Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Before The Din Of Dawn

The Igbos believe that the sky, sun, moon, stars, rivers, etc are
governed by chis(gods) who give accounts of their governance to Chi
ukwu, shortened to Chukwu(big god). Igwe is sky, but Chukwu lives in
elu igwe(above the sky, heaven). Anyanwu(sun) and onwa(moon) are
Chukwu's main instruments of light, not his abode. Onu ngara is a
stream in my hometown.

CAO.


On 29 Jan, 11:40, OLUWATOYIN ADEPOJU <tva...@gmail.com> wrote:
> 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 *
>
> A  clear correlation between Chukwu, Chi, the spirit self, and the sun is
> developed in
>
> 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<http://www.karnakhouse.co.uk/docs/catalog.html>
> . *
>
> 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
> <http://www.amazon.com/Sprouts-Virtue-Chinese-Philosophy-Culture/dp/07...>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*, <http://ufdc.ufl.edu/UFE0043998/00001> 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
> <http://www.karnakhouse.co.uk/docs/enter.html> 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*<http://www.karnakhouse.co.uk/docs/catalog.html>
> *.  *
> *
> *
> * *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<http://www.bookfinder.com/dir/i/AFA_Symbolism_and_Phenomenology_in_Nr...>
> . *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
> Medicin<http://www.kwenu.com/publications/iroegbu/igbomed/frame.htm>e
> and other essays at Kwenu.com and Chat
> Afrik<http://www.chatafrik.com/articles/arts-and-culture/itemlist/user/151-...>,
>  on the site Igbo Medicine and Culture, <http://www.igbomedicine.webs.com/> on
> his site set up for teaching,  Introduction to Igbo Medicine and Culture
> (Igbo Med 101)<http://www.udemy.com/introduction-to-igbo-medicine-and-culture/>and
> on various other sites, all reachable by a Google search and his books
> Introduction to
> Igbo Medicine and Culture in Nigeria
> <http://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Igbo-Medicine-Culture-Nigeria/dp/0...>and
> Healing Insanity : A Study of Igbo Medicine in Contemporary
> Nigeria<http://www.amazon.com/Healing-Insanity-Medicine-Contemporary-Nigeria/...>
> .
>
> Other efforts include the remarkable achievement of  Emmanuel
> Anizoba<http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=ntt_athr_dp_sr_1?_encoding=UTF8&field-aut...>who
> has brought out about eight books,  the striking website Odinani
> : The Sacred Arts and Sciences of the Igbo People : An Igbo Cyber
> Shrine<http://igbocybershrine.com/> and its Facebook
> twin<https://www.facebook.com/pages/Odinani-The-Sacred-Arts-Sciences-of-th...>,
> 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<https://www.facebook.com/pages/Odinani/148667081811994?ref=ts&fref=ts>
>  and Odinani Museum,
> Nri<https://www.facebook.com/pages/Odinani-Museum-Nri/296857297070446?ref...>,
> and the site  Introduction to Igbo
> Cosmology<http://www.udemy.com/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<http://soar.wichita.edu/handle/10057/1224/browse?value=Okafor%2C+Chin...>,
> a volume of Uche : Journal of the Department of Philosophy, University of
> Nigeria, Nsukka<http://uchejournal.com/display.php?id=UCHE%20VOLUME%2014,%20DECEMBER%...>,
>  and the work of Victor Manfredi <http://people.bu.edu/manfredi/index.html>,
> such as "*Afa, the Nri-Igbo Counterpart of
> Ifa*<http://people.bu.edu/manfredi/IfaAfaNri.pdf>"
> 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*<http://people.bu.edu/manfredi/IfaAfaNri.pdf>
> "and Before *Wazobi**̩**a*; *Òminigbo**̩**n* and polyglot culture in
> medieval *9ja* <http://people.bu.edu/manfredi/BeforeWazobia.pdf>  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
> ...
>
> read more »

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