This evening I attended this lecture at the Paideia Institute, on "The History of Hasidism" by Prof. David Biale . As it turns out, the 850-page work is actually authored by eight people working in concert, in itself a miracle of co-operation to have eight people writing as one and speaking/singing as one voice when we already have the saying " two Jews, three opinions"
Given the notorious flimflam of the 419ers and the magnetic flux of the ethnic mix, the 250-plus ethnicities, religious and political identities, persuasions, indigenous philosophies, it's about time we coin the saying, "Three Nigerians, five opinions!" – as is being amply demonstrated in this thread.
Personally, I look forward to Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju's forthcoming magnum opus which will no doubt be on the Ogboni Society or on Ifa, I look forward to that publication seeing the light of day as much as I look forward to as to both the critical acclaim for his fresh perspectives and no doubt, the kinds of critical perspectives that we are to expect, will be brought to bear upon it by other experts, semi-experts, not to mention fellow ignoramuses like yours truly.
It is to be expected that Adepoju's work should attract critical attention for precisely the reasons he is being criticised and forewarned by some of his traditional enemies and precisely because of the fresh insights he is likely to bear on the subject matter - from the vantage cross-cultural viewpoints of comparative mythologies, mysticisms, secret schools.
Nowhere has Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju declared that he is setting himself up as the Qutb, , the Rebbe or a Rebbe, or Satguru , or Babalawo or Moshiach or the king of kings of the Ogboni or the Ifa - in which case even the not so righteous might regard him as a " charlatan", so, as Gloria In Excelsis Emeagwali herself is asking, why should anyone (erudite scholars included) be in agony just because Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju proposes a study, "If Adepoju planned to formulate a new aesthetics, vision, school, interpretation, theology or model- why not?"
Baba Kadiri ( mature holy virgin up to a late age) offers a different perspective; that too has to be addressed, appropriately...
On Tuesday, 5 November 2019 15:14:00 UTC+1, Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju wrote:
Thanks Gloria.I appreciate your contributions to such criticism.toyinOn Tue, 5 Nov 2019 at 11:18, Gloria Emeagwali <gloria....@gmail.com> wrote:An interesting debate. Goodbibliographic references.If Adepoju planned to formulate a newaesthetics , vision, school, interpretation,theory, theology or model- why not?We don't have to be perpetualconsumers of the theories ofothers - especially since some of thelatter (Kant included) areperpetuators of prejudice andbigotry and are often over valued.That does not exempt the finalproduct from the kind ofscrutiny that is being applied.In the long run incisive criticism andcautionary noteswould assist in the improvementof Adepoju's proposed theory.GEafricahistory. netSent from my iPhone
On Nov 4, 2019, at 4:49 PM, 'Dompere, Kofi Kissi' via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafric...@googlegroups.com > wrote:
Greetings ALL,
Interesting discussions. These are SPIRITUAL GODS of Yoruba according to the formulation and retention
from BAHIA, BRASIL
KOFI
From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com > on behalf of OLAYINKA AGBETUYI <yagb...@hotmail.com>
Sent: Monday, November 4, 2019 2:10 PM
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com >; usaafricadialogue <USAAfric...@googlegroups.com >
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Beauties of Lagos: Meeting Kantinthe MetropolisExternal Email Warning WARNING! Please proceed with caution as this message could be a scam. The sender's account may have been compromised and used to send malicious messages. If this message seems suspicious, please DO NOT CLICK any of the links and/or attachments. If you believe the contents of this email may be unsafe, please send it as an attachment to the ETS Information Security Team: ets-i...@howard.edu.
Toyin
Thanks for this long winded piece which conflates so many issues. If I may start from the end what is univeral Ogboni and on whose behalf was it established since there is a specific organisation within Yoruba land with that mame who have sole authority to use that name?
Have you applied to the Ogboni as constituted in Yoruba land in western Nigeria and have they invested you with the authority to establish a universal Ogboni on their behalf?
