Female Erotic Intelligence and Arcane Power
in the
Art of the Yoruba Origin Ogboni Esoteric Order
An Intercultural Dialogue
Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
Compcros
Comparative Cognitive Processes and Systems
"Exploring Every Corner of the Cosmos in Search of Knowledge"
and
The Greater Ogboni Fraternity
Earth, Humanity, Cosmos
Abstract
An exploration of the implications of the engagement with female sexuality, the clitoris particularly,
in the artistic symbolism of the Yoruba origin Ogboni esoteric order, in the context of Yoruba nature philosophy. The essay concludes with a sequence of image collages crafted by myself using pictures from various sources, accompanied by poetic text, creating a contemplative and ritualistic rhythm, an effort which is part of my initiative in demonstrating an individualistic adaptation of Ogboni, distilling contemplative and ritual practice from critical and integrative scholarship.
I have two versions of this essay, the present shorter one, and another that expounds further on contrasts between conceptions of the feminine in Ogboni, on one hand, and the complementary Yoruba institutions, Gelede and Ifa. The longer essay also examines beyond what is present in this composition the significance of Ogboni nature philosophy in relation to Yoruba philosophy of nature in general. It also provides a brief but incisive picture of the philosophical and spiritual eroticism of Hindu Tantra, a central inspiration for this piece. I removed those sections from this work in order to facilitate my control of the core of this paper in an aspect of Ogboni iconography of the feminine and its hermeneutic potential. I might present the expanded work later or adapt parts of it for other essays.
Contents
Salutation to the Ancestors, Both Ascended and Embodied
The Question
Invocation of the Pink Robed Monarch
The Mystery that is Ogboni
What is the Clitoris?
Questions Arising from the Prominence of the Clitoris in Ogboni Sculpture in Relation to Attitudes to the Clitoris in Classical Yoruba Culture
Evocations of Female Genitalia in General in Ogboni Sculpture
Clitoral Valorisation in Ogboni Sculpture in Contrast to the Culture of Clitoral Excision in Yorubaland
Scholarship on Ogboni in Relation to Clitoral Prominence in Ogboni Sculpture
Salutation to the Ancestors, Both Ascended and Embodied
I salute those ancestors who gave us Usugbo, described by some as the foundations of Ogboni
I salute those forebears who gave us Ogboni
I salute those who have, over the centuries, nurtured the sacred flame
I salute the intrepid ones who laid the foundations in humanity's search for knowledge
I salute those who passed on and expanded the fire, enabling it reach me
illuminations communicated through my mother, who taught me how to read, and my father, who built our family library.
May your inspirations blaze into infinity.
May we who catch the fire be worthy.
May the impact of the Divine One, through us, resonate across space
and
time.
The Question
Invocation of the Pink Robed Monarch
O pink robed monarch,
the king in the world,
small yet powerful,
minuscule yet potent,
she of the rhythm of emergence and withdrawal,
we salute you.
May your favour be our pleasure
our relationship with you our mutual fulfillment
you that sleepeth not but may be aroused by the one sensitive to your delicacies.
That invocation is derived from a name for the clitoris in Yoruba thought, "oba inu aye", "the king in the world", as described by Loland Matory in Sex and the Empire that is No More: Gender and the Politics of Metaphor in Oyo Yoruba Religion.
The Mystery that is Ogboni
On account of the prominence of depictions of the clitoris in the art of the Yoruba origin Ogboni esoteric order, can ideas about this organ be a point of entry into the knowledge currently available to the world on this deeply secretive group?
The loose ideological confederation of esoteric groups named Ogboni, intimately related to the also secretive Osugbo, are known to many Nigerians as a mystery both powerful and suggestive of something to be wary of. These are organizations of whom much is said but little understood in the Nigerian social space on account of the balance of secrecy and influence they have demonstrated over the centuries till the present. Having once been one of the most powerful political and judicial systems in Yoruba history, they still retain a subtle influence and an image in the public mind associated with mysterious and dangerous occult power. This sense of mystery is reinforced by the fact that the rich scholarship on Ogboni, illuminating, though addressing at best, a very restricted access to its secrets, is unknown to many.
