Ògbóni
From Myth to Physics
Yorùbá Esotericism at the Matrix of Disciplines
A Response to Olayinka Agbetuyi
2
Part 8
Collage by myself evoking matter and energy transformations in the earth, in nature in general, in the human being and in machines, mediated through images of CERN ( the European Organization for Particle and Nuclear Research) research and Ògbóni, Yoruba esoteric order, iledi,Ògbóni sacred space ritual structure, all centered in the figure of Onile, Owner of earth and of Human habitation on earth, centre of Ògbóni veneration.
Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
Comparative Cognitive Processes and Systems
"Exploring Every Corner of the Cosmos in Search of Knowledge"
Abstract
This essay is a development of the philosophical and mystical potential of the Yorùbá origin Ògbóni esoteric order. This effort is carried out by demonstrating intersections between Ògbóni cosmology, in its ritual activity, and scientific cosmology within the framework of its technological expression, particularly in particle physics, the study of the smallest constituents of matter.
These conjunctions are demonstrated in the context of relationships between an account of the ritual construction of the Ògbóni iledi, the order's sacred meeting house, and the activity of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, the European Organization for Particle and Nuclear Research, both creativities described as contrastive ways of engaging with varied conceptions of energy.
This essay is a response to queries raised by Olayinka Agbetuyi, in the USAAfrica Dialogues Series Google group, as a rejoinder to my article, "Ògbóni: From Myth to Physics : Yorùbá Esotericism at the Matrix of Disciplines: A Response to Olayinka Agbetuyi", which reacted to his engagement with my earlier essay published in the same group, "From a Horned, Naked Woman to Cosmological Physics and Explorations of Consciousness: Developing the Wisdom of the Yorùbá Origin Ògbóni Esoteric Order through its Multi-Cultural and Trans-Disciplinary Associations : A Voice from the Universal Ògbóni Fraternity".
Contents
Abstract
Evoking, Concentrating and Directing Àse, Creative Cosmic Force
CERN and Ògbóni : Convergences and Divergences in Terms of Forms of Energy Engaged With
Evoking, Concentrating and Directing Àse, Creative Cosmic Force
Permeating all activity in the Yorùbá understanding of the cosmos, however, underlying all individual actions and relationships, and particularly concentrated in sacred action, is the role of àse, a creative force understood as pervading existence, enabling being and becoming, existence and change, an abstraction expressed in the concrete particulars of cosmic being and dynamism.
Rowland Abiodun's "Àse: Verbalizing and Visualizing Creative Power through Art" presents a description of this concept in terms that mesh with Wenger's harmony of abstract and personificatory conceptions in describing sacred force:
Àse pertains to the identification, activation and utilization of innate energy, power and natural laws believed to reside in all animals, plants, hills, rivers, natural phenomena, human beings and orisa (310).
[It is believed that àse] inhabits and energizes the awe inspiring space of the orisa, their altars( oju ibo)along with all their objects, utensils, offerings and including the air around them.
…
Oju ibo also applies to the sacred architectural space where priests and devotees may be empowered or recharged with àse before undertaking any major task ( 310).
In "Understanding Yorùbá Art and Aesthetics: The Concept of Àse", Abiodun quotes William Fagg's pithy depiction of these ideas in a broader cultural context, valid in spite of the limitations of scholarship in Fagg's day represented by such terms as "tribal'" and "primitive":
Tribal cultures tend to conceive things as four-dimensional objects in which the fourth or time dimension is dominant and in which matter is only the vehicle, or the outward and visible expression, of energy or life force. Thus it is energy and not matter, dynamic and not static being, which is the true nature of things.
( African Arts, Vol. 27, No. 3, Memorial to William Fagg.1994. 68-78+102-103, 69, quoting Fagg's "In Search of Meaning in African Art," in Primitive Art and Society, edited by Anthony Forge. London: Oxford University Press, 1973.164).
Ògbóni iledi ritual, like all Yorùbá ritual, may thus be understood as engaging with a kind of energy, àse, described as inherent in every form in existence.
This ritual does this by using symbols summing up humanity's engagement with energy, represented by the symbolization of the human being by charcoal, in the context of the terrestrial location of humanity within the ambit of the creator of the universe.
This combination of diverse elements in a ritual context may be understood as a means of mobilizing this creative force through the synergy between matter, represented by the symbolic elements, and the human perceptive imagination, in Wenger's words, a synergy activated and focused through ritual.
This strategy may be interpreted through correlating Abiodun's essays, his referencing in those essays of àse theory and practice as described in Henry and Margaret Drewal's "Composing Time and Space in Yorùbá Art," in Word and Image : A Journal of Verbal and Visual Enquiry, 1987, 3,/3, 225-51, the exposition on the same subject in Henry John Drewal et al's Yoruba: Nine Centuries of African Art and Thought, 1989, 16-26 and its elaboration as the central thesis of Abiodun's Yorùbá Art and Language: Seeking the African in African Art, 2014.
One may thereby summarize Yorùbá ritual theory as being centered in the distillation, concentration and directing of àse, a cosmic force understood to enable being and becoming.
CERN and Ògbóni : Convergences and Divergences in Terms of Forms of Energy Engaged With
The CERN experiments are directed at the generation and application of energy in bringing particles into collision so as to study the outcome.
Ògbóni iledi ritual integrates symbols of humanity's relationship with energy within the human race's terrestrial and cosmological contexts, as a means of activating, through ritual, energy described as underlying all processes of existence, physical and mental, animate and inanimate, concrete and spiritual, an understanding of cosmic energy known as àse in Yorùbá.
The àse conception may be understood as describing a kind of energy, adapting the understanding of energy in physics, as the capacity to do work.
This kind of energy, however, understood as underlying all processes of existence, is described in a way that makes it more fundamental to the character of the cosmos than the conception of energy in physics.
Thus CERN technology and Ògbóni ritual may both be understood in terms of working with energy, different understandings of energy, as perceived within different metaphysical systems and using different kinds of instruments, both seeking to work with forces believed to shape the character of reality, material phenomena in the case of CERN, and non-material because not accessible to known quantitative measurement, in the case of Ogboni.
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