Ògbóni :From Myth to Physics : Yorùbá Esotericism at the Matrix of Disciplines :A Response to Olayinka Agbetuyi 2 Part 1
Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
Ògbóni
From Myth to Physics
Yorùbá Esotericism at the Matrix of Disciplines
A Response to Olayinka Agbetuyi
2
Part 1
Collage by myself evoking matter and energy transformations in the earth, in nature in general, in the human being and in machines, mediated through images of CERN ( the European Organization for Particle and Nuclear Research) research and Ògbóni, Yoruba esoteric order, iledi,Ògbóni sacred space ritual structure, all centered in the figure of Onile, Owner of earth and of Human habitation on earth, centre of Ògbóni veneration.
Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
Comparative Cognitive Processes and Systems
"Exploring Every Corner of the Cosmos in Search of Knowledge"
Abstract
This essay is a development of the philosophical and mystical potential of the Yorùbá origin Ògbóni esoteric order. This effort is carried out by demonstrating intersections between Ògbóni cosmology, in its ritual activity, and scientific cosmology within the framework of its technological expression, particularly in particle physics, the study of the smallest constituents of matter.
These conjunctions are demonstrated in the context of relationships between an account of the ritual construction of the Ògbóni iledi, the order’s sacred meeting house, and the activity of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, the European Organization for Particle and Nuclear Research, both creativities described as contrastive ways of engaging with varied conceptions of energy.
This essay is a response to queries raised by Olayinka Agbetuyi, in the USAAfrica Dialogues Series Google group, as a rejoinder to my article, “Ògbóni: From Myth to Physics : Yorùbá Esotericism at the Matrix of Disciplines: A Response to Olayinka Agbetuyi”, which reacted to his engagement with my earlier essay published in the same group, “From a Horned, Naked Woman to Cosmological Physics and Explorations of Consciousness: Developing the Wisdom of the Yorùbá Origin Ògbóni Esoteric Order through its Multi-Cultural and Trans-Disciplinary Associations : A Voice from the Universal Ògbóni Fraternity”.
Acknowledgements
I salute those who have made this effort possible through the years of their own creativity, seeking to understand deeply hidden knowledge and making it available so others may stand on their shoulders to see the universe from the foundations they have created.
I also salute those whose material and moral support prove fundamental, even in the pursuit of goals far from their expectations, benefactors who do not wish to be named.
Great thanks are also due to Olayinka Agbetuyi, whose priceless challenges provide the blast of air on which the wings of the eagle may soar to greater heights.
All these possibilities rest on the initiatives of those, who, centuries ago, their names now forgotten but their influence ever resonating, created Ògbóni in a time now unknown, and of their descendants, who have kept alive the ancient flame, the response of a particular people to the glory and mystery, the majesty and power of humanity’s terrestrial location in the journey among the stars.
Iya!
Alagbara!
Agba!
Mother!
Powerful!
Old!
Ògbóni initiation chant from Peter Morton-Williams, “The Yorùbá Ògbóni Cult in Oyo”, Africa: Journal of the International African Institute, Vol. 30, No. 4. 1960. 362-374. 368.
Contents
Abstract
Acknowledgements
Contents
Invocation of Onile
Central Terms : Philosophy and Mysticism
Structure
Description of Àse from Rowland Abiodun
Ògbóni Cosmogram :Visual Summation of Human Existence Within its Terrestrial and Cosmic Contexts
Ògbóni Adinkra Stanzas
Thanks and Dialogical Context
Similarities Within Differences Between CERN Research and Ògbóni Ritual: Goals, Methods and Languages of Expression
Divergences in Surface Structure and Convergences at Deep
Structure
CERN’s Cosmological Investigations
Goal and Methods
Machines
Mathematical Language
Differences Between Non-Animistic and
Animistic Mathematics
Animistic Mathematics: Odu Ifá and
Hindu
Yantras
Imaginative Significations: Mathematical Symbolism Describing the Equivalence of Matter and Energy in Physics
Physics, Philosophy and Spirituality as Contrastive but Correlative Quests for the Fundamental Character and Dynamism of the Universe
Ògbóni Goals and Methods
Ritual Use of Mythic Symbols
Correspondences and Differences Between Mythic and Mathematical Languages
Imaginative Significations: Material Forms
Evoking Energy Generation by Human Beings
Within Humanity’s Cosmic Context as Depicted
in Ògbóni Ritual
Comparative Methodologies: Ògbóni Iledi Ritual as Paradigmatic of Humanity’s Engagement with Energy
The Unknown Creative Factor Implicit in CERN Physics but
Explicit in Ògbóni Myth : The Question of an Ultimate Reality
and Power
CERN and Ogboni: Methodological or Incidental Parallels in Instrument Positioning?
Questions about the Implications of the Underground Positioning of Central Instruments in CERN Research and Ogboni Ritual
Differences Between CERN''s Large Hadron Collider and the
Ògbóni Iledi Ritual Complex
The Rationale for the Underground Location of the Large
Hadron Collider
Exploring the Logic of the Underground Positioning of the
Ògbóni Iledi Ritual Complex
Cultivating Relationships with Spirits, Sentient
Agents Unbounded by Material Limitations
Evoking, Concentrating and Directing Àse, Creative
Cosmic Force
CERN and Ògbóni : Convergences and Divergences in Terms of Forms of Energy Engaged With
Relationships Between Matter and Consciousness in CERN Research and Ògbóni Ritual
CERN’s Particle Physics Research and Consciousness
Àse and its Relationship with Consciousness
Visually Conjuncting Ògbóni Symbolism and CERN Research
Correlative Visualizations of Human Relationships with Diverse Conceptions of Energy
The Associative Power of the Ògbóni Iledi Ritual Complex
The Spectrum of Ogboni Visualizations of Ile, Earth, as Onile, Owner of Earth and of Human Habitation on Earth
Between Hindu Myth and CERN Physics
Shiva's Cosmic Dance and the “Dance of Subatomic Particles”
The Diffusion of Hindu Mythology and Philosophies into
the Thinking of Modern Scientists
Erwin Schrodinger and Julius Oppenheimer
My Journey in Exploring Àse through Nature Mysticism
On Language
Developing an Economy of Donations Rather than of Purchase in this Project
Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
Ògbóni
From Myth to Physics
Yorùbá Esotericism at the Matrix of Disciplines
A Response to Olayinka Agbetuyi
2
Part 2
Collage by myself evoking Ògbóni and CERN ( the European Organization for Particle and Nuclear Research) images in dialogue
Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
Comparative Cognitive Processes and Systems
"Exploring Every Corner of the Cosmos in Search of Knowledge"
Abstract
This essay is a development of the philosophical and mystical potential of the Yorùbá origin Ògbóni esoteric order. This effort is carried out by demonstrating intersections between Ògbóni cosmology, in its ritual activity, and scientific cosmology within the framework of its technological expression, particularly in particle physics, the study of the smallest constituents of matter.
These conjunctions are demonstrated in the context of relationships between an account of the ritual construction of the Ògbóni iledi, the order’s sacred meeting house, and the activity of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, the European Organization for Particle and Nuclear Research, both creativities described as contrastive ways of engaging with varied conceptions of energy.
This essay is a response to queries raised by Olayinka Agbetuyi, in the USAAfrica Dialogues Series Google group, as a rejoinder to my article, “Ògbóni: From Myth to Physics : Yorùbá Esotericism at the Matrix of Disciplines: A Response to Olayinka Agbetuyi”, which reacted to his engagement with my earlier essay published in the same group, “From a Horned, Naked Woman to Cosmological Physics and Explorations of Consciousness: Developing the Wisdom of the Yorùbá Origin Ògbóni Esoteric Order through its Multi-Cultural and Trans-Disciplinary Associations : A Voice from the Universal Ògbóni Fraternity”.
Contents
Abstract
Invocation of Onile
Central Terms : Philosophy and Mysticism
Structure
Description of Àse by Rowland Abiodun
Ògbóni Cosmogram :Visual Summation of Human Existence Within its Terrestrial and Cosmic Contexts
Invocation of Onile
I imagined her in front of me
naked
as I am naked in spirit.
I called out :
Onile
Owner of Earth
The Earth is yours and the fullness thereof
receive me in my nakedness of soul
in tune with your own nakedness.
Grant me the blessings I ask for assistance on life’s journey.
Beyond this
let us be one
my potent centre your boiling core
erupting in creative fecundity
a palpitating point amidst the spheres
one with the cosmic dance.
Central Terms: Philosophy and
Mysticism
Philosophy is understood in this context as the sequential development of ideas dealing with the fundamental construction of existence.
This configuration of existence is depicted as referring to reality as it subsists independently of human engagement with the universe.
Existence is also described in this essay in terms of how this universal quality is understood by the human mind.
Existence is further perceived in this article as referring to the character of the universe as shaped in concrete terms by human beings.
Mysticism is demonstrated in this work as the aspiration to unity with or intimate perception of ultimate reality. It is pursued through the cosmological implications of a body of symbols, Ògbóni symbols, understood as encapsulating the cosmological values of Ògbóni, and indirectly, those of physics as demonstrated by the work of CERN.
Essay Structure
After the abstract, the
acknowledgements, the list of contents and the brief explanation of key terms,
the essay opens with an invocation
of Onile, the centre of Ògbóni veneration, representing Ile, Earth, as owner of
earth and of human habitation on earth, the latter symbolized particularly by
the sacred Ògbóni meeting house, the iledi,
understood as a nexus of human community. The invocation is based on a
statue of Onile, a picture of which, from the website of Barakat gallery, precedes
the invocation.
The invocation demonstrates the character of this production as an intellectual exercise within a spiritual context, an effort to explore and relate with ideas about ultimate value and ultimate reality through devotional, contemplative, imaginative, analytical and synthesizing approaches.
These conceptions of ultimate value are summed up in the idea of human experience of the material universe as grounding and integrating the totality of known human possibility, no matter how abstract.
A central Yorùbá cosmological maxim, “Aye loja, orun nile”, “Earth is a marketplace [ where we come for a time to buy and sell while] orun [the zone of ultimate origins] is home”, resonates with various African cosmologies, as demonstrated for example, by Nkeonye Otapkpor’s study of a similar Igbo conception, “Uwa bu afi”, “The world is a marketplace” (“The World as a Marketplace”, The Journal of Value Inquiry. 1996. 30:521-530).
Within the context of that ultimately transcendent vision, however, classical Yorùbá thought, represented par excellence, in this context, by Ògbóni philosophy, may be understood as emphasizing the embodied character of human existence as a nexus for even the most exalted possibilities, embodiment within the context of Earth being the immediate human reality through which all other realities are engaged with.
The material foundations of human existence in Yorùbá thought are represented with particular force in the Ògbóni emphasis on Earth as universal mother, embodied by her children, the male and female identities depicted by a central Ògbóni artistic motif, the edan ògbóni.
What may this emphasis on material embodiment as fundamental nexus of possibilities communicate in relation to the quest for the unifying structure and dynamism of the material universe that is a central goal of physics?