The clitoris is the female sexual organ devoted
solely to pleasure, its extreme sensitivity
deriving from its more than 8,000 sensory nerve endings often making it central to the temporarily transfigurative physical and mental experience of orgasm, as experienced by women.
The Wikipedia essay on the subject, referencing various scholarly and more general texts, describes it as " the human female's most sensitive erogenous zone and generally the primary anatomical source of human female sexual pleasure".
I Tavare's et al's "The Predictive Role of Different Types of Sexual Stimulation on Female Orgasm Occurrence" describes what seems the dominant medical view on the clitoris:
"Women’s orgasms can be induced by erotic stimulation of various genital and non-genital sites. Despite the diversity of erogenous zones, the clitoris is the most sensitive erogenous zone and the main anatomical structure accountable for obtaining sexual pleasure in women, which is justified by the presence of over eight thousand sensory nerve endings only at the surface of its external portion, the glans clitoris... Findings showed that women’s orgasm is more frequently experienced through sexual activities that involve clitoral stimulation compared to coital activity alone. ... these findings reinforce the idea that it is a difficult task to distinguish orgasms as clearly initiated in the vagina or in the clitoris. Thus, the results are in agreement with the idea that any type of sexual activity will implicate the stimulation of not only a single anatomical structure, but also of some other adjacent anatomical structures...and, as such, it seems to be hard to imagine any sexual activity that does not involve clitoral stimulation" .
James G. Pfaus et al's
"The Whole Versus
the Sum of Some of the Parts: Toward Resolving
the Apparent Controversy of Clitoral Versus Vaginal Orgasms"
( Socioaffective Neuroscience and Psychology, Oct. 25, 2015),
is particularly evocative of the fascination and excitation of
enquiry inspired by this subject, demonstrating the scope of the debates within the medical community on the structure and significance of the clitoris.:
" Of
all the orgasms on Earth, none are more mysterious than those in females.
Controversy has raged over them for more than a century. If they do not serve
an obvious reproductive or fitness-related endpoint ... then why do they
exist? What do women get out of them? Can all women have them? And the most
mysterious of all: What produces them? This latter question continues to ignite
vehement debate over the role of the clitoris and vagina".
"The nature of a
woman’s orgasm has been a source of scientific, political, and cultural debate
for over a century. Since the Victorian era [ the reign of Queen Victoria in
England], the pendulum has swung from the vagina to the clitoris, and to some
extent back again, with the current debate stuck over whether internal sensory
structures exist in the vagina that could account for orgasms based largely on
their stimulation, or whether stimulation of the external glans clitoris is
always necessary for orgasm.
We review the history of the clitoral versus
vaginal orgasm debate as it has evolved with conflicting ideas and data from
psychiatry and psychoanalysis, epidemiology, evolutionary theory, feminist
political theory, physiology, and finally neuroscience" [ and conclude
with presenting ] "A new synthesis... that acknowledges the enormous
potential women have to experience orgasms from one or more sources of sensory
input, including the external clitoral glans, internal region around the
“G-spot” that corresponds to the internal clitoral bulbs, the cervix, as well
as sensory stimulation of non-genital areas such as the nipples".
"With experience, stimulation of one or all of these triggering zones are
integrated into a “whole” set of sensory inputs, movements, body positions,
autonomic arousal, and partner- and contextual-related cues, that reliably
induces pleasure and orgasm during masturbation and copulation. The process of
integration is iterative and can change across the lifespan with new
experiences of orgasm".
Whatever the position of medical researchers on the spectrum of
views on the scope of relationship between the clitoris and female orgasm, the
general perspective, as far as I can see, accords with Mazloomdoost D and
Pauls RN's summation in summation in "A Comprehensive Review of the Clitoris and Its Role in
Female Sexual Function" ( Sex Med Rev. Oct. 2015, 3
(4) : 245-263), examining " available evidence (from 1950 until
2015) relating to clitoral anatomy, the clitoral role in sexual functioning,
vaginal eroticism, female prostate, female genital mutilation/cutting, and
surgical implications for the clitoris", that "The intricate neurovasculature
and multiplanar design of the clitoris contribute to its role in female sexual
pleasure. Debate still remains over the exclusive role of the clitoris in
orgasmic functioning..The clitoris is possibly the most critical organ for
female sexual health. Its importance is highlighted by the fact that the
practice of female genital cutting is often used to attenuate the female sexual
response. While its significance may have been overshadowed in reports
supporting vaginal eroticism, it remains pivotal to orgasmic functioning of
most women..".
