Please forgive my asking you to share why you hold the views you do.
Your presentation contains various layers of assertions we need to distinguish and correlate-
Q- ''[ Ifa] is a lengthy educational and spiritual process that could actually last a lifetime.''
What is the content and goal of this process?
How does this process relates to ese ifa that inspires this discussion?
Is this process not open to development outside the traditional training system, and if not, why?
2. ''Ifa, as a body of knowledge, is not just the literary aspect of it alone (that is, the part that is committed to writing by academics), it is heavily spiritual, a cultural and comprehensive way of life.''
Q- What, in essence, is the character of this spiritual, cultural and comprehensive way of life, to the degree that it can be briefly summed up, as most spiritualities sum up their core distinguishing orientations?
Since ese ifa is a vehicle for the spiritual, cultural and comprehensive way of life you reference, is ese ifa not open to investigation and mastery along such lines outside the traditional learning system, and if not, why?
3. ''I (or you) can memorize and regurgitate ese Ifa, but that doesn't mean anything more than spewing out what the Yoruba call "Òkú Òrò" (dead, inefficacious words), mere gibberishes spewed out with no consequences.''
Q- Why should that be so?
What quality about ese ifa as traditionally understood gives it vitality and efficacy and are these values not accessible outside the traditional context, if not why?
5. '' Yes, Barber was right (by the way, she is Karin, not Karen*) by assessing Ifa as an all-encompassing body of knowledge, where you can find any theme or subject and almost anything in its universe. Barber is not suggestive of a porous traction that where anyone anywhere could improvise.''
Q- Why are Ifa literature, epistemology, metaphysics and divination, its core disciplines, not open to improvisation by anyone?
What are the criteria that define valid activity in these fields of knowledge in Ifa?
Ese ifa scholarship and Ifa scholarship generally will benefit greatly from the examination of the questions rather than the current unexamined approach centered in leaving the traditional views unquestioned.
Verbal language, being a fundamental feature of humanity, is perhaps the central human information system and is thus fundamental to spirituality, becoming strategic to cosmologies, prayers and rituals, with some cosmologies understanding language as primal, Hinduism, for example, describing the sound OM as the primal sound at the source of existence.
These issues are not unique to Ifa and are being vigorously addressed in studies of various spiritualities.
Analysis of those points you raised will help bring studies of the ontology-the mode of being- of ese ifa and Ifa generally, further from unquestioned religious veneration into critically examined religious theology and philosophy of language.
Thanks MOA.
The challenge we face in discussing the ontology of ese ifa is that we are often faced with declarations of opinion without analysis.
Please forgive my asking you to share why you hold the views you do.
It's when we start examining the logic of our views we begin to get at the heart of this matter.
Your presentation contains various layers of assertions we need to distinguish and correlate-
Q- ''[ Ifa] is a lengthy educational and spiritual process that could actually last a lifetime.''
What is the content and goal of this process as it relates to ese ifa that inspires this discussion?
2. ''Ifa, as a body of knowledge, is not just the literary aspect of it alone (that is, the part that is committed to writing by academics), it is heavily spiritual, a cultural and comprehensive way of life.''
Q- Since the discussion is about ese ifa, not Ifa as a whole, ese ifa can be discussed as a vehicle for the spiritual, cultural and comprehensive way of life you reference.
That being so, is ese ifa not open to investigation and mastery along such lines outside the traditional learning system, and if not, why?
3. ''I (or you) can memorize and regurgitate ese Ifa, but that doesn't mean anything more than spewing out what the Yoruba call "Òkú Òrò" (dead, inefficacious words), mere gibberishes spewed out with no consequences.''
Q- Why should that be so?
What quality about ese ifa as traditionally understood gives it vitality and efficacy and are these values not accessible outside the traditional context, if not why?
4. ''If you have the time and the will, you may follow the 7-8 outlined formula suggested by Wande Abimbola in his 1976 IFA: An Exposition of Ifa Literary Corpus. But remember that this was just a PhD dissertation in which the author was doing a text analysis of his observations. It does not suggest anyone could follow the formula and create an authentic ifa verse.'
