A moving, mouth watering poem from Chidi.
His work in both Nigerian Pidgin English and Standard English has clearly grown over the years.
Chidi, could you please explain what onu ngara is?
Correlating Chukwu, Chi and the Sun
Chinua Achebe's " Chi in Igbo Cosmology" in Morning Yet on Creation Day and African Philosophy : An Anthology by Emmanuel Chukwudi Eze
and Ogonna Agu, The Book of Dawn and Invocations : The Search for Philosophic Truth by an African Initiate.
Agu's analysis of relationships between Chukwu, the sun and the kolanut ritual is fantastic and empowers considerably Achebe's comparatively tentative but striking formulations.
Agu presents the analysis in the introduction and develops a poetic sequence based on it in the chapter "Abu Chi Na Ubosi : Song of the Light of Dawn".
Like the other poems in the book this chapter is written both in Igbo and in English.
The concept of Chukwu dwelling in the sun may not necessarily be understood as Chukwu being localised to the sun. Various cosmologies understand a supreme deity in relation to the sun in an agentive and symbolic sense. In such contexts, the sun is a manifestation and symbol of that ultimate power, a particular concentration of that power. This sense of manifestation and focus may be understood in terms of "dwelling", perhaps, without presenting that ultimate potency purely in terms of localisation to the discrete but relatively centrally powerful phenomenon represented by the solar force.
Very impressive presentations in correlating abstract ideas with natural forms while retaining a sensitivity to their abstract character include the superb analysis in Evans Pritchard's Nuer Religion on relationships between the abstraction and pervasiveness of the supreme being in relation to the manifestations of that being in nature and Sarah Allan's poetically analytical The Way of Power and Sprouts of Virtue on the imagery of water in classical Chinese thought.
Variety and Scope in Orally Developed and Transmitted Belief Systems
A peculiar sensitivity and range of understanding is facilitated by exposure to a culture by living within it. The exposure to a civilisation achieved by living within it, however, does not necessarily imply that one is thereby adequately informed on the various manifestations represented by the scope of the belief systems that contribute to defining that culture.
The only circumstance that can enable such breadth of knowledge is breadth of exposure to the various contexts that unfold the variety of possibilities realised in that belief system. This may emerge through the range of places one is present in at various times, the range of people and situations one interacts with in the process of living within that social system, through comprehensive field research or through studying the works of those who have engaged in such breadth of field research, or by correlating insights from a variety of sources anchored in field research, or studying a comprehensive breadth of recorded accounts from those who belong to those belief systems.
It is tempting to think that the exposure one has garnered from belonging to belief systems that were largely oral or from the views of a few seemingly authoritative figures on those systems implies one has a synoptic grasp of that tradition.
The more realistic picture seems to be that these oral traditions also demonstrate significant ideational scope and range of practice, along with significant interpretive variety. A variety demonstrated and enabled by its practitioners in the oral culture and by its transmission by both practitioners and other students within a written culture.
These qualities of interpretive scope and variety also expand or shrink with time, as Jordan Fenton demonstrates in his PhD thesis on the South Eastern Nigerian Ekpe esoteric order and its Nsibidi semiotic system, Take it to the Streets : Performing Ekpe/Mgbe Power in Contemporary Calabar, Nigeria, and as Babatunde Lawal seems to do with aspects of Yoruba Orisa cosmology and as Awo Falokun Fatumnbi ( George Wilson) suggests about the more esoteric and metaphysical aspects of the conception of the feminine in relation to ideas about the creative and destructive figures known as Awon Iya Wa, Our Mothers, within the context of the synoptic Orisa tradition sub-system known as Ifa.
An Emerging Critical Mass in Recent Developments in Classical Igbo Spirituality in a Global Context
A critical mass is developing in the study of classical Igbo religion, as evident by such recent initiatives as Karnark House bringing out Ogonna Agu's The Book of Dawn and Invocations and the two volumes of Anenechukwu Umeh's After God is Dibia : Igbo Cosmology, Divination and Sacred Science in Nigeria, along with Umeh's translation of Igbo poetry From Okponku Abu.
Umeh's Dibia volumes, as an account from within the initiatory practice of the Igbo divinatory and spiritual system Afa, provide a fine complement to Angulu Onwuejeogowu's more intellectual, more analytic but less grounded in personal experience classic Afa Symbolism and Phenomenology in Nri Kingdom and Hegemony : An African Philosophy of Social Action. This book might be difficult to buy since it was published in 1997 by Ethiope in Benin and Onwuejeogowu has gone to join the ancestors, but enthusiasts would do well to stretch themselves to obtain it because it is a classic work in divinatory studies as knowledge systems, addressing the imagistic, narrative, mythic, structural, performative, social and epistemic aspects of the system from the perspective of an outsider to the initiatory practice of Afa.