On account of its potency, a power that deeply shapes
body, mind and and spirit, the latter being aspects of the self that transcend
the purely material and psychological, and inspired by the name of the Centre for Erotic Intelligence, which
describes erotic intelligence as central to "our personality, our
creativity, imagination, and personal expression [ critical to] the way
we perceive, connect, and engage with the world around us", a group
that I was led to through its rich article on the clitoris, I describe
the clitoris, not simply in terms of female sexual pleasure but in relation to
feminine erotic intelligence, the construction of the self through its erotic
capacities.
Along similar lines, " Alessandra Graziottini and Dania Gambini describe "women’s sexuality [ as] deeply rooted in the anatomy
and physiology of their whole bodies... a sexuality whose biologic anatomic and functional basis is
then modulated and reshaped throughout life by personal, relational, and
contextdependent events and affective dynamics" in "Anatomy and Physiology of Genital Organs – Women" from Handbook of Clinical Neurology, Vol. 130. Edited D.B. Vodusˇek and F. Boller, Elsevier, 2015,
Questions Arising from the Prominence of the Clitoris in Ogboni Sculpture in Relation to Attitudes to the Clitoris in Classical Yoruba Culture
It is this potential for a configuration of the self through the intersection of diverse but correlative potencies in which the erotic is central, that is the signal identity of the deployment of the clitoris in Ogboni sculpture.
In Yorubaland, where Ogboni originates, along with other parts of Nigeria, Africa and Asia, some people cut off the clitoris entirely or remove a part of it to inhibit female sexual pleasure, thereby encouraging sexual discipline, it is believed, or to protect the unborn child believed to be at danger from this very small but potent organ.
Why then does Ogboni art, as evident from online searches and books, at times depicts women as both naked and with their clitoris discreetly depicted but very prominent, as shown in the pictures in this essay?
Why should such a reputedly conservative group as the Ogboni, traditionally described as a society of elders, thus celebrate the clitoris, and among a people who have a long tradition of cutting off a part or all of that biological feature, both to tame female sexuality and to protect babies in the belief that if the clitoris touches the baby's head during childbirth, the child would die and that cutting this organ enables safe delivery?
What relationships does this seeming contradiction have with Rowland Abiodun's observation, in "Woman in Yoruba Religious Images", of the understanding of the power demonstrated by the clitoris in terms of the hidden but potent force represented by the ancestors and by the occult potency of women at the nexus of birth and death, creativity and destruction, represented by the concept of "Iya Wa Osoronga", which may be translated as "Our Mothers Sorcerous", or with Loland Matory's account of the clitoris as king in aye, the Yoruba understanding of the world as material and social conglomeration?
What is the scope and implications of the similarity between the Yoruba conceptions of the clitoris described by Abiodun and that of the esoteric group the Mevoungou of Cameroon, as depicted by Naminata Diabate in Genital Power: Female Sexuality in West African Literature and Film ( 2011 PhD Diss. University of Texas at Austin), referencing, among others, the field work of Jeanne-Françoise Vincent’s Traditions et Transition: Entretiens Avec des Femmes Beti du sud-Cameroun (1976, 2001) describing Mevoungou cosmology as one in which the clitoris is perceived as a particularly potent embodiment of evu ( a concept elaborated on by Peter Geschiere's "Chiefs and the Problem of Witchcraft: Varying Patterns in South
and West Cameroon" , Journal of Legal Pluralism, 1996, Nrs. 37-38, Note 3.) and Laura Hengehold's , "Witchcraft, Subjectivation, and Sovereignty: Foucault in Cameroon", Sens Public, 2009) a force similar to the Yoruba ase ( Henry John Drewal et al, Yoruba: Nine Centuries of African Art and Thought,1989, 16) a pervasive power open to use for good and evil and underlying the transformative creativity critical for unusual achievement?
Could this constellation of ideas illuminate the interpretive possibilities of the explicit depiction of the clitoris in Ogboni art?
