Beauties of Lagos: Meeting Kant in the Metropolis
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Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
Oct 27, 2019, 5:20:52 PM10/27/19
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Walking in Lagos, I saw something striking.
The form unmistakable. The environment an effort in development, yet a long way to go from perfection.
The intelligence of nature again compelling.
Which came first, beauty or the ability to perceive it?
This morning, I sent the picture below to a number of listserves to which I belong.
But almost all these groups are not set up to cater for pictures of women with striking physiques, unlike one of them, Big Booty Support Group, which is dedicated to celebrating big bodied, big bottomed Black, often African-American women, a demographic with a very rich place in the politics of body aesthetics in the US, particularly in relation to African-Americans and their intersections with the larger community.
These correlations are demonstrated by the celebration in the article "First Lady's Got Back", of the dynamics of the posterior of then First Lady Michelle Obama and the resulting furor over what some saw as a focus on externalities as opposed to substance, to which the writer responded that the Black woman's bottom has long been central to the paradoxical perceptions of the Black woman in the US, both alluring and denigrated, so that the emergence of a First Lady with a dynamic derriere was a victory for the aesthetics of the Black woman, and for Black people in general, a victory in an ongoing struggle where physical characteristics are central to identity.
This is a struggle in which in which Krissah Thompson's "Michelle Obama’s Posterior Again the Subject of a Public Rant" and Michelle Bernard's "Michelle Obama and the Broadsides on the Black Woman’s Backside" are later developments.
This struggle is correlative with another struggle within the Caucasian community, the highlighting of feminine beauty as emerging in a variety of forms, from the full bodied and big to the slim and thin, unlike the dominance of women with bodies like those of slender teenage boys in modelling of at least the past ten years.
.jpg?part=0.1&view=1)
A shock of discovery
The picture above, however, was not taken in the US but in Lagos, the commercial capital of Nigeria, a country of Black people, where the robust female backside has long been a staple of female centred aesthetics.
So, what could I possibly have to say about that picture that could rescue me from the sad place to which the celebration of the intersection of female aesthetics and female sexuality has been too often consigned, the zone of caution lest one be seen as negatively indulging, particularly in terms of my practice of surreptitious shots taken at random as the eye is surprised by a flash of beauty that might never be seen again?
.jpg?part=0.2&view=1)
Carrying the treasure across the road
It is the manner in which the perfectly chosen clothes mould her contours, a perfection amplified by impressive grooming, that strikes me. On second thought, the picture's projection of contrast between Nigerians' efforts at self care and the character of their environment also moves me.
The perfectly sculpted form beside the open drain which she has crossed using the old planks on top of the drains, standing in exquisitely shaping clothes in front of the makeshift food stand beside a shanty structure.
The perfectly sculpted form beside the open drain which she has crossed using the old planks on top of the drains, standing in exquisitely shaping clothes in front of the makeshift food stand beside a shanty structure.
The picture says a lot about contrasts between natural and human engineering, between human body and human environment, between the glory of the human form and its enhancing by human hands, between the inalienable summit achieved in the human person by evolution and the struggles of the human being to shape their material reality.
So, have I rescued myself, through philosophizing, from suspicions of perversion?
May I now return in peace to enjoying my picture of that magnificent form, buttocks like hillocks, as the Hindu
“Tripurasundari Ashtakam” declares of the Goddess Tripurasundari, the curves of the upper body sitting lightly on the symmetric flaring of the lower regions, magics of the body rife in Africa but perhaps not so readily prominent elsewhere?
.jpg?part=0.3&view=1)
The sight vanishes, leaving an aftertaste in the air
"That which is created through thought, but which is beyond the power of thought to fully understand and express.
That created by nature, dwarfing and yet elevating the self, humility before the awesome and expansion enabled by contact with that beyond the mundane."
Adaptions of German philosopher Immanuel Kant on the Sublime in his Critique of Judgement.
You may also see this in
in dynamic images and music on YouTube
the visual and verbal minimalism of Twitter
in a photo album with others like it on Pinterest
the crystalline essence generated by a Facebook photo album
the crystalline essence generated by a Facebook photo album
the visual unfolding and verbal elaboration of a Facebook Note and The Female Presence blog
Ibukunolu A Babajide
Oct 28, 2019, 6:59:26 AM10/28/19
to USAAfricaDialogue, Politics Naija, Bring Your Baseball Bat, nigerianworldforum, Talkhard
Toyin,
You visit Lagos, take photos (without her permission) of a woman walking by whose backside is normal and ordinary by Nigerian standards and you weave this rather petty yarn around her? I have in the past told you, and I repeat that where there is no substance, weaving inane words around nothing will never create non existent substance.
That woman is an average woman you will meet daily out of the 10 million approximate women who live and walk about in Lagos. What is new?
You yet again, waste your time and mine!
Cheers.
IBK
_________________________
Ibukunolu Alao Babajide (IBK)
AN ENGLISH NURSERY RHYME
The law locks up the man or woman
Who steals the goose from off the common
But leaves the greater villain loose
Who steals the common from off the goose
The law demands that we atone
When we take things that we do not own
But leaves the lords and ladies fine
Who take things that are yours and mine
The poor and wretched don’t escape
If they conspire the law to break
This must be so but they endure
Those who conspire to make the law
The law locks up the man or woman
Who steals the goose from off the common
And geese will still a common lack
Till they go and steal it back
- Anonymous (circa 1764)
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Gloria Emeagwali
Oct 28, 2019, 6:59:55 AM10/28/19
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What do you think of the view that given Kant’s assertions of Black inferiority and his virulent racism, quoting him in a discussion on Black aesthetics is problematic?
GE
Sent from my iPhone
Walking in Lagos, I saw something striking.The form unmistakable. The environment an effort in development, yet a long way to go from perfection.The intelligence of nature again compelling.Which came first, beauty or the ability to perceive it?This morning, I sent the picture below to a number of listserves to which I belong.But almost all these groups are not set up to cater for pictures of women with striking physiques, unlike one of them, Big Booty Support Group, which is dedicated to celebrating big bodied, big bottomed Black, often African-American women, a demographic with a very rich place in the politics of body aesthetics in the US, particularly in relation to African-Americans and their intersections with the larger community.These correlations are demonstrated by the celebration in the article "First Lady's Got Back", of the dynamics of the posterior of then First Lady Michelle Obama and the resulting furor over what some saw as a focus on externalities as opposed to substance, to which the writer responded that the Black woman's bottom has long been central to the paradoxical perceptions of the Black woman in the US, both alluring and denigrated, so that the emergence of a First Lady with a dynamic derriere was a victory for the aesthetics of the Black woman, and for Black people in general, a victory in an ongoing struggle where physical characteristics are central to identity.This is a struggle in which in which Krissah Thompson's "Michelle Obama’s Posterior Again the Subject of a Public Rant" and Michelle Bernard's "Michelle Obama and the Broadsides on the Black Woman’s Backside" are later developments.This struggle is correlative with another struggle within the Caucasian community, the highlighting of feminine beauty as emerging in a variety of forms, from the full bodied and big to the slim and thin, unlike the dominance of women with bodies like those of slender teenage boys in modelling of at least the past ten years.