May Ògbóni cosmology and that of physics be correlated, deeper similarities enriched by obvious differences, in order to arrive at a richer synthesis in which the mythic, the spiritual and the scientific empower each other through the nexus of imagination?
Exploring these questions proceeds through the depiction and description of the Ògbóni symbolism central to this essay, a symbolism I describe as an Ògbóni cosmogram, a visual summation of human existence within its terrestrial and cosmic contexts.
This is followed by the Ògbóni Adinkra Stanzas, a sequence of visual and poetic expressions I construct to map a journey of interpretation of the mystical potential of this Ògbóni symbolism. It depicts an interpretive sequence and suggests its practice as a contemplative discipline and the goals aspired to through that discipline.
The visual forms, employed, however, in relation to the poetic interpretations, are Adinkra symbols from the Akan and Gyaman of Ghana, used here to stand for the more concrete character of the Ògbóni expressions because of the Adinkras’ unique combination of elegance and evocative force, of abstract potency and sinuous dynamism.
These values amplify the suggestive power of the incidental correlation between some of the Adinkra designs and the numerical configuration of Ògbóni symbolism and its evocation of human positioning within ritual action enabled by these symbolic structures.
The body of the essay then proceeds to explore this work’s mythic and scientific coordinates, examining points of convergence, demonstrating them as enriched by the divergences between these contrastive but ultimately correlative forms of knowledge.
Description of Àse by Rowland Abiodun
Àse is that divine essence [ as understood in Yorùbá cosmology] in which physics, metaphysics and art blend to form the energy or life force activating socio-political, religious and artistic processes and experiences.
…
Outwardly expressed through verbal, visual or performing arts, separately or jointly, àse imbues sound, space and matter with energy to re-structure existence, transform the physical world and also to control it.
Rowland Abiodun, “Àse: Visualizing and Verbalizing Creative Power through Art”, Journal of Religion in Africa, Vol.24,
Fasc.4.Nov.1994. 309-322. 319.
Ògbóni Cosmogram : Visual Summation of Human Existence Within its Terrestrial and Cosmic Contexts
A. The personification of Earth (Ile) in Ògbóni is Onile, the Owner of the Earth, the mother from whom all life issues and to whom all return and the Owner of the House, the Ògbóni sacred meeting house, the iledi, understood as evoking the unity of the community within which the Ògbóni live, and, one may hold, as symbolic of human existence represented by the unity of men and women as children of Earth, a central Ògbóni motif.
Ile is represented in the iledi by the burial in the earth of the iledi of certain natural substances symbolizing the four elements of the Ògbóni system:
1. Olorun, Owner of Orun, the zone of ultimate origins symbolized by the sky in its seeming infinity, depth and translucent beauty. Evoked by white powdered chalk.
2. Ile, Earth, characterized by pure black mud from a river.
3. Blood (judgment), suggested by red, powdered camwood.
4. Human being, indicated by powdered charcoal collected from cooking fires of Ògbóni members.
These substances are gathered together in four calabashes previously used by Ògbóni members, and buried in the earth, surrounding the heads of various animal sacrifices (e.g. tortoise, cockerel, sheep, pig, snail, pigeon and duck (5), making that spot the sacred centre of the iledi, marking the zone where Onile is worshipped.
B. Configuration of the Ògbóni in Ifá divination [ Ifá may be described as a method of mapping and influencing relationships between the various possibilities of existence through knowledge developed with the aid of spatial symbolism, and through the symbols' corresponding graphic, numerical and literary expressions.
The Ògbóni Ifá configuration, within the effort to map all possibilities of existence represented by Ifá, may thus be seen as a characterization of Ògbóni in relation to the coordinates defining being and becoming, existence and change, as understood in Ifá].
Slightly adapted from Dennis Williams’ "The Iconology of the Yorùbá' Edan Ògbóni’ ". Africa: Journal of the International African Institute, Vol. 34, No. 2, 1964. 139-166. I42.
Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
Ògbóni
From Myth to Physics
Yorùbá Esotericism at the Matrix of Disciplines
A Response to Olayinka Agbetuyi
2
Part 3
Collage by myself evoking matter and energy transformations in the earth, in nature in general, in the human being and in machines, mediated through images of CERN ( the European Organization for Particle and Nuclear Research) research and Ògbóni, Yoruba esoteric order, iledi,Ògbóni sacred space ritual structure, all centered in the figure of Onile, Owner of earth and of Human habitation on earth, centre of Ògbóni veneration.
Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
Comparative Cognitive Processes and Systems
"Exploring Every Corner of the Cosmos in Search of Knowledge"
Abstract
This essay is a development of the philosophical and mystical potential of the Yorùbá origin Ògbóni esoteric order. This effort is carried out by demonstrating intersections between Ògbóni cosmology, in its ritual activity, and scientific cosmology within the framework of its technological expression, particularly in particle physics, the study of the smallest constituents of matter.
These conjunctions are demonstrated in the context of relationships between an account of the ritual construction of the Ògbóni iledi, the order’s sacred meeting house, and the activity of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, the European Organization for Particle and Nuclear Research, both creativities described as contrastive ways of engaging with varied conceptions of energy.
This essay is a response to queries raised by Olayinka Agbetuyi, in the USAAfrica Dialogues Series Google group, as a rejoinder to my article, “Ògbóni: From Myth to Physics : Yorùbá Esotericism at the Matrix of Disciplines: A Response to Olayinka Agbetuyi”, which reacted to his engagement with my earlier essay published in the same group, “From a Horned, Naked Woman to Cosmological Physics and Explorations of Consciousness: Developing the Wisdom of the Yorùbá Origin Ògbóni Esoteric Order through its Multi-Cultural and Trans-Disciplinary Associations : A Voice from the Universal Ògbóni Fraternity”.
Contents
Abstract
Ògbóni Adinkra Stanzas
Ògbóni Adinkra Stanzas
Interpreting the Ògbóni symbol configuration, the Ògbóni cosmogram, central to this essay, in terms of a mystical template, a means of aspiring to unity with or intimate perception of the summation and source of existence.
This template is visualized through Adinkra symbols from the Akan and Gyaman of Ghana.
The last word, in italics in each poem, is the name of the Adinkra symbol directly above the poem.
Situated between mud and chalk, charcoal and camwood
I reflect on the immensity of the cosmos
Kuntunkantan
In my mind’s eye,
I see charcoal to my left, red camwood dust to my right,
mud behind , chalk in front.
I embody all that humanity has ever been
and will be.
The red of blood : life’s vitality
the mud of earth : the material universe in which we live
charcoal : human creativity transforming matter to energy
all subsumed by the ultimate immensity
its symbol the radiance of white chalk.
Agyindawuru
Positioned between earth and humanity, blood and fire
I rest in the expanse of the infinite
Dame Dame
Unraveling the knot mystic
at the intersection of science and metaphysics
myth and consciousness
Ògbóni wisdoms unfolding through space and time
Nyansapon
Seeking to penetrate to the unity of energy and intelligence
of palpitating life within terrestrial spaces
in the bowels of eternity
Adinkrahene
Transformations of being and becoming
in flight to the Ògbóni mountain
where earth and humanity, fire and life
unite as a cosmic flame
Akokonan
Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
Ògbóni
From Myth to Physics
Yorùbá Esotericism at the Matrix of Disciplines
A Response to Olayinka Agbetuyi
2
Part 5
Collage by myself evoking matter and energy transformations in the earth, in nature in general, in the human being and in machines, mediated through images of CERN ( the European Organization for Particle and Nuclear Research) research and Ògbóni, Yoruba esoteric order, iledi,Ògbóni sacred space ritual structure, all centered in the figure of Onile, Owner of earth and of Human habitation on earth, centre of Ògbóni veneration.
Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
Comparative Cognitive Processes and Systems
"Exploring Every Corner of the Cosmos in Search of Knowledge"
Abstract
This essay is a development of the philosophical and mystical potential of the Yorùbá origin Ògbóni esoteric order. This effort is carried out by demonstrating intersections between Ògbóni cosmology, in its ritual activity, and scientific cosmology within the framework of its technological expression, particularly in particle physics, the study of the smallest constituents of matter.
These conjunctions are demonstrated in the context of relationships between an account of the ritual construction of the Ògbóni iledi, the order’s sacred meeting house, and the activity of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, the European Organization for Particle and Nuclear Research, both creativities described as contrastive ways of engaging with varied conceptions of energy.
This essay is a response to queries raised by Olayinka Agbetuyi, in the USAAfrica Dialogues Series Google group, as a rejoinder to my article, “Ògbóni: From Myth to Physics : Yorùbá Esotericism at the Matrix of Disciplines: A Response to Olayinka Agbetuyi”, which reacted to his engagement with my earlier essay published in the same group, “From a Horned, Naked Woman to Cosmological Physics and Explorations of Consciousness: Developing the Wisdom of the Yorùbá Origin Ògbóni Esoteric Order through its Multi-Cultural and Trans-Disciplinary Associations : A Voice from the Universal Ògbóni Fraternity”.
Contents
Abstract
Thanks and Dialogical Context
Similarities Within Differences Between CERN Research and Ògbóni Ritual: Goals, Methods and Languages of Expression
Divergences in Surface Structure and Convergences at Deep Structure
CERN’s Cosmological Investigations
Goals and Methods
Machines
Mathematical Language
Differences Between Non-Animistic and
Animistic Mathematics
Animistic Mathematics: Odu Ifá and
Hindu
Yantras
Imaginative Significations: Mathematical Symbolism Describing the Equivalence of Matter and Energy in Physics
Physics, Philosophy and Spirituality as Contrastive but Correlative Quests for the Fundamental Character and Dynamism of the Universe
Thanks and Dialogical Context
Thanks OAA for the opportunity to clarify and further expand on these issues.
I am not trying to convince you of the validity of my views, as your comments to which I am responding may be interpreted as assuming. Dialogue does not imply that those dialoguing must convince each other. Perhaps we can understand each other better, learn from each other and in the process engage others too, who may or may not participate in the discussion.
Thanks for acknowledging, following my earlier analysis, what you describe as "parallels in methodology" between the Ògbóni iledi ritual complex and CERN in placing their instruments underground, though you argue, in contrast, correctly, up to a point, in my view, that their goals are different.
This understanding of methodological parallels as you describe them, needs to be carefully examined for what it says about the rationale for this underground positioning of instruments and the significance of the diverse logics for this strategy in Ògbóni and CERN.
Here is your complete response as a guide to what follows:
Toyin Adepoju.
There has been some attempt to tidy up the opening statements but there are still a few issues. Two words ‘relationship' and 'conjuncting' seem to be used inaccurately.
If you see further down Capra' piece you will note that 'parallels' is the appropriate comparative word you need other than in the first instance where you compare physics and metaphysics. There is no relationship between CERN and Ògbóni rituals; practitioners never met.
Conjunction is a noun that cannot take on a gerund form such as conjuncting. I suspect the word you had in mind is conjoin the verb which takes on a gerund to form conjoining. Now to the essay proper.
