Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju :
Your problem seems to be that it's not the veracity or reasonableness of Soyinka's critique that bothers you - it's the identity of the critic, and there too you unwittingly commit the biographical heresy, after all Wole Soyinka is not celebrated or venerated by either hagiographer or detractor, as a confounded liar, on the contrary his credibility is not undermined but cemented by the values espoused in his Reith Lectures, which I recommend you pay some attention , and please stop exaggerating about the petty and the patently ridiculous such as his alleged " running battle with GEJ's wife"
This man ( Eddie Palmieri) just died.
Here's one of his early hits
Eddie Palmieri : Harlem River Drive:
" You all know the story -- how it all began
It took five days - and then came Man
Oh, the land was free; and so were we
No slavery - to lead the poverty"
The lyrics continued : https://genius.com/Harlem-river-drive-idle-hands-lyrics
Yes indeed,
and on the sixth day God
made man, the political animal
and so, no holds barred
we primates descend
from the cosmic sea, from
the compassionate, speculative,
mystical, sublime, to the profane,
partisan, patriotic, sometimes insane,
contemporarily political:
What Wole Soyinka says about Peter Obi
What Femi Fani-Kayode says about Peter Obi
The very last I read on this matter was PETER OBI IS A CHAMELEON by
Baba Kadiri, it's quite a long a piece that thus metaphorically begins:
"As we all know, chameleon is a cunningly deceptive reptile blessed with the ability to modify its skin pigmentation to reflect the predominant colour of its immediate environment. Most snakes, birds or other known Carnivore have no appetite for the chameleon, perhaps due to the fact that the skin is reportedly poisonous. Changing colour, combined with its slow movements and its swift swift and sticky tongue which is the longest in the world and can be launched and retrieved in a fraction of second makes it a predator in its own right. Insects and small birds are its major victims. Factually, the chameleon changes its colour not for self- protection but most importantly for its stomach."
As for me, over here in my quiet corner, I have no dog in the fight.
As the bird sang,
"You may be livin' in another country under another name
But you're gonna have to serve somebody, yes, you are…" (Yes, you are a servant)
And that's why you Gotta Serve Somebody
As a profound Nigerian national I suppose you have every right to pick and choose what interests you, to vote for Alhaji Atiku or the not so holy Peter Obi and if need be and your good heart so moves or leads you, to vote for some contemporary Biblical Barabbas or the name of the thief on the cross who was crucified with Jesus about whom Jesus said, "This day wilt thou be with me in paradise"
For your purview, some more food for thought, the first part of
PETER OBI IS A CHAMELEON By S. Kadiri
As we all know, chameleon is a cunningly deceptive reptile blessed with the ability to modify its skin pigmentation to reflect the predominant colour of its immediate environment. Most snakes, birds or other known carnivores have no appetite for the chameleon, perhaps due to the fact that the skin is reportedly poisonous. Changing colour, combined with its slow movements and its swift swift and sticky tongue which is the longest in the world and can be launched and retrieved in a fraction of second makes it a predator in its own right. Insects and small birds are its major victims. Factually, the chameleon changes its colour not for self- protection but most importantly for its stomach.
When General Sani Abacha took over power in 1993 and many Nigerians demanded that justice be done to the results of the June 12, 1993 Presidential election, be the young Peter Obi, then in his early thirties, cunningly presented himself as a lover of Abacha's dictatorship. Consequently, General Abacha selected him to be the Director of Nigerian Ports Authority. Obi's period at NPA was noted for importation of junks into Nigeria and coincidentally Obi got enough money from NPA to invest in Fidelity Bank.