<20191023_113516 (3).jpg>A shock of discoveryThe picture above, however, was not taken in the US but in Lagos, the commercial capital of Nigeria, a country of Black people, where the robust female backside has long been a staple of female centred aesthetics.So, what could I possibly have to say about that picture that could rescue me from the sad place to which the celebration of the intersection of female aesthetics and female sexuality has been too often consigned, the zone of caution lest one be seen as negatively indulging, particularly in terms of my practice of surreptitious shots taken at random as the eye is surprised by a flash of beauty that might never be seen again?
<20191023_113601 (3).jpg>Carrying the treasure across the roadIt is the manner in which the perfectly chosen clothes mould her contours, a perfection amplified by impressive grooming, that strikes me. On second thought, the picture's projection of contrast between Nigerians' efforts at self care and the character of their environment also moves me.
The perfectly sculpted form beside the open drain which she has crossed using the old planks on top of the drains, standing in exquisitely shaping clothes in front of the makeshift food stand beside a shanty structure.The picture says a lot about contrasts between natural and human engineering, between human body and human environment, between the glory of the human form and its enhancing by human hands, between the inalienable summit achieved in the human person by evolution and the struggles of the human being to shape their material reality.So, have I rescued myself, through philosophizing, from suspicions of perversion?May I now return in peace to enjoying my picture of that magnificent form, buttocks like hillocks, as the Hindu “Tripurasundari Ashtakam” declares of the Goddess Tripurasundari, the curves of the upper body sitting lightly on the symmetric flaring of the lower regions, magics of the body rife in Africa but perhaps not so readily prominent elsewhere?
<20191023_113604 (2).jpg>The sight vanishes, leaving an aftertaste in the air"That which is created through thought, but which is beyond the power of thought to fully understand and express.That created by nature, dwarfing and yet elevating the self, humility before the awesome and expansion enabled by contact with that beyond the mundane."Adaptions of German philosopher Immanuel Kant on the Sublime in his Critique of Judgement.You may also see this inin dynamic images and music on YouTubethe visual and verbal minimalism of Twitterin a photo album with others like it on Pinterest
the crystalline essence generated by a Facebook photo albumthe visual unfolding and verbal elaboration of a Facebook Note and The Female Presence blog
Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
Oct 28, 2019, 7:16:50 PM10/28/19
to usaafricadialogue
Thanks Gloria.
Such quotations, as well as any use of Kant by Black people, suggest the limitations of Kant's understanding, in my view.
Kant's thought is so powerful I find it unavoidable. The fact that I and many other Black people take advantage of his ideas indicates he understood little about the cognitive capacities of Black people, in contrast to what he thought.
toyin
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/2AAAB8F2-FC23-4A87-9CD2-2305ADB8E1E3%40gmail.com.
Salimonu Kadiri
Oct 30, 2019, 4:57:53 PM10/30/19
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Are you, Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju, sexually perverse and vulgar? I ask you this question because of your two previous posts on this forum,
preceding this Beauties of Lagos. When the debate on the case of sex for mark at OA University, Ife, involving a professor and a female student raged you, Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju, posted on this forum that there should be State brothel in Nigeria
where men could go and ''rock off.'' You were of the opinion that the Professor who was a married pastor with children should have access to brothels to quench his sexual hunger. When in response to his counsel, I asked if you would allow your daughter or
sister to serve in the brothel so that men could ''rock off'' on them, you kept quiet.
On Thursday, 6 September 2018, Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju posted on this forum what you title as
Essay on Masculinity in the Context of Male Eroticism. The essay was accompanied by a photograph pictures of one so-named Julian Phillips with his penis erected gushing out sperm. The photographs were marked, Julian Phillips and Ideals of
Manhood (Contains Explicit Erotic Images). Olayinka Agbetuyi in his post of Friday, 7 Sept. 2018, protested against the display of perverse pornographic pictures on this forum and appealed to you to show respect for forum members, especially women. On
the same day, you titled your response to Olayinka Agbetuyi thus, "Convergences of the Erotic, the Philosophical and the Spiritual in Yoruba and Hindu Thought.'' Therein, you queried Olayinka Agbetuyi thus,
"What is the moral difference in sculpted erotica and the display of such erotica in the human body which is the model for the sculpted form.'' Mr. Agbetuyi responded adequately to your justification of pornographic pictures posted on this list
serve as follows, "When the Yoruba for instance use erotic image, it is sculpted and
NEVER personally displayed (as with your Julian Phillips). The parenthesis is my own addition. I have waited in vain for one year and one month for you, in the name of freedom of speech and expression, to fulfil the hope of Olayinka Agbetuyi
by displaying your genitalia as your mate, Julian Phillips.
As if addicted to sex, you posted on this forum what you termed, Beauties of Lagos. What constituted beauties of Lagos for you is photograph stocked into trousers like
a sack of cocoa beans and standing in front a hawker's shed. Behind her was a metre wide gutter with stagnant rain and household waste water. The gutter that probably end up at another residential building was constructed by civil engineers who obtained their
degrees in town planning buy paying money and sexual briberies to their professors and lecturers. The stagnant water in the gutter looks like mosquitoes' parliament where bills of malaria are passed to the inhabitants in the area. The sweater girl with stored
buttocks in trousers stood alone in front of plastic rapped bakeries with no attendant in sight. The hawker, probably, ran away on seeing the camera man mistaking him for bribe-taking Nigerian official. The sweater wearing (girl) woman stocked into trousers
showing outwardly protruded buttocks was labelled in your 'Beauties of Lagos' as *A chock of Discovery.* Traditionally, judging beauty of humans in Nigeria always start from the facial outlook, but your photographed beauty in Lagos was faceless.
Your notion of beauty of a (girl) woman is limited to the size of her buttocks. As a result of what seems to be your obsession to huge lady's buttocks you posted a second picture of the faceless lady with the huge buttocks crossing over a gutter and you remarked,
*Carrying the treasure across the road.* To you, the treasure was the girl's huge buttocks stocked in European trousers and on top wearing a sweater in a 32 Celsius degree warm temperature.
Clothes are meant to cover one's nakedness and to serve as a protective function against hash weather, cold or hot. Nigerian indigenous (native) attires make both slender and fat persons
look elegant and naturally beautiful. At no time in the history of Nigeria did our mothers wear clothes with the intention to attract men for sexual intercourse. Our mothers in those days never wore clothes to exhibit their buttocks to men with explicit sexual
invitation to men that, if you like my buttocks come and mount on me. Men and women looked forward to marriage where sexual intercourse was instituted for the purpose of
purpose of regenerating. In explainable cases where there were more girls (women) than boys (men) a man was allowed to marry more than
a wife if he could support them as the bread winner of the family. The practice of polygamy was not to satisfy the sexual appetite of the man but not to deprive any woman the chance of child birth. Even, as racist as Fredrick Lugard was in his
'The Dual Mandate in British Tropical Africa,' he did not fail to observe that polygamy in Africa ensured that every female is mated. And importantly, he observed,
"The custom, which seems fairly general among the negro tribes, of suckling a child for two or three years, during which a woman lives apart from her husband, tends to decrease population (p.66).'' That shows that African men of yesteryears exercised
self-discipline and control in matters of sex. They never regarded sex as leisure hour recreation. I don't know what you gain by staring at a woman's large and stored buttocks inside a trousers. However, I am puzzled that you regard her buttock as a shocking
discovery and a treasure in disregard of the environment in which the two of you found yourself. If animals are put in the same environment in Europe or America the perpetrated would be jailed for cruelty to animals. In a world where every Nigerian man is
presumed to be a pimp and every Nigerian woman is a prostitute, I think we should be mindful of what we write and publish. They call us thieves and we dance in the market square carrying goat.