You have not cleared my objection to figuring in consciousness as part of the goal of CERN which evokes comparative parallels; indeed your citation of Ifá only confirms my position.
You cited the Yorùbá parallels to the Socratic Dialogue between Ifá and Obàtalá and Ifá's final answer supports my view that consciousness is bestowed in the womb inexplicably in spite of the fact that Obàtálá waited for a whole cosmic year (250 million human years- another Yorùbá parallel to the Judeo-Christian parallel of cosmic time which was at the root of Western calculation of the moment of the Big Bang) but alas Obàtala missed the crucial moment having fallen asleep in the course of the long wait.
Your observation that Ògbóni are said to be engaged with distilling the creative energy understood as signifying possibilities is NOT the same as consciousness. In the Ęsę Ifá you quoted the power that creates consciousness (Àşę exists outside conscious [ness] till it is created and embodied by that power.
Ifá's response that 'To be dissatisfied with even with the most wondrous accomplishment is the force that drives consciousness onward' is not the same as saying it created consciousness.
Correlating the four elements of Ògbóni ritual : charcoal, camwood, earth and chalk with CERN's activity is not convincing. For instance where is the CERN equivalent of chalk or God in their strictly secular experiment?
You stated that ideas on matter and energy are related indirectly in the CERN context to the nature of consciousness. This is not accurate.
Your idea of parallels in methodology is accurate relative to the positioning of instruments in underground structures but the goals, as I have maintained are different.
Towards the end you conceded ' I am simply making the basic statement that subatomic particles constitute matter enables consciousness through physical body." Is that true of a piece of rock according to western thought? Is that what CERN is all about?
Capra's drawing of parallels between Shiva's dance ( which is the main motivation for your essay and should have been cited in your introduction paragraph) is only metaphorical and is therefore a myth compared to CERN's experimentation. Shiva’s dance does not involve physical collision of matter; CERN''s experiment does.
Thus the statement ' The metaphor of the cosmic dance thus unifies ancient mythology, religious art and modern project is at best tenuous even if the scientists agree to tissue to appeal to the human imagination not to see their project as an unnecessary waste of resources. How many westerns would agree to the concept of Shiva's dance?
For you to agree with this the myth of Yorùbá thought which you should have deployed ( which I have used in the past to teach the Shiva myth) is the Ògún myth and not Ògbóni ritual.
What is the result of your efforts at telepathic dialogue with trees?
You stated that you were not selling your work yet you again asked for donations to support the project. Your last sentence is 'Click here to donate.'
OAA
Similarities Within Differences in CERN Research and Ògbóni Ritual : Goals, Methods and Languages of Expression
Divergences in Surface Structure and Convergences at Deep Structure
The goals of CERN and Ògbóni are certainly different at the level of surface structure, adapting linguistic theorist Noam Chomsky to refer to the explicit, obvious goals, methods and underlying philosophies of the basically contrastive but ultimately correlative activities represented by CERN research and Ògbóni iledi ritual.
Their goals are correlative at the level of deep structure, in terms of the similarities in difference between their activities represented by the goals, methods and philosophies that inform those activities.
CERN’s Cosmological Investigations
Goal and Methods
Machines
CERN is trying to answer the questions "What is the nature of our universe?”, “What is it made of?" as stated at those links at their site.
CERN is doing this by exploring the smallest constituents of matter using energy within those constituents, nuclear energy.
The nuclear and particle physics research institute pursues these goals by employing some of the world's most powerful particle accelerators, as that CERN link states, particles being the smallest units of matter.
Particle accelerators are used to propel these objects at close to the speed of light, the fastest known speed in the universe. The particles are made to collide, and in colliding break open, generating even more basic forms described as the building blocks of the universe as they emerged at the explosion that brought the universe into being.
The CERN Large Hadron Collider experiment, therefore, tries to simulate the conditions that existed at the birth of the universe in a primal explosion in order to study the structures emerging in the seconds after the event, structures underlying what we now know as the universe.
CERN thus pursues the goal of advancing understanding of what the material universe is made of and of the relationships between these underlying constituents. CERN is thereby contributing to the central quest of physics, "the search for the underlying principles that govern the [ nature] and behavior of our universe" as the discipline is described by Roger Penrose in The Road to Reality: A Complete Guide to the Physical Universe (2004, xv).
Mathematical Language
A central method in this quest is the use of mathematical symbols, an artificial language, achieving centrality in science since such 17th century European developments as Galileo Galilei's declaration that "the book of nature is written in the language of mathematics" and the assertion, perhaps by Johanne Kepler, that "In the beginning, God geometrized", demonstrating the significance of these declarations through their own work.
The foundational stages of this language and its associated styles of reasoning are closely modeled on nature. This language and its related forms of logic eventually go beyond what is immediately observed in nature and have proven capable of accurately predicting what is observed years or even centuries later.
It has also proven vital to constructing technological creations that were barely imaginable when these mathematical formulations were created. This is possible because the mathematical expressions in question represent descriptions of human understanding of unvarying aspects of reality, laws of nature, that hold as long as the material conditions that enable them exist.
Thus, Newton’s laws of motion, of the relationship between objects and the forces that make them move, is employed in sending rockets into space, even though rockets did not feature even in the known imaginations of Newton and his fellow Europeans in the scientist’s 17th century Europe and would not be constructed on that continent until the 20th century, three centuries later.
Mathematics also goes beyond even what is observable in nature, as in the study of infinity by Georg Cantor and others.
In demonstrating these qualities, mathematical thinking is described as projecting a precision and predictive enablement that make it particularly useful in discovering and describing the character and structure of the physical universe.
This style of thought and expression, in its relationship with observable reality, demonstrates "abstract representations of concrete situations". It is a method of modelling phenomena, as described by Timothy Gowers in Mathematics: A Very Short Introduction ( 2002, 16).
These relationships between phenomena, interpreted in terms of a particular kind of visual symbolism, consisting of numbers and shapes, represent how mathematics is used in interpreting both the material universe and aspects of the universe inaccessible to material examination.
Differences Between Non-Animistic and Animistic Mathematics
The latter, however, aspects of the universe inaccessible to material examination, are not identical with spiritual concepts, spirituality interpreted as relating to expressions of consciousness that are not limited to the known limitations of material entities, such spirituality being beyond the province of mathematics as practiced in mainstream science.
Animistic Mathematics: Odu Ifá and Hindu Yantras
Aspects of the universe inaccessible to material examination, are central, however, in the mathematics of such animistic systems as Ifá, as described by Wande Abimbola, of odu Ifá, Ifá mathematical structures, as spirits emerging from orun, the zone of ultimate origins ( An Exposition of Ifá Literary Corpus, 1976, chapter 2, “Ifá Priests and their System of Divination: The Odu and the Ese of Ifá,” 26-27) and as described by myself in, “Cosmological Permutations: Joseph Ohomina’s Ifá Philosophy and the Quest for the Unity of Being” (Facebook).
The understanding of a kind of mathematical symbolism as expressing sentient entities is also strategic to Hindu yantra theory, in which mathematical forms known as yantras are believed to be expressions of sentient entities, divine powers underlying the metaphysical structure and dynamism of the cosmos, as described, with particular depth, scope and lucidity in Madhu Khanna’s Yantra: The Tantric Symbol of Cosmic Unity.
The intersections and divergences between the better known, conventional, non-animistic mathematics and animistic mathematics is a rich platform for discussing the implications of relationships between science and spirituality. In discussing mathematics in this essay, however, the focus is on non-animistic mathematics, the kind in use in modern science.
Imaginative Significations: Mathematical Symbolism Describing the Equivalence of Matter and Energy in Physics
Demonstrating mathematics as a symbol system, a language used to stand for referents beyond itself, Albert Einstein's famous E=mc² equation, for example, central to matter/energy transformations generated by CERN’s Large Hadron Collider, is not in itself equivalent to matter, energy or the speed of light, but refers to these material and abstract referents through letters, numbers and images.
These forms are constituted into a mathematical equation, a method of using letters, numbers and images in demonstrating relationships between different referents.
In this equation:
E stands for energy,
M for mass, the amount of matter in an object, matter understood as a measurable quantity,
= represents the relationship of equivalence between what comes before the = and what comes after
C for the speed of light while
² stands for the precise character of the relationship between mass, energy and the speed of light the equation describes.
The speed of light is the speed at which matter is converted into energy within enabling conditions.
The equation thus describes the equivalence of matter and energy, underlying the latter successful efforts to release energy though splitting matter open, creating nuclear energy and nuclear weapons, as this equation is explained, among numerous sources, in Peter Galison’s “The Sextant Equation: E=mc²”, from Graham Farmelo’s edited It Must be Beautiful: Great Equations of Modern Science.2003.68-86.
The equation thus describes the process through which energy is released from the breaking apart of particles as they are smashed into each other in the CERN colliders.
Physics, Philosophy and Spirituality as Contrastive but Correlative Quests for the Fundamental Character and Dynamism of the Universe
The use of mathematics in physics is a central tool in the primary goal of that discipline, the quest to understand the fundamental character and dynamism of the universe.
This goal conjoins physics, which focuses on the material universe and employs mathematics, and some philosophies and spirituality, the latter two disciplines integrating the material and the non-material, using natural languages in their investigations, in the effort to understand the character and dynamism of the cosmos, and, in some cases, to participate in influencing this dynamism.
Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
Ògbóni
From Myth to Physics
Yorùbá Esotericism at the Matrix of Disciplines
A Response to Olayinka Agbetuyi
2
Part 6
Collage by myself evoking matter and energy transformations in the earth, in nature in general, in the human being and in machines, mediated through images of CERN ( the European Organization for Particle and Nuclear Research) research and Ògbóni, Yoruba esoteric order, iledi,Ògbóni sacred space ritual structure, all centered in the figure of Onile, Owner of earth and of Human habitation on earth, centre of Ògbóni veneration.
Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
Comparative Cognitive Processes and Systems
"Exploring Every Corner of the Cosmos in Search of Knowledge"
Abstract
This essay is a development of the philosophical and mystical potential of the Yorùbá origin Ògbóni esoteric order. This effort is carried out by demonstrating intersections between Ògbóni cosmology, in its ritual activity, and scientific cosmology within the framework of its technological expression, particularly in particle physics, the study of the smallest constituents of matter.
These conjunctions are demonstrated in the context of relationships between an account of the ritual construction of the Ògbóni iledi, the order’s sacred meeting house, and the activity of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, the European Organization for Particle and Nuclear Research, both creativities described as contrastive ways of engaging with varied conceptions of energy.
This essay is a response to queries raised by Olayinka Agbetuyi, in the USAAfrica Dialogues Series Google group, as a rejoinder to my article, “Ògbóni: From Myth to Physics : Yorùbá Esotericism at the Matrix of Disciplines: A Response to Olayinka Agbetuyi”, which reacted to his engagement with my earlier essay published in the same group, “From a Horned, Naked Woman to Cosmological Physics and Explorations of Consciousness: Developing the Wisdom of the Yorùbá Origin Ògbóni Esoteric Order through its Multi-Cultural and Trans-Disciplinary Associations : A Voice from the Universal Ògbóni Fraternity”.
