Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
Comparative Cognitive Processes and Systems
"Exploring Every Corner of the Cosmos in Search of Knowledge"
Situate yourself at the intersection of the crescent and the circle
between change and stability
between transformation and totality
circles dividing and conjoining
flame breathed from flame
knowledge, meditation, action
evidence, inference, experience;
study, concentration, renunciation.
The tongues of flame are infolded
into the crowned knot of fire
and the fire and the rose are one.
The lines above are a summation of an understanding of the path of Ogboni mysticism, inspired by imagistic conjunctions between the design of the edan ogboni above and ideas from various cultural contexts.
The structural and numerical centrality of the crescent and the circle in the image, in relation to Babatunde Lawal's description in "À Yà Gbó, À Yà Tó: New Perspectives on Edan Ògbóni", of the crescent, spiral and concentric circle in Ogboni iconography as evoking recreative capacity, lead to my adapting the exhortation to the initiate in the seminal Western esotericism text The Teachings, Rites and Ceremonies of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn edited by Israel Regardie, to "Situate yourself at the centre of the cross of the elements, from whence issued the creative word at the birth of the dawning universe", its rhythmic beauty supremely rich in associations running from the Christian symbolism of the cross to the account of creation through the Word in the Biblical Book of John to the Hermetic conception of the elements as the foundations of spiritual growth.
Interpreting the crescents of the edan as suggesting temporality associated with the phase of the moon in which it assumes a crescent shape, as Lawal states, and the concentric circles on which the circles terminate as evoking the integration of all possibility around a centre, a universal and ideationally compelling manner of viewing a concentric circle, I arrive at "Situate yourself at the intersection of the crescent and the circle/between change and stability/between transformation and totality".
Ogboni mysticism is thus depicted as sensitive to the tension between temporality and change and the human aspiration to transcend these dynamisms, between the ultimacy that is Olodumare, "axiom paradoxon,…beginning and consequence", as summed up by Susanne Wenger in her review of Harold Courlander's Tales of Yoruba Gods and Heroes, and the opposites Olodumare integrates and transcends, to the quest for a point of synthesis in Yoruba cosmology's emphasis on process as a central rhythm of being, process in terms of recurrent transitions between emergence from and return to orun, the zone of primal origins where Olodumare is centred, a process known to most humans as birth and death but in Yoruba and other cosmologies which share similar perspectives as a cycle of birth, death and rebirth.
The configuration of three concentric circles forming an elegant amplification of the visual power of the centripetal force of the circles, their location on the figure's chest suggesting the figure as embodying the qualities they symbolize, leads to my evocation of this structure in images inspired by Dante Alighieri's great visual picture in the Divine Comedy, of the Christian conception of God as Three Persons in One, in terms of three circles occupying the same space, each breathed out of the other.
I continue with an adaptation of lines from the Hindu Katha Upanishad of the methods through which the self may be transmuted from its focus on temporality to a cognitive grounding in eternity.
I conclude by adapting T.S. Eliot's lines from his poetic cycle Four Quartets, of the consummation of spiritual development in terms of the image of the fire of transformation and the rose of consummating beauty.
The edan ogboni is thus interpreted in terms of visual correlations between its form and some of the most vividly realized and sublime ideational constructions from various ideological contexts around the world.
This exercise may thus be understood as actualizing, through verbal interpretation of the motifs that define this example of edan art, Babatunde Lawal's luminous summation in "À Yà Gbó, À Yà Tó" on the intersection of creativity and tradition in the art of edan ogboni:
Edan [ unlike the descriptive orientation of traditional Yoruba sculpture] is concerned with the essence and timelessness of being, and therefore is metaphorical in its imagery; its form, though inspired by the human figure, has a meta-empirical reference.
Yet the emphasis on the esoteric provides the brass-smith…with a unique opportunity to exercise his creativity and experiment with the human figure while still complying with… prescribed characteristics handed down over generations. A close examination of the edan corpus reveals variations on common themes and a great diversity in artistic skills, inventiveness, and temperaments.
The handling of headgear and coiffures, facial expressions, and body decorations is individualized, and form ranges from the two-dimensional to the volumetric and architectonic.
The society's concern with archetypes in its rituals and corporate emblems would seem to impose severe restrictions on the artist. Yet, it is the same concern that gives the artist the inspiration to operate at a higher level of creative consciousness, enabling him to dissociate the human figure further and further from the mundane. The result is a corpus of startling and highly original forms.
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