After the death of Abacha, June 8, 1998, the plan for a democratically elected government in Nigeria began. Obi could not join any of the political parties in 1999 because most of them were anti- military dictatorship. However, by 2003, Peter Obi joined the APGA party led by Odumegwu Ojukwu to contest for the governorship of Anambra State. Dr Chris Ngige of the PDP was declared the winner of Anambra State gubernatorial election, 2003. Peter Obi challenged the result in the Court. While the case was pending in the Court, a dispute occurred between Governor Ngige and Chris Uba, the brother of Andy Uba who was Special Adviser to President Obasanjo. Both Andy Uba and Obasanjo were of the opinion that Governor Ngige should at least share the money budgeted for security with Chris Uba who had facilitated the election of the Governor. Ngige refused despite all manners of State's power deployed by Obasanjo to compel Ngige to comply. Thereafter, Chris Uba went public to declare how election result sheets were thumb printed in private lodges in favour of Dr Chris Ngige to become Anambra State Governor. Chris Uba later witnessed in Court against Ngige whose election was nullified six months to the 2007 Federal election and Peter Obi was immediately sworn in as the Governor of Anambra State.
In the 2007 Federal election, Andy Uba contested against the six months old Peter Obi's governorship. When Andy Uba was declared the winner of the election, Peter Obi filed a constitutional case at the Supreme court, asking it to determine if his four years tenure began when he was sworn in as a Governor late in November 2006 or not. The Supreme Court decided that his four years tenure began when he was sworn in and as such the April 2007 gubernatorial election in Anambra was null and void. Thus, Peter Obi was a two-term APGA political party's Governor of Anambra for 8 years before he handed over to Willie Obiano in 2014. During his 8 years tenure Anambra did not become New York, Paris, or London. Mostly, he deposited a huge portion of the Revenue Allocation received from the Federation Account into fidelity bank in which he had substantial interest. While the people of Anambra were afflicted with constant dysentery and cholera due to lack of potable water, Peter Obi invested billions of naira of Anambra money in beer brewing which was 50 naira per share then but worths only 5 naira per share today.
Back in 2012, Peter Obi publicly vowed never to leave APGA but 8 months after handing over to another UPGA Governor, Peter Obi the Chameleon changed his party colour to PDP. At the 2019 Presidential election, Peter Obi was on a joint ticket with Atiku Abubakar as a Vice-president candidate for PDP. After the eight years tenure of Muhammadu Buhari as the President, it was assumed that it was the turn of the South to produce the president as agreed by the political elites. Atiku Abubakar insisted on contesting in the presidential primary of the PDP. On April 29, 2022, Peter Gregory Onwuabuasi Obi and Atiku Abubakar were among 15 members of the PDP screened and cleared to contest in the PDP presidential primary election scheduled to take place on May 28, 2022. That implies that the PDP in compliance with Section 77 (2&3) of the Electoral Acts, 2022, must have sent register of containing names of its members to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) latest 28 April 2022 as specifically required in Section 77 (3) of the Electoral Acts, 2022. The PDP membership register thus forwarded to the INEC on 28 April 2022 must have contained the name of Peter Gregory Onwuabuasi Obi as a member of the PDP. However, four days to the PDP presidential primary election, Tuesday, 24 May 2022, P. G. O.O. resigned his membership of PDP. On Friday, 27 May 2022, Obi joined the Labour Party. On Monday 30, 2022, Labour Party had its presidential primary election and Peter Gregory Onwuabuasi Obi emerged as the presidential flag bearer of the party. If the Labour Party had complied with Section 77 (2&3) of the Electoral Acts 2022, it ought to have sent its membership register to INEC latest May 1, 2022, and the name of Peter Gregory Onwuabuasi Obi could not have been there since he was not a member until Friday, 27 May 2022. The implementation of why political parties are required to submit their membership register to INEC thirty days before their primaries, congresses or conventions is to ensure that is to ensure that a person must have been a member of a party for, at least, 30 days to be qualified to contest for an elected post on behalf of the party. Peter Gregory Onwuabuasi Obi was a member of Labour Party for 72 hours when he became their presidential candidate in contravention of *Section 77 (3) of the Electoral Acts, 2022, specifically enacted to prevent those who failed to obtain nomination of their party to contest for an elective post to cross over to any of the small party to buy nomination. That's how lawful Peter Gregory Onwuabuasi Obi the Chameleon is.