Contents
Abstract
Ògbóni Goals and Methods
Ritual Use of Mythic Symbols
Correspondences and Differences Between Mythic and Mathematical Languages
Imaginative Significations: Material Form Evoking Energy Generation by Human Beings
Within Humanity’s Terrestrial and Cosmic Contexts as Depicted in Ògbóni Ritual
Comparative Methodologies: Ògbóni Iledi Ritual as Paradigmatic of Humanity’s Engagement with Energy
The Unknown Creative Factor Implicit in CERN Physics but Explicit in Ògbóni Myth : The Question of an Ultimate
Reality and Power
Ògbóni Goals and Methods
Ritual Use of Mythic Symbols
The Ògbóni iledi configuration represents a depiction of unifying principles of human existence, using concrete, physical, visual symbols drawn from nature.
These symbols are a means of abstraction from vast ranges of human experience. This abstraction depicts the universe as perceivable in terms of the human relationship with energy within the context of terrestrial existence, as framed by an intelligence and creative power behind the cosmos.
This cosmological framework is used as an interface between the human being and the creative forces they are working with. The proximate identity of these forces is the understanding of Ile, Earth, as a sentient entity whose presence is being concentrated, through ritual, at a spot of the iledi.
Ile is herself is likely to be perceived as an expression of àse, the cosmic power deriving from the creator of the universe and responsible for being and becoming, existence and change.
The Ògbóni symbols act as a means of focusing the intentions of the ritual agents. These visual forms are likely to be themselves represented through ritual speech meant to evoke the presence of Ile, Earth, understood as an expression of àse.
This evocational process would therefore proceed through the use of language calling forth the presence of the terrestrial mother. This process would be carried out in the belief that the conglomeration of Ògbóni images acts as a means of focusing the presence of Ile.
These images represent the complex of Earth and her intersection with humanity within the context of cosmic unity, an ultimate unity represented by Olorun, the creator of the universe symbolized by the immensity, breadth and luminous beauty of the sky.
This imagistic complex would be further represented through speech that guides the evocational process, almost like calling someone’s name, inviting them to come to a particular place. The place, in this context, is where the ritual forms are buried:
Mother of we, charcoal burners feeding flames for food
Blood palpitating, bonding us in life and judgment
Between water and earth, between life and death, between matter and spirit
In the name of the ultimately immense one
Luminous as the sky yet beyond that great immensity
May your presence be known
In mystery and power, in darkness and light, in awe and illumination, majestic yet comforting
Ile! Alagbara! Powerful! Immovable!
Yet dynamic as the flowing stream and the crashing waves
Rhythms of ocean bottom, life teeming in silent depths.
Accept these humble gifts as we seek your presence.
So, the ritual speech, the incantation invoking, calling forth the presence of Ile, Earth, may go, at the spot where the ritual forms are buried, their presence resonating in the words of invocation.
Correspondences and Differences Between Mythic and Mathematical Languages
The Ògbóni mythic forms of charcoal, mud, chalk and camwood dust and mathematical symbols share the qualities of being imaginative and associative forms, in that they signify or refer to something different from themselves, providing a mental staircase to guide the human mind to understand what they are referring to.
The focus of mythic language, however, may be described as being in a combination of associative precision and evocative range.
It evokes both its proximate or readily induced associative values and an almost infinite range of evocative possibilities deriving from this associative foundation.
Mathematical symbolism, on the other hand, is directed only at associative precision, focusing on a specific referent to the exclusion of other possibilities.
Imaginative Significations: Material Form Evoking Energy Generation by Human Beings Within Humanity’s Terrestrial
and Cosmic Contexts as
Depicted in Ògbóni Ritual
The universe is represented according to material substances in the Ògbóni iledi symbol configuration representing Ile, Earth, understood as a sentient entity and the mother of all beings, the centre of Ògbóni veneration.
Within this structure-
Mud stands for earth.
Charcoal, for the human being. This human reference is underscored by the fact that in earlier times this charcoal was taken from the cooking fires of Ògbóni members.
Blood, for judgment.
Chalk, for Olorun, the creator of the universe.
Thus, this symbol configuration uses
Mud, in representing Earth, as universal mother.
In the spirit of maximizing the associative value of symbols, one may stretch this to include the entire material cosmos.
Blood, for judgment, which may be interpreted in terms of the Ògbóni relationship with blood, in the older contexts from which much scholarship on Ògbóni comes, in which blood, often animal blood, and in rare, particularly grave cases, human blood, is described as spilled in ritual, particularly rituals dealing with judgments involving oath taking (Peter Morton-Williams, “The Yorùbá Ogboni Cult in Oyo”, 1960. 366, 370).
The focus in such contexts seems to be on the vitality of blood as embodying àse, a spiritual force which may be activated and directed through ritual.
Blood may thus be understood in this framework as evoking the bond between humans and between humans and earth, a bond intimately related to the normative and judicial processes through which society is sustained, enabling the civilizational value represented by communal existence.
Charcoal, for the human being.
Charcoal is a central means of energy in the low technology environment in which the Ògbóni symbols were developed. It is created by burning wood to generate heat energy, in the course of which it is transformed into charcoal.
In charcoal being described as standing for the human being, one may interpret this as suggesting human activity in relation to nature, specifically, transforming nature in generating energy for sustenance and warmth, as in earlier times.
This symbolism may be extended beyond such earlier periods to going beyond direct sustenance, as energy uses have expanded with technological growth.
Isaac Asimov sums up the strategic significance of fire, with particular reference to its early control by humanity through burning wood:
The whole civilization of mankind has been built upon finding new sources of energy and harnessing it in ever more efficient and sophisticated ways. In fact, the greatest single discovery in man’s history involved methods for converting the chemical energy of a fuel such as wood into heat and light.
…
Fire provided man with a practically limitless supply of energy, which is why it is considered the greatest single human discovery-the one that hastened man’s rise above the state of an animal.
( Guide to Science 1 : The Physical Sciences, Penguin: Harmondsworth, 1979. 407) .
The 1992 Encyclopaedia Britannica article on fire reinforces these insights:
The step from the control of fire to its manufacture is great and required hundreds and thousands of years.
…fire has been essential at every stage of the growth of civilization during the succeeding 10,000 years.
…
Much of the modern increase of technology and science might be characterized as a continual increase in the amount of energy available through fire and brought under human control.
Most of the increased available energy has come from ever greater amounts and kinds of fires.
(Micropaedia, Vol. 4, 1992, 788, concisely but richly elaborated upon, though not quoted here, in Macropedia, Vol.18, subsection on “Mastery of Fire”, p. 828 in the article “Evolution, Human,”).
Comparative Methodologies: Ògbóni Iledi Ritual as Paradigmatic of Humanity’s Engagement with Energy
CERN pursues its own goals by using massive machines that generate energy as they smash particles together in order to study the results as the particles break apart.
Ògbóni iledi ritual integrates symbols of humanity’s relationship with energy within the human race’s terrestrial and cosmological contexts, as a means of activating, through ritual, energy described as underlying all processes of existence, physical and mental, animate and inanimate, concrete and spiritual, an understanding of cosmic energy known as àse in Yorùbá.
The Ògbóni iledi ritual configuration may be seen as a symbolic summation of humanity's relationship with energy, in relation to the idea of an ultimate power.
In
that light, it encapsulates the CERN system, the latter understood
as a modern expression of a fundamental activity humanity has undergone since
it discovered how to create fire, a primary form of energy.
The Unknown Creative Factor Implicit in CERN Physics but Explicit in Ògbóni Myth : The Question of an Ultimate Reality and Power
The Ògbóni ritual complex also depicts a subject that looms behind all human activity, particularly in its relationship with energy- does there exist an ultimate source to the dynamism of the cosmos, an ultimate energy source, perhaps directed by an ultimate intelligence, that enables the varied expressions of energy in the cosmos, enabling the cosmos exist and develop?
The Ògbóni iledi configuration represents an answer to this question in terms of the evocation of Olorun, the Yorùbá image of this ultimate power, represented in the Ògbóni ritual complex by chalk.
The CERN technological complex does not reference the question of an ultimate energy source, or its direction by a cosmic intelligence, but that question, as clarified by physicists from Aristotle to Isaac Newton to Paul Davies and others, is inescapable in all human activity, particularly the search for fundamental principles of the physical universe known as physics.
In relation to physics, the question can be framed as “is there an ultimate source to the creation and interaction between matter and energy within the context of space and time that is the province of physics?”
This question, implicit to physics or explicitly expressed by physicists and philosophers, incidentally responds to your enquiry :
Correlating the four elements of Ògbóni ritual : charcoal, camwood, earth and chalk with CERN's activity is not convincing. For instance where is the CERN equivalent of chalk [ representing] God in their strictly secular experiment?
Atheist physicists may conclude such an ultimate source of power and order does not exist. Agnostics may declare the idea of such a source is unnecessary to explain the cosmos. Others like astronomer Fred Holye may conclude along the lines of the Wikipedia essay on him, which provides links to the sources of the following account of his views:
"If one proceeds directly and straightforwardly in this matter, without being deflected by a fear of incurring the wrath of scientific opinion, one arrives at the conclusion that biomaterials with their amazing measure of order must be the outcome of intelligent design. No other possibility I have been able to think of..."
"The notion that not only the biopolymer [ complex structures produced by living organisms and making up much of their constitution -Encyclopedia Britannica online on "polymer" and Chemistry Leaner on biopolymer"] but the operating program of a living cell could be arrived at by chance in a primordial organic soup here on the Earth[the dominant scientific understanding of the origin of life on Earth] is evidently nonsense of a high order."
Though Hoyle declared himself an atheist, this apparent suggestion of a guiding hand led him to the conclusion that "a super intellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology, and ... there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature."
He would go on to compare the random emergence of even the simplest cell without panspermia [ seeding of life on earth from space] to the likelihood that "a tornado sweeping through a junk-yard might assemble a Boeing 747 from the materials therein" and to compare the chance of obtaining even a single functioning protein by chance combination of amino acids to a solar system full of blind men solving Rubik's Cubes [ a subtle and complex mathematical puzzle] simultaneously.
Those who advocate the intelligent design (ID) belief sometimes cite Hoyle's work in this area to support the claim that the universe was fine tuned in order to allow intelligent life to be possible.
Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
Ògbóni
From Myth to Physics
Yorùbá Esotericism at the Matrix of Disciplines
A Response to Olayinka Agbetuyi
2
Part 7
Collage by myself evoking matter and energy transformations in the earth, in nature in general, in the human being and in machines, mediated through images of CERN ( the European Organization for Particle and Nuclear Research) research and Ògbóni, Yoruba esoteric order, iledi,Ògbóni sacred space ritual structure, all centered in the figure of Onile, Owner of earth and of Human habitation on earth, centre of Ògbóni veneration.
Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
Comparative Cognitive Processes and Systems
"Exploring Every Corner of the Cosmos in Search of Knowledge"
Abstract
This essay is a development of the philosophical and mystical potential of the Yorùbá origin Ògbóni esoteric order. This effort is carried out by demonstrating intersections between Ògbóni cosmology, in its ritual activity, and scientific cosmology within the framework of its technological expression, particularly in particle physics, the study of the smallest constituents of matter.
These conjunctions are demonstrated in the context of relationships between an account of the ritual construction of the Ògbóni iledi, the order’s sacred meeting house, and the activity of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, the European Organization for Particle and Nuclear Research, both creativities described as contrastive ways of engaging with varied conceptions of energy.
This essay is a response to queries raised by Olayinka Agbetuyi, in the USAAfrica Dialogues Series Google group, as a rejoinder to my article, “Ògbóni: From Myth to Physics : Yorùbá Esotericism at the Matrix of Disciplines: A Response to Olayinka Agbetuyi”, which reacted to his engagement with my earlier essay published in the same group, “From a Horned, Naked Woman to Cosmological Physics and Explorations of Consciousness: Developing the Wisdom of the Yorùbá Origin Ògbóni Esoteric Order through its Multi-Cultural and Trans-Disciplinary Associations : A Voice from the Universal Ògbóni Fraternity”.
Contents
Abstract
CERN and Ogboni: Methodological or Incidental Parallels in Instrument Positioning?
Questions about the Implications of the Underground Positioning of Central Instruments in CERN Research and Ogboni Ritual
Differences Between CERN''s Large Hadron Collider and the Ògbóni Iledi Ritual Complex
The Rationale for the Underground Location of the Large Hadron Collider
Exploring the Logic of the Underground Positioning of the Ògbóni Iledi Ritual Complex
Cultivating Relationships with Spirits, Sentient Agents Unbounded by Material Limitations
CERN and Ògbóni: Methodological or Incidental Parallels?
Questions About the Implications of the Underground Positioning of Central Instruments in
CERN Research and Ògbóni Ritual
Thanks for acknowledging, following my earlier analysis, what you describe as "parallels in methodology" between the Ògbóni iledi ritual complex and CERN in placing their instruments underground, though you argue, in contrast, correctly, up to a point, in my view, that their goals are different.
How significant is the parallel in location of instruments underground by CERN and Ògbóni, one may ask? Does it really suggest parallels in methodology for these very different institutions, CERN, the nuclear and particle physics research facility and the Ògbóni iledi, a ritual space for working with àse, which may be described as the conception of cosmic energy in Yorùbá thought?
Do these locational parallels suggest methods fundamental to the logic of their activities? Do they represent techniques integral rather than incidental to their work? Are the underground locations of their instruments essential, and in what ways, to the character of the work being done by the CERN scientists or the Ògbóni ritual specialists? Methods of functioning central to the nature of the substances they are working with and how these substances may best be managed?
May the response to these questions illuminate the differences and similarities between these institutions, the technological, CERN, and the ritualistic, Ògbóni?
Differences Between CERN''s Large Hadron Collider and the Ògbóni Iledi Ritual Complex
CERN''s Large Hadron Collider is a scientific enterprise, described as the largest and most complex machine ever constructed, built in ten years as part of a project involving the collaboration of up to a hundred nations in an institutional setting engaging thousands of scientists, exceeding in those superlatives even space travelling rockets and space stations while the Ògbóni iledi ritual complex is a simple collection of mud, chalk, camwood dust, charcoal and heads of sacrificed animals, a cosmogram meant to represent Ile, Earth, understand as a sentient entity to whom the Ògbóni relate as universal mother.
The Rationale for the Underground Location of the Large Hadron Collider
I expect the CERN LHC, the Large Hadron Collider, is placed underground for reasons of space and safety. Its underground location takes advantage of space under the earth, the machine being sited under large areas of land in use for other activities at the Swiss-French border as well as under the CERN control systems and visitor sections manned by scientists and administrators above ground.
Secondly, the large amounts of energy released and used by the CERN underground machines are unsafe for human proximity. No one is allowed into the tunnels housing the collider once experiments in the machine are in progress so people are not affected by the radiation from the experiments.
The underground location could also facilitate the extremely tight security at the site, in which entrance to every section is carefully managed, even for the CERN scientists, yet the site is close enough to population centres to prevent the isolation of a desert location.
The underground placing of the LHC is thus a necessity of space, safety and perhaps security. It relationship to the organic character of the underground zone within which it is sited consists of the insulation the space provides to the radiation emissions from the experiments conducted there.
Exploring the Logic of the Underground Positioning of the Ògbóni Iledi Ritual Complex
Not much is publicly known about Ògbóni ritual theory and practice, on account of the extreme secrecy of the various schools of the order, with scholarly investigations of Ògbóni being not only few but tapering off to almost or certain non-existence in the second half of the 20th century.
Reliable inferences, however, can be made from the few but concise summations by Ògbóni members. These can be used in building on such richly evocative but only basically explained accounts as the symbol configuration provided by Dennis Williams in “The Iconology of the Yorùbá Edan Ògbóni” and which I describe as an Ògbóni cosmogram. Comments by Ògbóni members may also be enhanced through correlations with other accounts of Yorùbá ritual theory and practice.
Rich, though not always elaborate descriptions of the logic of ritual similar to that of the Ògbóni iledi ritual configuration are provided by Ògbóni initiate Susanne Wenger in describing her own correlation of art and ritual with her team at the Oshun forest in Oshogbo, in Yorubaland in South-West Nigeria.
A particularly telling example is the following passage from her book with Gert Chesi, A Life With the Gods in their Yorùbá Homeland, Wörgl: Perlinger, 1983:
Wine ferments only in the barrel; so sacred force ripens, secluded in the heart of matter. Our shrines and sculptures [are not primarily means of narrating myths, instead] Like wine barrels, they seclude the god’s identity so it can once again ferment into some primal manifestation.
[These] shrines, walls and sacred art [are] a bridge between the gods and the human perceptive imagination, in order to create themselves anew in the image of anyone’s own spiritual demands (138).
The essential aim [ in constructing sacred art at the Oshun forest] was to create coordinating centres of sacred force accumulation. To give the gods strength through stillness and to secure their dynamism’s undisrupted presence in the meditative serenity of their forest home, we erected walls
(135).
These lines are beautiful in describing sacred activity in terms normally reserved for humans- the incubation of identity, of power, through contemplative withdrawal, often likened, in the human context, to a descent into darkness, darkness represented by insulation from external activity, an insulation generated, in this instance, though, seclusion in “the heart of matter” suggesting immersion within a material substance, perhaps the earth.
What is being described seems to be the recognition and intensification of a quality in nature understood as divine, as suggested by the reference to the “meditative serenity” of the forest homes of the gods. A serenity safeguarded through the creation of human made structures secluding these centres of divine presence, so as facilitate the accumulation of sacred force, as Wenger puts it.
This description of art as ritual is not identical with the creation of the Ògbóni iledi ritual space, since the focus in the Ògbóni space is not on a zone perceived as demonstrating any special quality, but simply on a spot on the earth of the iledi as a location in which symbolic forms are buried in the context of ritual.
The Ògbóni context suggests human creation of sacred space, rather than Wenger’s emphasis on the recognition and safeguarding of sacred space in nature.
The similarity between seclusion within the earth in the Ògbóni context and the emphasis on nature in terms of concealed depths in Wenger’s account, however, suggests a related logic might be at play in both situations.
The Ògbóni ritual complex is meant to represent the presence of Ile, Earth, at that spot. This representation concentrates the globally diffused identity of Earth at that location. This idea of concentration can be taken metaphorically, simply as an aid to the mind to focus attention on the idea of Ile, Earth, as an entity to which the Ògbóni relate.
It can also be taken literally, in the sense of inviting an intensification of the identity of Earth as a sentient entity, as an agentive force, as a personality, into that spot of the iledi, the better to permeate the environment with her presence and facilitate communication with her devotees.
Cultivating Relationships with Spirits , Sentient Agents Unbounded by Material Limitations
The combination of precision, variety and associative force of the symbolic forms employed, their gravity amplified by the sacrificing of animals, thereby adding animate entities to the ritual matrix, suggests that the iledi ritual complex is more of an effort to intensify or focus the presence of a spirit, a sentient entity that may be related with beyond the limitations of a physical form.
If simple symbolization were all that was the goal of the ritual construct, an object placed at the spot would have been adequate.
Ògbóni initiate and Ifá babalawo- adept in the esoteric knowledge of Ifá- Kolawole Ositola’s description of the relationship between shrine construction and sustenance and the presence of the spirits invited to the shrine, as recounted by Margaret and Henry Drewal, reinforces this perspective:
A shrine is where a Yorùbá deity "sits," that is, where the spirit of the deity, which is an active force, may reside. It is composed of containers holding vital ingredients to activate the spirit; objects necessary for the diviner's performance [ or that of any other kind of ritual specialist]; often a formal "seat" or a base, which serves to raise the containers and other objects off the ground; and "medicines"[ an English translation of oogun, a Yorùbá term for a compact, portable ritual construct, which may also be medicinal] buried under the ground where the shrine is placed, which attract the spirit to the site.
Because it resides at that place, the spirit must be continually fed and nourished through sacrifice. And before it is fed, it should be attentive; thus, it is "awakened" with incantations and actions, such as spraying gin on the shrine.
If a person neglects his shrine, that is, if he does not offer it food-however little-the spirits will leave. Ositola stresses that it is the idea and the intention behind the gift that counts, not the size. Therefore, when a shrine is neglected, "all you are seeing are the images. The person has relegated the deities to idols, ordinary images . . . “
( “An Ifá Diviner's Shrine in Ijebuland,” African Arts, Vol. 16, No. 2, 1983. 60-67+99-100. 64.)
This account suggests a shrine in this context as a means of attracting a spirit to a location and sustaining a relationship with that spirit, hence the emphasis on oogun, compact ritual forms “buried under the ground where the shrine is placed [and] which attract the spirit to the site” and on feeding the spirit through gifts the essence of which consists in the thought behind them, not their size, in the sense of a friendly relationship in which the person being given the gift is able to assess the intensity of the orientation of the giver, a relationship established at the level of consciousness, between the mind of the invisible entity and the otherwise invisible mind of the devotee, which is, however, open to the spirit.
This accounts suggests, therefore, that the spirits are not fed through ingesting the gifts, which they can’t do, not being material entities, but are fed though the intentions of the devotee, communicated through the gifts, understood as concretizations of intention, as vehicles of orientation, thereby painting a picture akin to a human relationship, in which people are psychologically sustained by the sincere attentions of other people.
Why are the oogun, the compact ritual forms that are described as attracting the spirit, buried in the earth under the shrine? Why are they not placed above ground?
Wenger’s account of another ritual space, a natural environment in the Oshun forest, could suggest an answer, “On the way to the suspension bridge one can see the entrances to the Igbo’fa, the new Ifá Grove. To allow ritual force accumulation, it is not open to the public.
