The Philosophy of the Yoruba Origin Ogboni Esoteric Order and the Figure of Onile
A summary of the relationship of the Ogboni sculptural form known as Onile to the philosophy of the group.
Visualizing the Feminine in Ogboni SculptureResponses
Discussion with Eze Chimalio
My exploration of the meanings of the Ogboni sculpture presented after the images below is partly inspired by the discussion with Chimalio and was not part of the initial posting to which he responded, my surprise at his presentation of an understanding of Ogboni art identical with that of Dennis Williams' iconic essay linked below below propelling our discussion.
The Philosophy of the Yoruba Origin Ogboni Esoteric Order and the Figure of Onile
Onílè is an Ogboni conception indicating the owner of the land, and by extension the earth, which humanity relates with as primary enabler of embodied existence, generator and container of arcane powers, foundational companion on life's walk conducted on her surface, the earth which humanity transforms into living space.
Onílé is also this identity as the owner of the house representing this transformation, the house as sacred communal space of Ogboni, symbolic of the house that is the community, the community that is the microcosm of the world, the house of the world, ile aye, that is humanity's place in the habitat that is the cosmos, and, as one may expand this associative continuum, the cosmos itself a structure of constants and dynamism enabling it as the home represented by the possibilities it constitutes, a specific actualization of the unknown scope of the potentialities of existence.
This summation integrates and builds on various identifications of this figure, particularly Henry John Drewal's "The Meaning of Osugbo Art: A Reappraisal", Babatunde Lawal's "À Yà Gbó, À Yà Tó : New Perspectives on Edan Ògbóni", Rowland Abiodun et al's Yoruba Art and Aesthetics and John Pemberton et al's Yoruba: Nine Centuries of African Art and Thought.
Visualizing the Feminine in Ogboni Sculpture
Picture below: Collage by myself of pictures from various sources depicting representations of the feminine in Ogboni sculpture. The two to the middle and left are Onile while that on the right is another central Ogboni form known as an edan ogboni. The image on the left is also known as Ajagbo and comes from Frank Willet's African Art, that in the middle from the art dealer Barakat: Mirror of All Ages and Cultures and that on the right from Lawal's "À Yà Gbó, À Yà Tó".
Power and order, power and grace, power and arcane presence, erotic projections and the focus of non-human potencies within human form, these qualities are dramatized by this trinity of figures in two of which clitoral prominence is harmonized with the wild presence indicated by horned female heads atop mammaries succulent in their pointed ripeness or rested with time, perhaps in their satiation of past nourishing of children.
The figure on the left demonstrates projecting eyes, the split sphere of Ogboni art, most likely suggesting heightened perception, a variation of a convention of bulging eyes in Yoruba art described as symbolizing expansion of vision beyond the readily perceptible. The images in the centre and right have hooded, contemplative eyes, evoking carefully modulated, outward sensitivities and a quiet, inward gaze, both resonant with reverence of a sacred moment the works seek to capture.
The styles of visual perception evoked by these figures mobilizes the image of the eyes as a foci of values dramatized by these sculptural ensembles, visualizations of the human quest to perceive possibilities beyond the immediately accessible dimensions of phenomena, expressions of the understanding of vision as a means of transcending the concrete to link possibilities at the intersection of being and becoming, nature and humanity, humanity and non-human spirit, suggesting the capacity of vision in bridging "what we see [ and] what we could see, might see, and what we cannot physically see but can only imagine in the mind's eye", as described by Mary Nooter Roberts in a depiction of her curated exhibition, "The Inner Eye: Vision and Transcendence in African Arts", as presented by Arthur Nguyen in "A Conversation with Dr. PollyNooter Roberts on The Inner Eye".
On the left, the Ajagbo Onile figure dramatizes power and order evoked by the conjunction between compression of body and enlargement of head, the hyperbolic structure and grave features of the head and face lending gravitas to the structural concentration realized by the rest of the body, even as a necklace at the division of these ultimately unified design diversities gives a sense of understated elegance, projecting the delicacy of a feminine presence within an otherwise solemn tableau of uncompromising gravitas.