A bridge between the outsider intellectual analysis and structuring of an Onwuejeogwu and the insider view of an Umeh is provided by the wonderful work of Patrick Iroegbu on Igbo medicine and divinatory systems, in his Introduction to Igbo Medicine and other essays at Kwenu.com and Chat Afrik, on the site Igbo Medicine and Culture, on his site set up for teaching, Introduction to Igbo Medicine and Culture (Igbo Med 101) and on various other sites, all reachable by a Google search and his books Introduction to Igbo Medicine and Culture in Nigeria and Healing Insanity : A Study of Igbo Medicine in Contemporary Nigeria.
Other efforts include the remarkable achievement of Emmanuel Anizoba who has brought out about eight books, the striking website Odinani : The Sacred Arts and Sciences of the Igbo People : An Igbo Cyber Shrine and its Facebook twin, where the classic tradition is being examined and represented in modern terms and through images derived from non-African cultures, as represented by Marvel Comics superheroes, for example, thereby demonstrating a view of the conceptual elasticity and imaginative possibilities of the tradition, other pages on Facebook such as Odinani and Odinani Museum, Nri, and the site Introduction to Igbo Cosmology which brings together essays on classical Igbo cosmology, some of them detailed academic papers.
A number of academic papers on Igbo cosmology and practice being publicly accessible online, such as Chinyere Okafor's archive at Wichicta State University, a volume of Uche : Journal of the Department of Philosophy, University of Nigeria, Nsukka, and the work of Victor Manfredi, such as "Afa, the Nri-Igbo Counterpart of Ifa" it would be wonderful to bring them all together in one place.
Igbo Spirituality as a Node in a Web of Regional, Diaspora African and Global Affiliations
Manfredi's "Afa, the Nri-Igbo Counterpart of Ifa"and Before Wazobi̩a; Òminigbo̩n and polyglot culture in medieval 9ja explore parallels between Yoruba, Edo and Igbo knowledge systems of Ifa (Yoruba) Afa (Igbo) and Ominigbon (Edo) in order to demonstrate these systems as divergences from a central knowledge system, a point evident from a basic study of their organisational structure and divinatory methods.
Manfredi goes further to explore links between knowledge systems in South Eastern Nigeria and African esoteric orders developed by those who reached the Americas through the Middle Passage in "Philological Perspectives on the South-Eastern Nigerian Diaspora.
The research on relationships between African cognitive systems, as indicated by Molefi Kete Asanteand Ama Mazama in the Encyclopaedia of African Religion, and particularly in divination, as expounded by scholars like Evan Zeuss in Ritual Cosmos : The Sanctification of Life in African Religions, seems to have been particularly developed by Van Binsbergen, developing this continental or regional unity and further linking it with global developments, as shown by his sprawling websites, reached through his Shikanda Portal, leading one to his writings on divination such as "Regional and Historical Connections of Four Tablet Divination in West Africa " and "Board Games and Divination in Global Cultural History : A Theoretical, Comparative and Historical Perspective on Mankala and Geomancy in Africa and Asia".
The structurations represented by the deep affinities between African cultures, particularly in their cognitive systems, and between these and cognitive systems developed by Diaspora African cultures, imply that each of these systems is better understood in relation to the others.
More expansive understanding is reached by exploring parallels of these cultural forms with others in the global context beyond those demonstrating geographical proximities and direct cultural relations and historical continuities.
The bonds between continental African and Diaspora African cognitive systems play out further in terms of the various cultural forms, classical and past, classical and present, recent and contemporary, that have some roots in these cognitive systems. These forms are particularly evident in the arts and include relationships between Ekpe and its Nsibidi semiotic system described as metamorphosing into and the Cuban esoteric order Abakua and their Anaforuana semiotic system, artists and writers who employ or adapt these symbols or motifs or are deeply influenced by these orders in in their work, such as Victor Ekpuk and Uche Edochie with Nsibidi and BelkisAyón with Abakua.
Robert Farris Thompson seems to have been doing pioneering work in demonstrating the links between the continental and the Diaspora African esoteric orders and in Flash of the Spirit while more recent work, such as that of Ivor Miller in Voice of the Leopard : African Secret Societies and Cuba, and his essays at the Afro-Cuba web set up to celebrate these links between the Diaspora and the mother continent, such as "Ekpe Leopard Society in Africa and the Americas : Influence and Values of an Ancient Tradition" and others such as "Cuban Abakua Chants : Examining New Linguistic and Historical Evidence for the African Diaspora", along with research on other links between Diaspora African and continental African cultural forms and art as in "Kongo Cruzado: Lukumí and Kongo Identities in Cuba: the Art of Francisco 'Gordillo' Arredondo" go a long way in describing the web of affiliations that link all continental African and Diaspora African cognitive systems.