(The Sacred Groves of Oshogbo, Schubertgasse: Kuntrapunkt.Verlag fur Wissenswertes, 1990. 20)
The association between sacred presence, concentration of spiritual identity through concealment, within the earth, or otherwise away from human contact, recurs in these accounts from Wenger and Ositola.
Wenger references “sacred force accumulation”, a process in which “sacred force ripens, secluded in the heart of matter”, a method of assisting the gods cultivate “strength through stillness [thus securing] their dynamism’s undisrupted presence in…the meditative serenity of their forest home”. The Ositola account describes the burial of shrine objects to attract the spirit.
The focus in both accounts, that of Wenger and that of Ositola, is on mutuality of action, in which the devotee and the spirit are mutually enabling, the devotee helping to create conditions conducive to the spirit while the spirit provides the values the devotee perceives in the relationship.
Wenger’s depiction of a shrine as “a bridge between the gods and the human perceptive imagination” is correlative with Ositola’s account of the intimate relationship between the spirit and the devotee through the medium of the shrine.
This is an imaginative relationship because it involves dialogue between the human being and an otherwise invisible entity whose presence is mediated through visual, often artistic forms, concrete or abstract formations, the shrine images referenced by Ositola.
Wenger’s further summations bring these ideas to a clearer focus in relation to Ògbóni:
[ In Ògbóni ]it is taken for granted that the earth is not just the soil in which the farmer plants and harvests his crops, it is also the soil in which we plant and harvest in a metaphysical sense. The Ògbóni know that matter is a dimension of the spirit.
( “The Oshun Grove of Oshogbo: Symbol of the Crisis of Yorùbá Culture: Conversations between Susanne Wenger and Ulli Beier”, Redefining Yorùbá Culture and Identity,27-36.35).
Wenger’s depiction, in A Life with the Gods, of the spiritual significance of yam, growing under the earth and harvested from there for consumption by humans, reinforces this idea of matter as a dimension of spirit, a unity emblematized by growth within the darkness of earth which yet nourishes those living above the earth:
Orisa [ deity] Oginyon is the god of the yam, which means that he is the yam. And he is [also the orisa] Obàtala, the author of all inspired life. Through being the yam he is the sacred sustenance of matter; through being Obàtala he is the transcendent light dimension of that same matter. The yam is dark and grows and rests in darkness; but it is white inside, where it is sweet sustenance ( 113).
Thus, earth, in the Ògbóni context, is believed to embody powers of sustenance, biological and spiritual, which Ògbóni call upon in ritual. Thus, the Ògbóni ritual burial of symbolic forms in the earth is central to the efficacy of the ritual process, a process meant to distill these powers through maximum proximity to the terrestrial presence.
Reinforcing the order’s relationship with Ile, Earth, as a unified, sentient identity, a venerated mother, Ògbóni are also understood as relating with expressions of Ile represented by spirits that emanate from the earth ( Peter Morton-Williams, “The Yorùbá Ogboni Cult in Oyo”, 369 ).
Ulli Beier’s The Return of the Gods: The Sacred Art of Susanne Wenger, 1975, 79-80, amplifies this understanding in describing the symbolism of the stylized roof of Iledi Ontoto, the Oshogbo Ògbóni meeting house reconstructed by Wenger and her artistic team, an account I present on page 12 of my “Cosmogeographic Explorations: Metaphysical Mapping of Landscape at the Oshun Forest and Glastonbury”( Scribd):
“Three enormous thatch roofs rise against the sky like three giant lizards”. The reptilian forms suggested by the sweep of the thatch huts as well as by the dynamic thrust of the elongated sculptural forms they contain “symbolize the forces that inhabited the earth before [humanity], already charged with magical forces, which [humankind] tries to filter and use in [their] rituals for Ile, the earth spirit…”
Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
Ògbóni
From Myth to Physics
Yorùbá Esotericism at the Matrix of Disciplines
A Response to Olayinka Agbetuyi
2
Part 8
Collage by myself evoking matter and energy transformations in the earth, in nature in general, in the human being and in machines, mediated through images of CERN ( the European Organization for Particle and Nuclear Research) research and Ògbóni, Yoruba esoteric order, iledi,Ògbóni sacred space ritual structure, all centered in the figure of Onile, Owner of earth and of Human habitation on earth, centre of Ògbóni veneration.
Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
Comparative Cognitive Processes and Systems
"Exploring Every Corner of the Cosmos in Search of Knowledge"
Abstract
This essay is a development of the philosophical and mystical potential of the Yorùbá origin Ògbóni esoteric order. This effort is carried out by demonstrating intersections between Ògbóni cosmology, in its ritual activity, and scientific cosmology within the framework of its technological expression, particularly in particle physics, the study of the smallest constituents of matter.
These conjunctions are demonstrated in the context of relationships between an account of the ritual construction of the Ògbóni iledi, the order’s sacred meeting house, and the activity of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, the European Organization for Particle and Nuclear Research, both creativities described as contrastive ways of engaging with varied conceptions of energy.
This essay is a response to queries raised by Olayinka Agbetuyi, in the USAAfrica Dialogues Series Google group, as a rejoinder to my article, “Ògbóni: From Myth to Physics : Yorùbá Esotericism at the Matrix of Disciplines: A Response to Olayinka Agbetuyi”, which reacted to his engagement with my earlier essay published in the same group, “From a Horned, Naked Woman to Cosmological Physics and Explorations of Consciousness: Developing the Wisdom of the Yorùbá Origin Ògbóni Esoteric Order through its Multi-Cultural and Trans-Disciplinary Associations : A Voice from the Universal Ògbóni Fraternity”.
Contents
Abstract
Evoking, Concentrating and Directing Àse, Creative Cosmic Force
CERN and Ògbóni : Convergences and Divergences in Terms of Forms of Energy Engaged With
Evoking, Concentrating and Directing Àse, Creative Cosmic Force
Permeating all activity in the Yorùbá understanding of the cosmos, however, underlying all individual actions and relationships, and particularly concentrated in sacred action, is the role of àse, a creative force understood as pervading existence, enabling being and becoming, existence and change, an abstraction expressed in the concrete particulars of cosmic being and dynamism.
Rowland Abiodun’s “Àse: Verbalizing and Visualizing Creative Power through Art" presents a description of this concept in terms that mesh with Wenger’s harmony of abstract and personificatory conceptions in describing sacred force:
Àse pertains to the identification, activation and utilization of innate energy, power and natural laws believed to reside in all animals, plants, hills, rivers, natural phenomena, human beings and orisa (310).
[It is believed that àse] inhabits and energizes the awe inspiring space of the orisa, their altars( oju ibo)along with all their objects, utensils, offerings and including the air around them.
…
Oju ibo also applies to the sacred architectural space where priests and devotees may be empowered or recharged with àse before undertaking any major task ( 310).
In “Understanding Yorùbá Art and Aesthetics: The Concept of Àse”, Abiodun quotes William Fagg’s pithy depiction of these ideas in a broader cultural context, valid in spite of the limitations of scholarship in Fagg’s day represented by such terms as “tribal’” and “primitive”:
Tribal cultures tend to conceive things as four-dimensional objects in which the fourth or time dimension is dominant and in which matter is only the vehicle, or the outward and visible expression, of energy or life force. Thus it is energy and not matter, dynamic and not static being, which is the true nature of things.
( African Arts, Vol. 27, No. 3, Memorial to William Fagg.1994. 68-78+102-103, 69, quoting Fagg’s "In Search of Meaning in African Art," in Primitive Art and Society, edited by Anthony Forge. London: Oxford University Press, 1973.164).
Ògbóni iledi ritual, like all Yorùbá ritual, may thus be understood as engaging with a kind of energy, àse, described as inherent in every form in existence.
This ritual does this by using symbols summing up humanity's engagement with energy, represented by the symbolization of the human being by charcoal, in the context of the terrestrial location of humanity within the ambit of the creator of the universe.
This combination of diverse elements in a ritual context may be understood as a means of mobilizing this creative force through the synergy between matter, represented by the symbolic elements, and the human perceptive imagination, in Wenger’s words, a synergy activated and focused through ritual.
This strategy may be interpreted through correlating Abiodun’s essays, his referencing in those essays of àse theory and practice as described in Henry and Margaret Drewal’s "Composing Time and Space in Yorùbá Art," in Word and Image : A Journal of Verbal and Visual Enquiry, 1987, 3,/3, 225-51, the exposition on the same subject in Henry John Drewal et al’s Yoruba: Nine Centuries of African Art and Thought, 1989, 16-26 and its elaboration as the central thesis of Abiodun’s Yorùbá Art and Language: Seeking the African in African Art, 2014.
One may thereby summarize Yorùbá ritual theory as being centered in the distillation, concentration and directing of àse, a cosmic force understood to enable being and becoming.
CERN and Ògbóni : Convergences and Divergences in Terms of Forms of Energy Engaged With
The CERN experiments are directed at the generation and application of energy in bringing particles into collision so as to study the outcome.
Ògbóni iledi ritual integrates symbols of humanity’s relationship with energy within the human race’s terrestrial and cosmological contexts, as a means of activating, through ritual, energy described as underlying all processes of existence, physical and mental, animate and inanimate, concrete and spiritual, an understanding of cosmic energy known as àse in Yorùbá.
The àse conception may be understood as describing a kind of energy, adapting the understanding of energy in physics, as the capacity to do work.
This kind of energy, however, understood as underlying all processes of existence, is described in a way that makes it more fundamental to the character of the cosmos than the conception of energy in physics.
Thus CERN technology and Ògbóni ritual may both be understood in terms of working with energy, different understandings of energy, as perceived within different metaphysical systems and using different kinds of instruments, both seeking to work with forces believed to shape the character of reality, material phenomena in the case of CERN, and non-material because not accessible to known quantitative measurement, in the case of Ogboni.
Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
Ògbóni
From Myth to Physics
Yorùbá Esotericism at the Matrix of Disciplines
A Response to Olayinka Agbetuyi
2
Part 9
Collage by myself evoking matter and energy transformations in the earth, in nature in general, in the human being and in machines, mediated through images of CERN ( the European Organization for Particle and Nuclear Research) research and Ògbóni, Yoruba esoteric order, iledi,Ògbóni sacred space ritual structure, all centered in the figure of Onile, Owner of earth and of Human habitation on earth, centre of Ògbóni veneration.
Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
Comparative Cognitive Processes and Systems
"Exploring Every Corner of the Cosmos in Search of Knowledge"
Abstract
This essay is a development of the philosophical and mystical potential of the Yorùbá origin Ògbóni esoteric order. This effort is carried out by demonstrating intersections between Ògbóni cosmology, in its ritual activity, and scientific cosmology within the framework of its technological expression, particularly in particle physics, the study of the smallest constituents of matter.
These conjunctions are demonstrated in the context of relationships between an account of the ritual construction of the Ògbóni iledi, the order’s sacred meeting house, and the activity of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, the European Organization for Particle and Nuclear Research, both creativities described as contrastive ways of engaging with varied conceptions of energy.
