Dialogues: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Oju L'Oro Wa : From Physical Visionto Witchcraft and Mystical Insight: An Intercultural Exploration of the Faceas Epistemological and Metaphysical Matrix in Yoruba Thought

Yoruba proverbs, Ifa verses, and traditions preserved in societies less touched by Christian missionary activities are the best places to look for the real meaning of aje (as a Yoruba phenomenon). I went to school and grew up in a Nupe town where as of the time 1968-71 there was no single native Christian. The churches (located at the outskirt of town) were built and patronized by only migrants, sojourners and traders. Traditional religious practices, including the famous Gunu, and Islam predominated. Yet among them, the witch ega or gachizi, were always portrayed as the cause of deaths, sicknesses, misfortunes, and tragedies etc.

I also spent my holidays in the 60s as a child with my maternal grandparents in a Yoruba town with a mix of very strong traditional African religions and Islam and Christianity. Here too, adherents of traditional religions (as well as Christians and Muslims) generally spoke negatively of witches (though they often mentioned that occasionally some witches opted to do good).

I also know of a couple of Yoruba masquerades (Egungun) , epitome of Yoruba traditional religion - one in my local precinct was called Ota-aje (nemesis of the witch) - that were dedicated to protecting society from the evil powers and plans of the aje. On about three occasions as a young boy I witnessed the coming to my grandparents town of an out-of town Sango troupe invited to come to neutralize the evil actions of witches. The refrain of the song they sang is still fresh in my memory even as I write this. Also, I had a late great uncle who was a notable ifa priest who took ill and died after a fearsome illness. The consensus explanation for his sickness and death was that he had on several occasions flouted the warnings of a witch and had through his priestly vocation rescued somebody who the witch was afflicting (the witch was supposedly feasting on the soul of the person, but this great ifa priest uncle of mine rescued the person from the witch) thus disrupting their activities and challenging their power, for which it was thought that he paid the ultimate price. While my great uncle was languishing in his sickness, some people, so the story goes in my extended family, had gone to beg the witch or witches (in a different village) to spare my great uncle. They were supposedly told that it was already too late to beg since they had shared the soul of this man.

It would seem then that the conception of a witch as very negative (usually death dealing) force among the Yoruba (and Edo?) probably has little to do with Christian missionaries. Rather, missionaries were more likely as do contemporary charismatic Christians in Africa , to have adopted the local understanding about witches and presented their own religion as an alternative source of protection from them. Lastly, also when I was growing up, I know of a notable woman, wife of an alfa - Muslim learned in the healing art and maker and seller of charms - who said (to my mother) that she would seek initiation into aje so as to ensure that her prospering son would thereby be safe from harm.

This general negative conception of the witch or of witchcraft seems to apply in large parts of Central Africa and East Afri.

The translation by William Bascom of an Ifa verse below is from page 459 of his (W. Bascom) Ifa Divination. There are a couple of other verses mentioning aje (witches) in a negative light.

Verse 225 - 2 459

There is someone who is favoring and indulging a woman with everything;

but the woman is a witch. She will not allow his affairs to straighten out. He

makes a sacrifice, but it has no effect; he makes medicine, but it does not work.

He should sacrifice six baby chickens, six sticks of birdlime,2 and seasoned

mashed yams because of this woman. They said he should carry them into his

farm. He carried the seasoned mashed yams into his farm, and he tied the

chicks to a basketry tray; he tied the sticks of birdlime to the edge of the tray.

The senior wife of this man turned into a bird and she flew to the farm. When

she reached the farm, she heard the cries of the baby chickens and flew down to

the ground; she saw the seasoned mashed yams and, as she began to eat them,

she stuck to the birdlime and she died.3

Ifa says there is a bird-woman4 who is standing beside this person. Ifa

says that he should make a sacrifice, so that she will not be able to kill him.

