version of Lawal's description, in "À Yà Gbó, À Yà Tó" , of bearded female Ogboni sculptures as evoking the distillation of occult power in a woman, a concentration dramatized by high level female initiates in Ogboni? May the combination of female breasts and what looks like a penis suggest that this figure integrates in themself both the feminine and the masculine, an androgynous father/mother who thus exemplifies the ultimate generative power that enables all forms of existence, a power whose unusual shaping projects them as beyond the conventionalities of human understanding, a force suggestive of Lawal's argument in " Ejiwapo: The Dialectics of Twoness in Yoruba Art and Culture", that the ultimate creator in Orisa spirituality is understood by some perspectives as an androgynous entity, an idea which may be correlative with Susan Wenger, in her review of Harold Courlander's Tales of Yoruba Gods and Heroes, on Olodumare, the ultimate identity of this cosmology, as ultimately transcending even the integration of such binaries to issue in an identity as "axiom paradoxon...beginning and consequence"?
What more powerful evocation of uncanny potency may be realized beyond the powerfully animal and bird like legs in harmony with the strangely humanoid form? Suggestive, perhaps, of the description of aje, exemplars of occult powers particularly embodied by women understood to enable them fly as birds or move with motion akin to avian elevation above the limitations of gravity, and thus of space, that confine humans?
In response to my inquiries on this work, Yoruba culture expert Suzanne Preston Blier states "It looks to be a modern reproduction, created in Yoruba style, modeled after the 18th century large Ogboni-linked sculptures [ Onile] that were set up in new towns". Henry John Drewal, an authority on Ogboni art, also responded, "This figure is definitely inspired by Ogboni imagery. , it relates...closely to an Onile figure that represents the "Owner of the House" — a reference to the Iledi or meeting house of the Ogboni society".
Having tracked the image to its primary source at the website of the auction house Sotheby's I read this summation, translated by the Chrome browser, on the figure:
"By its size, the richness of its ornamentation and the very high quality of its cast, this work stands among the most accomplished witnesses of the rare and prestigious corpus of onile figures. Each "house", or lodge, of the secret society possessed a pair of female and male onile figures ("house owner"). The latter "was placed in the most confidential space of...the meeting house of members of the association, namely its interior sanctuary..which preserves the most precious objects of worship" (Lebas, Arts from Nigeria in French private collections , 2012, 263). Unlike edan figures- which also worked in pairs but [ were] individual property - the onile sculptures were clan possessions. The reference [ of edan] to the founding ancestral couple redoubles here in the presence of masculine and feminine attributes, testifying to the double presence of the ancestors and their essential complementarity.
Characteristic of the oldest and most eloquent style of the Ijebu, this ancestral figure adopting an offering gesture is distinguished by the superb mastery of expressionist traits and exuberant adornment (scarifications and body ornaments). Added to this are the delicate, colorful marks, marks of time on the copper alloy, which reveal its age and its prolonged use".
Certainly not a figure to be encountered in dim light, or met in a sudden, unprepared encounter, akin to the Gelede Great Mother mask that is kept in darkness to incubate its powers away from human gaze that may profane the potent form or even be harmed by that dangerous and yet creative and compelling force, an "awesome power [ that] resides in its unknowableness", as described by Henry John Drewal in "Art and the Perception of Women in Yorùbá Culture" .
The bulging eyes are consonant with edan ogboni art. This convention in Yoruba sculpture is described by one scholar as suggesting the development of vision expanded to perceive various dimensions of existence, a demonstration of 'oju inu', inward vision, as different from 'oju lasan' ordinary perception, a continuum ranging from the conventional forms of insight represented by corporeal perception and visual cognition, to memory, imagination, critical thinking and intuition to the uconventional, expressed by extrasensory perception, dreams, trances, prophecy, hypnotism, empathy, telepathy, divination, healing, malevolence, benevolence, and witchcraft, adapting Lawal's summation in "Àwòrán : Representing the Self and its Metaphysical Other in Yoruba Art", witchcraft, in this context, representing a range of powers embodied in the self and transcending the limitations of human ability as defined by conventional understandings of causality, of space , time and consciousness.
The sense of supplication demonstrated by the figure's gesture suggests a sacred context, thus heightening the strangeness of the tableau generated by the figure but also bringing its arcane personality within the bounds of the familiar, thereby generating a sense of something related to humanity but not fully assimilatable within humanity. Is such a complexly unified identity not central to the character of the numinous, as analysed in Rodolph Otto's The Idea of the Holy, as a presence that inspires both a sense of distance on account of its otherness but compels fascination through its calling to something unfulfilled in conventional human relationship with reality, a non-rational element constituting the pulse of most religion, as the definition of this term by Websters Third New International Dictionary of the English Language may be adapted?
Dennis Williams, in "The Iconology of the Yoruba Edan Ogboni", states that "Ogboni art, is "iconic-archetypal, hieratic...a manifestation of eternal principle" [and] "is worshiped as the actual vessel of the spirit". If one were to meditate on this sculpture, would one reach a contact with the spirit this work could be understood to embody? To what degree could such an effort facilitate appreciation of the contention by Toyin Falola in "Ritual Archives" that "Objects encode the character of the being they represent", leading to the understanding that "Gods and goddesses generate around them a wide range of...texts and sounds, visible and invisible symbols, objects and signs"? If one were to encounter such an entity, its identity so close to the human yet so alien from it, how would one cope with the experience?