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5918209/NHS-nurse-jailed-14-years-using-voodoo-force-Nigerian-women-work-prostitutes.html
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Ämne: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Beauties of Lagos: Meeting Kant in the Metropolis
Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
Oct 31, 2019, 9:18:29 AM10/31/19
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Thanks, Salimonu.
I would be pleased if you were to post a link to that debate on Nigerian universities so one can read exactly what I wrote, and in what context, since it was some years ago.
These lines of yours beautifully adapt a social philosophy, although you are insensitive to the beauty of the woman in the picture you describe:
These lines of yours beautifully adapt a social philosophy, although you are insensitive to the beauty of the woman in the picture you describe:
Depicting Social Philosophy through an Image
"What constituted beauties of Lagos for you is [ a] photograph [ of a woman] stocked into trousers like a sack of cocoa beans and standing in front [ of ] a hawker's shed. Behind her was a metre wide gutter with stagnant rain and household waste water. The gutter that probably end [ s] up at another residential building was constructed by civil engineers who obtained their degrees in town planning by paying money and sexual briberies to their professors and lecturers.
The stagnant water in the gutter looks like mosquitoes' parliament where bills of malaria are passed to the inhabitants in the area. The sweater girl with stored buttocks in trousers stood alone in front of plastic [ w] rapped bakeries with no attendant in sight. The hawker, probably, ran away on seeing the camera man mistaking him for [ a ] bribe-taking Nigerian official."
Perceptions of the Female Bottom
This is entertaining-
The sweater wearing (girl) woman stocked into trousers showing outwardly protruded buttocks was labelled in your 'Beauties of Lagos' as *A Shock of Discovery.*
Traditionally, judging beauty of humans in Nigeria always start from the facial outlook, but your photographed beauty in Lagos was faceless. Your notion of beauty of a (girl) woman is limited to the size of her buttocks. As a result of what seems to be your obsession to huge lady's buttocks you posted a second picture of the faceless lady with the huge buttocks crossing over a gutter and you remarked, *Carrying the treasure across the road.* To you, the treasure was the girl's huge buttocks stocked in European trousers and on top wearing a sweater in a 32 Celsius degree warm temperature.
...
At no time in the history of Nigeria did our mothers wear clothes with the intention to attract men for sexual intercourse. Our mothers in those days never wore clothes to exhibit their buttocks to men with explicit sexual invitation to men that, if you like my buttocks come and mount on me. Men and women looked forward to marriage where sexual intercourse was instituted for the purpose of purpose of regenerating.
...
African men of yesteryears exercised self-discipline and control in matters of sex. They never regarded sex as leisure hour recreation. I don't know what you gain by staring at a woman's large and stored buttocks inside a trousers.
However, I am puzzled that you regard her buttock as a shocking discovery and a treasure in disregard of the environment in which the two of you found yourself.
If animals are put in the same environment in Europe or America the perpetrated would be jailed for cruelty to animals. In a world where every Nigerian man is presumed to be a pimp and every Nigerian woman is a prostitute, I think we should be mindful of what we write and publish. They call us thieves and we dance in the market square carrying [ a] goat."
The Human Bottom as a Physiological and Symbolic Nexus
The human bottom, most exquisitely actualized in the female bottom, as celebrated in that picture of mine you are discussing, is a physiological and symbolic nexus, a point of balance between and unification of the upper and lower body.
It is also the zone enabling the body to rest as it seats on that bottom in the human person's various peregrinations between birth and transition.
The bottom is both a means of rest and the zone rested upon, thus evocative of a range of physical and abstract values relating to foundationality, the pivot or essence of phenomena, the zone on which a subject or phenomenon rests. This double value is demonstrated in the range of meanings of the word for bottom, "utuhu" in Okpameri, my native language, and possibly of "idi" in Yoruba.
These terms indicate the idea of "bottom" which may be physical or abstract, the human bottom or that of an object or the foundation or core of a subject or a phenomenon.
Seating on one's bottom may thus evoke the need for rest in both a physical and a non-physical sense, in a material and a psychological or spiritual sense.
It may suggest the aspiration to ultimate rest, resting on the foundation providing the rationale and consummation of that ceaseless motion that defines humanity, resting in the balance of motion and stillness known as eternity, as the symbolism of sitting is described by Catholic theologian Karl Rahner in Belief Today.
The bottom is also an aesthetic and erotic nexus, its spherical unities suggesting the linking of beauty and desire, rising into peaks of possibility suggesting the declaration "Buttocks as hillocks", of the Hindu Goddess Tripurasundari in the "Tripurasundari Ashtakam", the personage a side glance from whom empowers
with an irresistible erotic force,
the most decrepit man, unskilled in the arts of love, so that women run after him in desperate longing, their clothes slipping from their bodes, as declares the Soundaryalahari, The Billowing Waves of the Ocean of Beauty, yet she is the same entity from a thread of whose garment the cosmos is created, images evoking the spectrum of value of the relationships between the aesthetic and the erotic.
The Foundationality of the Erotic
The erotic is fundamental to existence and its capacity to animate the most pleasurable responses negates your views about sexuality as related purely to procreation.
Central to civilization is the channeling of the erotic, while its suppression is psychologically and socially dangerous.
Beauty and eroticism, aesthetics and sexuality, belong together in a continuum, and civilization consists partly in being able to separate aspects of this continuum as appropriate for demonstration in particular contexts. Ignoring or suppressing altogether any aspect of this continuity leads to psychological and social deformations.
The Scope of Human Centred Aesthetics in Various Cultures
Hence, in spite of the central significance of fertility in classical African civilizations, environments that required high fertility rates for various reasons not always pertinent today, if at all, the physicality, the embodiment of women and men, were not seen simply in terms of procreative instrumentality, objects for bringing new life into the world, but in terms of a richly embodied aesthetics, ranging from the physical to the abstract, from the senses to moral values, from physicality to the divine, within a continuum in which the erotic was a driving force.
Thus, Romanus Egudu's translations in Igbo Oral Poetry contain a celebration of the form of a particular woman as akin to "a straight line drawn by God", her beauty like a lamp with which wayfarers find their way, if I recall that last image correctly, evoking moral values resonant with the Yoruba expression "iwa le wa", "inward being is beauty", indicating, in my view, not only a focus on the aesthetics of personality but the correlative puzzle of the fact that visible beauty, the most immediately evident, does not have a necessary relationship with inward beauty, which is often not obvious, this being my own response to an idea which Rowland Abiodun explores at length in Yoruba Art and Language, an example of relationships between physical and other forms of beauty relentlessly explored in aspects of the aesthetics of perhaps all continents, as in Islamic, Western and Jewish aesthetics, where physical beauty becomes an entry into moral and divine beauty.
Beauty is one of the attributes or "faces" of God as it shapes the cosmos as seen in Jewish Kabalistic cosmography. Platonic inspired aesthetics seeks to find or reflect ultimate beauty in natural beauty.
The Aesthetic-Erotic Continuum
Where the aesthetics of the human form are encountered, the erotic is not far behind. A Yoruba expression declares that since the hairy place of pleasure between a woman's legs, that place in which the deity Eshu has secreted himself within a concentration of honey as depicted in a particular Ifa poem, is not easy to perceive, we seek after the delights of the face instead.