Ifa says that we are seeking advice about a matter, but that the person from

whom we are seeking advice is an enemy; therefore we should be careful not to

speak of it in front of this person, who will prove to be a tale-bearer.

2. A sticky substance made from the sap of a tree and used with a decoy to

catch parrots in the cornfield. Cf. verse 245-2.

3. Note that all of the items sacrificed are instrumental in catching the

witch.

4. A witch. Witches are believed to have birds and other animal familiars

and, as stated in this verse, to be able to turn themselves into birds.

The linkage of aje, Esu, and Orunmila in the verse below (Bascom Ifa Divination, pp. 556 - 557) would seem to provide a basis to argue that the verse predates Christianity by scores if not hundreds of years.

Iku ndana epin, arun ndana ita; aje oun Esu ndana munrun-munrun a da fun Qrunmila nigba-ti ara omore ko da;. . .

"Death kindles a fire of epin wood; disease kindles a fire of ita wood; Witches and Eshu kindle a fire of munrun-munrun wood" 1 was the one who cast Ifa for Orunmila when his child's health was not good. . . ."

Femi Kolapo

From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of OLAYINKA AGBETUYI <yagbetuyi@hotmail.com>
Sent: Friday, March 29, 2019 7:34:24 AM
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com; Yoruba Affairs
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Oju L'Oro Wa : From Physical Visionto Witchcraft and Mystical Insight: An Intercultural Exploration of the Faceas Epistemological and Metaphysical Matrix in Yoruba Thought

Let me draw Toyins attention to why he may be unsatisfied with Lawals prblematisation of the word ' witchcraft in Yoruba thought.

First of all let me state forthight that the Yoruba generally use ' oju inu' as synonimous with deep insight if we are to discard with transliteration outright.

Now to witchraft; the originary meaning bastardized by Christian consciousness ( the way the word ' Esu" was bastardized for the same purpose) for 'Aje' meant guardian of esoteric lores and not 'witch' in which the reductionist self serving Christian evangelism presented it. The Aje and Osoronga were originarily forces for good whose mystical powers were sought to unravel problematic situations. But as in all things which Christian missionaries prefer not to come to terms with, they are simply turned to manifestations of evil and the devil's work.

OAA.

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.

-------- Original message --------

From: "Emeagwali, Gloria (History)" <emeagwali@ccsu.edu>

Date: 28/03/2019 01:58 (GMT+00:00)

To: Yoruba Affairs <yorubaaffairs@googlegroups.com>, usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com

Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Oju L'Oro Wa : From Physical Visionto Witchcraft and Mystical Insight: An Intercultural Exploration of the Faceas Epistemological and Metaphysical Matrix in Yoruba Thought

I hope these are ancient enough.

Epics are like the Blue Nile, that leaves Lake Tana in the city of Bahir Dar,

flows to Tis Isat village, becomes a magnificent waterfall,

the Tissisat or Blue Nile waterfalls, and flows down into Sudan, and

eventually Egypt, taking silt and nutrients from its place of origin,

Ethiopia, all along the way.

The epic brings with it ancient perceptions and philosophies and ways

of thinking, and eventually may focus on a particular hero or villain

from a later era, but you have to decipher and appreciate its ancient

origins and contexts.

Professor Gloria Emeagwali
History Department, CCSU
www.africahistory.net

http://web.ccsu.edu/afstudy/archive.html

Chief Editor- "Africa Update"

www.vimeo.com/user5946750/videos

Gloria Emeagwali's Documentaries

2019 Distinguished Africanist Award

New York African Studies Association

From: 'Michael Afolayan' via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Wednesday, March 27, 2019 2:03 PM
To: usaafricadialogue; Yoruba Affairs
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Oju L'Oro Wa : From Physical Vision to Witchcraft and Mystical Insight: An Intercultural Exploration of the Face as Epistemological and Metaphysical Matrix in Yoruba Thought

"On a different note, let me recommend Oral Epics from Africa edited by Johnson and Hale. This wonderful text includes Soninke, Mande, Fulbe, Wolof and Central African epics. Several ancient epics from this region are there including the Epic of Wagadu (Soninke) and the Epic of Njaajaan Njaay(Wolof)
Mwindo Epic (Congo Region)." GE

I hope the fellow (Meshack?) inquiring about African epic traditions is paying close attention to these references.

