Initiation into Edan Ogboni
Foundational
Aesthetic and Cognitive Mysticism
1
Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
Compcros
Comparative Cognitive Processes and Systems
"Exploring Every Corner of the Cosmos in Search of Knowledge"
and
The Greater Ogboni Fraternity
"Earth, Humanity, Cosmos"
Abstract
An effort at developing a version of the crafting, ensouling and dedication to an initiate, of an edan ogboni, a central symbolic form and spiritual vessel of the Yoruba origin Ogboni esoteric order.
Dedicated to the indomitable scholars of Ogboni, and particularly to
Babatunde Lawal
whose scholarship is particularly strategic for an understanding of the Earth grounded, embodied and yet transformative character of classical Yoruba thought, at the intersection of aesthetics, epistemology and metaphysics to which Ogboni is distinctively central.
Contents
Abstract
Picture of Master of Equanimity and Seeker of Balance Edan Ogboni
Dedication
Aspirational Summation
Contemplative Matrix
Aspirations in Aesthetic and Cognitive Mysticism
The Inspirational Edan Ogboni
Intercultural Inspirational Contexts
Invocation through Aesthetic Contemplation
Ontological Questions in Ogboni Mysticism and Magic
Logic of Contemplative Method
Sequence and Sources of Contemplative Progression
The Master of Equanimity and Seeker of Balance
1
Aspirational Summation
My eye stable in the perception of the coming and going of everything from Nothing.
My emotions, the still, potent depths beneath the ocean surface.
The dynamism of being and becoming
the crescents of transformation
the circles of totality.
I situate myself at the intersection of the crescent and the circle
between change and stability
between transformation and totality
circles dividing and conjoining
flame breathed from flame.
Knowledge, meditation, action
evidence, inference, experience;
study, concentration, renunciation.
Grinding the elements of awareness
into a totality of understanding by their horrific power
discrete forms of knowledge
significant units of information
merge with universal concepts
unfolding their ultimate significance
erasing the boundaries between past, present and future
the living, the departed and the unborn
the physical and the non-physical.
Emerging as
the chameleon's all-round vision
the power to conceptualize the totality of life at once
the concavity of the ground of being
the circumference of eternity
the calabash of symbolic cosmic power.
The tongues of flame are infolded
into the crowned knot of fire
and the fire and the rose are one.
2
Contemplative Matrix
In the cave of mind, at the vortex of today and tomorrow, of being and aspiration, I was presented with an edan ogboni, to make as my own.
Not in the arcane consecration of the ancient ones, in which, through an exacting ritual, the brass form with iron stem, female and male powers in unity : luster and permanence, health, wealth, beauty, and fertility, the allure of the life giving vitality of the silken essence of the ancient woman steeped in transformative magic, alloyed with valor, creative energy, industry, hunting, warfare, strength for hammering, cutting, securing, bracing, vigor, and "cutting edge" vital for success and longevity, transformer of the abyss of transition where the cosmic will is given expression and reality takes shape, is incarnated by a spirit bound to the initiate.
I was invited to make the edan my own, in my own way, ensouled by a spirit invoked by my aspiration, that spirit that comes and goes as it will, everywhere present, nowhere confined, the power that enables the galaxies, the lifting of my hand and the firing of neurons in my brain.
Day by day, I kept vigil in my mind, through physical gaze and mental recollection, with the Master of Equanimity and Seeker of Balance, what the edan had become to me, embodying the mediation between my mind and my emotions, between awareness of myself and all facets of that awareness, between myself and the world, between my minisculity and its ability to contemplate the All.
Slowly, It rose within me, the Shadow, the Living Darkness, the Nothing from which All comes, experienced but beyond description.
O brethren, do not desert me!
We meet at last in conclave, in the no-time and no-place.
The mission entrusted ripens to fulfillment.
The other shore is in sight.
Aspirations in Aesthetic and Cognitive Mysticism
The lines above are a summation of an understanding of the path of Ogboni mysticism, a development of the mystical potential of the ideas and practices of the Yoruba origin Ogboni esoteric order as described in my "Metaphysics and Epistemology of Ogboni Mysticism", of which parts 1and 2 have been published on Facebook. The poetic expressions demonstrate an aesthetic mysticism and a cognitive mysticism, two approaches of this mystical philosophy.
Aesthetic mysticism involves reaching towards the source and unification of existence through the appreciation of beauty. This aspiration is pursued, in this context, through the contemplation of the aesthetic power of a particular edan ogboni, a central symbolic form and spiritual vessel of Ogboni.