Another Yoruba expression builds upon this perspective in declaring, "Oju lan do", "it is the face we have sex with", evoking the central attraction of the human face in the aesthetic-erotica continuum, the face being perhaps the most potent physical demonstration of human being.
Another Yoruba expression builds upon this perspective in declaring, "Oju lan do", "it is the face we have sex with", evoking the central attraction of the human face in the aesthetic-erotica continuum, the face being perhaps the most potent physical demonstration of human being.
Evoking this continuum is Ogboni art, which depicts Onile, the female centre of veneration in the Yoruba origin esoteric order, as naked, as her clitoris is prominently but elegantly displayed.
The clitoris has no procreative function, its only role being the enhancing of sexual pleasure, as I point out in my essay on this art posted on this group, referencing current medical literature on the subject-" Female Erotic Intelligence and Arcane Power in the Art of the Yoruba Origin Ogboni Esoteric Order : An Intercultural Dialogue : Part 1 " part of my essay series "My Journey in Developing the Universal Ogboni Fraternity : a New School of the Yoruba Origin Ogboni Esoteric Order".
Why should the art of such a venerable group as Ogboni, particularly as it existed in its older pre-colonial formations, thus celebrate female eroticism, and outside the procreative capacity of that eroticism?
What could we learn about that foregrounding in relation to Loland Matory's account, in Sex and the Empire that is No More: Gender and the Politics of Metaphor in Oyo Yoruba Religion , of the clitoris being referenced in Yorubaland as "the king in the world"?
How do these ideas relate to the interpretation of female genitalia in classical Yoruba thought as described by Rowland Abiodun in "Woman in Yoruba Religious Images" and by Henry Drewal in
"Art and the Perception of Women in Yoruba Culture" , as an abode of mysterious occult power?
What relationships may be drawn between these ideas and those of the African female esoteric group, the Mevoungou of Cameroon, which I referenced in " Female Erotic Intelligence and Arcane Power in the Art of the Yoruba Origin Ogboni Esoteric Order 1" , for whom the clitoris is a centre of spiritual power?
As we proceed on this train of thought, puzzling over the possibly correlative significance of an aspect of female biology within diverse African cultures, are we far from the Hindu Yoni Tantra, in which female genitalia is a centre of worship,
a matrix of cosmic and terrestrial creativity in which cosmic life emerges into human embodiment, through which the transformation of the senses through pleasure points to points of entry into the ultimate ground from which the senses are derived as a primary form of apprehending existence, a biological zone visualized as a cosmos of being and becoming, a matrix of creativity where cosmos conjoins with earth, its physical geography co-terminus with a cosmography realized by the ten Mahavidyas, female embodiments of wisdom manifest in the permutations of existence, terrestrial and cosmic?
Gaze in veneration at that sacred space, declares the Yoni Tantra, consummating that adoration by penetration, and thus, as Abhinavagupta would describe in the Tantraloka, the clitoris and the linga, the phallus as a symbol of cosmic creativity, become the instruments lighting a flame, a flame consuming the senses, at the height of which erotic intensity,
awareness peaked at a climax of bliss,
the entwined two become Shiva, the power enabling being and becoming, dramatizing the vibrations of union between the God Shiva and the Goddess Shakti from which the cosmos continually emerges.
Eroticism in Classical African Literature
Were classical Africans truly insensitive to the erotic, relating to sexuality only in terms of procreation?
Along with the example of Ogboni art, one may also consider such expressions as an exquisite oral poem from the Bagirmi in Ulli Beier's compilation African Poetry: An Anthology of Traditional African Poems, in which the poet armours herself, painting her eyes with black antimony, girding herself with amulets, as her chant continuously invokes the person she hopes to allure with these enchantments, with whom she aspires to "satisfy my desire", "you my slender boy", hoping to realize an aspiration similar to that of another lover in an Egyptian poem in the same collection, "This is my desire : / with you to release it, / to be alone with you/ when it sounds the call of freedom, /my bird, scented with myrrh".
Clearly, this is a world far from the pure focus of sexuality on procreation which you ascribe to classical African cultures.
Exploring the Scope of Human Centred Aesthetics
On my writing about women, I am a writer on the aesthetics of the human being, particularly the female person, from the erotic to the arcane and spiritual.
The human person and all aspects of the human form inspire endless response across time and space, as demonstrated by the range of references in my essay on the beard of the artist and scholar Dele Jegede and on the face of the thinker Iro Eweka.
On the erotic, I don't identify with the idea that celebrating, even publicly, the harmony of the beautiful and the erotic is necessarily something negative.
On celebrating the beauty of female anatomy, does that necessarily indicate a sexual orientation?
Eroticism, sexuality, aesthetics, are continually at play in people's encounters with the world, necessitating the filtering and selection of responses to this complex stimuli, that selectivity constituting civilized culture enabling people live harmoniously in society.
The Erotic as Spiritual Matrix
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OLAYINKA AGBETUYI
Oct 31, 2019, 9:18:40 AM10/31/19
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Toyin.
I hope the current reactions draw a curtain on your attempts to post materials of this nature in this forum.
We share the African sensibilities of those listservs who did not appreciate the value of such postings.
Many will bear it in silent disgust, others will depart in anger from the forum (we do not want to lose mature reserved highly gifted intellectuals) and others will express their outrage in no uncertain terms as you have seen. Reserve such postings in
future for the Booty Magazine.
The Yoruba have a saying; 'E jawo ni idi ido, ere omode ni'
(Mature adults should not engage in past times meant for youngsters.) You must know that there are contributors and sterling intellectuals here who are also GRANDPARENTS. What would they be doing reading such stuff? You may say they could just ignore
it. But what does it say about the collective permissive etiquette of forumites?
In Europe 'freedom of expression' allowed Hugh Heffner a sixty year old to be hawking Playboy (pornograohic materials) brazenly on newsstands to the disgust of decent members of the society. That is not the future people want for Africa.
No one wants overt censorship, but in mature civilised communities and discourses self censorship is key to mutual respect.
I would not go as far as Alagba Kadiri's outraged chastisement this time ( he wants a return to Africa's pre- colonial ethical past as soon as practicable.) I can sense your scholarly intent and you even second guessed that others may interpret the motivation
to be perverse and you were proven right. You stated a few postings ago thay this is not strictly an academic forum to prepare our minds for what is coming; for a large number of participants it is.
You made valid comparisons with Indian texts (the Indians were noted for the sex manual Kama Sutra but India is vast, I work daily with Indians and I know not all Indians subscribe to the ethos and stereotype of that manual.
About 15 years ago I posted on the psychoanalytic import of the Okebadan festival with its erotic language but it does happen every day and does not involve the mature intellectuals of the city. It symbolised a one day relief if the bottled up sexual
tensions imposed by the agency if civilisation in view of the perceived psycho-somatic harm done to the human psyche.
Yes, even in traditional times intercourse between men and women goes beyond procreation alone but its discourses are discreet and not ubiquitous. Even in the West today you cannot enter the White House to go and listen to a seminar on the Booty Magazine.
And of course Immanuel Kant will squirm in his grave to know you cite his name in vain. For all we know of him he had no interest in erotic materials in his conception of the sublime.
So there is a time and a place for everything. Many participants disagree that this is a forum for gratuitous eroticism.
OAA
Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.