MOA

On Wednesday, March 27, 2019, 3:42:56 PM GMT+1, Emeagwali, Gloria (History) <emeagwali@ccsu.edu> wrote:

This is a fitting tribute to Pius Adesanmi, too. Note the significance of the eye to ancient northeast Africans.The famous protective Egyptian eye comes to mind in terms of the psychic world (witchcraft).

On a different note, let me recommend Oral Epics from Africa edited by Johnson and Hale. This wonderful text includes Soninke, Mande, Fulbe, Wolof and Central African epics. Several ancient epics from this region are there including the Epic of Wagadu (Soninke)
and the Epic of Njaajaan Njaay(Wolof)
Mwindo Epic (Congo Region).

Professor Gloria Emeagwali
Prof. of History/African Studies, CCSU
africahistory.net; gloriaemeagwali.com
2019 Distinguished Africanist Awardee
New York African Studies Association

From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju <toyin.adepoju@gmail.com>
Sent: Tuesday, March 26, 2019 1:08:48 AM
To: usaafricadialogue; Yoruba Affairs
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Oju L'Oro Wa : From Physical Vision to Witchcraft and Mystical Insight: An Intercultural Exploration of the Face as Epistemological and Metaphysical Matrix in Yoruba Thought

"Oju L'Oro Wa"

From Physical Vision to Witchcraft and Mystical Insight

An Intercultural Exploration of

The Face as Epistemological and Metaphysical Matrix in Yoruba Thought

Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju

Compcros

Comparative Cognitive Processes and Systems

"Exploring Every Corner of the Cosmos in Search of Knowledge"

"Oju l'oro wa", "the face is the abode of discourse" - Pius Adesanmi

"Oju ni oro o wa" , "Oro, the essence of communication, takes place in the eyes/face)"-Rowland Abiodun

This concept is an example of the emphasis on the grounding of cognition in Yoruba thought, from the most concrete to the most abstract levels, on embodiment, on the biological and social enablements of knowing, as opposed to transcending or bypassing the human being's embodied self.

I was introduced to the analysis of this concept by Adesanmi's superb essay "Oju L'oro Wa". I encountered it again at the opening of an interview with Mary Nooter Roberts discussing the pan-African significance of Yoruba epistemology in relation to an exhibition on visuality in African art, where she quotes Abiodun's rendition, possibly from "Ase: Visualizing and Verbalizing Creative Power though Art" and Yoruba Art and Language: Seeking the African in African Art but omits his pairing of eyes and face in his translation, including only his references to eyes, perhaps because her focus in the interview was on Yoruba and African sculptural dramatizations of ideas about visuality.

Abiodun and Adesanmi are presenting ideas of fundamental significance in Yoruba thought, correlative with a galaxy of concepts in this body of knowledge and pivotal in the integration of this cognitive configuration into the global network of ideas. Adesanmi's interpretation addresses the face, Abiodun integrates eyes and face , both being correct, since "oju" in Yoruba can mean either the face or the eyes, although the distinction and relationship between them constitutes a rich conceptual bridge, central to the emphasis on embodiment, on the potential of biologically and socially constituted knowing critical to Yoruba thought.

"Oju inu" is a Yoruba expression that dramatizes the hermeneutic network, the interpretation of reality in general represented by interpretive strategies in particular bodies of knowledge, constellated by the eyes, in particular, and the face, in general, in Yoruba thought.