This essay is a response to queries raised by Olayinka Agbetuyi, in the USAAfrica Dialogues Series Google group, as a rejoinder to my article, “Ògbóni: From Myth to Physics : Yorùbá Esotericism at the Matrix of Disciplines: A Response to Olayinka Agbetuyi”, which reacted to his engagement with my earlier essay published in the same group, “From a Horned, Naked Woman to Cosmological Physics and Explorations of Consciousness: Developing the Wisdom of the Yorùbá Origin Ògbóni Esoteric Order through its Multi-Cultural and Trans-Disciplinary Associations : A Voice from the Universal Ògbóni Fraternity”.
Contents
Abstract
Relationships Between Matter and Consciousness in CERN Research and Ògbóni Ritual
CERN’s Particle Physics Research and Consciousness
Àse and its Relationship with Consciousness
Relationships Between Matter and Consciousness in CERN Research and Ògbóni Ritual
CERN’s Particle Physics Research and Consciousness
The CERN understanding of energy and matter is indirectly related to the non-material because the particles studied by CERN constitute the brain and body that enable human consciousness even as the full scope of the relationship between consciousness and the matter constituting the human body is not yet known.
CERN, as a particle research institute, is certainly not exploring consciousness, which is not ordinarily the field of physics, although some physicists, such as Roger Penrose in Shadows of the Mind: A Search for the Missing Science of Consciousness, explore consciousness in their philosophical writings as part of their effort to investigate a broad spectrum of reality from their primary scientific base in physics.
Matter is related to consciousness because it enables consciousness as it known on earth, the only kind of consciousness generally known to humanity.
CERN's work deals with the smallest particles of matter, suggesting an indirect relationship between CERN's research and the nature of consciousness.
How do the particles studied by CERN conjoin to generate the complex organism that is able to study itself and the universe?
That question is outside the remit of CERN's mission but it is implied by their work, as it is of quantum mechanics-the study of subatomic particles- as eloquently expressed by such scientist philosophers as David Darling in Equations of Eternity: Speculations on Consciousness, Meaning and the Mathematical Rules that Orchestrate the Cosmos:
Out of a hot, dense melee of subatomic particles-which is all that once existed...your thoughts at this moment derive from energy transactions between particles born at the dawn of time...the anarchy of genesis has given way to intricate, exquisite order [demonstrated by ] portions of the universe that can reflect upon themselves and ask: Why am I here? What is the purpose of life, consciousness, and reality?...the universe questioning itself ( 1993, xiii-xiv).
Àse and its Relationship with Consciousness
The Yorùbá àse conception, on the other hand, is directly related to consciousness since it is understood as enabling the individuality of human creativity.
Is it true that àse is believed to “exist outside consciousness till it is created and embodied by that power?” as stated by Agbetuyi in the piece to which this essay responds?
Is he stating that àse creates consciousness and is thereafter embodied by consciousness or that consciousness creates àse?
Àse is believed to be inherent in all forms of being, and not a creation of any of these forms, human or non-human.
It is understood as a creative force enabling all activity; hence it is prior to the activities of consciousness and enables those activities, as demonstrated by the following description from Babatunde Lawal:
Like many other African peoples, the Yorùbá trace the origin of the world to a Supreme Divinity called OLODUMARE—the Eternal One, ELEDA—the Creator of All that Exists and ALÀSE—the source of àse, the enabling power that sustains and transforms the universe, abiding in all things—animate or inanimate, visible or invisible, creating something out of nothing, changing materials from one state to another, giving form to the formless, motion to the motionless, and life to all, the vital force that enables the sun to shine, the fire to burn, the wind to blow, the rain to fall, the river to flow, unifying the visible and the invisible, the material and the immaterial universes ("Divinity, Creativity and Humanity in Yorùbá Aesthetics" and Yoruba, the latter quoted in Renee Waite's African Concepts of Energy and their Manifestation through Art, M.A. Kent State University, 2016. 14;170).
Àse is perceived as pervading the cosmos, enabling existence and the capacity of change within states of being, yet, within this uniformity of being and its general characteristics, it is described as facilitating creative individuality, enabling, for each person, “a unique blend of performative power and knowledge-the potential for certain achievements”, as described by Henry John Drewal et al's Yorùbá: Nine Centuries of African Art and Thought ( 16).
Chinua Achebe’s presentation of the concept of ike from the culturally cognate and relatively geographically contiguous Igbo vividly projects this combination of the general and the particular:
The Igbo world is an arena for the interplay of forces. It is a dynamic world of movement and of flux. ... Ike, energy, is the essence of all things, human, spiritual, animate and inanimate.
Everything has its own unique energy which must be acknowledged and given its due. "Ike di na awaja na awaja" is a common formulation of this idea: "Power runs in many channels".
[ The complement of that saying] "Onye na nkie, onye na nkie"-literally, "Everyone and his own”- is a social expression of the same notion often employed as a convenient formula for saluting en masse an assembly too large for individual greetings (“The Igbo World and Its Art”, African Philosophy: An Anthology, ed. Emmanuel Chukwudi Eze, 1997. 435-437. 435).
Àse is therefore understood as both cosmic and psychological, individual and social, correlating all zones of existence and all forms of being, the human and the non-human, animate and inanimate, the material and the spiritual.
Awo Falokun Fatunmbi’s description of consciousness as understood in Ifá, a picture that sums up the animistic universe of Yorùbá cosmology, does not reference the àse idea, but paints a picture that is correlative with it, an idea that demonstrates the same level of cosmological generality, of metaphysical fundamentality, as the àse concept:
According to Ifá, everything in nature has some form of consciousness called “Ori” [a] fabric which binds the universe together [as] the multi-levelled layers of consciousness which ... exist in all things on all levels of being.
Ifá teaches that it is the ability of forces of nature to communicate with each other, and the ability of humans to communicate with forces in nature that gives the world a sense of spiritual unity ( “Obàtala - Ifá and the Chief of the Spirit of the White Cloth”, Scribd)
May the àse idea not be therefore seen as foundational to the understanding of consciousness in Yorùbá cosmology? A generative force, enabling recreative, transformative capacity, change from one state to another?
Such changes are demonstrated particularly by the capacity for reflection and action enabled by awareness of one’s existence, awareness of one’s environment and of the relationships between self and environment.
These are the coordinates of consciousness as experienced by human beings, all or part of which are also depicted of inanimate forms as understood in the animistic universe of Yorùbá cosmology.
Thus, one may modify Agbetuyi’s summation along these lines:
Àse is believed to be antecedent to consciousness. After consciousness is created by àse, consciousness embodies that cosmic power.
These issues resonate with the Obàtala /Olodumare ese Ifá, Ifá literature text, which Agbetuyi referenced and which I linked earlier. I used the story in demonstrating how myth is able to address questions at the intersection of science and metaphysics- in this case- how life and consciousness animate the body in the womb, a retelling and expansion inspired by attending lectures on biology of the embryo, as I explain in the notes to the story.
Its largely composed by myself, based on a narrative nucleus from Bolaji Idowu's Olodumare: God in Yorùbá Belief, which supplies the story of Obàtala 's adventure in a few lines, a story I build on in terms of the characterization, narrative sequence, dialogue, and imagery of the story Agbetuyi read, including the correlation of Obàtala 's sleep-actually one night- with the rotation of the earth on its axis in one day, creating the difference between night and day.
It’s an example of what I name hybrid ese Ifá, a largely new creation constructed from an existing ese Ifá, a hybrid literary genre I understand myself as pioneering, along with the composition of completely new ese Ifá, in which ese Ifá structure is used in creating new narratives or poetry, another initiative I am pioneering.
Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
Ògbóni
From Myth to Physics
Yorùbá Esotericism at the Matrix of Disciplines
A Response to Olayinka Agbetuyi
2
Part 10
Collage by myself evoking matter and energy transformations in the earth, in nature in general, in the human being and in machines, mediated through images of CERN ( the European Organization for Particle and Nuclear Research) research and Ògbóni, Yoruba esoteric order, iledi,Ògbóni sacred space ritual structure, all centered in the figure of Onile, Owner of earth and of Human habitation on earth, centre of Ògbóni veneration.
Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
Comparative Cognitive Processes and Systems
"Exploring Every Corner of the Cosmos in Search of Knowledge"
Abstract
This essay is a development of the philosophical and mystical potential of the Yorùbá origin Ògbóni esoteric order. This effort is carried out by demonstrating intersections between Ògbóni cosmology, in its ritual activity, and scientific cosmology within the framework of its technological expression, particularly in particle physics, the study of the smallest constituents of matter.
These conjunctions are demonstrated in the context of relationships between an account of the ritual construction of the Ògbóni iledi, the order’s sacred meeting house, and the activity of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, the European Organization for Particle and Nuclear Research, both creativities described as contrastive ways of engaging with varied conceptions of energy.
This essay is a response to queries raised by Olayinka Agbetuyi, in the USAAfrica Dialogues Series Google group, as a rejoinder to my article, “Ògbóni: From Myth to Physics : Yorùbá Esotericism at the Matrix of Disciplines: A Response to Olayinka Agbetuyi”, which reacted to his engagement with my earlier essay published in the same group, “From a Horned, Naked Woman to Cosmological Physics and Explorations of Consciousness: Developing the Wisdom of the Yorùbá Origin Ògbóni Esoteric Order through its Multi-Cultural and Trans-Disciplinary Associations : A Voice from the Universal Ògbóni Fraternity”.
Contents
Abstract
Visually Conjuncting Ògbóni Symbolism and CERN Research
Correlative Visualizations of Human Relationships with Diverse Conceptions of Energy
The Associative Power of the Ògbóni Iledi Ritual Complex
The Spectrum of Ogboni Visualizations of Ile, Earth, as Onile, Owner of Earth and of Human Habitation on Earth
Visually Conjuncting Ògbóni Symbolism and CERN Research
In the light of convergences between CERN and Ògbóni, one could imagine being erected one day on the grounds of CERN a representation of the Ògbóni iledi configuration as a means of contemplating the timelessness of humanity's engagement with energy within the context of what Wole Soyinka describes in Myth, Literature and the African World as the mysterious immensity that surrounds us, the immensity implicit in all enquiry, brooding behind pictures of cosmic origin in science and myth.
Related conceptions are evoked by the scientific idea of the Quantum Nothing, the unknown state of being before the explosion understood to have brought the universe into existence, magnificently analyzed in Tian Yu Cao’s "Ontology and Scientific Explanation” in John Cornwell’s edited Explanations: Styles of Explanation in Science, in terms that incidentally suggest its parallels with the Jewish Kabbalist conception of Ain Soph, the Unmanifest, and the Buddhist Void.
The scientific idea of the Quantum Nothing and religious ideas of the Unmanifest and the Void signify a point beyond which the human mind cannot go yet which projects the question of the generative antecedents to the cosmos as we know it.