-------- Original message --------
From: Salimonu Kadiri <ogunl...@hotmail.com>
Date: 30/10/2019 21:10 (GMT+00:00)
Subject: Sv: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Beauties of Lagos: Meeting Kant inthe Metropolis
Are you, Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju, sexually perverse and vulgar? I ask you this question because of your two previous posts on this forum,
preceding this Beauties of Lagos. When the debate on the case of sex for mark at OA University, Ife, involving a professor and a female student raged you, Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju, posted on this forum that there should be State brothel in Nigeria
where men could go and ''rock off.'' You were of the opinion that the Professor who was a married pastor with children should have access to brothels to quench his sexual hunger. When in response to his counsel, I asked if you would allow your daughter or
sister to serve in the brothel so that men could ''rock off'' on them, you kept quiet.
On Thursday, 6 September 2018, Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju posted on this forum what you title as
Essay on Masculinity in the Context of Male Eroticism. The essay was accompanied by a photograph pictures of one so-named Julian Phillips with his penis erected gushing out sperm. The photographs were marked, Julian Phillips and Ideals of
Manhood (Contains Explicit Erotic Images). Olayinka Agbetuyi in his post of Friday, 7 Sept. 2018, protested against the display of perverse pornographic pictures on this forum and appealed to you to show respect for forum members, especially women. On
the same day, you titled your response to Olayinka Agbetuyi thus, "Convergences of the Erotic, the Philosophical and the Spiritual in Yoruba and Hindu Thought.'' Therein, you queried Olayinka Agbetuyi thus,
"What is the moral difference in sculpted erotica and the display of such erotica in the human body which is the model for the sculpted form.'' Mr. Agbetuyi responded adequately to your justification of pornographic pictures posted on this list
serve as follows, "When the Yoruba for instance use erotic image, it is sculpted and
NEVER personally displayed (as with your Julian Phillips). The parenthesis is my own addition. I have waited in vain for one year and one month for you, in the name of freedom of speech and expression, to fulfil the hope of Olayinka Agbetuyi
by displaying your genitalia as your mate, Julian Phillips.
As if addicted to sex, you posted on this forum what you termed, Beauties of Lagos. What constituted beauties of Lagos for you is photograph stocked into trousers like
a sack of cocoa beans and standing in front a hawker's shed. Behind her was a metre wide gutter with stagnant rain and household waste water. The gutter that probably end up at another residential building was constructed by civil engineers who obtained their
degrees in town planning buy paying money and sexual briberies to their professors and lecturers. The stagnant water in the gutter looks like mosquitoes' parliament where bills of malaria are passed to the inhabitants in the area. The sweater girl with stored
buttocks in trousers stood alone in front of plastic rapped bakeries with no attendant in sight. The hawker, probably, ran away on seeing the camera man mistaking him for bribe-taking Nigerian official. The sweater wearing (girl) woman stocked into trousers
showing outwardly protruded buttocks was labelled in your 'Beauties of Lagos' as *A chock of Discovery.* Traditionally, judging beauty of humans in Nigeria always start from the facial outlook, but your photographed beauty in Lagos was faceless.
Your notion of beauty of a (girl) woman is limited to the size of her buttocks. As a result of what seems to be your obsession to huge lady's buttocks you posted a second picture of the faceless lady with the huge buttocks crossing over a gutter and you remarked,
*Carrying the treasure across the road.* To you, the treasure was the girl's huge buttocks stocked in European trousers and on top wearing a sweater in a 32 Celsius degree warm temperature.
Clothes are meant to cover one's nakedness and to serve as a protective function against hash weather, cold or hot. Nigerian indigenous (native) attires make both slender and fat persons
look elegant and naturally beautiful. At no time in the history of Nigeria did our mothers wear clothes with the intention to attract men for sexual intercourse. Our mothers in those days never wore clothes to exhibit their buttocks to men with explicit sexual
invitation to men that, if you like my buttocks come and mount on me. Men and women looked forward to marriage where sexual intercourse was instituted for the purpose of
purpose of regenerating. In explainable cases where there were more girls (women) than boys (men) a man was allowed to marry more than a wife
if he could support them as the bread winner of the family. The practice of polygamy was not to satisfy the sexual appetite of the man but not to deprive any woman the chance of child birth. Even, as racist as Fredrick Lugard was in his
'The Dual Mandate in British Tropical Africa,' he did not fail to observe that polygamy in Africa ensured that every female is mated. And importantly, he observed,
"The custom, which seems fairly general among the negro tribes, of suckling a child for two or three years, during which a woman lives apart from her husband, tends to decrease population (p.66).'' That shows that African men of yesteryears exercised
self-discipline and control in matters of sex. They never regarded sex as leisure hour recreation. I don't know what you gain by staring at a woman's large and stored buttocks inside a trousers. However, I am puzzled that you regard her buttock as a shocking
discovery and a treasure in disregard of the environment in which the two of you found yourself. If animals are put in the same environment in Europe or America the perpetrated would be jailed for cruelty to animals. In a world where every Nigerian man is
presumed to be a pimp and every Nigerian woman is a prostitute, I think we should be mindful of what we write and publish. They call us thieves and we dance in the market square carrying goat.
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5918209/NHS-nurse-jailed-14-years-using-voodoo-force-Nigerian-women-work-prostitutes.html
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för Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju <toyin....@gmail.com>
Skickat: den 27 oktober 2019 20:10
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Ämne: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Beauties of Lagos: Meeting Kant in the Metropolis
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Ämne: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Beauties of Lagos: Meeting Kant in the Metropolis
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Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
Oct 31, 2019, 1:21:13 PM10/31/19
to usaafricadialogue
OA,
I hope you are aware that this is a moderated group.
Thanks
toyin
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OLAYINKA AGBETUYI
Oct 31, 2019, 4:03:02 PM10/31/19
to usaafric...@googlegroups.com
Toyin:
Much of what you said here skirts around the use of the picture the way you used it but did not deal with the core of the objections.
Philosophysing about beauty in general and in abstract about gods and genitalia is different from a particular human form which is being violated.
Your holistic theory of human beauty is not depicted but the derriere so Salimonu's ',point is cogent.
Publications of erotica discourse within the cover of books is not the same as live public digitized discussion.
And again what has Kant got to do with it?
OAA.
Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.
-------- Original message --------
From: Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju <toyin....@gmail.com>
Date: 31/10/2019 13:21 (GMT+00:00)
To: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Beauties of Lagos: Meeting Kant inthe Metropolis
Thanks, Salimonu.
I would be pleased if you were to post a link to that debate on Nigerian universities so one can read exactly what I wrote, and in what context, since it was some years ago.
These lines of yours beautifully adapt a social philosophy, although you are insensitive to the beauty of the woman in the picture you describe:
These lines of yours beautifully adapt a social philosophy, although you are insensitive to the beauty of the woman in the picture you describe:
Depicting Social Philosophy through an Image
"What constituted beauties of Lagos for you is [ a] photograph [ of a woman] stocked into trousers like a sack of cocoa beans and standing in front [ of ] a hawker's shed. Behind her was a metre wide gutter with stagnant rain and household waste water. The gutter that probably end [ s] up at another residential building was constructed by civil engineers who obtained their degrees in town planning by paying money and sexual briberies to their professors and lecturers.
