Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
Comparative Cognitive Processes and Systems
''Exploring Every Corner of the Cosmos in Search of Knowledge''
Abstract
This is a response to the need for better access to texts that lead readers into the inspirational power of classical African philosophies and spiritualities, texts of sublime ideational power expressed in mesmerising verbal art.
A few examples are described from the Ifa system of knowledge best known as part of the Yoruba origin Orisha tradition.
Part 1 of this series is ''The Need for Readily Accessible Inspirational Sacred Texts in Classical African Spiritualities:Inspiring Short Overviews of Yoruba Origin Orisa Spirituality''.
Categories
Poetry or Prose, Short, Long or Intermediate
Cosmological/Cosmogonic/Non-Cosmogonic and the Non-Cosmological
The Lyrical and the Lengthy
Sophisticated speech is perhaps humanity's first demonstration of movement from the purely animal to the human level. After speech, came literature, a form of verbal expression that creates meaning beyond the immediate point being made.
Verbal music, verbal pictures and stories of actions and thoughts are the major means by which this kind of expression works, a form of communication later recorded through writing.
One of the great ways of developing and spreading philosophical and spiritual ideas and their traditions is through texts, particularly written texts, a culture in which classical African philosophies and spiritualities are still far behind knowledge systems that emerged from those cultures which cultivated widespread writing.
A lot of published texts exist from the Yoruba origin Orisha tradition, one of the better textualized of classical African spiritualities. Yet, even this tradition suggests the problems involved in this subject.
If I want inspiration during a difficult time, which of these texts should I go to?
Can I use any of them for reflection and inspiration the way one would use the Bible?
One of the best known texts in the Orisha tradition, is ese ifa, literature of the Ifa system of knowledge, of the world's greatest examples of literature, vast, intricate and deeply varied in its content.
It demonstrates the literary, the spiritual and the philosophical as constituting the same complex, a unity of verbal imagination and meaning through which one may explore life's deepest possibilities.
Ese ifa, however, demonstrate broad variety in content and literary power, in both poetry and prose, and length. I present here very short descriptions of some of the greatest ese ifa known to me from my exposure in English to this multi-lingual literary tradition.
Cosmological/Cosmogonic/Non-Cosmogonic and the Non-Cosmological
The ese ifa I shall be referencing can be organized in terms of two major categories, the cosmological and the non-cosmological. The cosmological can again be divided into the cosmogonic and the non-cosmogonic. The non-cosmological may include the metaphysical.
The Lyrical and the Lengthy
The non-cosmological and the cosmological may be further organised in terms of other categories, such as the lyrical and the lengthy.
The Classical and the Post-Classical
Another category may also be recognised in the classical as different from the post-classical. The classical consists in ese ifa from the oral tradition, their composers unknown. The belief some hold that they were all composed by Orunmila, the orisha or deity whose wisdom is seen as underlying Ifa, is unsustainable, on account of the broad range of Yoruba history the ese ifa reference.
The post-classical consists of ese ifa composed outside the classical, oral tradition, created by known composers, likely composed as written as opposed to oral text, unlike the oral tradition in which orality preceded writing. Such ese ifa is represented by my own work, comprising hybrid ese ifa, derived from reworking and at times expanding existing ese ifa, and completely original ese ifa, composed largely or wholly without building on antecedent ese ifa.
These compositions represent an understanding of ese ifa as a body of texts demonstrating a range of literary structures which anyone may study and adapt. Within this context, the unique use of a particular literary structure in some ese ifa may be seen as constituting those ese ifa into a literary genre of their own. As representing a range of literary forms, a range of literary structures, universes of reference and styles of handling those references, ese ifa may be studied and adapted to the creation of new ese ifa,even expanding the traditional universe of reference of ese ifa in the process, and adapted even to contexts outside both the Ifa universe, however broadly understood, and the Yoruba language.