Correlative Visualizations of Human Relationship with Diverse Conceptions of Energy
Thus, one may be led by such a representation of the Ògbóni ritual configuration to appreciate the distance of humanity's journey from the discovery of the capacity of wood to release energy when burned, resulting in charcoal, to the giant CERN colliders under the earth releasing massive amounts of energy as they smash particles together.
One may also reflect on the relationships between efforts to discover the constituents of matter through CERN's initiatives and efforts by such figures as the Ògbóni ritual specialists to distill and concentrate àse, a creative energy believed in Yorùbá cosmology to inhere in all forms of being, pursuing this activity through interaction between symbolic natural substances, ritual speech and gesture as means of activating and directing this force, as Rowland Abiodun elaborates of Yorùbá ritual practice generally in "Àse : Visualizing and Verbalizing Creative Power through Art", "Àse : Understanding Yorùbá Art and Aesthetics" and Yorùbá Art and Language: Seeking the African in African Art, employing these strategies within the context of burying the ritual substances in earth, understood as concentrating this force.
Ideas of cosmic force, and specifically, of fields of energy, are perennial in human thought, from religious to scientific cosmologies.
The Higgs field, central to CERN's work, is described in scientific cosmology as a field, a space permeated by a force, which particles pass through, and thereby gain mass, enabling the material structure of the cosmos.
Gravity, magnetism, electricity-these examples of invisible but potent fields in science are the current forms of the older scientific belief in the ether, which has fallen into dis-acclaim.
Thus, one may appreciate the continuity within difference between the Yorùbá conception of àse and the scientific conception of fields of force.
A scientist may take a break from working with the underground machines at CERN and go above ground to relax in the company of the hypothetical Ògbóni monument, inspiring reflection on past, present and future, the unknown and the unknowable, on our ancestral past evoked by organic sources of energy represented by charcoal, as these reflect the sophisticated machines of the present and the unimaginably transformed instruments of the future, activities shaped by our enmeshing in the material universe constituted by matter, energy, space and time, ideas of material cosmos evoked by the symbol of mud, standing for earth in the Ògbóni monument, materiality within which takes place activities powered by homo sapiens, the warm blooded creature evoked by red dust ground from the bark of the camwood tree, as visualized in the Ògbóni imagination.
Within this sphere of action across space and time, is there an ultimate foundation, an ultimate nexus of possibility within which all being converges, a question seeming to recede infinitely the farther the human being grows, flakes of white falling to earth evoking both mystery and beauty, completing the Ògbóni configuration in terms of the whiteness of chalk standing for what Ògbóni initiate Susanne Wenger describes as Axiom Paradoxon, Beginning and Consequence, the ultimacy, one may observe, which is yet embodied by Earth, Iya Agba, the venerable aged woman surrounded by her four calabashes of chalk, camwood, charcoal and mud in her home under the earth, an image from an ese Ifá, a story from the Yorùbá origin Ifá system of knowledge that correlates the two Yorùbá institutions of Ògbóni and Ifá.
The Associative Power of the Ògbóni Iledi Ritual Complex
My correlation of CERN science and Yorùbá cosmology and ritual is inspired by the Ògbóni iledi configuration on account of the paradoxical associative range of the Ògbóni ritual system, encapsulating a cosmos of possibilities with the conciseness of a few, everyday natural substances in relation to the ubiquity and seeming ordinariness of earth.
It is not as dramatic, for example, as Soyinka's magnificent depiction of the Yorùbá deity Ògún's shaping of diverse forces to carve a path for his fellow deities from orun, the world of ultimate origins, to earth, in Myth, Literature and the African World or the further development of that story in his poem "Idanre" and its evocation in his Ògún Abibiman.
The Ògbóni motifs demonstrate instead the sublimity of the seemingly mundane, the cosmicisation of the everyday, emblematizing the creative powers of the feminine, concealed in human womb or womb of earth, yet enabling, sustaining and regenerating all.
Earth, however, is also a terrible power that both sustains and destroys, hence her parallels stretch to Kali, the Hindu creator/destroyer/recreator Goddess, to Shiva, who dances the cosmos into being, becoming, ending and rebirth, reverberations of the continuity of existence through the Hindu Shakti, the motive force that enables existence and transformation, kin of the Yorùbá àse.
The Spectrum of Ògbóni Visualizations of Ile, Earth, as Onile, Owner of Earth and of Human Habitation on Earth
Some Ògbóni depictions of Onile, Earth, as embodiment of Earth and of human congregation, evoke the quietly voluptuous, akin to the more explicit voluptuousness of the Hindu Shakti, all the better to evoke the dynamic plenitude of existence which these figures represent.
The Ògbóni depictions run the gamut from the buxom female to the elderly female, evoking dramatizations of the feminine life cycle in its embodiment of procreative capacity, erotic effervescence, and post-menopausal existence, as evocative of the human life cycle.
It is thus akin to the more explicit evocation of these biological continuities in such cosmologies as that of modern Western Paganism and particularly modern Western witchcraft, in the image of the maiden, mother and crone, recognizing the inherent creativity of every stage of feminine and of human life.
These images from Western spiritualities transform the old European stigmatization of young and old women as evil witches into valoristic images of the maturation of power.
The seeds of such a transformation also exist in classical Yorùbá conceptions of the feminine, since ideas of such maturation of àse, life force, in the woman through the development of the life cycle are central to classical Yorùbá conceptions of the feminine.
They need, however, to be better developed and projected to contribute to taking Africans away from the demonization of women as witches, a goal achieved in the West in terms of forms of female empowering spiritualities.
Such negative mentalities, however, are still represented in such African examples as the confusion of the valorisation and demonization of women in classical Yorùbá thought.
Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
Ògbóni
From Myth to Physics
Yorùbá Esotericism at the Matrix of Disciplines
A Response to Olayinka Agbetuyi
2
Part 11
Collage by myself evoking matter and energy transformations in the earth, in nature in general, in the human being and in machines, mediated through images of CERN ( the European Organization for Particle and Nuclear Research) research and Ògbóni, Yoruba esoteric order, iledi,Ògbóni sacred space ritual structure, all centered in the figure of Onile, Owner of earth and of Human habitation on earth, centre of Ògbóni veneration.
Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
Comparative Cognitive Processes and Systems
"Exploring Every Corner of the Cosmos in Search of Knowledge"
Abstract
This essay is a development of the philosophical and mystical potential of the Yorùbá origin Ògbóni esoteric order. This effort is carried out by demonstrating intersections between Ògbóni cosmology, in its ritual activity, and scientific cosmology within the framework of its technological expression, particularly in particle physics, the study of the smallest constituents of matter.
These conjunctions are demonstrated in the context of relationships between an account of the ritual construction of the Ògbóni iledi, the order’s sacred meeting house, and the activity of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, the European Organization for Particle and Nuclear Research, both creativities described as contrastive ways of engaging with varied conceptions of energy.
This essay is a response to queries raised by Olayinka Agbetuyi, in the USAAfrica Dialogues Series Google group, as a rejoinder to my article, “Ògbóni: From Myth to Physics : Yorùbá Esotericism at the Matrix of Disciplines: A Response to Olayinka Agbetuyi”, which reacted to his engagement with my earlier essay published in the same group, “From a Horned, Naked Woman to Cosmological Physics and Explorations of Consciousness: Developing the Wisdom of the Yorùbá Origin Ògbóni Esoteric Order through its Multi-Cultural and Trans-Disciplinary Associations : A Voice from the Universal Ògbóni Fraternity”.
Contents
Abstract
Between Hindu Myth and CERN Physics
Shiva's Cosmic Dance and the “Dance of Subatomic Particles”
The Diffusion of Hindu Mythology and Philosophies into
the Thinking of Modern Scientists
Erwin Schrodinger and Julius Oppenheimer
Between Hindu Myth and CERN Physics
Shiva's Cosmic Dance and the “Dance of Subatomic Particles”
Agbetuyi earlier described myth as belonging with metaphysics and as having no relationship with physics.
He accurately described Ògbóni ritual as mythic action like the Shiva statue on the CERN grounds is also a mythic expression, leading him to question the basis for associating two such vastly different cultural forms as myth and science, and even more so, the ultra-sophisticated world of the nuclear and particle research facility that is CERN with the ritual universe of Ògbóni, and the art of Shiva, asking to what degree scientists identify with the CERN-Shiva conjunction in spite of the presence of that statute on the grounds of the research centre as a gift from the Indian government commemorating the country’s association with CERN.
He declares-
"There is no relationship between CERN and Ògbóni rituals; practitioners never met."
And
“Shiva’s dance does not involve physical collision of matter; CERN''s experiment does.”
An imaginative correlation is not an exact but a general conjunction.
Thus, mythic explanations of reality, such as Shva's dance and the Ògbóni ritual configuration, may be understood as imaginative images that underlie all possibilities of human conception, even ideas that were not conceivable in their specificities by the creators of the ritual systems, being developments predating by centuries the scientific conceptions the mythic forms may imaginatively evoke without being identical with them.
Thus, one may interpret the motion of sub-atomic particles in terms of Shiva's cosmic dance in the understanding that the mythic image is more fundamental, because more general, more open to imaginative identification with various phenomena, than the scientific, even though they are not referring to the same specific concept, but simply to the idea of motions of creation and regeneration within the most fundamental aspects of existence-matter and energy in scientific cosmology, divine consciousness working on all aspects of being, including matter, in Hindu myth.
The Diffusion of Hindu Mythology and Philosophies into the Thinking of Modern Scientists
Erwin Schrodinger and Julius Oppenheimer
Hindu mythology and philosophies are actually among the best known and appreciated in the world, with pioneer of quantum mechanics Erwin Schrodinger drawing significantly on Hindu philosophy in developing his world view, as stated in his book My View of the World and nuclear physicist Julius Oppenheimer famously invoking a line from Hindu Bhagavad Gita on watching the first test denotation of the atom bomb, the project he headed, "If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the mighty one...I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds."
Oppenheimer invokes a mystical text, a story depicting a vision of an ultimate cosmic power, in terms of an atomic explosion, inspired as he was by the then unprecedented scope of power released by the scientific device.
At the link above, he is also described as responding to the ethical dilemma represented by the mystical narrative, an exploration of the justice of combat in the light of its creation of death, in the context of a dialogue between Arjuna, the warrior, and Krishna, his charioteer and embodiment of ultimate deity, at the battle of Kurukshetra.
Oppenheimer's later career, as that link states, demonstrates his internalization of this ethical dilemma, in his response to the use of the atomic bomb on Japan, particularly perhaps since the tide of the war had turned in favour of the Allies before the Hiroshima and Nagasaki denotations, and perhaps because he was confronted with the human reality of the child he was central to creating.
The Gita was written centuries before the atom bomb, but it reflects the paradoxes of war that have existed since those earlier days to the present, while its celebration of cosmic power evokes the human capacity to conceive of power at the grandest scales, represented by ultimate cosmic force in the Hindu context of the Gita and nuclear energy in Oppenheimer's time, hence the ancient text spoke to him on that historic day in 1945.
What is at stake in this context is imaginative multicultural and multi-disciplinary correlations, not exact identity between diverse phenomena.