Recently, a Nigerian woman by name, Comfort Emmanson, on Ibom Air Uyo-Lagos flight AN 513 was involved in an altercation with Ibom Air's staff. On arriving in Lagos she was manhandled by the staff of Ibom Air before causing her to be arrested by the police and charging her in court where she was remanded in custody pending trial. A week earlier, a male airline passenger was also involved in a dispute with the crews of the airplane during boarding in Lagos. The Staff of the airline, not Ibom Air, did not report the incident to the law enforcing agent. Reacting on the two incidents, Peter Gregory Onwuabuasi Obi saw selective justice where Comfort Emmanson was arraigned in court but not Wasiu Ayinde. At the same time, Obi the Chameleon was apologizing to the Staff of Ibom Air for what he termed the unruly behaviour of Comfort Emmanson. However, NCAA has debunked selective justice according to the following link: https://www.vanguardngr.com/2025/08/why-ibom-air-passenger-emmanson-was-charged-to-court-and-not-kwam-1-ncaa/
*Peter Gregory Onwuabuasi Obi was Governor of Anambra State for eight years and during this period two-thirds of inmates in Anambra were people awaiting trials. Most of them had been in solitary confinement for over five years for offences which on conviction would not be higher than six months. Obi's compassion did not make him to release those innocent souls from prison, even though he had power to do so. We have heard about *Pandora Papers and Peter Gregory Onwuabuasi Obi's involvement in Offshore Companies in Tax Havens in the British Virgin Islands and Barbados. Obi remained as Director of Next International (UK) Limited while serving as Governor of Anambra State which was in direct variation of Code of Conduct Bureau and Tribunal Act. Obi's non- declaration of his Offshore Companies was in gross violation of the provisions of the Constitution of Nigeria that requires public officers to declare all their properties, assets and liabilities. If not for selective justice, people like X-governor Obi would have been behind the bar. Actually, the justice system in Nigeria is selective but as the Yoruba aphorism says, "Bi oju akata ba yo ewo, enu adie ko ni ao ti gbo," meaning if there's boil in the face of jackass, the fowl is not qualified to talk about it…
Great thanks Cornelius, for that passionate and illusive style of scholarship.
Yes, I admire Soyinka's writings and his pro-democracy political activity but his partisan politics does not excite me.
If truly he made those comments about Obi, where are his assessments of the stewardship of Tinubu as President or of Buhari?
When anyone dismisses a Presidential candidate such as Obi, who has a better pedigree than Buhari, whom Soyinka supported and has not disavowed nor does he have the identity challenges of Tinubu why should I be particularly interested?
Is this not the same Soyinka of "The Trouble with Buhari ", the most trenchant anti-Buhari critique before his Presidency enabled by those in the anti-GEJ camp to which Soyinka was central?
Is that not the Soyinka known for his problematic alliance with then Rivers State governor Rotimi Amaechi and his running battle with GEJ's wife?
Why should I take such a political commentator seriously?
Im tempted to divert attention from this response and check out what Soyinka actually stated about Obi but is that worth my precious early morning time?
Would Soyinka analyse why Obi was able to defeat Tinubu in Lagos, an epochal feat of the kind that has occurred only twice in Nigerian history, the first being Ziks victory in the SW in the 60s?
Will he compare the strategies used to nullify Ziks victory with that used by Lagos APC to regain ground in the subsequent guber elections through a rabid anti-Igbo campaign which some see as continuing through govt declarations and policies till the present, such as threats of rescinding certificates of land ownership and the renaming of streets?
Will he examine the actuality of claims that Igbos are actively competing with Yorubas for dominance in Lagos, declaring that Lagos is a no man's land free for dominance by anyone?