The stagnant water in the gutter looks like mosquitoes' parliament where bills of malaria are passed to the inhabitants in the area. The sweater girl with
stored buttocks in trousers stood alone in front of plastic [ w] rapped bakeries with no attendant in sight. The hawker, probably, ran away on seeing the camera man mistaking him for [ a ] bribe-taking
Nigerian official."
Perceptions of the Female Bottom
This is entertaining-
The sweater wearing (girl) woman stocked into trousers showing outwardly protruded buttocks was labelled in your 'Beauties
of Lagos' as *A Shock of Discovery.*
Traditionally, judging beauty of humans in Nigeria always start from the facial outlook, but your photographed beauty in Lagos was faceless. Your notion of
beauty of a (girl) woman is limited to the size of her buttocks. As a result of what seems to be your obsession to huge lady's buttocks you posted a second picture of the faceless lady with the huge buttocks crossing over a gutter and you remarked, *Carrying
the treasure across the road.* To you, the treasure was the girl's huge buttocks stocked in European trousers and on top wearing a sweater in a 32 Celsius degree warm temperature.
...
At no time in the history of Nigeria did our mothers wear clothes with the intention to attract men for sexual intercourse. Our mothers in those days never
wore clothes to exhibit their buttocks to men with explicit sexual invitation to men that, if you like my buttocks come and mount on me. Men and women looked forward to marriage where sexual intercourse was instituted for the purpose of purpose
of regenerating.
...
African men of yesteryears exercised self-discipline and control in matters of sex. They never regarded sex as leisure
hour recreation. I don't know what you gain by staring at a woman's large and stored buttocks inside a trousers.
However, I am puzzled that you regard her buttock as a shocking discovery and a treasure in disregard of the environment
in which the two of you found yourself.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/MN2PR07MB7168C6290145F1728252B2CFAE660%40MN2PR07MB7168.namprd07.prod.outlook.com.
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Salimonu Kadiri
Oct 31, 2019, 6:52:16 PM10/31/19
to usaafric...@googlegroups.com
Thank you, Oluwatoyin, for not answering my question - Are you sexually perverse or vulgar? I asked you the question partly because you once honoured abnormal sexual postures in one of your postings on this list serve and partly
because I could not understand what information you were trying to convey to your readers with pictures of woman with bounteous buttocks stocked inside Euro-American made trousers. I find it very difficult to see you accept unconditionally the values of the
white bourgeois world in Nigeria : their morals and canons of respectability, their standards of beauty and consumption despite the fact that Nigeria lacks the same environmental and economic platform. I read somewhere that in 2018 Nigeria imported bleaching
creams for one billion naira and consumed in the same period seven-hundred million packets of condoms. At a time when Nigerians are battling with University lecturers and professors with abnormal libido who are auctioning exam grades for sex, we should not
be confronted with pictures of ladies' fat buttocks.
S. Kadiri
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Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
Oct 31, 2019, 6:52:30 PM10/31/19
to usaafricadialogue
Im puzzled Olayinka.
You first dismissed the subject as something that should not be broached on this forum at all now you are trying to generate a discussion about it, such discussions being what I find particularly inspiring about responses to such posts.
So, what do you want- dismissal or discussion?
toyin
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OLAYINKA AGBETUYI
Oct 31, 2019, 9:24:35 PM10/31/19
to usaafric...@googlegroups.com
I am not generating a discussion on it. Im saying your response had not taken care of why we should not be generating extensive discussions as you did in respectable circles. In fact your response has amplified my position that such discourses do not
form part of the staple of the general public discourses:
It is part of what justifies Ogboni as a 'secret' society dealing with ARCANE knowledge and not general public discourses. The same goes for the Eshu excerpt you cited. Ifa priest consultations are not generally conducted in the open square but in privacy.
OAA
Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.
-------- Original message --------
From: Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju <toyin....@gmail.com>
Date: 31/10/2019 22:58 (GMT+00:00)
To: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Beauties of Lagos: Meeting Kantinthe Metropolis
Im puzzled Olayinka.
You first dismissed the subject as something that should not be broached on this forum at all now you are trying to generate a discussion about it, such discussions being what I find particularly inspiring
about responses to such posts.
So, what do you want- dismissal or discussion?
toyin
On Thu, 31 Oct 2019 at 21:02, OLAYINKA AGBETUYI <yagb...@hotmail.com> wrote:
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/VI1PR04MB44935B9D0C8D78703F6CE6D9A6630%40VI1PR04MB4493.eurprd04.prod.outlook.com.
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Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
Nov 1, 2019, 2:50:23 AM11/1/19
to usaafricadialogue
Really, Salimonu?
Are sexual perversity and vulgarity to be legislated from a particular point of view?
You presented your view of propriety in such issues and I presented mine.
You presented your view of propriety in such issues and I presented mine.
On the physical architecture I discussed, explained at length the value I see in admiring and reflecting on the glory of the human form.
As for accepting unconditionally the views of the Western "bourgeois world in Nigeria : their morals and canons of respectability, their standards of beauty and consumption despite the fact that Nigeria lacks the same environmental and economic platform" how did I do that?
As for the issues of sexual ethics in Nigerian universities, we are not in a Nigerian university here. We are on the Internet. The challenges relevant to these different environments are very different even though comparable.
I would like to have the link to where I am supposed to have done this- " you once honoured abnormal sexual postures in one of your postings on this list serve" so i can better examine the post and its context.
I would like to have the link to where I am supposed to have done this- " you once honoured abnormal sexual postures in one of your postings on this list serve" so i can better examine the post and its context.
thanks
toyin
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Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
Nov 1, 2019, 2:50:34 AM11/1/19
to usaafricadialogue
OA,
Thanks.
So you are making pronouncements then that are not open to discussion?
You are not generating invitations to examine open ended issues?
Yet you are conflating your views on the propriety of presenting
supposedly erotic material in a group like this one with views on esotericism and privacy of Ifa divination consultations. relating these to ideas about the
Yoruba deity Eshu
?
You introduce to this subject such recondite issues as Ogboni esotericism, arcane knowledge, ideas about privacy as opposed to public revelation in Ifa consultation, conceptions of Eshu which you say I cited in another sequence of posts, conflating all these with ideas about spaces of discourse of the erotic.
Since you conflate those complex but tantalizing issues the way you are doing without an effort to clarify your views on them, what am I to do but simply wonder how critically you are approaching your cunjuncting of those ideas.
You are making a statement on the validity of particular spaces of discourses in relation to diverse but possibly correlative subjects, with a focus on conceptions of secrecy and the arcane in relation to public discussion, with particular reference to Ogboni, relating this to individuality and privacy of Ifa consultations, in terms of the similarities and differences between these two fields of enquiry, examining how they resonate with the Eshu reference you allude to, but you present your convergence of these complexities in terms of a bare conflation without justification for mixing these varied discourses, particularly in relation to questioning the propriety of erotic presentations in scholarly spaces such as this one.
I have an idea of the direction in which you are going, but how realistic is it for me to respond adequately since you have not explained your understanding of these cultural forms and your rationale for correlating them as you are doing?
It would be so helpful if you took the trouble to do so.
The strategy you are adopting is correlative with that of Moshe Halbertal in Concealment and Revelation: Jewish Esotericism and its Philosophical Implications, in which he locates the specialized character of spiritual esotericism within ideas of concealment of knowledge in exoteric discourses, such as conceptions of the subconscious mind in psychoanalysis.
