Oracle Quest 4
Suffusions of Colour :
Bruce Onobrakpeya's Oracle IV
Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
Comparative Cognitive Processes and Systems
"Exploring Every Corner of the Cosmos in Search of Knowledge"
Abstract
The time is a thousand years from now. The Oracle series of mixed media works by the 20th-21st century artist Bruce Onobrakpeya, first presented in the 2015 book Onobrakpeya: Masks of the Flaming Arrows, and adapting the visual structure of the opon ifa, a central symbolic and functional form of the Yoruba origin Ifa system of knowledge and divination, have long been missing, rumoured to have been scattered to unknown locations across the world in order to prevent the arcane knowledge they embody being available to any one person,so dangerous these perceptions are whispered to be.
Someone, however, determines to track them down and unearth the mysterious cognition they enable.. This series, combining art criticism, art theory and broader philosophical reflection within the compressed evocative and narrative power of the short story and rich in detailed visual and verbal engagements with each element in each of these works of art, represent this person's account of the quest.
"All men by nature desire to know.This is demonstrated, above all, in the delight we take in the sense of sight, for it reveals the differences between things", goes the first line of the Metaphysics by the 4th century Greek philosopher Aristotle. Can the multiplicity revealed by sight be traced to an underlying, unifying principle, he proceeds to ask, this inquiry forming the driving force of this book that institutionalized the philosophical field of metaphysics.
The encounter with Oracle IV in the possession of an Eskimo shaman who uses it for inter-dimensional voyages inspires the exploration of various forms of rationality in efforts to arrive at the foundations of existence.
A surface of concentric circles permeated by gradations of blue, light at the circumference, deep in the centre, amplified by roilings of white, blue and black like waves on a dramatically active sea, the central profusion of variously coloured objects framed and highlighted by the luminosity that shapes the circles.
Bruce Onobrakpeya's Oracle IV
The dramatic colour contrasts, the one distinctive quality of Oracle IV in Bruce Onabrakpeya's Oracles series, lead me to wonder about the complexity and subtlety of the operations through which differences in colour are perceived by the human eye, making the world a much richer place than it would otherwise be.
This, in turn, takes my mind to the 4th century Greek philosopher Aristotle's opening words in what, after his time, became known as his Metaphysics, in which he asserts, as a demonstration of the inherent human desire to gain knowledge, the delight in the sense of sight, in its enabling of the ability to distinguish between things.
Moving from this platform, he proceeds to enquire if an underlying principle can be found unifying this diversity.
He thus goes from sensory perception to ratiocinative examination of the implications of sensory phenomena, doing this purely through logical analysis, seeking, through reasoning alone, to arrive at a concept that would reveal how the variety of things that are perceptible by human beings may be organised in terms of a central principle.
What does existence rest on? The human bottom is designed for periodic rest, evoking the quest for the fundamental rest in ultimate reality, to adapt Catholic theologian Karl Rahner in Belief Today. Can the human mind ever have a final rest? The image above shows the bottom of Oracle IV, alive with a plethora of symbols vivified by eloquent colour.
The heat of thick clothes keeps me insulated from the terrible cold as I sit in respectful silence in front of Oracle IV, positioned on the wall of the igloo retreat of the Eskimo shaman, Warao. I was led here by a report that a structure akin to the Oracle series by the artist Bruce Onobrakpeya which I have been seeking for years had been seen in this place.
On arrival, Warao had informed me that he used it in facilitating shamanic journeying through contemplation of the work, leading to a perception of the universe as radiant with a rich blue welling from its depths, as against this background, an ordered chaos of many colours, seemingly glowing from all the forms in the universe, would rise in a symphony of meaning.
Image Above
"With our feet we walk the goat's earth. With our hands we touch God's sky", states a poem from the Kuba of Sudan in David Rubadiri's edited 1989 Growing Up with Poetry: An Anthology for Secondary Schools.
The sense of the sky as a dome enveloping the earth may be seen as paradigmatic for efforts to suggest the cosmic frame of terrestrial existence through the image of a circle encapsulating the totality of earthly phenomena.