The design of the Onile figure in the centre employs elements of the Ajagbo structure, in the foreshortened lower regions and the calm power of the face, the elongated neck, thin, rather than medium sized in the other work, its elegance heightened by the delicate circlet that rings it.
The delicately carved face, rather than the calmly but powerfully projecting features of Ajagbo, in harmony with the expansion of the elongation of the neck to the entire midsection and hands, is actualised in an exquisite cylindricality enhanced by the tender ripeness of delicately pointed breasts.
These delicacies of form flow into the squat structurality of the lower section, the entire ensemble achieving a sense of delicate but concentrated power, allied to the evocation of a wild force radiated by the horns, disciplined in terms of the order projected by the modelling of the face and body of the figure, suggesting a focusing of the non-human within the human. The animal structures, in tandem with an elegant human form, project a stylized rendition of a particular kind of feminine beauty, "gazelle limbed in paradise", Leopold Sedar Seghor's line from his poem "Black Woman".
In "The Iconology of the Yoruba Edan Ogboni" ( Africa: Journal of the International African Institute, Vol. 34, No. 2, 1964, 139-166) Denis Williams describes Ogboni art as not symbolic but incarnational, if I might use my own term in order to better appreciate his understanding. Incarnational, in the sense of acting as the embodiment of a sentient entity, a spirit, rather than as simply evoking the character of that spirit. Reinforcing this understanding, Evelyne Roche Selke's From the Womb of Earth: An Appreciation of Yoruba Bronze Art ( University Press of America, Maryland, 1978, 11), depicts the akedanwaiye, the Ogboni bronze caster as so named by Williams, as not only inviting the spirit into the sculpture created with an understanding of the character of that spirit, but, through the highly ritualized intensity of the method of creating and ensouling the structure, foreshadows the identification of human spirit and spiritual Other the Ogboni initiate the edan ogboni is meant for should experience with the form/spirit unity that Ogboni art is understood as demonstrating.
What kinds of entities, what kinds of self aware and agentive powers may these works of art suggest, non-human personalities on in relation to whose identities they were or may have been created?
The values of power and force, potent and disciplined, wild yet contained, animal and human power converging in the erotic, the latter indicated by the prominent clitoris in the Ajagbo figure, resonate with the meaning of its name as a fighter, a fighter dispensing justice in relation to the society of elders that the Ogboni traditionally is, as described by Peter Morton Wiliams in " The Yoruba Ogboni Cult in Oyo" ( Africa: Journal of the International African Institute, Vol. 30, No. 4, 1960, 362-374 , 369-70), perhaps the first to discuss this figure in the literature on Ogboni.
What kind of entity may be suggested by the delicate beauty and contemplative power of the Onile figure in the centre, wild force channeled into sinuous resonances, sexual potency suggested by the jutting clitoris, pointing to the temporarily transformative power of orgasm enabled by that sexual organ, values conjoined in depicting a merging of the human and the animal in terms of a form of the feminine that is either unhuman or evocative of a potential of the human?
Ogboni, like the Earth and nature centred orientation of the Nigerian Cross-River Ekpe/Ngbe and its related esoteric groups, may be seen as an occult system for drawing powers from nature into human space, as described of Ekpbe/Ngbe by Elliot Leib and Renee Romano in "Reign of the Leopard: Ngbe Ritual" (African Arts, Vol. 18, No. 1, 1984, 48-57+94-96 ). The leopard, the totem spirit of the groups, represents " natural force, which lies beyond the confines and cognizance of society, and at the same time, tradition and authority, the force of law, and the continuity of the social order" [thus it is ] "an image of both the animal itself and the collective spirit of the Ngbe membership, living and dead ( 52 ).