Is the Soyinka of 2015-2025 the same as the Soyinka of the 60s and the anti-Abacha struggle era?
I've just had a look at what Soyinka is described as stating about Obi and it seems to confirm my initial stance not to take Soyinka seriously on the subject.
He is quoted as stating Obi can't lead beceause he encourages the vitriolic behaviour of his more combative supporters and even controls such behaviour.
I am yet to see evidence corroborating that view. Ill be pleased to have it pointed out to me.
I also recall the same Soyinka openly supported and enabled the ascension of Buhari, a master of incitive political strategy, whose followers massacred innocent youth corpers beceause Buhari lost an election which it was clear he could not win, the same Buhari who declared that "the dog and the baboon would be covered in blood" if his earlier electoral defeat were repeated in the last race that eventually brought him to the Presidency, the same Buhari who used the Boko Haram insurgency as a political tool by declaring Boko Haram the work of the GEJ govt and on another occasion declaring the war against Boko Haram a war against the North?
Is this Soyinka the kind that should be taken seriously?
Is his current politics different from that of an APC stooge?
A superlative writer and spiritual thinker but an unreliable politician.
Having addressed what would ordinarily not command my attention bcs I would consider it not worthy of my time, I can now proceed to address other things in your comments.
I would not want my response to the sublime things you are discussing to be mixed with the unenriching discourse on Soyinka's politics so I'll continue in another message.
On Fri, 22 Aug 2025, 23:07 Cornelius Hamelberg, <cornelius...@gmail.com> wrote:Today in history: 22nd August…
the peopled planet
P.P.
Big Grammar plethora of political parties
not APC or PDP or LP
or NNPP or APGA or
YPP, ADC, PRP, SDP
not Bullshit Party, BP
not Pi Pi Pi or Koffi's
Oluwatoyin,
May the spirits be happy with you !
The spirits may be happy with every effort you make to augment and amplify their presence, to put the Osun-Osogbo Sacred Grove on the world map, and that too could be good for tourism - or could it be that they (the custodians of the Osun-Osogbo Sacred Grove) prefer secrecy and don't want too much publicity ?
Please permit this little phantasmagoria: From the mystical and magical to the practical give us our daily bread and butter, the practicalities - necessities that man is heir to, fresh air, clean water, and from there, maybe, pure fantasy, the numinous, the not so numinous, some more holy or not so holy gobbledegook, another crazy Footnote to Howl or much better, the holy fool , cosmic idiot ( c.i. ) or cosmic clown ( c.c. ) cosmic chi ( c.c. ) cosmic d …cosmic e, f, g sharp minor
"Old lady judges watch people in pairs
Limited in sex, they dare
To push fake morals, insult and stare
While money doesn't talk, it swears
Obscenity, who really cares
Propaganda, all is phony"
So you're "not too excited about naija politics right now ". Surely, you don't mean to say that because of this lack of excitement you are prepared to just sit back and watch Naija slide into the abyss, the bottomless pit of anarchy & corruption, a distinct possibility that Professor Jibrin Ibrahim has been warning about ?