What survives the eventual dissolution of material forms? The 18th-19th century German philosopher Immanuel Kant speaks, in his own way, for many thinkers in indicating the possibility of transcending his nature as an "animal creature, which after it has been for a short time provided with vital power, one knows not how, must again give back the matter of which it was formed to the planet it inhabits (a mere speck in the universe) [ through] a destination not restricted to conditions and limits of this life, but [reaches] into the infinite" in his Critique of Practical Reason.
The image above is the dome like circular top of Oracle IV, looking down on the wealth of diverse forms embraced by the circular enclosure that defines the space of the construct.
Was this truly possible? Who was I to say? A work of art, as all aesthetic forms, anything considered beautiful or harmonious, brings together various kinds of rationality. The visual perception of the beautiful represents one aspect of rationality. The effort to explore the meaning of that visual experience constitutes another character of rationality. The imaginative identification with the phenomenon involves another style of logic. The conviction that the referent enables mystical awareness of the kind described by Warao dramatizes yet another mode of the rational. These varied rationalities may all be coherent within their own frames of reference as held by various people and may even be sustained by the same person, as has been done by some thinkers and enthusiasts of the aesthetic.
Image Above
A half circle is a crescent. The crescent moon, the appearance of the moon as it moves towards and from its complete, circular image, visual changes existing only in the perception of the terrestrial satellite on account of its orbit round the earth, stimulates ideas of progressive unfolding of latent possibility, such as Mark Dyczkowski's 1992 interpretation of a line from a commentary on the 9th century Indian thinker Vasugupta's The Aphorisms of Siva, in which the waxing and waning of the moon represents the cycle of nourishment of the cosmos from an invisible "unchanging, underlying reality", an approach to the relationship between ultimate reality and the manifest cosmos in terms of the changes of perception enabled by the motions of celestial phenomena.
The image above is of the left side of Oracle IV, highlighting the balance between the richly carved circumference and the roiling blue, white and black of the empty centre of the concentric circles, a tumultuous emergence from a still centre.
"How did you get this work of art?", I ask Warao. "It has been a family heirloom for generations", he states. "It has been for me a means for finding direction at a critical point in my life", he continues, "eventually leading to my becoming a shaman, a journeyer between dimensions".
Amazing. Who would have thought Onobrakpeya's creation would travel from Nigeria's tropical, forested Niger Delta to the frozen North Pole, under circumstances it would be difficult to trace across centuries, becoming invaluable as a facilitator of a variant of traditional shamanic journeying?
Clearly, I would not be able to acquire Oracle IV as I had I-III, being too precious to Warao. I would have to be content with contemplating it in the hospitality offered me in his retreat.
Image Above
Enigmatic forms ring the right side circumference of Oracle IV.
Their contrast with and complementation of the empty centre boiling in a flux of colours suggest for me the cosmological constants, physical laws and their mathematical expressions, that emerged in the moments following what is understood by the dominant scientific theory on cosmogenesis as the explosion that created the universe, creating an ordered cosmos out of a prior condition which is so elusive of categorisation in terms of the knowledge built up from the study of the universe, the boundary of human knowledge that can be rationatively validated, this primordial condition is described as "Nothing", as summed up by Tian Yu Cao in his 2004 essay "Ontology and Scientific Explanation " in John Cornwell's edited Explanations: Styles of Explanation in Science.
The sentinel regularity and enigmatic stylisation of the circumference spanning forms also resonate for me with the related conception from the different cultural universe represented by Benin Olokun thought, which speaks of "the 401 deities who gave birth to me", the number 401 standing for infinity, as described by Norma Haas Rosen in her 1989 " Chalk Iconography in Olokun Worship".
The most comprehensive summation known to me of the scope of perception inspired by the senses is Babatunde Lawal's 2001 outline of classical Yoruba epistemology in "Àwòrán: Representing the Self and Its Metaphysical Other in Yoruba Art".
He describes this in terms of a movement from corporeal perception to, among other possibilities of knowledge and action, imagination, ratiocination, extrasensory perception and witchcraft, witchcraft being a practice that may be seen as the exercise of powers of action outside conventionally understood laws of nature.