Like the animal horns of the female Ogboni figures converge the powers of wild nature with human form, Ekpe/Ngbe ritual space is described as incarnating the wild force associated with the leopard within human space:
The ekat, the secret recesses of the Ngbe lodge, reproduces the natural domain of the leopard in the forest within the confines of the lodge. ....It is there that the leopard spirit is kept in captivity with a "chain around (his) neck to lock him while sleeping [ the chain image is metaphorical since the reference is not to a physical leopard but to a spirit identified with the leopard, the idea of the chain around its neck evoking occult methods used to keep a spiritual force localized within a defined zone while the 'sleep' of the leopard suggests the intangible force in question in a quiescent state] .The leopard spirit emerges from the ekat, where he has been ritually prepared, passing underneath the starch-resist, blue-and- white-dyed ukara cloth [when invoked by] the sounds of the Ngbe voice [ ritual drumming] [ 54].
Are the nature powers evoked in classical Ogboni sculpture, referencing the potency of distinctive beauties encountered in nature, aesthetic forms radiating elegance and grace resonant with human beauty but conflated with possibilities that define their non-humanness, actualizations to which European folkloristic and mythic conceptions of non-animal nature entities are correlative?
Do they suggest the African context of a natural space so potent with a pervasive energy that enables existence and creativity, consciousness and agency, as the Yoruba concept of ase and the Igbo ike may be described, that the geological and aquatic spaces of that natural environment, its flora and fauna, are particularly evocative of the numinous, as a friend once mentioned to me, correlative with the Western concept of an enchanted forest, ideas superbly dramatized in Arthur Marchen's The Great God Pan in a manner both animistic and mystical, unifying human and non-human nature while pointing, as in the evocation of Onile in Ogboni and the leopard spirit in Ekpe/Mgbe , to a totality beyond both? :
….half conscious, he began to think of a day, fifteen years ago, that he had spent roaming through the woods and meadows near his own home [wandering between reverie and dream] as he had wandered long ago, from the fields into the wood, tracking a little path between the shining undergrowth of beech-trees; and the trickle of water dropping from the limestone rock sounded as a clear melody in the dream… when suddenly, in place of the hum and murmur of the summer, an infinite silence seemed to fall on all things, and the wood was hushed, and for a moment in time he stood face to face there with a presence, that was neither man nor beast, neither the living nor the dead, but all things mingled, the form of all things but devoid of all form. And in that moment, the sacrament of body and soul was dissolved, and a voice seemed to cry "Let us go hence," and then the darkness of darkness beyond the stars, the darkness of everlasting.
In the figure to the right, the solemn calm of a richly bearded face surmounts robust breasts held by the figure's hands in a tender but eloquent grasp. The contemplative seriousness of the figure's expression, in relation to the evocative force of that erotic and maternal stance, is enhanced by a constellation of abstract shapes, crescents culminating in concentric circles that encapsulate the figure in a manner both honorific and evocative of profound but unknown significations, giving it a sense of stentorian majesty.
Crescents, emblematic of the phases of the moon, symbols of the transformative potency of female menstrual cycles. The culmination of the crescents in concentric circles perhaps suggesting lunar fullness. This fullness itself projecting the consummation of temporal motions the lunar rhythms represent. These rhythms dramatizing the full scope of temporal, biological, mental and spiritual rhythms of waxing and waning, as may be adapted from Lawal's interpretation of this iconography in "À Yà Gbó, À Yà Tó".
Further adapting Lawal in his description of aspirations to rejuvenation within the life cycle symbolized by the renewal of existence suggested by the crescent in its evocation of female biological rhythms, the human being as embodied by Ogboni may be seen as seeking to ride the rhythms of possibility that define existence, achieving rejuvenation fitting for various stages of the temporal cycle and perhaps even transcending it within the ambit of eternity.
Hence the Ogboni invocatory chant quoted by Lawal as a definitive expression of the group's values:
The old ones
increase with age
titled female elders
may children be born to live.