Classical Igbo Spirituality Invocations
Other invocations one could fruitfully place beside that of Chidi to enrich one's appreciation of prayer in the classical Igbo context include :
The incantatory poem by a diviner invoking truth before consulting his bones, his divinatory instruments, in Poetic Heritage : Igbo Traditional Verse collected and edited by Donatus Nwoga and Romanus Egudu, a fantastic poem rich in personification and incantatory rhythm.
"Afa (before Chukwu at Dusk)" by Pol Ndu in Songs for Seers, excerpted and richly analysed by Isidore Okpewho in The Heritage of African Poetry.
The superb prayers and rituals in "Context, Content and Spirituality of Igbo Prayers" by Emefie Ikenga-Metuh in Research in African Literatures Vol. 16, No. 3 (Autumn, 1985), pp. 319-348
Thanks
toyin
On Tue, Jan 29, 2013 at 12:20 AM, Akurang-Parry, Kwabena <KAParr@ship.edu> wrote:
OA, precolonial Akans also didn't have the notion of "heaven," however, they believe that goodness was key to resurrection, aptly put, rebirth.
Kwabena
________________________________________
From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com [usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com] on behalf of Anunoby, Ogugua [AnunobyO@lincolnu.edu]
Sent: Monday, January 28, 2013 2:58 PM
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
Subject: RE: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Before The Din Of Dawn
"Above" and 'heaven" are okay. I would say that "Sky' is probably most appropriately. The Igbo believe that God lives in the sky ( "igwe" in Igbo). I might add that the notion of "heaven" is not indigenous to Igbo traditional religion.. It is borrowed from the Christian religion.
oa
-----Original Message-----
From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com [mailto:usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Chidi Anthony Opara
Sent: Monday, January 28, 2013 12:55 PM
To: USA Africa Dialogue Series
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Before The Din Of Dawn
"Above" in this context means "heaven". The Igbos believe that heaven is located above, just above, not in the sun or moon. The reference to Chukwu as "Onye bi na elu" translates to "He who lives above". As a child and as an adult in Igboland, I have never heard any elder allude to Chukwu living in the sun or moon.
CAO.
On Jan 28, 7:02 pm, kenneth harrow <har...@msu.edu> wrote:
> chidi
> in your praise for chukwu, can you help me out?
> i am teaching equiano tonight, and he alludes to their african belief
> in god who dwells in the sun.
> in your poem, chukwu dwells above. would you agree that equiano's
> statement about dwelling inthe son could be an accurate one (i know it
> was more than 200 years ago, which might have been different then) ken
> On 1/28/13 4:24 AM, ChidiAnthonyOparaPoetry/Quotes wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> > (Poem By: Chidi Anthony Opara)
> > I come before you
> > This hour before dawn
> > Chukwu.
> > You, who dwell above,
> > Below
> > Is your foot stool.
> > You, whom the gods
> > Genuflect in his presence,
> > Before you I come
> > Clean,
> > Devoid of dirt.
> > Your covenant with my forebears
> > Bound me to come before you
> > On this market day,
> > At this hour
> > To purge my soul of impurities
> > Of the period past.
> > I have washed my body
> > And rinsed my mouth
> > With the waters of onu ngara.
> > No human is worthy
> > To present sacrifices
> > And libations in your presence.
> > My sacrifices
> > I have presented to the good gods,
> > My libations
> > To my ancestors.
> > I stand before you in awe,
> > Yet
> > I must make my confessions
> > Before the din of dawn.
> > Reproductions in part or in whole, in whatever forms, of
> >ChidiAnthonyOparaPoetry/Quotes except for non-profit information and
> >education purposes, without a written permission from
> >PublicInformationProjects
> ><http://www.publicinformationprojects.blogspot.com/><http://www.chidi
> >anthonyopara.blogspot.com/>
> > is not allowed.
> > --
> > You received this message because you are subscribed to the
> >"USA-Africa Dialogue Series" moderated by Toyin Falola, University of
> >Texas at Austin.
> > For current archives, visit
> >http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
> > For previous archives, visit
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> --
> kenneth w. harrow
> faculty excellence advocate
> distinguished professor of english
> michigan state university
> department of english
> 619 red cedar road
> room C-614 wells hall
> east lansing, mi 48824
> ph. 517 803 8839
> har...@msu.edu
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Compcros
Comparative Cognitive Processes and Systems
"Exploring Every Corner of the Cosmos in Search of Knowledge"
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