I thus see ese ifa as similar, in this sense, to oriki, ofo and other forms of Yoruba literature and the English poetic forms the lyric and the sonnet, the Indian verbal form the sutra and the Japanese haiku which demonstrate structures and orientations anyone may study and adapt to various contexts both within and beyond the traditional references employed by these forms. Wande Abimbola's An Exposition of Ifa Literary Corpus and Ifa Divination Poetry analyses these structures in some kinds of Ifa poetry using universally valid principles of Western literary analysis. Other kinds of ese ifa exist, however, such as the prose narratives in Cromwell Ibie's multi-volume Ifism.
How would such a practice of composing new ese ifa relate to the sacred character of ese ifa? Are ese ifa sacred on account of their content or because of how they may be used in particular contexts?
Ese ifa are often playful, at times depicting anti-social behaviour on the part of Orunmila. Ese ifa often use animal personifications indicating their imaginative character.
Within all ese ifa, one could also categorise styles of opening ese ifa poetry and narrative, this being an art form of its own.
Cosmological ese ifa dramatize approaches to the meaning, structure and dynamism of existence.
Cosmogonic ese ifa are imaginative accounts of the creation of the cosmos or the Earth or both. They can be understood as mythological forms exploring, in terms of imagery and narrative, perennial human questions, questions resonating across time and space, an effort that may be appreciated and could even prove inspiring whatever one's position on the issues addressed and the perspectives projected.
Dew descends from orun, the space of originating creativity, suggesting the shaping existence on Earth through the descent of ''asuwa'', enabling the coming together of the various components that constitute the world and the human being, from the hair on the human head to the grass of the savannah to fish in the ocean.
The seamless unity in variety of this complex of imaginatively vivid ideations makes this a globally powerful rendition of humanity's loftiest aspirations, rooted in the majesty of the physical world as it resonates with human social order.
2. The Poetry and Literary and Artistic Analysis in the First Chapter of Rowland Abiodun's Yoruba Art and Language: Seeking the African in African Art, a magnificent combination of mythic thinking and of elucidation of the mythic narratives. Lucid, luminous, philosophically elevated and conceptually profound in an endlessly evocative network of ideas.
One of these poems may be titled ''The Journey of Ọ̀rọ̀'', an entry into the core of Yoruba origin ideas about the power of language and of its literary expression, examining the roots of literary power in the relationship between literature and other forms of imaginative expression, ideas dramatized in the story of the journey to Earth of ọ̀rọ̀ from the mind and actions of Odumare, the creator of the universe.
Ọ̀rọ̀, as described in Pius Adesanmi's "Oju L'Oro Wa" means a subject of reference and the process of addressing this subject.This conventional understanding is developed by the unnamed oral poet in terms of a dramatization of ideas about the origins and ultimate significance of human reflective and expressive capacity demonstrated by ọ̀rọ̀, discourse,in its varied forms.
In this poetic narrative, ọ̀rọ̀ is personified as the complex of divine knowledge and wisdom expressed through the power of human thought and expression. Ọ̀rọ̀ roams the world naked but is dangerous to gaze at with naked eyes on account of its incandescent power. Hence ọ̀rọ̀ is approached through òwe , imaginative creations expressed in visual and verbal art.
This creativity demonstrates the character of oriki, a mapping of the nature of an entity through its history. This imaginative creativity enables an indirect engagement with the mysterious majesty of ọ̀rọ̀, dangerous in it's naked potency but the source of all human thought and expression, as this celebration of imaginative power through images and verbal rhythms may be summed up.
An expanded version of this pillar in Yoruba verbal and visual aesthetics, Yoruba Art and Language: Seeking the African in African Art, is due out in June 2023.
3. Iya Agba Series
Building on this centre, I integrate lines from other classical ese ifa and a broad range of texts from various disciplines and cultures, from the sciences to religion, in constructing a unified narrative reaching from cosmogonic origins to cosmic integration in Earth, a unity subsumed in the calabash image.