At least you cannot accuse senior statesman Brother or Brer Soyinka of writing what some critics deemed escapist literature of the type cooked up by fellow Nobel Laureate Hermann Hesse whose rather paci-fis-tic , escapist literature is variously accused of not having confronted the Nazis frontally. But what do I know? His Siddhartha and Demian et al, set me off on a mystical quest, a wild goose chase, (this was while the Vietnam War was still raging and with the mining of the harbour at Haiphong, I was sure that so help me God, the world was coming to a complete and final END, but what do I know? Every day we're getting closer to it, every day the world is slowly but surely coming to an end, it's the second law of thermodynamics. Meanwhile, due to some kind of psychological blockage after several intentful false starts I have as yet been unable to zap right through his Magister Ludi .That's Hermann Hesse for me and there ain't any going back to him,from me…
Once someone has passed through the crucible, completed the seven journeys through the seven heavens, Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, we would be talking about the whole man, Insan al-Kamil//the perfect man, not about half of the man - and because there's supposedly no inner division within that kind of consciousness, since there's the political man whose moral/ human calculations are not dimmed or separated into another sphere nor does he stop acting in synch with - in Soyinka's case the spiritual man ; His Exalted Literary Majesty, His Ecclesiastical & Existential Eminence Cardinal Wole Soyinka, Voodoo High Priest of an Exalted Super-Natural Yoruba Cult (like tribal Judaism) or a universal religion, and thus we are not to suspect that someone descends from enlightenment to unenlightenment, that someone wakes up and then goes back to sleep - indeed Baba Ram Dass suggests that if The Buddha were to be one's therapist, at the end of the session/s one would emerge from the treatment fully enlightened and not revert to playing the role of Touchstone or some cosmic clown. ( And by the way in 1979, during dinner at a Stockholm restaurant, Soyinka , Kofi Awonoor and me, just we three, Kofi Awoonor ( Ewe super-cultural -nationalist) tried to ridicule me because I told him that according to Tibetan Buddhism, we all fell from the same tree. As you know in the region of comparative religious ideas/ mythologies etc, some people are not aware that in the human family there's also something known as the Bodhi tree, looking down on Shri Hanuman, who the Pakistani Muslims love to denigrate as "the Hindu Monkey God", like Salman Rushdie ( check out the opening of his "The Satanic Verses") they think that we all fell off the same Baobab or Mango tree not far from our natal hometown in wherever, as Joseph Brodsky put it when asked about his roots, he said, "Well, I'm not a tree"
I mention Soyinka*s steady, not periodic or evanescent commitment to the future of humanity - of the humankind in Nigeria, the redemption of the body politic , the collective soul of the one people who make up the Naija nation, and in that regard we're not talking about scattered body parts, some dismembered by the wanton looters, much worse than Boko Haram & ransom kidnappers who go for Nigerian bodies and material artefacts not giving a damn about their "soul" / neshama - whereas I sense that for Brer Soyinka who died daily - in "The Man Died" , and having passed through The Gates of Eden / Nirvana / Heaven, having walked on hot coals - last night I made this comparative point in a phone discussion with Baba Kadiri : while Peter Obi was gladly accepting an appointment from Sani Abacha as director of the Ports Authority, Wole Soyinka was on a world tour as self-appointed and anointed anti-Abacha ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary, campaigning against that dictator who was then busy trampling on everybody's democratic rights in Nigeria - which should lead you to conclude, dear Oluwatoyin, that in the political beast too there is no separation in conscience or consciousness between the beast that Abacha was said to have been and the outside democratic veneer of the beast concealed inside of his within. Achille Mbembe talks about this in the chapter on obscenity "The Aesthetics of Vulgarity" in his On the Postcolony
Nigeria is forever such an interesting place! I referred to The Brotherhood of the Cross and Star and now thank you for bringing our attention to Yeats' Blood and the Moon
By the way, because charity begins at home, I'm surprised - partly mortified really that you point at the moon but not at everyone's Nigerian darling Christopher Okigbo and his Heavensgate….
Speak of loneliness and Rilke comes to mind…
And still more associative thinking , rich and never ending Persian Mysticism and this place name, Konya , Konya and Rumi …
Other facts of life : Lagos Ownership & Identities: The Documentary
May your endeavours prosper !
--On Friday, 22 August 2025 at 01:41:34 UTC+2 Oluwatoyin Adepoju wrote:Very great thanks for the info on forests, for the Google search and for the rich links, Cornelius. I lot there I need to learn from.
Im not too excited about naija politics right now so I appeal to keep my peace on it.