The unity of structural balance and symbolic evocation actualized by the edan ogboni inspires imagistic conjunctions between the design of the edan and ideas from various cultural contexts.
These correlations thus motivate a cognitive mysticism, an effort to conceptualize and experience existence as a unity grounded in an ultimate source through the study of its constituents and the relationships between them. These convergences are explored through the ideas and images understood as evoked by the inspirational edan.
The Inspirational Edan Ogboni
Elegant yet powerful, arcane yet recognizable in its imaging of the human, the tubular concentration of form in harmony with the solemnity of the face give the work a sense of ascetic dignity, even as the twin edan ogboni held in its hands like a scepter of power project an impression of authority, reinforced by the constellation of abstract forms framing the human structure.
These abstractions suggest a symbol configuration bodying forth a scale of values more internal and abstract than related to the concrete, in the context of the figure's freedom from any embellishment of its bare form.
This example of edan ogboni shown in this text inspired the poetic lines that open the essay.
The picture comes from Getty Images and is possibly by the great photographer Werner Forman, his art capturing magnificently the sense of self possessed centring within a convergence of symbols dramatized by the edan.
Intercultural Inspirational Contexts
A foundational background to the approach to relating with edan ogboni represented by the poetic lines is the inspiration of Wole Soyinka's distillation of classical Yoruba thought and ritual through depth of identification in relation to breadth of intercultural evocation, evoking the universal human values the culturally grounded inspiration emerges from.
In the dramatic, poetic and autobiographical scope represented by Death and the King's Horseman, The Credo of Being and Nothingness, A Shuttle in the Crypt and The Man Died, for example, he either dramatizes the specificities of classical Yoruba cosmology, demonstrating its universally human essence or distills from while transcending the culturally specific matrix evident in his cosmologically oriented works.
These dynamisms are accomplished through language of inimitable beauty and memorable force, readily accessible yet pointing to inexhaustible depths in Death and the King's Horseman and The Credo of Being and Nothingness, a balance between profundity and simplicity different from the uncompromising expressive individuality represented by the lyricism of A Shuttle in the Crypt, the powerful narrative experimentation of The Man Died and the linguistic muscularity and imaginative daring of Myth, Literature and the African World, the latter being the book which transformed a central part of my inner self in the image of classical Yoruba thought and art.
Resonating with the Soyinka inspiration is the figure of Tibetan Buddhist poet and hermit Jetsun Milarepa, one of Soyinka's empowering recollections while in prison during two years of the Nigerian Civil War of 1967-1970, as narrated in his autobiographical The Man Died. Milarepa embodies an example of inner strength through the inward recollection empowered by the hermit's outward withdrawal, an inspirational mainstay of Soyinka's during his imprisonment, as evident in the autobiographical text and in A Shuttle in the Crypt, poetry written during that confinement.
Milarepa's poetry, in its conjunction with his life, is a magnificent demonstration of the humanizing of complex philosophical conceptions and their luxuriance of imagistic expression. He masterfully projects the architectonic power and beauty of the philosophy of his Kargyutpa school of Tibetan Buddhism, ensparkled by the emotional depth of his commitment to that vision, enriched by the tension between his emotional relationships with other humans and the focus of his heart on his uncompromising solitude in quest of ultimate wisdom, as demonstrated in Evans Wentz' edited Kawa Samdup's translation of Tibet's Great Yogi Milarepa and Garma Chang's translation of the Sixty Thousand Songs of Milarepa.
The form of the meditation represented by this reworking of edan ogboni ritual is also influenced by my decisive encounter with W.G. M. Gray's Office of the Holy Tree of Life, subsuming a cosmological scope of reference with detailed evocation of the nodes of this cosmological scheme, in terms of a poetic luminosity that brings wonderfully home the symbolism of the cosmos as a tree, remarkably developed by the Jewish origin Kabalistic Tree of Life.
The central source for the ideas adapted for the interpretation of the symbolic universe of the edan is Babatunde Lawal's "À Yà Gbó, À Yà Tó: New Perspectives on Edan Ògbóni", ideas on which I have constructed a network of associations drawn from various cultural contexts.
Listserv moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com
To subscribe to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue+subscribe@googlegroups.com
Current archives at http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
Early archives at http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "USA Africa Dialogue Series" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to usaafricadialogue+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
No comments:
Post a Comment