Image:
Quietly majestic edan ogboni
Reconstituting Ogboni Philosophy and Ritual
One may integrate the central Ogboni conception of veneration of the Earth with elaborations of this idea developed by its members, correlating these with other views on nature inspired by or constitutive of Yoruba thought, thus cultivating what may be seen as an Ogboni inspired integration of Yoruba nature philosophy and spirituality.
A key inspiration in such an initiative would be the work of Babatunde Lawal, on account of his efforts in demonstrating conjunctions between various female orisa, Yoruba cosmology deities, with Ile, Earth, the centre of Ogboni veneration, in The Gelede Spectacle: Art, Gender and Social Harmony in an African Culture, his arguments in "Ejiwapo: The Dialectics of Twoness in Yoruba Art and Culture", for the ideational integration of sky and earth, of Olorun, identified with the sky and with orun, the metaphysical zone of ultimate origins, with Ile, Earth, both of these constituting a unified entity represented by the spherical harmony of a closed calabash, Igba Iwa, the Calabash of Existence, elaborations complemented by his superb work on Ogboni conceptions of the feminine and the masculine/feminine dialectic in À Yà Gbó, À Yà To".
"What is the significance of such an initiative, of an effort to construct a nature philosophy and spirituality organized in terms of central motifs in Ogboni thought? Is such an activity relevant beyond those interested in Yoruba philosophy and spirituality?", I asked myself, as I gazed into the majesty of the pre-dawn sky, aglow with the diamonds of stars.
It would contribute to humanity's arsenal of ideational constructs, its network of ideas that help build value out of the experience of appearing from a place unknown onto the third planet from the sun and disappearing from it at a time unforeseeable to a destination much speculated on but not truly known in a way that everyone can attest to, if known at all.It would project, not simply accounts of relationship with nature in Ogboni thought and visual art but pinpoint efforts to locate the human/nature dynamic within the context of the meaning of existence, of the value of this relationship with that of which the human being is a part and yet which the human person can contemplate as different from but intimate to themselves.
In a global knowledge culture in which the richest studies of classical African civilizations, even in terms of their continuing vitality in the present, are ensconced in academic works most people do not know about or have access to, my contribution to uncovering these timeless powers within the publication context of social media and other online self publishing platforms, could contribute to lifting, for many, the veil on the tremendous reality represented by the amazing visual and conceptual creativity generated by Africa in its journey from the emergence of humanity on its soil to the present, and represented, in this context, by Ogboni art and thought.
This exploration facilitates bridging the distance between this ancient creativity and conventional understanding of form as evident in nature. Such a connection is particularly vital given the alienation of many Nigerians, and possibly many Africans, from the aesthetic principles and distinctive ideational and other forms of power created by classical African cultures, alienation enabled by Western colonialist, Christian and Islamic denigration of classical African spiritualities and their arts.
Invocations and Meditation Inspired by Ogboni Art and Thought
The power of Ogboni visual conceptions, its art, and the ideational contexts and ritual structures of this art project great possibilities of adaptation of this system by an enthusiast. Images of Onile and edan ogboni or pictures of such images may be mobilized in meditation as a means of identifying with or exploring the ideas associated with them. The structure of the Ogboni iledi, the Ogboni meeting house, depicted by Dennis Williams in "The Iconology of the Yoruba Edan Ogboni" may be adapted to the construction of such a structure, using materials of one's choosing where the symbolic forms, such as parts of animals, described by Williams, as used in the traditional sacralisation of the ritual space, prove inappropriate.
Image
Sacred Structure of the Iledi, Ogboni Meeting House
" sacrifices are made of a tortoise, cockerel, sheep, pig, snail, pigeon, and duck. Ile is then localized in the iledi by the burial there of the heads of these sacrifices. Associated with this burial are certain natural substances symbolizing the four elements of the system: Olorun (the Sky God)["O l'orun means 'the one who is, has, proceeds through, sustains,manufactures, inheres, etc. (li) [ the Zone of Primal Origins] (Orun)]' " from Susanne Wenger's review of Tales of Yoruba Gods and Heroes by Harold Courlander],Ile (Earth), blood (judgement), and human being. These are represented respectively by powdered chalk, pure black mud from the river, powdered camwood and powdered charcoal collected from food cooked by the members. These substances are gathered together in four calabashes previously used by members, and buried in circumferential relationship to the sacrifice.[ This is a very rich symbolic structure an identical forms of which in an ese ifa, an Ifa literary form I explore in depth in my "Iya Agba Series": " Classical Ese Ifa:Igbadu:Odu, the Venerable Old Woman Becomes a Calabash: Orisa Cosmological Narrative With Extensive Commentary", "Creating Hybrid Ese Ifa Using Classical Models :Igbadu: Odu, the Venerable Old Woman Becomes a Calabash " and "Initiation into Ifa through Odu/Iya Agba at Cosmic Nexus by Wande Abimbola and Judith Gleason" ] The site is then an Ile-the sacred centre of the iledi, and marks the spot where Onile is worshiped".
Image and text from Denis Williams "The Iconology of the Yoruba Edan Ogboni"
In such a context, therefore, the aspirant may make themselves into an iledi, an embodiment of the constellation of ideas about the place of the human being in relation to the cosmos as mediated through the earth represented by the iledi, the Ogboni meeting house. Examples of such internalisations of ritual space include the Western esoteric Ritual of the Pentagram which consists in visualizing sacred principles positioned at one's sides, front and back, in the context of invocations in relation to those principles,
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