Your effort at transposing a discussion about eroticism vis a vis a scholarly listserve in terms of the range of cognitive forms from Yoruba culture you reference could be very useful in the task of building foundations for the study of Yoruba esotericism, and its contribution to other African and non-African esotericisms, relating to such Yoruba concepts as awo ( spiritual mystery and power ) and eewo ( taboo) , in relation to broader bodies of knowledge, of which ideas of concealment and unveiling in relation to the erotic are pertinent, with Yoruba ideas on the erotic in general and female eroticism in particular being valuable vantage points for such an examination.
Thanks
toyin
It is part of what justifies Ogboni as a 'secret' society dealing with ARCANE knowledge and not general public discourses. The same goes for the Eshu excerpt you cited. Ifa priest consultations are not generally conducted in the open square but in privacy.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/VI1PR04MB4493D8C8BE09CC34FDDE0891A6620%40VI1PR04MB4493.eurprd04.prod.outlook.com.
Michael Afolayan
Nov 1, 2019, 7:13:25 AM11/1/19
to usaafricadialogue, NaijaP...@yahoogroups.com, Politics Naija, Bring Your Baseball Bat, nigerianworldforum, Talkhard
Oluwatoyin:
Let me act the role of my grandmother who passed away long - very long, time ago, certainly before you were born. Sorry, I have to say it in English, and consequently much of the meaning would be lost in translation (sorry about that)! Here is how she would have talked to you:
"Toooooooyin!"
And your response would be, "Maaaaaaa!"
Grandma: What food do the earlobes eat?
You: Words, Mama. They eat words.
Grandma: How many are your ears?
You: Two.
Grandma: What do you use them for?
You: To hear words.
Grandma: O šeun, láyé! But can't your ears hear what all these people are saying?
You: What are they saying, Mama Agba?
Grandma: Listen, my dear, when you veer into conversations about female backsides, clit..is, ge...alia, etc., you are entering into the Sanctum Sanctorum (Holy of Holies), as you alakowes call it. When you become obsessive with those conversations, you step from the holy to the profane. Haha, Oluwatoyin, Abi na you be dat nasty profet wey com'ot the mout' of the monster fish after three days? Haba!!! You see, academics has its grace when it stays on course and carries its well meaning learners along; but without care, one could easily roam out of the realm of grace into that of disgrace. Son, I don't want you to get to that point; but from what I am hearing others say to you (and to me on occasions), you are not too far from taking that unholy step, and I am worried.
You: I don't understand what you are saying, Grandma.
Grandma: You do, my dear! I trust you do. If you don't, then I am worried - very worried, and even more worried about you now than ever before. I have always seen you as very intelligent albeit with a high octane propensity. Don't you hang out with your famous namesake known for high-level intelligence (and sometimes people in Lagos think he is the one writing when you write all these things belittling us as women!)? So, don't tell me you don't understand what they are saying. Right now, it is as if you are beating your high-pitched bàtá drum to a bunch of cool jazz dancers. It might play better with Sango or Santeria dancers - highly possessed, having tasted some ritual animal blood: they can dance, shake, hop, jump and even summersault. And even with that group, the problem is that the bata drum is beaten with care and then hung on the wall hooks to cool down and take a breather because if it is beaten too hard and harsh for a protracted period, it breaks into shreds. No, you can't afford that. . . Let wisdom guide you, son!
===
As for me, what do I know? Those are just counsels from my grandmother. You don't need to respond to me; and responding to her will be redundant. Just take it or leave it and have a profitable weekend in Lagos and be sure to use your eyes productively, jòó!
Michael O. Afoláyan
Speaking on Behalf of Grandma!
On Wednesday, October 30, 2019, 3:07:38 PM GMT+1, Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju toyin....@gmail.com [NaijaPolitics] <naijap...@yahoogroups.com> wrote:
IBK,
People, particularly on the USA Africa group, where you ply your odious trade, must be wondering why you keep attacking me even though I never address you and why Professor Toyin Falola, who runs the group, lets you get on with it in spite of myself and Chidi Anthony Opara recurrently calling attention to the corrosive behavior that is your trademark and its incongruity on a scholarly group.
Since Falola is insisting by letting you get on with it that self help is the best option, I have to respond this time, having been silent for years.
My brother, it is not my fault that your wife left you. She only confided in me and I comforted her.
Please stop trying to hound me for your own inadequacies.
Please stop trying to hound me for your own inadequacies.
Toyin
That created by nature, dwarfing and yet elevating the self, humility before the awesome and expansion enabled by contact with that beyond the mundane.."
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Michael Afolayan
Nov 1, 2019, 7:13:30 AM11/1/19
to usaafricadialogue
Oluwatoyin:
Let me act the role of my grandmother who passed away long - very long, time ago, certainly before you were born. Sorry, I have to say it in English, and consequently much of the meaning would be lost in translation (sorry about that)! Here is how she would have talked to you:
"Toooooooyin!"
And your response would be, "Maaaaaaa!"
Grandma: What food do the earlobes eat?
You: Words, Mama. They eat words.
Grandma: How many are your ears?
You: Two.
Grandma: What do you use them for?
You: To hear words.
Grandma: O šeun, láyé! But can't your ears hear what all these people are saying?
You: What are they saying, Mama Agba?
Grandma: Listen, my dear, when you veer into conversations about female backsides, clit..is, ge...alia, etc., you are entering into the Sanctum Sanctorum (Holy of Holies), as you alakowes call it. When you become obsessive with those conversations, you step from the holy to the profane. Haha, Oluwatoyin, Abi na you be dat nasty profet wey com'ot the mout' of the monster fish after three days? Haba!!! You see, academics has its grace when it stays on course and carries its well meaning learners along; but without care, one could easily roam out of the realm of grace into that of disgrace. Son, I don't want you to get to that point; but from what I am hearing others say to you (and to me on occasions), you are not too far from taking that unholy step, and I am worried.
You: I don't understand what you are saying, Grandma.
Grandma: You do, my dear! I trust you do. If you don't, then I am worried - very worried, and even more worried about you now than ever before. I have always seen you as very intelligent albeit with a high octane propensity. Don't you hang out with your famous namesake known for high-level intelligence (and sometimes people in Lagos think he is the one writing when you write all these things belittling us as women!)? So, don't tell me you don't understand what they are saying. Right now, it is as if you are beating your high-pitched bàtá drum to a bunch of cool jazz dancers. It might play better with Sango or Santeria dancers - highly possessed, having tasted some ritual animal blood: they can dance, shake, hop, jump and even summersault. And even with that group, the problem is that the bata drum is beaten with care and then hung on the wall hooks to cool down and take a breather because if it is beaten too hard and harsh for a protracted period, it breaks into shreds. No, you can't afford that. . . Let wisdom guide you, son!
===
As for me, what do I know? Those are just counsels from my grandmother. You don't need to respond to me; and responding to her will be redundant. Just take it or leave it and have a profitable weekend in Lagos and be sure to use your eyes productively, jòó!
Michael O. Afoláyan
Speaking on Behalf of Grandma!