There is no answer to these questions in the scholarship available to me so far, this scholarship being the core of writings on Ogboni accessible though academic databases. The primary constellation of academic texts on Ogboni emerging from years of fieldwork by various scholars of the subject does not develop any Ogboni ideas on sexuality outside its procreative context; conception and child birth, to the best of my knowledge, being the cardinal values of female sexuality in classical Yoruba thought, the cultural complex to which Ogboni belongs.
I am trying to respond, through speculation based on a study of Ogboni visual art in the context of classical Yoruba conceptions of the female body and self and the human body in general, to the questions provoked by the nexus of conflicting values in Yoruba culture converging on this female biological feature.
It is a subject of profound significance at the intersection of biology, psychology and spirituality, with the distinctive Ogboni deployment of this biological form evoking these conjunctions, which in themselves resonate with their intersections in other discursive contexts.
Various branches of biology and its relationship with the mind, along with experiential accounts of sexual encounter, demonstrate the profound effects of clitoral stimulation on the body/mind convergence and the relationship between sex, in which such stimulation is often critical for women, and transformative experiences at the intersection of body, mind and spirit.
The 10th century Hindu Kashmiri thinker Abhinvavagupta, in the context of his erotic mysticism ( Kerry Martin Skora, "Abhinavgupta's Erotic Mysticism: The Reconciliation of Spirit and Flesh"), as depicted in John Dupuche's Abhinavagupta: The Kula Ritual as Elaborated in Chapter 29 of the Tantralolka ( Delhi: Motital Banarsidass, 2003, 256) describes the clitoris as the fire that lights the flame of consciousness, impelling the combustion of the senses within that conflagration, a flame of such intensity it reaches to the core of the self, its ground in the source of existence.
Evocations of Female Sexuality in General in Ogboni Sculpture
Evocations of feminine sexuality as known to me in Ogboni sculpture are centred in two forms. One consists in the depiction of female genitalia without emphasizing any part of the vulva, the outer section, simply inscribing a few lines clearly delineating the presence of the erotic and procreative zone,
or in fewer cases, making a slit
that serves this purpose.The other involves both providing a structure indicating the presence of the vulva and a definite addition representing the clitoris, at the top of the vulva.
The sculpture that depicts the vulva alone is that of edan, the paired male and female forms that constitute a central symbolic and spiritual vessel of Ogboni. That which emphasizes the clitoris represents Onile, owner of land, earth and house as representative of the
Ogboni
iledi, the association's sacred meeting house and the communal and terrestrial associations of that location as unifying Earth and humanity.
Clitoral Valorisation in Ogboni Sculpture in Contrast to the Culture of Clitoral Excision in Yorubaland
Accounts of generational continuity of female clitoral mutilation
among Yoruba people is described, amongst numerous sources, by Nurudeen Alliyu's "Perspectives on the
Decline of Female Genital Mutilation in Abeokuta Nigeria" ( 2015, Ife
Social Sciences Review, vol. 24 no. 2),
in the context of three forms of FGM, Female Genital Mutilation, as possibly involving "the removal of the hood or of the clitoris and or part of the clitoris itself [or the] removal of the clitoris along with partial or total excision of the labia minora [ or] the removal of the clitoris, the labia minora and the adjacent medial part of the labia majora, and the stitching of the vaginal opening leaving an opening the size of a pinhead to allow for the flow of urine and menstrual blood".
TC Okeke et al in "An Overview of Female Genital Mutilation in Nigeria"(
Annals of Medical and Health Sciences Research
2012 2(1)
) states that
"the removal of the prepuce or the hood of the clitoris and all or part
of the clitoris" is the most common method of this practice in Southern Nigeria where
Yorubaland belongs.
Adeyemo Adeyinka et al's "Knowledge and Practice of Female
Circumcision among Women of Reproductive Ages in South West Nigeria"(
Journal of Humanities and Social Science , 2012, vol.2, no.3) and Jennifer Quichocho's
Through the Yoruba Lens: A Postcolonial Discourse of Female Circumcision
(2018 MA thesis, University of Denver), are further representative of
the temporal progression of this phenomenon. Scholarly accounts are
reinforced by such newspaper reports as "
Female Genital Cutting in Ekiti State-A Tale of Three Kings"( Sola Abe,
Guardian Nigeria,
09/09/2017).The descriptions of continuity of the practice are
modified by such a report as Nurudeen Alliyu's rich first hand accounts
in "Perspectives on the Decline of Female Genital Mutilation in Abeokuta
Nigeria" ( 2015).