If not your activity is clearly fraudulent!
You also stated that you have created your own ese Ifa. if you know the origins of the traditional ese Ifa you will realise that name dropping Wande Abimbola will not enable you to be a bonafide person capable of creating even a single line of ese Ifa. I am afraid this is another 419 on your part. Only bonafide Ifa priests who have gone through the proper novitiate and gone through the proper rankings create genuine ese Ifa. So whatever you created is fake and must be treated as such. No wonder your prolegomenary gambit of self initiation priest hood. ( no such thing exists except perhaps in the charlatanry of the border lines of pentecostalism -which is why they are rife with scandals including sex for grades.) Proper religions have good organisational structures with strictures on how progress and not your abracadabra method.
You cite Orisa culture in diaspora. This is another 419 gimmick. Those who started Orisa culture in the diaspora took it from Yoruba land in the Middle passage and adapted it to their new locales ( same with the West African coast line.) But here is Toyin Adepoju seated in the original home land of Ifa and Ogboni culture in Yoruba land where he should defer to the authorities for these organisations faking residency abroad after ejection from the United Kingdom, the locus of his original plans. Are you adapting Ifa and Ogboni to their home lands in Lagos or Benin? To delude the world along these lines of self delusion you state:Yoruba origin spirituality, (sic) Orisa spiritualityis better understood as a world spirituality,not an ethnic spirituality, on account of itsintercontinental and intercultural breath...
Yes, it is but it has an extant ethnic cote and those who live within that ethnic core practice the ethnic variant. An American can not stay in the UK since child hood ( I actually had such students in the UK) till adulthood and start broadcasting abroad American iEnglish as international English!Let me ask you a wuestion: Why have you not chosen to adapt Islam and lets see if a fatwa will not be pronounced ? You said:
What religious and other organisations do iscreate systems of access to suchpossibilities. These systems are often theinnovation of a person or a group eventuallyadopted by others.
You stated that you were not trying to describe African aesthetics but depicting your own aesthetics, Is your name Immanuel Kant? Everyone on this listserv knows you by the name Vincent Oluwatoyin Acepoju.
Your translation of " Oju loro wa" as well as Adesanmi's misses the point of what the Yoruba mean by its usage. What is more, the image of the woman you posted showed no face but the hips: what is the correlation?
You have been missing the point in much of your studies because you refuse to seek the guidance of experts. Do not pass on the ignorance!
OAA
Sent from Samsung tablet.
-------- Original message --------From: Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju <toyin....@gmail.com>Date: 04/11/2019 16:59 (GMT+00:00)To: usaafricadialogue <USAAfric...@googlegroups.com >Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Beauties of Lagos: Meeting Kantinthe Metropolis
Thanks OAA.
Great thanks for your response linking various aspects of Yoruba esotericism and philosophy in relation to aesthetics.
Dialogue Between Exoteric Surfaces and Esoteric Depths
You state:
"Let me start with your oxymoron' open study of the sacred.' Your statement has inadvertently summed up the cogency of my position!
If it is sacred why indulge in its OPEN study?"
But, the open disclosure and study of the sacred is the foundation of most of what we know of religion.
Religions thrive significantly through scriptures, largely verbal, but also visual and gestural, symbols encoding the inspirational core of those spiritualities.
Most scriptures are publicly accessible, while the esoteric dimension of the religions in question represent ways of interpreting and applying those scriptures.
The Zohar, central to Jewish esotericism, is an imaginative interpretation of Jewish scripture as publicly understood.
Regardless of whatever esoteric depths the babalawo may enter into, ese ifa, Ifa literature, accessible even to non-initiates before the advent of widespread writing and now widely accessible globally through a constant stream of written texts, is the primary cognitive system of Ifa.