The Lord of secrets descend!
For longevity and prosperity! ( 37)
Lawal describes edan ogboni sculpture as dramatizing the values expressed in that chant, stressing "the dignified bearing of old age [ in] imagery...evocative of the ancient beginnings of humankind while projecting at the same time the aspiration of the present generation to live far into the future, beyond the physical present into ehin-Iwa, the afterlife. [ Values dramatized by ] "a hint of the eternal in the enlarged head" possibly suggestive of an enlargement of sensitivity to ori inu, the "inward head", the invisible and immortal essence of self symbolized by the physical head, this stylisation being part of a structure of visual conventions projecting a concern with the "essence and timelessness of being", in imagery that is inspired by the human figure, even as it aspires, through metaphor, to a "meta-empirical reference" (48).
This meta-empirical reference is partly evoked by abstract forms working in tandem with realistic or quasi-realistic figurations. The "essence and timelessness of being", the "hint of the eternal" referenced by Lawal, may as been as suggested by the conjunction between the life sustaining regeneration evoked by the figure's sensitive grasp of her ripe breasts and the evocation of recreative celestial motion suggested by the symbols of the crescent and the concentric circle.
An incidental conjunction with another cultural context in which relationships between the feminine, the moon and cosmic process is crystallized suggests the universal potency of these images.
Bhaskara's commentary on the Hindu sacred text the Shiva Sutras of Vasugupta opens with a salutation to the God Shiva, described as "the beloved of the daughter of the Snowy Mountains [ who] bears as a crestjewel the budding moon", a designation the implications of which Mark Dyczkowski interprets in term of ideas that incidentally encapsulate, with particular force, the association of the crescent moon with such primal divinities as the ancient Egyptian Goddess Isis to the Ogboni motif of the crescent and the modern Western Pagan correlation of the phases of the moon with the Goddess who enables being and becoming:
The movement of the moon is thought to continuously regenerate the universe. The moon is the visible form of the divine source of the life giving ambrosia...which, as it gradually wains, empties out of it to feed the entire universe of objectivity, including the gods...as well as the sun and other cosmic bodies along with the [human] body, senses and mind.
During the bright fortnight, as the moon waxes, it gradually reabsorbs into itself from its hidden source what it had lost in the dark fortnight. In this way, the moon, which consists of fifteen digits...increases and decreases continuously. This cyclic process of nourishment and self-regeneration is grounded in an unchanging, underlying reality that persists as the permanent element that guarantees the continuity and regularity of this process.
This element is conceived to be the sixteenth digit of the moon...Although invisible, it is the source of all the other digits and hence the one which ultimately nourishes the whole universe...and so is identified with the divine energy of the emission of consciousness...that incessantly renews all things ( The Aphorisms of Siva: The Siva Sutra with Bhaskaras' Commentary, the Varttika. Albany: SUNY Press, 1992, 9, 190-191).
Eternity may be seen as symbolized by the termination of the crescents in concentric circles, evoking relationships between temporal transformations and the consummation of time in infinity. The edan ogboni, in the spirit of the master of Konigsberg, may be seen as capable of inspiring contemplation of time and its consummation.
This visual and verbal discourse may range from the enabling of life by the human feminine as analogue of Ile, Earth, as nurturer of all terrestrial existence, and, as Immanuel Kant states in his Critique of Practical Reason, to the possibility of transcending the limitations of temporality represented by the minisculity of one's individual lifespan enclosed by the majestic motions of the celestial bodies [ evoked by the concentric circles of the edan] and the confinements of space represented by Earth, "a mere speck in the universe", by reaching through one's mind into infinity.
At the intersection of aspiration and effort, of image and idea, Ogboni art dramatizes the perennial human quest to reach beyond the mundane, to concentrate the human encounter with the glory, wonder, mystery and power of material existence, engaging with transcendent luminosities vibrating from the core of the concrete.
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