Kim Marie Vaz' The Woman with the Artistic Brush: Life History of Yoruba Batik Nike Olaniyi Davies
( 1995)
sums up the scope of the reasons for this practice in Yorubaland as well as ways of interpreting the expressed rationale of its practitioners. These presentations, consisting of first hand experiences and analyses, paint a tragic image of fear of the clitoris as sexual enhancer and practically supernatural force, accounts that describe Yorubaland as demonstrating the highest concentration of the practice of mutilating female genitalia in the name of the supposed good of the victim. This perceived good is that of inhibiting female sexual pleasure, thereby encouraging sexual discipline , protecting the unborn child whom it is believed would die if their head touches the clitoris as well as easing childbirth through cutting the clitoris.
The practice demonstrates a range of horrific physical and psychological health consequences, summed up, among other sources, in
TC Okeke et al( 2012) and the Nigerian Federal Ministry of Health and World Health Organisation's "
Elimination of Female Genital Circumcision in Nigeria" (2007).
In the light of these developments, why would the sculpture of one of the most venerable protectors of Yoruba social order, a society of elders who are more likely to be conservative than liberal, make a point of crafting a prominent clitoris on a work of art representing the spiritual expression of the venerational centre of their group?
Scholarship on Ogboni in Relation to Clitoral Prominence in Ogboni Sculpture
In the literature on Ogboni I have encountered so far,
Henry John Drewal's "The Meaning of Osugbo Art: A Reappraisal"
mentions clitoral prominence in Onile sculpture but does not present any explanation for this artistic feature, either in terms of first hand information from Ogboni members or as a speculative deduction by himself. Teresa Washington's The Architects of Existence:
Aje in Yoruba Cosmology, Ontology, and Orature
describes this sculptural feature
as suggesting female power
, without elaborating on the idea . As significant as her interpretation is, she is clearly making an imaginative projection ungrounded in first hand accounts from field workers on the subject, drawing as she is on
Babatunde Lawal's "À Yà Gbó, À Yà Tó : New Perspectives on Edan Ògbóni", the most comprehensive essay I know on Ogboni, relentless in its determined explication of every facet of the Ogboni sculpture it discusses, particularly the feminine forms, yet is silent on the clitoral prominence in the striking Onile image it presents.
Peter Morton Wiliams' 1960 "The Yoruba Ogboni Cult in Oyo",
the first amongst this sequence of texts to present the image of the
Onile in question, shown in this essay in figure 3,
through his engaging account of Ajagbo, a version of Onile that is
remarkable for the conjunction between its visuality, its symbolization
and its judicial role as a spiritual fighter for the most uncompromising kind of
justice and, yet, in her nakedness, displays a prominent clitoris,
the same Onile form
which Drewal, Abiodun and Washington are responding
to,
does not mention the clitoral presence at all. Evelyn Roache-Selk's From the Womb of
Earth: An Appreciation of Yoruba Bronze Art, is majestic on its subject and particularly glorious on Onile, but like Washington, makes only a brief but memorable interpretation of clitorial visibility in this sculptural genre.
A scholar on Ogboni who could be particularly sensitive to the subject is Hans Witte, as demonstrated by his acute keenness to and bold interpretations of the conceptual dimensions of feminine spirituality in Yoruba thought in "The Invisible Mothers: Female Power in Yoruba Iconography" ( Approaches to Iconology, Volumes 4-6)
, but I am yet to read his book
Earth and Ancestors : Ogboni Iconography
and his PhD thesis in Dutch on Ogboni art, the title of which may be translated as Yoruba Symbolism of the
Earth.
Does the explicit depiction of the
clitoris in Ogbon Onile sculpture suggest a keen sensitivity to female
sexuality, not only in terms of procreative capacity, as may be adduced
for those Onile sculpture where female genitalia are shown, but also, or exclusively in relation to female sexual pleasure, as represented by those works in
which the clitoris is distinctively displayed? Why the marked visibility
of the clitoris in sculpture of such striking seriousness of presence
and gravity of association and function?