Q- What qualities of ese ifa demonstrate or generate its authenticity beyond its literary structure and readily accessible content and why are these qualities not accessible outside the traditional system?
5. '' Yes, Barber was right (by the way, she is Karin, not Karen*) by assessing Ifa as an all-encompassing body of knowledge, where you can find any theme or subject and almost anything in its universe. Barber is not suggestive of a porous traction that where anyone anywhere could improvise.''
Q- Why are Ifa literature, epistemology, metaphysics and divination, its core disciplines, not open to improvisation by anyone?
What are the criteria that define valid activity in these fields of knowledge in Ifa?
Ese ifa scholarship and Ifa scholarship generally will benefit greatly from the examination of the questions rather than the current unexamined approach centered in leaving the traditional views unquestioned.
Verbal language, being a fundamental feature of humanity, is perhaps the central human information system and is thus fundamental to spirituality, becoming strategic to cosmologies, prayers and rituals, with some cosmologies understanding language as primal, Hinduism, for example, describing the sound OM as the primal sound at the source of existence.
These issues are not unique to Ifa and are being vigorously addressed in studies of various spiritualities.
Analysis of those points you raised will help bring studies of the ontology-the mode of being- of ese ifa and Ifa generally, further from unquestioned religious veneration into critically examined religious theology and philosophy of language.
great thanks
toyin
On Tue, 1 Dec 2020 at 15:49, 'Michael Afolayan' via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> wrote:
--"Anyone can learn these techniques and emulate the significatory universe of ese ifa or even adapt these zones of reference to other subjects. # Ese ifa, ̀as Karen Barber has observed, is what may be described as an assimilative genre in Yoruba literature, integrating other genres into its varied expressions. # The issue here is not whether or not ese ifa can be emulated. It can and I have done it, posting the examples online..." (Oluwatoyin Adepoju)
===
Oluwatoyin Adepoju:
You err in these assessments. I may not understand your concept of what you've christened "significatory Itime.fa universe", but this much I know: not just anyone can learn and "emulate" Ifa, as you suggested. It is a lengthy educational and spiritual process that could actually last a lifetime. Ifa, as a body of knowledge, is not just the literary aspect of it alone (that is, the part that is committed to writing by academics), it is heavily spiritual, a cultural and comprehensive way of life. I (or you) can memorize and regurgitate ese Ifa, but that doesn't mean anything more than spewing out what the Yoruba call "Òkú Òrò" (dead, inefficacious words), mere gibberishes spewed out with no consequences. If you have the time and the will, you may follow the 7-8 outlined formula suggested by Wande Abimbola in his 1976 IFA: An Exposition of Ifa Literary Corpus. But remember that this was just a PhD dissertation in which the author was doing a text analysis of his observations. It does not suggest anyone could follow the formula and create an authentic ifa verse.
Yes, Barber was right (by the way, she is Karin, not Karen*) by assessing Ifa as an all-encompassing body of knowledge, where you can find any theme or subject and almost anything in its universe. Barber is not suggestive of a porous traction that where anyone anywhere could improvise. In fact, if you ever listened to one of the late Professor Sophie Oluwole's conversations, you would hear the same notion. Indeed, if you send me your WhatAppable number, I would forward to you one of her conversations relevant to this matter not already heard it.
My point? Ese Ifa in its full authenticity cannot be emulated.
MOAOn Tuesday, December 1, 2020, 12:52:49 AM GMT+1, Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju <toyin.adepoju@gmail.com> wrote:
--Recreating a Scriptural Tradition
Creating New Ese Ifa: Questions and Vision
Collage of me in my study with correlative Ifa, Voodoo and Benin Olokun igha-ede symbols
Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
Abstract
An exploration of the issues involved in creating new forms of the literature of the Yoruba origin Ifa oracle.
Ese ifa are the sacred texts of the Yoruba origin of the Ifa oracle. These poems and stories of unknown number,] are used as part of the divinatry process, as Ifa's central information system and as sources for the Orisa cosmology to which Ifa belongs. Ifa, as part of the Orisa spirituality, is one of the world's rapidly globalising spiritual systems.