On Thu, 21 Aug 2025, 23:29 Cornelius Hamelberg, <cornelius...@gmail.com> wrote:National Geographic Magazine : The Osun ForestOn Thursday, 21 August 2025 at 12:55:25 UTC+2 Cornelius Hamelberg wrote:Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
wonderful
like Armah's
beautyful
Many thanks for this
your latest evocative description
transporting us on the wings of magic words
to the sacred, mystic, enchanted, living, breathing
tropical Osun Forest, a spiritual location, much like
Ramana Maharshi's much venerated Arunachala,
on our mother earth, our people's planet.
I was going to question your certainty, going to ask you to please explain what you mean by
"I declare that this doorway is my symbol, that this mysteriously lonely, compellingly inviting and
forbidden entranceway is my ancestral door, that Soyinka and Abiodun, Wenger and
Onobrakpeya, Yeats and Abhinavagupta have passed through there." -
but then there was this brief
section of Matthew Arnold -
"Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the Ægean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery…"
of course not about the Sacred Ganges, ringing in my ear
and of course, what do deities have to do with misery ?
My tentative question was partly answered by your reference to
"Dialogue Between Self and Soul"
Many thanks for that too , because it left me wondering whether or not the likes of Walt Whitman , Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Henry David Thoreau also, possibly the pantheistic William Wordsworth "passed through there"?
Cornelius Ignoramus
Cosmic Ignorance
CI for short
Would like to know.
On Wednesday, 20 August 2025 at 11:42:47 UTC+2 Oluwatoyin Adepoju wrote:Nature, Sculpture, Architecture in the Osun Forest, Part 2Atmospheric Potency and Sacred SynergyThe Doorway of TransformationOluwatoyin Vincent AdepojuAbstractThis essay examines the Doorway of Transformation, a sacred threshold in Nigeria's Osun Forest, Osogbo, leading from the Esu shrine complex to the Oro Grove, the Irunmole Conclave, and the Ogboni Grove.The doorway symbolizes a portal through which the self is reshaped by encounters with the forest's majestic trees, sculptural forms, and spiritual resonance.This transformative experience, framed as an Esu initiation, bridges human consciousness with cosmic mysteries, illuminating the interplay of choice, existence, and interconnectedness at the crossroads of being.All pictures are by myself.Doorway from Esu Shrine Complex to Grove NetworkI declare that this doorway is my symbol, that this mysteriously lonely, compellingly inviting and forbidden entranceway is my ancestral door, that Soyinka and Abiodun, Wenger and Onobrakpeya, Yeats and Abhinavagupta have passed through there.This doorway is the door from the Esu shrine complex into the section of the Osun forest in Osogbo, Nigeria, constituted by the Oro Grove, the Irunmole Conclave and the Ogboni Grove.The picture above shows it from outside, looking at the forest path it leads into.External view of Doorway of Transformation showing part of the sculptural tableau, the Esu shrine complex, that immediately precedes it.Cognitive Concentrations through SolitudePeople are hardly seen there. Tourists do not visit. Likely because the space is consecrated to particular esoteric traditions, Oro and Ogboni, of the Yoruba origin Orisa spirituality the forest is associated with and therefore perhaps not open to the public.A US embassy dignitary and her large entourage were once taken through there in my presence as part of a speedy tour of the forest and its artistic wonders, its balance of vegetative wildness and human nature culturing, but this section of the vegetative zone is best appreciated in contemplative solitude.Such a context exposes one to the atmospheric density of something that predates humanity, something existing in its own universe apart from the human world, something not open to being subsumed by human vision, something ancient and mysterious that envelops you as you stand or move in silence in that space.Such an environment helps you better appreciate the immensity into which, by being born into the world, you have been thrown as a person entering the vast and mysterious universe, as depicted in the Urhobo Akporode concept, visualized by the artist Bruce Onobrakpeya in terms of glorious pillars emblazoned with symbols.Onobrakpeya's Akporode installation, in adapting the majestic verticality of trees as evoked by the Urhobo pillar symbol of aspiration to Oghene, the creator of the universe, incidentally evokes the mentally expansive encounter with such spatial regions as this section of the Osun forest, constituted by magnificent trees, vegetal clusters inspiring the effort to make sense of existence though symbols dramatising mystery, awe and the scope and limitations of the understanding gained.Transformative ConfigurationsQuestions of PerceptionIn a fundamental way, I never emerge through this door leading to this section of the forest as exactly the same person who passed through it to explore the wonders it leads into.Those glories are the tree constellations of the Oro Grove and the vegetative womb that is the Ogboni Grove.
