Ògbóni
From Myth to Physics
Yorùbá Esotericism at the Matrix of Disciplines
A Response to Olayinka Agbetuyi
2
Part 7
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
CERN and Ogboni: Methodological or Incidental Parallels in Instrument Positioning?
Questions about the Implications of the Underground Positioning of Central Instruments in CERN Research and Ogboni Ritual
Differences Between CERN''s Large Hadron Collider and the Ògbóni Iledi Ritual Complex
The Rationale for the Underground Location of the Large Hadron Collider
Exploring the Logic of the Underground Positioning of the Ògbóni Iledi Ritual Complex
Cultivating Relationships with Spirits, Sentient Agents Unbounded by Material Limitations
CERN and Ògbóni: Methodological or Incidental Parallels?
Questions About the Implications of the Underground Positioning of Central Instruments in
CERN Research and Ògbóni Ritual
Thanks for acknowledging, following my earlier analysis, what you describe as "parallels in methodology" between the Ògbóni iledi ritual complex and CERN in placing their instruments underground, though you argue, in contrast, correctly, up to a point, in my view, that their goals are different.
How significant is the parallel in location of instruments underground by CERN and Ògbóni, one may ask? Does it really suggest parallels in methodology for these very different institutions, CERN, the nuclear and particle physics research facility and the Ògbóni iledi, a ritual space for working with àse, which may be described as the conception of cosmic energy in Yorùbá thought?
Do these locational parallels suggest methods fundamental to the logic of their activities? Do they represent techniques integral rather than incidental to their work? Are the underground locations of their instruments essential, and in what ways, to the character of the work being done by the CERN scientists or the Ògbóni ritual specialists? Methods of functioning central to the nature of the substances they are working with and how these substances may best be managed?
May the response to these questions illuminate the differences and similarities between these institutions, the technological, CERN, and the ritualistic, Ògbóni?
Differences Between CERN''s Large Hadron Collider and the Ògbóni Iledi Ritual Complex
CERN''s Large Hadron Collider is a scientific enterprise, described as the largest and most complex machine ever constructed, built in ten years as part of a project involving the collaboration of up to a hundred nations in an institutional setting engaging thousands of scientists, exceeding in those superlatives even space travelling rockets and space stations while the Ògbóni iledi ritual complex is a simple collection of mud, chalk, camwood dust, charcoal and heads of sacrificed animals, a cosmogram meant to represent Ile, Earth, understand as a sentient entity to whom the Ògbóni relate as universal mother.
The Rationale for the Underground Location of the Large Hadron Collider
I expect the CERN LHC, the Large Hadron Collider, is placed underground for reasons of space and safety. Its underground location takes advantage of space under the earth, the machine being sited under large areas of land in use for other activities at the Swiss-French border as well as under the CERN control systems and visitor sections manned by scientists and administrators above ground.
Secondly, the large amounts of energy released and used by the CERN underground machines are unsafe for human proximity. No one is allowed into the tunnels housing the collider once experiments in the machine are in progress so people are not affected by the radiation from the experiments.
The underground location could also facilitate the extremely tight security at the site, in which entrance to every section is carefully managed, even for the CERN scientists, yet the site is close enough to population centres to prevent the isolation of a desert location.
The underground placing of the LHC is thus a necessity of space, safety and perhaps security. It relationship to the organic character of the underground zone within which it is sited consists of the insulation the space provides to the radiation emissions from the experiments conducted there.
Exploring the Logic of the Underground Positioning of the Ògbóni Iledi Ritual Complex
Not much is publicly known about Ògbóni ritual theory and practice, on account of the extreme secrecy of the various schools of the order, with scholarly investigations of Ògbóni being not only few but tapering off to almost or certain non-existence in the second half of the 20th century.
Reliable inferences, however, can be made from the few but concise summations by Ògbóni members. These can be used in building on such richly evocative but only basically explained accounts as the symbol configuration provided by Dennis Williams in "The Iconology of the Yorùbá Edan Ògbóni" and which I describe as an Ògbóni cosmogram. Comments by Ògbóni members may also be enhanced through correlations with other accounts of Yorùbá ritual theory and practice.
Rich, though not always elaborate descriptions of the logic of ritual similar to that of the Ògbóni iledi ritual configuration are provided by Ògbóni initiate Susanne Wenger in describing her own correlation of art and ritual with her team at the Oshun forest in Oshogbo, in Yorubaland in South-West Nigeria.
A particularly telling example is the following passage from her book with Gert Chesi, A Life With the Gods in their Yorùbá Homeland, Wörgl: Perlinger, 1983:
Wine ferments only in the barrel; so sacred force ripens, secluded in the heart of matter. Our shrines and sculptures [are not primarily means of narrating myths, instead] Like wine barrels, they seclude the god's identity so it can once again ferment into some primal manifestation.