The original text is not powerful in a literary sense, though comprising images of great interpretive potential particularly in their resonance within the Orisa tradition, conjuncting Ifa, Ogboni esotericism and Orisa spirituality generally. The interpretive possibilities of these images became clearer to me from Judith Gleason's analysis in A Recitation of Ifa, Oracle of the Yoruba, perspectives igniting conjunction with other texts in Yoruba Studies, and beyond.
The venerable female, Iya Agba, having grown old, wishes to retire from the world to the peace and silence under the Earth.
She asks her children, the deities, the orisa, to bring her a calabash each, containing something of great value to them, to keep her company.
Obatala, Ogun, Soponna and Oduduwa between them bring a calabash of chalk, of mud, of charcoal and of camwood dust from a tree's bark, as offerings to their mother.
Building on this simple but deeply evocative story, I articulate the possibilities inherent in these images constructed but not explained or expanded upon by the original verbal artist.
I develop the originating inspiration in mobilizing commonplace items to shape far reaching evocations of human existence. These consist in the journey from animal to human life represented by charcoal, suggesting the discovery and use of fire in cooking, enabling the movement from eating food raw to cooking it.
Red camwood dust is understood as standing for the vitality of life enabled by blood. Mud is taken as emblematic of the union of earth and water without which Earth and its life forms would not exist. White chalk is seen as evoking the luminous yet mysterious sources of existence, enabling the convergence of possibilities imaged by the other symbols. This complex of symbolic forms is further subsumed in the personas of the deities they are associated with.
I expand the inspirational nucleus of the original text to actualize its possibilities in constructing an imagistic and narrative universe that is pivotal to the totality of Yoruba origin Orisa cosmology and its reverberations in the institutions of the central Yoruba institutions Ifa and Ogboni.
This image complex at the heart of these institutions is central to Yoruba thinkers' contributions to the perennial struggle to make meaning of human life by examining the implications of the material realities of existence.
These realities are represented in this context by charcoal and its association with cooking, camwood dust in relation to blood, mud referencing earth and water and white chalk dust evoking originating beauty both radiant and mysterious.
I take further the implications of these symbols in ''Developing Universal Ogboni Philosophy and Spirituality : My Journey''.
The Facebook thread of the post of the poem contains a rich debate on the validity of creating ese ifa after the ancient, canonical achievements of the classical tradition and particularly by a person, like myself, who doesn't have a traditional initiation, if any, into Ifa.
B. Original Poem with Extensive Commentary
Correlating various presentations of the calabash as metaphysical and epistemological symbol and ritual form in Yoruba thought, relating these with the calabashes of Iya Agba.
All cosmological ese ifa are metaphysical in that they address issues relating to the foundations of existence. Metaphysical ese ifa, however, might not be cosmological, in that they might not engage ideas relating to the origins, structure and progression of the universe, but address issues about fundamental and ultimate meanings and values.
The richest ese ifa known to me along such lines is ''The Importance of Ori''.
A sublime demonstration of English writer James Joyce's insightful concept of the ''jocoserious,'' the serious and the jocular unified. Incidentally, this is a central expressive strategy in ese ifa, in which the most significant metaphysical conceptions, ideas about the foundations of existence, are dramatized through playfully imaginative forms, in this instance, an exploration of what constitutes the essence, the ultimate identity, of a human being, in the context of relationship with the orisha, spiritual powers understood to underlie the universe.
The poem is an exploration of the Ifa version of the globally pervasive idea that at the core of the self is an immortal identity, embodying the self's ultimate potential. This subject is dramatized through the image of a group of deities gathered to discuss which of them can follow their devotee on a distant journey.
Memorable imagistic gymnastics, superb word play, musical similarity in variety of sentence structures, are all woven together to deliver a uniquely powerful expression of a universal idea, magnificently actualized by the Ifa oral poet.
The poem is anthologized in Wande Abimbola's Sixteen Great Poems of Ifa and is accessible online through the African Oral poetry site linked above in the title of the poem.''The twisted wooden stump which crosses the road in a crooked way.
Ifa divination was performed for the Lion,
''There is no one so wise he can tie water into a knot in his pocket.''
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