I
am also fascinated by the visual conjunction of the prominent but discretely
delineated clitoris with the horns on the heads of these forms of Onile sculpture.
It
is logical to associate the power of female sexuality enabled by the
clitoris with the wild force evoked by the horns of the Onile art in which both clitoral presence and horns occur. Thus, a power at the
intersection of or enabled by the conjunction of female sexual power and a potency suggestive of the force of untamed
nature may be seen as evoked by these visual configurations.
Information Sources
My
knowledge of this field comes purely from reading the work of scholars who have
been allowed some access to the esoterica of this group or confederation of
groups, as well as pictures of this
art. I am yet to read two of the three books I know of on Ogboni art, Hans Witte's
Earth and Ancestors:Ogboni Iconography, Witte's Yoruba Symbolism of the
Earth,
Theo Dobbelmann's Der Ogboni-Geheimbund. Bronzen aus
Sudwest-Nigeria, which Google Translate renders as The Ogboni Secret
Society: Bronzes from South-West Nigeria, and, perhaps Witte's Fishes of the Earth: Mudfish Symbolism in
Yoruba Iconography.
I
am also taking note, for future study, of books on Ogboni generally, such
as A. P. Anyebe's Ogboni: The Birth and Growth of the Reformed Ogboni
Fraternity, Akinbowale Akintola's The Reformed Ogboni
Fraternity (ROF) : Its Origin and Interpretation of its Doctrines and Symbolism.
Classify
and JSTOR are proving particularly helpful for access to lists of texts on Ogboni , and, as with JSTOR, also access to those texts.
I
justify my writing about Ogboni in spite of the limitations of my
access to the published literature, itself at best a small fraction of
what may be known about this esoteric confederation, with the
understanding of myself as an explorer who is describing a marvelous
country of ideas and artistic expression he has discovered, organizing
and sharing his understanding and making deductions from it as he
proceeds. Within this context, the literature published in scholarly
journals and scholarly books demonstrates a unified picture of the
various genres of Ogboni art and some of their symbolic value, perspectives
reinforced by the images of this art from various art selling houses and
museums, enabling one readily draw valid
conclusions and make generalizations, though circumscribed by the knowledge to which one has access.
Figure 1
A wonderful Onile image, sublime in its quiet majesty, its remarkable beauty of construction and its sense of quiet power. The clitoral hood is prominently though discretely carved, aligning, in the body's verticular structure, with the beautifully incised face, the elegant but carefully composed eyes and the seamless combination of grace and wild potency evoked by the horns in their deft construction and associative power, beautifully constructed in their baptizing of the unhuman into the human.
Image source: Barakat: Mirror of All Ages and Cultures. Accessed 11/9/2018.
Who is Onile?
Onílè is an Ogboni conception indicating the
owner of the land, and by extension the earth, which humanity relates with as
primary enabler of embodied existence, generator and container of arcane
powers, foundational companion on life's walk conducted on her
surface, the earth which humanity transforms into living
space.
Onílé
is also
this identity as the owner
of the house representing this transformation, the house as sacred
communal
space of Ogboni, symbolic of the house that is the community, the
community that
is the microcosm of the world, the house of the world, ile aye,
that is humanity's place in the habitat that is the cosmos, and, as one may expand
this associative continuum, the cosmos itself a structure of constants and
dynamism enabling it as the home represented by the possibilities it
constitutes, a specific actualization of the unknown scope of the potentialities
of existence,
a summation
integrating and building on various identifications of this figure, particularly
Henry John Drewal's "The Meaning of Osugbo Art: A Reappraisal", Babatunde Lawal's "À Yà Gbó, À Yà Tó : New Perspectives on Edan Ògbóni", Rowland Abiodun
et al's Yoruba Art and Aesthetics and
Henry John Drewal et al's Yoruba:
Nine Centuries of African Art and Thought.
Onile figures may be male or female, as Drewal demonstrates
in "The Meaning of Osugbo Art" through an Onile image with a prominent erect penis, as shown by the male and female single and group Onile
figures at the site of the New Orleans Museum of Art, and as reinforced by Babatunde Lawal's argument
in "À Yà Gbó, À Yà Tó"
that Earth is understood as both male and female in Yoruba culture,
and as demonstrated by the male and female pair of edan, the central
sculptural form of Ogboni, being addressed as Ile, Earth, and as Iya,
mother, as Lawal observes, in that identity's androgynous formulation,
and, as one may speculate, in a supra-androgynous characterization,
subsuming and transcending gender.