Those magnificences also include the sculptural encapsulations of the Irunmole Conclave, complementing the sublimity of the Ogboni shrine house and the scuptural matrix of the Esu Shrine Complex from which one passes through that doorway leading into those varied majesties.The Oro Grove, the most uniquely compelling of the natural wonders of this place, is a relatively small space, its size ironic given its sense of spatial expanse generated by the cumulative force of the upward thrust of trees and the image of a complex network constituting a plant universe, seeming to cohere into something beyond the material configuration actualized by the plant world as perceptible to the eye, something that seems to shimmer at the entrance to the grove, out of the range of corporeal vision but palpable enough to be sensed by the attentive person, something akin to an invisible identity constituted by the relationships between the trees at its entrance, an unseeable web of radiance beyond the spectrum of human sight but glowing in a manner that touches sight without revealing itself, like the heat of the sun on the eyelids of a blind person, who is thereby able to sense the existence of the solar power but cannot see it.Is this enigmatic presence related to the Yoruba concept "ase", which Rowland Abiodun describes William Fagg as inadvertently referencing, a useful idea if we adapt the term "tribal" in Fagg's description in a creative way?:"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". ".Is it possible to see what is sensed in that magnificent forest space?Could such perception constitute " oju inu" , the inward eye, the Yoruba understanding of perception beyond the conventional range of the senses, as Babatunde Lawal states, perception into what is sensed but not seen in such a place as the Oro grove, opening one into participation in a universe of which the visible dimension of the forest is a limited expression, akin to Wole Soyinka's account of Yoruba Ijala poetry as celebrating "deity [as well as ] animal and plant life, the essence and relationships of growing things and the insights of man into the secrets of the universe"?Each tree a message from pre- human intelligences who planted them as a message to humanity as these figures left the Earth, contemplating which idea the tree that inspired it suddenly becoming enclosed in a cloud, invisible put potent, from which flashes the understanding that I am about to experience something beyond any previous conception I have had, this being a description of a long ago encounter of mine with a tree in Benin-City, an awesome experience sensitizing me to the mystery of trees, their capacity as catalysts for knowledge beyond the boundaries of the mind.I am suspended in a network of questions, marvels overflowing one's brain as one struggles with a version of Rudolph Otto's "numinous", "an invisible but majestic presence that inspires both dread and fascination and constitutes the non-rational element of vital religion".Her eyes closed, she contemplates the universe within herself. Opening her eyes, she gives birth to the universe from within herself, a universe rooted in herself.Abhinavagupta 's account of how the Hindu Goddess Kali creates the cosmos from within mirrors the forest's ability to awaken a mental universe, contributory to perceiving and shaping the external world.Looking up at the soaring trees constituting the Oro grove, a sense of an expanse akin to the limitless unfolding of the sky emerges, ablaze with stars spread over immense distances, as the watching consciousness is humbled and yet cocooned, minisculized yet uplifted by this glorious capsuling, existing within time yet seeming to enter into something beyond time through walking in silence into a grove in the Osun forest.Soyinka incidentally further projects the force of my experience of this vegetative zone as inspiring a senstivity to "the patient, eternal, immovable immensity that surrounds [the human person] an undented vastness [evoking] a realm of infinity [suggesting] the profound, elusive phenomenon of being and non-being..the bewildering phenomenon of the cosmic location of [the] human [person]".Who are those who designated this place as a zone of esoteric power, possibly making it out of bounds to the general public outside initiates of Orisa esoterica?What did they observe in this subsumation of trees, as different from others, that led to that conclusion?Why does my sense