He describes this in terms of a movement from corporeal perception to, among other possibilities of knowledge and action, imagination, ratiocination, extrasensory perception and witchcraft, witchcraft being a practice that may be seen as the exercise of powers of action outside conventionally understood laws of nature.
This summation may be complemented by Anenechukwu Umeh's depiction of the theory of perception of the Igbo Afa esoteric order in his 1998 After God is Dibia: Igbo Cosmology, Divination and Sacred Science in Nigeria ( 2 vols) , which, like the Yoruba conception, begins from a grounding in corporeal vision to embrace aspects of awareness beyond the corporeal, and, in the Afa case, culminates in the transcendence of the multiplicity of the material world represented by the plurality of human eyes, climaxing in cognition of the unity of existence.
In the centre hang fruits of various kinds, fruits of the tree of knowledge, fruits ingested with the eyes and digested through the mind.
Having experienced, over the years, all these stations of consciousness, adapting the terminology of cognitive mobility developed by the Islamic mystic Ibn Arabi, except that of the unity of being, although I might have touched its edges, its tentative unfolding before its suppression by my own diffidence, I have spent years trying to make sense of what were often puzzling and stupefying experiences. Here I was, far from home, engaging with something I was convinced held answers to the questions I sought, windows to understanding deeply yearned for.
The adept of Agbarha-Otor, like such masters of the transposition of classical African esoteric thought and practice who came after him to become his contemporaries, such as Victor Ekpuk and his transmutation of Nigerian Cross River Nsibidi and Owusu-Ankomah who created a cosmos out of the inspiration of Ghanaian Adinkra symbolism, has been able to achieve the recreation of the ancient symbols and ritual forms through his own individuality, while reworking their mythic essence, as Victor Ekpuk depicts his artistic vision in his 1995 Glendora Review magazine interview.
From the cave of becoming emerge forms multitudinous
Mythic indeed, one understanding of myth being "the recreative, transformative power of the human mind expressed in varying degrees of intensity", as described by Isidore Okpewho in his classic "What is Myth?", later published in his 1983 Myth in Africa.
Okpewho further develops this perspective in describing a direction of post-classical African poetry in his 1989 "African Poetry: The Modern Writer and the Oral Tradition" as that of "transmuting the oral tradition into symbols so as to demonstrate its mythic essence".
He thereby projects, incidentally, the conjunction of the primeval and yet timeless which the Niger Delta master has transformed into existence with the arcane assemblages that are his Oracle series, bringing alive in novel structures the ancient forces which classical African cultures had actualised in their sacred forms.
Okpewho further develops this perspective in describing a direction of post-classical African poetry in his 1989 "African Poetry: The Modern Writer and the Oral Tradition" as that of "transmuting the oral tradition into symbols so as to demonstrate its mythic essence".
He thereby projects, incidentally, the conjunction of the primeval and yet timeless which the Niger Delta master has transformed into existence with the arcane assemblages that are his Oracle series, bringing alive in novel structures the ancient forces which classical African cultures had actualised in their sacred forms.
How did Onobrakpeya arrive at what forms to bring together to create the unique power of these works? How did he conceive what colour schemes to employ? Through what cognitive metamorphosis did he arrive at the creation of the intricate carving of the circumference, echoing, in its sense of granite engraving, the atavistic temporality of prehistoric art, the circling forms like sentinels at earliest creation, midwives at genesis?
Each face, each carved form, is a mirror in which self and Other intersect, a microcosm of the invitation to project oneself into the imaginative construct inspired by the artistic creation. What emerges from this conjunction between viewer and viewed is neither fully the outcome of the nature of the one who views or that which is viewed but a combination of both.
"Warao, how did this work come to have such meaning for you?", I ask my host. The wind blows outside in its terrible power, but inside Warao's house of ice, protected by its ingenious engineering, we are safe.
"Our family tradition has been that each person must work out its unique significance for themselves" , he begins. "It is a template for self discovery", he states.
"The culture that inspired it, the purpose of its creator, are unknown to us, being from a distant social world on which, before you came to shed light on it, we had no information.