The composition of ese ifa has been done anonymously, dating from a period before the advent of writing in Yorubaland, an anonymity enhancing its air of timelessness, of divine inspiration at times attributed to it.
I, as an Ifa enthusiast operating outside the conventional training system of Ifa diviners and initiates, create new ese ifa, leading to debates at the intersection of the secular and the sacred, imagination and the spiritual, to which I respond in the passages below.
Ese Ifa is literature, as Wande Abimbola has very well demonstrated through his books An Exposition of Ifa Literary Corpus, Ifa Divination Poetry and Sixteen Great Poems of Ifa.
Being literary, it is verbalization projected imaginatively through techniques demonstrated by Abimbola.
Anyone can learn these techniques and emulate the significatory universe of ese ifa or even adapt these zones of reference to other subjects.
Ese ifa, as Karen Barber has observed, is what may be described as an assimilative genre in Yoruba literature, integrating other genres into its varied expressions.
The issue here is not whether or not ese ifa can be emulated. It can and I have done it, posting the examples online.
In fact, the theoretical and practical study of ese ifa, how to understand and construct it, enriches the cosmos of global literary study.
The question then becomes- does my emulating ese ifa expressive techniques make the outcome an example of ese ifa?
Are there other disciplinary criteria that must be satisfied to fulfill this goal?
That is the stance of Awo Fategbe in the debate we had on the thread of one of my Facebook postings of a traditional ese ifa which I had expanded using my own words.
Fategbe admired my effort but saw it as a contribution to secular literature that does not belong within the ese ifa corpus.
He argued for ese ifa as an oracular epistemology- a means of gaining knowedge- emerging from and activating spiritual realities.
Questions of the relationship between sacred and secular literature are fundamental at the intersection of religion and literature, the context where the ontology of ese ifa belongs, the frame in which it should be studied in comparison with other religious texts.
If ese ifa is understood as emerging from oracular inspiration, as Awo Fategbe argues, how may such inspiration be cultivated?
The construction of technically competent, artistically impressive ese ifa makes it clear that constructing ese ifa is not necessarily an esoteric process.
If it's argued that ese ifa is fundamentally a performative expression, actualized through relationships between diviner and client, as Noel Armherd argues in Reciting Ifa and as Olayinka Agbetuyi argues in a debate at the USAAfrica Dialogues Series Google group, how may one develop such relationships between actors and ese ifa, so as to facilitate using such verbal art as a problem solving, solution finding mechanism?
Are such questions answerable only from within the esoteric hermeneutics disclosed only in traditional Ifa training?
What of such innovators as those who describe themselves as doing Ifa divination without such training, represented by Jaap Verdjuin and his Independent Ifa school, a divinatory process on which he has published a book and the couple who have developed a system of digital Ifa divination?
Is it possible to cultivate relationships with spiritual powers described as anchoring Ifa, using ese ifa, Ifa literature, as a means of cultivating such relationships, akin to the use of literature as an aspirational and invocational vehicle in spiritualities across the world?
Would such strategies be unique to Ifa, particularly since it belongs amongst a complex of structurally and philosophically similar divination systems from Africa to Asia, from the Igbo Afa and Benin City Oguega to the Dahomean Fa and the Chinese I Ching, differing from them largely in terms of Ifa's greater verbal and visual artistic scope?
Like many humanistic spiritualities, the Ifa and the Orisa tradition within which it belongs privilege the individual self as the embodiment of the self's ultimate potential, the nexus of it's interaction with cosmos.
One view holds that the core of Ifa divination is in developing a relationship with the immortal core of the self, the ultimate unifier and enabler of the self's journey through physical and spiritual space and time.
Must relationship with oneself, even at such depth, necessarily be an activity someone else, such as the Ifa diviner, must do for one?
I am developing a do-it-yourself Ifa, one that actualizes Ifa's potential as a method of self exploration, navigating the unfolding links between self and society, self and cosmos, applicable to the daily challenges of living and their integration within the larger universe of life as a mission.
Nothing grows by remaining the same.
Ifa is on the move.
Also published in
Ese Ifa blog
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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
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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
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