"Inu", the complementary term to "oju", in that expression, is particularly strategic, indicating inwardness, but inwardness in a cognitive and metaphysical, rather than a physical, biological sense. "Oju inu" is conventionally translated as " inward eye", "inward vision", but that translation may also be rendered in a manner that clarifies it, presenting it as as "inner perception" or "penetrative insight", among other possibilities closer to the complementary concept "oju okan", translated as "the mind's eye" by Babatunde Lawal in "Aworan: Representing the Self and its Metaphysical Other in Yoruba Art".

The classic summation of this concept for me is in a paragraph in Lawal's "Aworan", complemented by Roberts' masterly elaboration on Lawal's summation in that interview and her article on the exhibition the interview is about and the other works she builds upon, represented by Rowland Abiodun's rich exploration in "The State of African Art Studies: An African Perspective", taken forward in his Yoruba Art and Language: Seeking the African in African Art , these explorations existing in relation to other engagements with the same or similar subjects, such as Barry Hallen and Olubi Sodipo's "The House of the Inu: Keys to the Structure of a Yoruba Theory of the Self" and The Good, the Bad and the Beautiful: Discourse of Values in Yoruba Culture:

Portraiture, Spectacle, and the Dialectics of Looking

Since the face is the seat of the eyes (oju), no discussion of aworan (representation), especially portraiture, would be complete without relating it to iworan, the act of looking and being looked at, otherwise known as the gaze.

To begin with,the Yoruba call the eyeball eyin ojú a refractive "egg" empowered by ase [a peculiar form of creative energy perhaps associated with the life force] (mediated by Esu) enabling an individual to see(riran). As with other aspects of Yoruba culture, the eyeball is thought to have two aspects, an outer layer called oju ode(literally, external eye) or oju lasan (literally, naked eye),which has to do with normal, quotidian vision, and an inner one called oju inu (literally, internal eye) or oju okan (literally,mind's eye).

The latter is associated with memory, intention,intuition, insight, thinking, imagination, critical analysis, visual cognition, dreams, trances, prophecy, hypnotism, empathy,telepathy, divination, healing, benevolence, malevolence,extrasensory perception, and witchcraft, among others. For the Yoruba, these two layers of the eye combine to determine iworan, the specular gaze of an individual.

John Annenechukwu Umeh, on the Afa system of knowledge from the culturally cognate Igbo thought in After God is Dibia: Igbo Cosmology, Divination and Sacred Science in Nigeria, incidentally complements Lawal's insights on Yoruba epistemology

In Afa language, ose naabo is the two eyes with which one sees the mortal world, while ose ora is the eye with which one sees the Spirit and the world in addition. Ose naabo has the dualities or polarities of the material world namely: anya aka nni na anya aka ekpe, i.e., right eye and left eye.

Ose ora is Uche. Uche is the Super Mind/Universal Mind/Universal consciousness…

Lawal's summation, complemented by of Umeh, is remarkable, in my view, in describing the penetrative vision represented by "oju inu" as encapsulating what I would describe as almost the entire range of human perceptual capacity, from its conventional to its unconventional expressions, from corporeal vision, vision enabled by the eyes, to critical thinking, imagination and intuition, among the conventional range of perception,and, in the unconventional range, to extrasensory perception, trance and witchcraft, the last, controversial term being undefined by him.

I find this summation striking for four reasons.

It encapsulates almost the complete range of human perceptual capacity, the conventional and the controversially unconventional.

It indicates an understanding of perception as grounded in biology but reaching beyond the evidently accessible represented by biology to penetrate into less accessible, deeper and at times, abstract aspects of existence.

It sums up, in a manner both concise and expansive, almost the entire scope of my wide ranging exploration of cognitive possibilities, influenced by various schools of thought and cognitively catalytic environments, covering Western exoteric and esoteric thought, African and Asian thought, and others beyond these contexts, tangential to my development but affirmative of what I am gaining from those other contexts.