[These] shrines, walls and sacred art [are] a bridge between the gods and the human perceptive imagination, in order to create themselves anew in the image of anyone's own spiritual demands (138).
The essential aim [ in constructing sacred art at the Oshun forest] was to create coordinating centres of sacred force accumulation. To give the gods strength through stillness and to secure their dynamism's undisrupted presence in the meditative serenity of their forest home, we erected walls
(135).
These lines are beautiful in describing sacred activity in terms normally reserved for humans- the incubation of identity, of power, through contemplative withdrawal, often likened, in the human context, to a descent into darkness, darkness represented by insulation from external activity, an insulation generated, in this instance, though, seclusion in "the heart of matter" suggesting immersion within a material substance, perhaps the earth.
What is being described seems to be the recognition and intensification of a quality in nature understood as divine, as suggested by the reference to the "meditative serenity" of the forest homes of the gods. A serenity safeguarded through the creation of human made structures secluding these centres of divine presence, so as facilitate the accumulation of sacred force, as Wenger puts it.
This description of art as ritual is not identical with the creation of the Ògbóni iledi ritual space, since the focus in the Ògbóni space is not on a zone perceived as demonstrating any special quality, but simply on a spot on the earth of the iledi as a location in which symbolic forms are buried in the context of ritual.
The Ògbóni context suggests human creation of sacred space, rather than Wenger's emphasis on the recognition and safeguarding of sacred space in nature.
The similarity between seclusion within the earth in the Ògbóni context and the emphasis on nature in terms of concealed depths in Wenger's account, however, suggests a related logic might be at play in both situations.
The Ògbóni ritual complex is meant to represent the presence of Ile, Earth, at that spot. This representation concentrates the globally diffused identity of Earth at that location. This idea of concentration can be taken metaphorically, simply as an aid to the mind to focus attention on the idea of Ile, Earth, as an entity to which the Ògbóni relate.
It can also be taken literally, in the sense of inviting an intensification of the identity of Earth as a sentient entity, as an agentive force, as a personality, into that spot of the iledi, the better to permeate the environment with her presence and facilitate communication with her devotees.
Cultivating Relationships with Spirits , Sentient Agents Unbounded by Material Limitations
The combination of precision, variety and associative force of the symbolic forms employed, their gravity amplified by the sacrificing of animals, thereby adding animate entities to the ritual matrix, suggests that the iledi ritual complex is more of an effort to intensify or focus the presence of a spirit, a sentient entity that may be related with beyond the limitations of a physical form.
If simple symbolization were all that was the goal of the ritual construct, an object placed at the spot would have been adequate.
Ògbóni initiate and Ifá babalawo- adept in the esoteric knowledge of Ifá- Kolawole Ositola's description of the relationship between shrine construction and sustenance and the presence of the spirits invited to the shrine, as recounted by Margaret and Henry Drewal, reinforces this perspective:
A shrine is where a Yorùbá deity "sits," that is, where the spirit of the deity, which is an active force, may reside. It is composed of containers holding vital ingredients to activate the spirit; objects necessary for the diviner's performance [ or that of any other kind of ritual specialist]; often a formal "seat" or a base, which serves to raise the containers and other objects off the ground; and "medicines"[ an English translation of oogun, a Yorùbá term for a compact, portable ritual construct, which may also be medicinal] buried under the ground where the shrine is placed, which attract the spirit to the site.
Because it resides at that place, the spirit must be continually fed and nourished through sacrifice. And before it is fed, it should be attentive; thus, it is "awakened" with incantations and actions, such as spraying gin on the shrine.
If a person neglects his shrine, that is, if he does not offer it food-however little-the spirits will leave. Ositola stresses that it is the idea and the intention behind the gift that counts, not the size. Therefore, when a shrine is neglected, "all you are seeing are the images. The person has relegated the deities to idols, ordinary images . . . "
( "An Ifá Diviner's Shrine in Ijebuland," African Arts, Vol. 16, No. 2, 1983. 60-67+99-100. 64.)
This account suggests a shrine in this context as a means of attracting a spirit to a location and sustaining a relationship with that spirit, hence the emphasis on oogun, compact ritual forms "buried under the ground where the shrine is placed [and] which attract the spirit to the site" and on feeding the spirit through gifts the essence of which consists in the thought behind them, not their size, in the sense of a friendly relationship in which the person being given the gift is able to assess the intensity of the orientation of the giver, a relationship established at the level of consciousness, between the mind of the invisible entity and the otherwise invisible mind of the devotee, which is, however, open to the spirit.