Christian Apophatic Theology and Public Christian Discourses
Various Christian mystics reference the divine transcendence of all cognitive categories, apophatic theology, with the image of the cloud of simultaneous obscuration and enlightenment dramatizing this perspective, an image possibly derived from Moses' encounter with God in the cloud within which he received the ten commandments, a picture interpreted in cognitive terms in such images as St.John of the Cross' "the dark cloud that illumines the night".
The primary inspirational point for these journeys to and from the readily accessible, however, is the exoteric core of Christian spirituality, the Bible, made available to all through great sacrifice, even of life, as with William Tyndale who was executed for translating the Bible into English, a risk taken by Tyndale, in the understanding adapted from St. Jerome, that ignorance of the Bible is ignorance of Christ, as the Encyclopedia Britannica 1971 sums up Tyndale's vision, a vision eventually proving critical for the Protestant Reformation, a further democratization of Christianity marked by translating the Bible into indigenous European languages, as with Martin Luther's seminal translation into German.
The Face as External Expression of Inward Being in Yoruba Thought asDemonstrated in Odu Ifa
This understanding of scripture as both the face, the outward expression and the concentration of an infinite essence that may be deduced through continuous study of that outward expression is suggested by Wande Abimbola's characterization in either Ifa Divination Poetry or An Exposition of Ifa Literary Corpus, of the visual expression of odu ifa, the primary organisational forms of Ifa.
Abimbola describes these visual mathematical permutations as "oju odu ifa", "the face/s of odu ifa", a description in keeping with the understanding of the significance of the human face in classical Yoruba thought.
These conceptions of the face are summed up in the expression "oju loro wa", translated by Pius Adesanmi as "the face is the abode of discourse".
They are also subsumed in the expression "oju inu", "inward vision/ eye or inward, penetrative perception". Oju" in Yoruba may represent either the face or the eyes embedded in the face.
"Oju inu" signifies a progression into the ontological depths of phenomena. This cognitive movement begins from "oju lasan", basic perception, or the outward eye which perceives only the externals of phenomena.
I discuss this ideational continuum in "Oju L'Oro Wa : From Physical Vision to Witchcraft and Mystical Insight: An Intercultural Exploration of the Face as Epistemological and Metaphysical Matrix in Yoruba Thought" (USAAfrica Dialogues Series Google Group) and "Adapting Yorùbá Epistemology in Educational Theory and Practice in Nigeria" ( Yorùbá Studies Review).
That characterization from Abimbola suggests the odu ifa are best understood in terms of a progressive apprehension of their symbolic and existential depths, from an exoteric surface to esoteric foundations, from their mathematical visual structures to the literary expressions those visual forms symbolise, ese ifa, the scriptures of Ifa, perhaps the best known of what may be described as scriptures of the Orisa tradition to which Ifa belongs.
The study of these "faces " of odu ifa would further proceed from the identity of these symbolic matrices as human cultural constructs represented by mathematical visual forms and literary structures to their understanding as expressions of entities whose essential identity is beyond the scope of human culture even while it embraces that scope.
At this foundational level, the odu ifa are understood as spirits, sentient agents described as emerging from orun, the world of ultimate origins, into Earth, as depicted by Abimbola, akin to Nyornuwofia Agorsor's reverential address to these forms, as I compile this in "Performative, Visual and Lyric Spirituality: Nyornuwofia Agorsor" and reinforced by Benin babalawo Joseh Ohomina, who, in a personal communication, describes the odu ifa as pre-human entities, embodiments of all possibilities of existence, a small fraction of whose significance as accessible to humanity is encoded in Ifa and whose non-human language the Yoruba pioneered the translation of into a human language, Yoruba, as I describe this perspective in "Cosmological Permutations : Joseph Ohomina's Ifa Philosophy and the Quest for the Unity of Being".
Transforming Theology into Scripture
Beyond scripture's role in terms of a dialogue between exoteric surface and esoteric depths, beyond what may be understood as that first order discourse in spirituality, "faith seeking understanding" is one definition of theology, an often public wrestling with the meaning of faith, with theological texts at times proving so seminal they become part of scripture.