The construct, however, speaks in a language that touches us, the language of colour and of structure. The relationship between centre and circumference, between simplicity and complexity, individuality and collectivity, between a quality, such as light, and its gradations.
"Our family tradition has been that each person must work out its unique significance for themselves" , he begins. "It is a template for self discovery", he states.
"The culture that inspired it, the purpose of its creator, are unknown to us, being from a distant social world on which, before you came to shed light on it, we had no information.
The construct, however, speaks in a language that touches us, the language of colour and of structure. The relationship between centre and circumference, between simplicity and complexity, individuality and collectivity, between a quality, such as light, and its gradations.
These are fundamentals projected by this creation from which one may spring into a universe of possibilities unique to each person, dramatizations of the language enabled by one's own history", Warao concludes.
Image Above
Brooding presences at cosmogenesis? The dialectic between abstract geometrization, realistic figuration and stylisation, as demonstrated in the carving of realistic and stylized forms into the circumference of the outermost circles in Onobrakpeya's Oracle series, has long emerged, in various cultures, as a strategy for indicating relationships between the material universe the human being readily perceives, represented by shapes that conform in a realistic manner, to this corporeal perception, and the non-material forms people can conceive, indicated by geometric and to a lesser degree, stylized forms.
Brooding presences at cosmogenesis? The dialectic between abstract geometrization, realistic figuration and stylisation, as demonstrated in the carving of realistic and stylized forms into the circumference of the outermost circles in Onobrakpeya's Oracle series, has long emerged, in various cultures, as a strategy for indicating relationships between the material universe the human being readily perceives, represented by shapes that conform in a realistic manner, to this corporeal perception, and the non-material forms people can conceive, indicated by geometric and to a lesser degree, stylized forms.
The inter-cultural continuum between realism and abstraction reaches a summative climax in Hindu theory of the multidimensionality of cosmic identities or deities, in presenting them in terms of a movement from corporeality to abstraction dramatised by, in ascending order, anthropomorphic form, sonic form and geometric form, the full complement of which is actualised in the exemplary ritual the Sri Devi Khadgamala Stotram.
In presiding over the primordial generative flux that may be perceived in the empty centre of Oracle IV, the figures at the circumference of the circle that encompasses this creative matrix recall for me the 20th century Nigerian poet Christopher Okigbo's invocation of the relationships between geometric forms and cosmological origins in his Labyrinths, in which the seeker journeys from the stream where the poet bathed as a child to the sources of cosmos, perceiving them in a manner that suggests they are either geometric forms or are reached through geometric configurations that frame their existence,"AND AT THE archway/ a triangular lintel / of solid alabaster/ enclosed in a square /inscribed in a circle / with a hollow centre/ above the archway / yawning shutterless / like celestial pincers like a vast countenance: ….. 'after we had formed /then only the forms were formed /and all the forms were formed after our forming' ".
I could identify with Warao's perspective. After all, was I not here on a similar quest? To seek assistance in making sense of the intersection between my individual universe and the larger cosmos with the help of a work of art, a symbol construct?
I sought help in unifying myself, in bringing my psyche and history together, as the Oracles integrate centre and circumference, multiplicity and the singular. Perhaps they could also take me beyond whatever synthesis is possible in the present into the empowered unravellings of the future.
What better way to pursue such a goal than through an enchanting symbolism, Onobrakpeya bringing this wisdom alive in his unique way, further providing a door to his decades long struggle, as evident from his creative history, with forms of the numinous as permeating all aspects of existence, from the ostensibly mundane to the expressly sacred?
All too soon, I had to leave after a week of enjoying the unparalleled hospitality of my host. I will return to this place, however, and the work of art that brought me here, again and again, through memory aided by pictures.
In the company of Oracle IV, I will seek ever deeper answers to the questions of who I am, where I am going and why I am here, on this planet circling a dwarf star.
Can a visual form facilitate the penetration of such mysteries?
From my experience with such forms, yes, particularly when, like Onobrakpeya's Oracles, they are constructed with the purpose of eliciting such depths of cognitive journeying, even subconsciously, as the viewer is drawn in by the conjunction of colour and structure in the unity of symbols.
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