This accounts suggests, therefore, that the spirits are not fed through ingesting the gifts, which they can't do, not being material entities, but are fed though the intentions of the devotee, communicated through the gifts, understood as concretizations of intention, as vehicles of orientation, thereby painting a picture akin to a human relationship, in which people are psychologically sustained by the sincere attentions of other people.
Why are the oogun, the compact ritual forms that are described as attracting the spirit, buried in the earth under the shrine? Why are they not placed above ground?
Wenger's account of another ritual space, a natural environment in the Oshun forest, could suggest an answer, "On the way to the suspension bridge one can see the entrances to the Igbo'fa, the new Ifá Grove. To allow ritual force accumulation, it is not open to the public.
(The Sacred Groves of Oshogbo, Schubertgasse: Kuntrapunkt.Verlag fur Wissenswertes, 1990. 20)
The association between sacred presence, concentration of spiritual identity through concealment, within the earth, or otherwise away from human contact, recurs in these accounts from Wenger and Ositola.
Wenger references "sacred force accumulation", a process in which "sacred force ripens, secluded in the heart of matter", a method of assisting the gods cultivate "strength through stillness [thus securing] their dynamism's undisrupted presence in…the meditative serenity of their forest home". The Ositola account describes the burial of shrine objects to attract the spirit.
The focus in both accounts, that of Wenger and that of Ositola, is on mutuality of action, in which the devotee and the spirit are mutually enabling, the devotee helping to create conditions conducive to the spirit while the spirit provides the values the devotee perceives in the relationship.
Wenger's depiction of a shrine as "a bridge between the gods and the human perceptive imagination" is correlative with Ositola's account of the intimate relationship between the spirit and the devotee through the medium of the shrine.
This is an imaginative relationship because it involves dialogue between the human being and an otherwise invisible entity whose presence is mediated through visual, often artistic forms, concrete or abstract formations, the shrine images referenced by Ositola.
Wenger's further summations bring these ideas to a clearer focus in relation to Ògbóni:
[ In Ògbóni ]it is taken for granted that the earth is not just the soil in which the farmer plants and harvests his crops, it is also the soil in which we plant and harvest in a metaphysical sense. The Ògbóni know that matter is a dimension of the spirit.
( "The Oshun Grove of Oshogbo: Symbol of the Crisis of Yorùbá Culture: Conversations between Susanne Wenger and Ulli Beier", Redefining Yorùbá Culture and Identity,27-36.35).
Wenger's depiction, in A Life with the Gods, of the spiritual significance of yam, growing under the earth and harvested from there for consumption by humans, reinforces this idea of matter as a dimension of spirit, a unity emblematized by growth within the darkness of earth which yet nourishes those living above the earth:
Orisa [ deity] Oginyon is the god of the yam, which means that he is the yam. And he is [also the orisa] Obàtala, the author of all inspired life. Through being the yam he is the sacred sustenance of matter; through being Obàtala he is the transcendent light dimension of that same matter. The yam is dark and grows and rests in darkness; but it is white inside, where it is sweet sustenance ( 113).
Thus, earth, in the Ògbóni context, is believed to embody powers of sustenance, biological and spiritual, which Ògbóni call upon in ritual. Thus, the Ògbóni ritual burial of symbolic forms in the earth is central to the efficacy of the ritual process, a process meant to distill these powers through maximum proximity to the terrestrial presence.
Reinforcing the order's relationship with Ile, Earth, as a unified, sentient identity, a venerated mother, Ògbóni are also understood as relating with expressions of Ile represented by spirits that emanate from the earth ( Peter Morton-Williams, "The Yorùbá Ogboni Cult in Oyo", 369 ).
Ulli Beier's The Return of the Gods: The Sacred Art of Susanne Wenger, 1975, 79-80, amplifies this understanding in describing the symbolism of the stylized roof of Iledi Ontoto, the Oshogbo Ògbóni meeting house reconstructed by Wenger and her artistic team, an account I present on page 12 of my "Cosmogeographic Explorations: Metaphysical Mapping of Landscape at the Oshun Forest and Glastonbury"( Scribd):
"Three enormous thatch roofs rise against the sky like three giant lizards". The reptilian forms suggested by the sweep of the thatch huts as well as by the dynamic thrust of the elongated sculptural forms they contain "symbolize the forces that inhabited the earth before [humanity], already charged with magical forces, which [humankind] tries to filter and use in [their] rituals for Ile, the earth spirit…"
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.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/CALUsqTSaKDpWm8Z4EGe%2Bxb3aW_5uoM5qHoaQDqMGSZ-uC-YHWw%40mail.gmail.com.
No comments:
Post a Comment