Female Onile figures demonstrating horns and a visible clitoris are depicted, according to my knowledge of this art so far, in terms of a number of modulations represented by the
figures pictured in this essay. One extreme of this expressive form, represented by figure 1, is actualised in terms of soft but
serious facial features and delicate modelling of the contours of the
body. Another extreme, visible in figure 3, projects an impression of gravitas, generated by the
tersely formulated body and stylized face, amplified by the flat breasts
of an elderly woman as opposed to the erect pointedness of the full
mammaries of the younger woman in the other Onile image. The contrast
between both figures is reinforced by Peter Morton Williams' description in
"The Yoruba Ogboni Cult of Oyo", of the Onile sculpture in the image of an elderly woman as Ajagbo,
a combative and "justly harsh orisa" or deity, invoked in cases of
judgment among the Ogboni, in which the figurine's body is rubbed with
various substances, the liquid from which all parties in a grave
dispute must drink in a ritual context, in the understanding that the
guilty party will die some time after as a result of the power of this
ritual test.
Figure 2
A magnificent Onile image with what looks like a sadly vandalised pubic section. The regal bearing of the figure remains unmistakable. The arcane beard is visible along with the rich breasts in their slender elegance. A beautiful cap sits atop a symbol conventional to the foreheads of Ogboni figures, back facing crescents, which, according to Lawal in
"À Yà Gbó, À Yà Tó evoke rejuvenative power, their being inscribed on the forehead perhaps suggesting the integration of such capacities within the various mutually nested levels of ori, the head understood in Yoruba cosmology as both biological centre of the embodied self and analogue for the metaphysical essence of the self existing beyond space and time but active in the life configuration of the embodied individual, as "essence, attribute, and quintessence...the
uniqueness of persons, animals, and things, their inner eye and ear,
their sharpest point and their most alert guide as they navigate through
this world and the world beyond", as summed up in Olabiyi Babalola
Yai's description in his review of Pemberton et al's Yoruba : Nine Centuries of African Art and Thought in African Arts, Vol. 25, No. 1, 1992. The spoon, as an instrument for eating food, is described by Lawal as representing the nurturing role of women.
Image source:
Barakat. Accessed 11/9/2018.
Correlative
with the varied impressions projected by the kneeling, horned Onile
image, of which the only examples exemplifying all those attributes are female, is that of the fully bearded woman, as richly discussed, along
with other Ogboni iconography, in Lawal's "À Yà Gbó, À Yà Tó ". The
scope of the beard, in its contrast with the prominent breasts of the
figure and the often prominent female genitalia, projects something
inexplicably strange and powerful, a bearded woman in classical Yoruba
thought being associated with mysterious spiritual powers related to
the largely feminine, ambivalently moral spiritual personalities known as aje who inspire a wary respect, though in the literature on Ogboni, aje is described as being
a demonstration of the forces emanating from the varied potencies
represented by the Earth rather than a suggestion of something negative.
The
arcane, therefore, is projected in Ogboni art of the feminine in terms
of horns and full beards. Making this art even more powerful in terms of
the conjunction of biologically impossible contraries, is the fully
bearded woman shown holding richly rounded breasts or suckling a child
at her breast, or, foregrounding the erotic as it enables the maternal,
the prominent carving out of female genitalia on female figures whose
faces are defined by beards or their heads by horns, or, moving to the
purely erotic, with the clitoris markedly displayed, discreet but
unmistakable between the legs of some examples of the horned Onile, as
in the two versions shown in this essay.
Ogboni
art may thus be seen as projecting the idea of the integration of wild power
and the female self through its sculpted image of the horned woman.
The
maternal, depicted in terms of full and older breasts, the arcane,
through horns and full beards, the erotic, in the form of full breasts, a
delicately shaped figure and depictions of female genitalia.The range
of female Ogboni figures thus spans a comprehensive range of
representations of the feminine
in its erotic, maternal and arcane
possibilities.