Examples of this are the Biblical Letters of Paul, the first systematic effort to reflect on and express in expository terms the meaning of the Christian message, or such literary forms as the Jewish tales of Nahman of Bratslav, the Islamic literature of Jalal ud din Rumi, these becoming forms of scripture for devotees of schools within larger religions, even though these texts are understood as ultimately pivoting around the primary Jewish Scriptures with Nahman's works or the Koran, as with Rumi.
The proliferation of Hindu sacred texts may also be related to the movement from reflection on scripture to the creation of new scriptures, exemplified by such Sakta-female centred spirituality-texts as the Soundaryalahari to Shaivite-a central male deity- texts as the Shiva Sutras, but all ultimately constellating, in terms of their primary metaphysical and epistemic premises, around the earliest and most influential, the Mahabharata,the Ramayana and the Upanishads, this summation however, useful as a starting point of inquiry, being perhaps a crude summation of the development of Hindu literature.
Illuminating Religion through Critical Scholarship
Beyond the work of believers in constructing scripture or theology, is the indispensability of scholarship not necessarily emerging from believer's perspectives. The philosophy of religion, along with other disciplines as they relate to religion, from neuroscience to sociology to history, are indispensable in the understanding of religion,even for a good number believers, helping them situate their faith within a critical depth and cultural breadth.
So, I am having difficulty grasping why you, a self professed scholar, and one essentially trained in the Western tradition-bcs in spite of your disavowal of what you describe as Western perspectives , I doubt if you have received education in any other context at the same level as you have been trained in Western thought constituted by both disciplinary contents and investigative procedures-is able to declare that understanding the nature of the sacred is not assisted by its open study.
Ifa Training Between Openness and Secrecy
On occlusion of information in Ifa, keeping its sacred practices deeply shielded from the outside world, are you not referencing Ifa of decades ago? Is what you are describing not Ifa of the days of limited literacy in pre-technological Yorubaland?
Things have changed. Current Ifa study is heavily savvy in the use of a broad range of media, from print to digital, from electronic opon ifa which can be programmed to 'da fa', perform Ifa divination, to the ever growing ocean of books and articles on Ifa, including Dutch diviner Jaap Verdjuin's book teaching how to do Ifa divination without being initiated into Ifa or learning it in the traditional sense, to my own efforts in creating new ese ifa, some of my efforts in various branches of Ifa even being poached by people presenting themselves online as babalawo, to correlations between Ifa and various branches of knowledge, such as Olu Longe's landmark inaugural Ifa Divination and Computer Science, developments, which, from the slowly growing picture evident in various developments online, are being taken on board in the evolution of Ifa training.
Truly up to date Ifa training needs to be both sensitive to its traditional roots and its contemporary developments across disciplines, as well as looking towards the future as a partner in shaping the human agenda.
A survey of approaches to Ifa from Nigerians of various races in Nigeria and Ifa devotees across the world, as evident in various social media platforms, websites and books, makes it clear that Ifa is steadily emerging into the full flowering of a modern movement, rooted in tradition but reflexive in relation to tradition, adapting to various social and technological contexts, intimately sacred yet facing the world.
Some Representatives of Contemporary Ifa and Orisa Spirituality
Solagbade Popoola and Yemi Elebuibon are two Yoruba babalawo who have been able to make themselves relevant in Nigeria and the West through making their insights accessible through a modern idiom.
Among diaspora babalawo, African-American Obafemi Origunwa is prominent in developing a brand of Ifa directed at the business of daily living, insights fed by his Ifa training as well as his academic training in the social sciences.
Caucasian babalawo Awo Falokun is remarkable in the sensitivity and scope of his Ifa philosophy, reflexive and multi-disciplinary, his latest initiative being his unfolding of his ides using his Facebook wall.