of the place as special, arrived at before learning of its particular sacred designation, converge with that of the cultural designators of this place?To what degree are those people and I responding to something inherent to the space or to qualities attributed to it by ourselves, triggered by what we see and sense there?"All the gods of the world were trees and animals, long, long before they entrusted their sancrosanct magnificence to a human figure", declares Susanne Wenger, the primary architect of the current recognition of the sacred identity of the Osun forest.Can that be true?Nature is likely to be humanity's first encounter with the sacred.The Doorway of TransformationSomething deep in me is touched by those explorations enabled by the doorway into the forest. The structure of my consciousness is subtly reconfigured.Through reverberations reaching deep into the self, blossoming in moments of reflection, I am reshaped in ways beyond my full understanding.Hence I refer to the doorway into this zone as the Doorway of Transformation and that entrace space as my ancestral door, through which have passed figures representing some of the greatest influences in my quest for the meaning of cosmos, of the place of the human being in the magnificent journey that began when the universe came into being, exploding into existence in a cataclysm the resonance of which continues to reverberate through the constellation of matter and energy, of principles of order and dynamism thereby generated.Through the inspirational effects of those spaces I reach greater clarity on my history.My mind is both elevated and better enlightened about my life as shaped by my quest for understanding.I am guided about my efforts in trying to penetrate the infinitely unfolding mystery that is existence.I therefore undergo an Esu initiation anytime I explore this section of the forest. I experience the transformations represented by Esu, the orisa or deity associated with the recreative possibilities of choices symbolized by the crossroads of existence, the orisa enabling connections between forms of being and modes of knowledge, between humans and spirits, between human intelligence and spiritual wisdom, and even, as a more radical view puts it, the orisa enabling consciousness of self as different from the world as well as awareness of connectivity with the world, the orisa to whom is dedicated the shrine complex through which one passes to the network of groves.NoteThis essay is a work in progress by a writer whose primary communication medium is social media.The further development of the essay requires a social media platform with more robust essay writing capacities than Gmail and Facebook the easiest to use on a phone, where the essay is being composed.This richer social media system would be LinkedIn which supports rich image integration into the body of the essay beyond the few images allowed into a Google group.Facebook enables more images but they can't be integrated into the body of the essay since Facebook Notes were scrapped, leaving only Facebook updates and image albums as the publishing media there.References and InspirationsInspirations
The presentation of the motif of the ancestral entranceway in the opening paragraph of the main body of the essay adapts Irish poet W.B. Yeats in his "Dialogue Between Self and Soul".The inspirational sequence of names in that first paragraph are not all explicitly reflected in the essay, some of them inspiring sections of the piece without being mentioned.I might include reference to them through the expanded image integration of the second edition of the essay.ReferencesWole Soyinka, Myth, Literature and the African World.Bruce Onobrakpeya, Akporode, Onobrak Arts Centre, Agbarha-Otor.Rowland Abiodun, Yoruba Art and Language: Seeking the African in African Art.Babatunde Lawal, " Aworan: Representing the Self and its Metaphysical Other in Yoruba Art".Rudolph Otto, The Idea of the Holy.Abhinavagupta, The Tantraloka, Light on the Tantras. English translation by Mark Dyczkowski.Hotter and Bruckman, Adunni: A Portrait of Susanne Wenger.Awo Faolokun Fatumnbi, Esu-Elegba: Ifa and the Divine Messenger.Henry Louis Gates Jr, The Signifying Monkey.Ayodele Ogundipe, "Retention and Survival of Yoruba Traditional Religion in the Diaspora: Esu in Brazil and Benin Republic" in Ivie: Nigerian Journal of Arts and Culture, Vol.1.No.1, 1986.--
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