This expansive perceptual exposure has enabled me, through the sequence I have eventually come to understand Lawal's summation as providing, to experience the entire sequence of his listing, including extra-sensory perception and a central aspect of witchcraft as understood in Southern Nigeria, to which Yorubaland belongs, the experience of what I later came to understand from the Western esoteric school the Ancient Mystical Order of the Rosy Cross ( AMORC) as projection of consciousness, in which one experiences oneself as being in a location different from where one's body is located and interacting with other people at such a location, an experience inspirational to my efforts to investigate and share with the public African and particularly Nigerian witchcraft conceptions.

The grounding of this conception from Yoruba epistemology in the biological enablement of corporeal vision facilitates comparison with both related and dissimilar epistemic conceptions, from the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle's opening lines of the book that initiates Western metaphysics, The Metaphysics, " All [ people ] by nature desire to know, as evidenced by the delight they take in sight, because it enables them see the differences between things", on which basis he launches an inquiry into the the possibility of understanding what qualities unify the diversity of phenomena, an insight that would lead to an underlying cosmological intelligence, if I am interpreting correctly Jonathan Lear's summation of Aristotle's project in Aristotle: The Desire to Know.

The Aristotelian orientation may be related to further developments in the Western tradition, to those who, like Plotinus in late antiquity and Bonaventura and Thomas Aquinas in the Middle Ages, held that it was possible through the study of sensorily perceived phenomena, to penetrate to an understanding of the unity underlying that diversity, a unity represented by the mind of God, ideas also correlative with Hindu Tantra, particular the school of Sri Vidya and Trika, where sensory perception is key to the Absolute and with Islamic conceptions on human beauty as revealing insights into divine beauty, aspirations echoed, though not necessarily in the mystical terms of the medieval Christian and the Hindu thinkers by Stephen Hawking in A Brief History on Time on his hope that a few simple equations derived from the study of the material universe could sum up the structure and dynamism of the cosmos and thus reveal the mind of God.

The Aristotelian direction could also be related to the Western schools of thought that emphasize the value of embodiment in knowledge, such as George Lakoff and Mark Johnson's Metaphors to Live By and Philosophy in the Flesh:The Embodied Mind and its Challenge to Western Thought and George Lakoff and Rafael Nunez' How the Embodied Mind Brings Mathematics into Being, who hold, that perception and expressions are grounded in embodiment, ideas often understood as contrastive with the perspectives associated with a pivotal figure in Western thought, Rene Descartes, in what is described as his foregrounding of thought to the exclusion of sensory experience.

The Adesanmi and Roberts' translations of "Oju l'oro wa", however, insightful as they are, in rendering 'oro' as discourse, as Adesami does, and as 'communication' in the Roberts interview translation does, represent severe abbreviations of the concept of 'oro', its fuller semantic range demonstrated by Abiodun in Yoruba Art and Language, an exposition I reflect on in "Manifestations at Cosmogenesis", engagements with the understanding of oro as an intersection between ideas of primordial wisdom in terms of which the cosmos is constructed and human cognitive and expressive capacities, concentrated, in daily living, into human expressions of various kinds, suggested in the more circumscribed, everyday understanding of oro as any subject that is the focus of attention.

This understanding of the concept brings into alignment with various ideas of the relationship between verbalization and cosmic creativity, such as the account of the Word in the opening lines of the Biblical Book of John and the Hindu understanding of sacred sound and its verbal expression, as expounded in Andre Padoux's Vac : Conceptions of the Word in selected Hindu Tantras, conceptions leading, ultimately, to ideas of interaction between human culture and perceptions of existents beyond that culture, between human creativity and cosmic creativity.

Thus, beginning from the simple but rich expression, "Oju 'ioro wa", one could explore the entire range of approaches to knowledge, in terms of perspectives in alignment with or opposed to it's biologically grounded epistemology.

Also published on Facebook

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Dialogues

Friday, March 29, 2019

Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Oju L'Oro Wa : From Physical Visionto Witchcraft and Mystical Insight: An Intercultural Exploration of the Faceas Epistemological and Metaphysical Matrix in Yoruba Thought

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