African-American olorisha and Ifa devotees Melba Farrell and Iyalemole Ngozi-Fabuluje , in their various Facebook Ifa, Orisa and African spirituality groups are mounting a sustained critique of patriarchy and misogyny in Ifa, as they work at developing what they name American Ifa, striving to excavate what they understand as pristine value from patriarchal encrustations in Ifa thought and practice in building a from of Ifa adapted to the distinctive circumstances of the American Orisa community.
Their work is complemented by that of Ifa and African spirituality adept Ayele Kumari, who not only reinterprets traditional Ifa hermeneutics in ways privileging the female presence in Ifa, has developed a female centred Africana and world spirituality communicated through the digital platforms of her school.
Even before these current developments, photographic evidence exists, though limited, of Ifa initiation and Ifa shrines in the work of such researchers as Margaret Thompson Drewal in such works of hers as "An Ifa Diviner's Shrine in Ijebuland" and Yoruba Ritual: Performers, Play, Agency.
A Yoruba babalawo she worked with, Kolawole Ositola, published an article in a Western academic journal, reflecting on his practice as an Ifa priest, "On Ritual Performance: A Practitioner's View",(TDR (1988-), Vol. 32, No. 2 (Summer, 1988), pp. 31-41, The MIT Press
URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/1145850 ).
Diverse Forms of Science and Philosophy?
What is Yoruba science? Science in the Western context has undergone significant change in its epistemologies from the Greeks to what may be seen as its eventual consolidation in the 17th century Scientific Revolution, leading to the nature of science as a method of enquiry and of ideas developed form such enquiry as generally understood today.
On what grounds, using what criteria, are particular elements of Yoruba culture, particularly its cosmology, beyond obvious technological forms such as metal smelting and scientific forms such as mathematical structures, to be understood as science, ?
Conceptions of a multiverse are ubiquitous, being central to societies operating within systems prior to the development of Western science and technology up till the 20th century, but are those conceptions identical with the scientific approaches to similar ideas?
The same goes for the Hindu and Ghanaian Ewe idea, the latter as described by Ghanaian visual and musical artist and thinker Nyornuwofia Agorsor, in her interpretation of her Cosmos Series of paintings of a cyclical universe, recurrently destroyed and regenerated, to which scientific cosmologist Roger Penrose's relatively recent cosmological model in Cycles of Time: An Extraordinary New View of the Universe, is similar, but does that make the Hindu and the Ewe ideas examples of science bcs a scientist in the modern Western understanding of the term has developed a similar idea?
The same goes for ideas of the universality of consciousness, a central idea of animism and similar to panpsychism, a recent development in Western philosophy, a similarity I discuss in "Between Classical African and Contemporary Western Philosophies of Nature and of Consciousness : A Study in Comparative Ecological Metaphysics".
What are the implications, however, of the different epistemic contexts in terms of which both sets of conceptions are developed and assessed?
Establishing the possibility, and even more so, the existence, of a form of science different from that fed by various civilizations across time but reaching its climax in the modern West needs to proceed through a rigorous process that is not intellectually inferior to the rigour of contemporary scientific practice and philosophy of science.
Aside from that, religion and science can be correlative, can even inspire each other, but they are not identical even when they demonstrate similar ideas.
African, Western or Individualistic Aesthetics?
What are African as different from Western aesthetics and is anyone bound to identify with an understanding of such aesthetic practices?
I am not trying to describe African aesthetics in this context.
I am depicting my own aesthetics, drawing parallels with African, Asian and Western expressions that have fed my own aesthetic formation as an African with an international cultural background operating in an international space.
In doing this, I point out the complexity of aesthetic perspectives evident in African history, counteracting monolithic and uncritical descriptions of this rich landscape.
On Forms of Inspiration and Authority in Spirituality
On your views on my usurping the rights of traditional bearers of Yoruba esoteric knowledge, you state-<div style="font-size:large
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