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Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
Nov 1, 2019, 7:13:32 AM11/1/19
to Politics Naija, usaafricadialogue, Bring Your Baseball Bat, nigerianworldforum, Talkhard
thanks Oga Afolayan.
the discussion is actually going very well.
as it is, i have an essay already from my discussion with Salimonu. if Olayinka fleshes out his own critique, more material will be stimulated that could even contribute to the foundations of the study of Yoruba esotericism, a field hungry for examination.
it was one of such debates on this group that led to my ongoing work on Ogboni which had been subconsciously gestating for ten years, work proving strategic for my professional identity as a cultivator of knowledge systems.
i salute.
toyin
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OLAYINKA AGBETUYI
Nov 1, 2019, 7:13:36 AM11/1/19
to usaafric...@googlegroups.com
Toyin:
What I have stated is common knowledge among the Yoruba.
The Yoruba do not believe everything should be and is dissectible in the manner of western empiricism the way you have carried on for a long time on all subjects in this forum thereby making the sacred profane, divesting them of their veneration and mystique
just to satisfy western audiences. The Yoruba do not believe their existence is simply to satisfy western curiosity.
It not for nothing that the Yoruba named the female genitalia 'obo' ( that which must be apprehended in secrecy and concealment instead of coming to discuss the function of a woman's clitoris on a public listserv scholarly or no scholarly) It is not a
subject that is meant for public scholarly discussion. That is why the agencies of Ogboni and Ifa priests exist to examine such issues with the required out of the public required decency, tact and sacredness.
Yes,Ifa agency exists for the same purpose: to examine with the appropriate tact and reverence issues considered delicate or sensitive for general public discussions. That is the true meaning of 'awo' as you rightly guessed. Are you giving Yoruba discreet
discourses the reverence they deserve for the sake of societal sanity. etiquette and reverence by letting everything "hang out' in your decided over analysing?
It is because the West wanted to know every thing about any thing about every one for the purposes of control that the colonial masters through the agency of the Christian missionaries labelled such groups and such approaches, agencies of darkness and
evil.
Are we still under colonialism? Are you a colonial agent?
OAA
Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.
-------- Original message --------
From: Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju <toyin....@gmail.com>
Date: 01/11/2019 07:03 (GMT+00:00)
To: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Beauties of Lagos: Meeting Kantinthe Metropolis
OA,
Thanks.
So you are making pronouncements then that are not open to discussion?
You are not generating invitations to examine open ended issues?
Yet you are conflating your views on the propriety of presenting supposedly erotic material in a group like this one with views on esotericism and privacy of Ifa divination consultations. relating these to
ideas about the Yoruba deity Eshu ?
You introduce to this subject such recondite issues as Ogboni esotericism, arcane knowledge, ideas about privacy as opposed to public revelation in Ifa consultation, conceptions of Eshu which you say I cited
in another sequence of posts, conflating all these with ideas about spaces of discourse of the erotic.
Since you conflate those complex but tantalizing issues the way you are doing without an effort to clarify your views on them, what am I to do but simply wonder how critically you are approaching your cunjuncting
of those ideas.
You are making a statement on the validity of particular spaces of discourses in relation to diverse but possibly correlative subjects, with a focus on conceptions of secrecy and the arcane in relation to
public discussion, with particular reference to Ogboni, relating this to individuality and privacy of Ifa consultations, in terms of the similarities and differences between these two fields of enquiry, examining how they resonate with the Eshu reference
you allude to, but you present your convergence of these complexities in terms of a bare conflation without justification for mixing these varied discourses, particularly in relation to questioning the propriety of erotic presentations in scholarly spaces
such as this one.
I have an idea of the direction in which you are going, but how realistic is it for me to respond adequately since you have not explained your understanding of these cultural forms and your rationale for correlating
them as you are doing?
It would be so helpful if you took the trouble to do so.
The strategy you are adopting is correlative with that of Moshe Halbertal in
Concealment and Revelation: Jewish Esotericism and its Philosophical Implications, in which he locates the specialized character of spiritual esotericism within ideas of concealment of knowledge in exoteric discourses, such as conceptions of the subconscious
mind in psychoanalysis.
Your effort at transposing a discussion about eroticism vis a vis a scholarly listserve in terms of the range of cognitive forms from Yoruba culture you reference could be very useful in the task of building
foundations for the study of Yoruba esotericism, and its contribution to other African and non-African esotericisms, relating to such Yoruba concepts as
awo ( spiritual mystery and power ) and eewo ( taboo) , in relation to broader bodies of knowledge, of which ideas of concealment and unveiling in relation to the erotic are pertinent, with Yoruba ideas on the erotic in general and female eroticism
in particular being valuable vantage points for such an examination.
Thanks
toyin
It is part of what justifies Ogboni as a 'secret' society dealing with ARCANE knowledge and not general public discourses. The same goes for the Eshu excerpt you cited. Ifa priest consultations are not generally conducted in the
open square but in privacy.
On Fri, 1 Nov 2019 at 02:24, OLAYINKA AGBETUYI <yagb...@hotmail.com> wrote:
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OLAYINKA AGBETUYI
Nov 1, 2019, 7:13:37 AM11/1/19
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Toyin:
Every one on this listserv knows 'you honoured abnormal sexual postures' in a posting showing the male genitalia ejaculating. That was disgusting!
If we had not forcefully intervened as we have now there is no telling the next level of your appreciation of female beauty will be to turn round the back view of a female to full frontal confrontation splayed wide of the female genitalia with close view
of anatomical details.
The only suitable word for such persistence is voyeurism.
This forum is not a voyeurist listserv.
OAA
Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.
-------- Original message --------
From: Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju <toyin....@gmail.com>
Date: 01/11/2019 07:04 (GMT+00:00)
To: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Beauties of Lagos: Meeting Kant inthe Metropolis
Really, Salimonu?
Are sexual perversity and vulgarity to be legislated from a particular point of view?
You presented your view of propriety in such issues and I presented mine.
You presented your view of propriety in such issues and I presented mine.
On the physical architecture I discussed, explained at length the value I see in admiring and reflecting on
the glory of the human form.
As for accepting unconditionally the views of the Western "bourgeois world in
Nigeria : their morals and canons of respectability, their standards of beauty and consumption despite the fact that Nigeria lacks the same environmental and economic platform" how did I do that?
As for the issues of sexual ethics in Nigerian universities, we are not in a Nigerian university here. We are on the Internet.
The challenges relevant to these different environments are very different even though comparable.
I would like to have the link to where I am supposed to have done this- " you once honoured abnormal sexual postures in one of your postings on this list serve" so i can better examine the post and its context.
I would like to have the link to where I am supposed to have done this- " you once honoured abnormal sexual postures in one of your postings on this list serve" so i can better examine the post and its context.
thanks
toyin
On Thu, 31 Oct 2019 at 23:52, Salimonu Kadiri <ogunl...@hotmail.com> wrote:
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Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
Nov 2, 2019, 4:45:54 AM11/2/19
to usaafricadialogue
OAA,
As I have asked you before, are you aware this is a moderated group?
I wonder if you appreciate the implications of my qs.
The Erotic and the Esoteric in Yoruba Discourse
The Erotic and the Esoteric in Yoruba Discourse
As for your perspectives on Yoruba secrecy in relation to the erotic, I wonder how accurate your views are.
You state:
"It not for nothing that the Yoruba named the female genitalia 'obo' ( that which must be apprehended in secrecy and concealment instead of coming to discuss the function of a woman's clitoris on a public listserv scholarly or no scholarly) It is not a subject that is meant for public scholarly discussion."
Yet Rowland Abiodun in "Woman in Yoruba Religious Images", Loland Matory in
Sex and the Empire that is No More: Gender and the Politics of Metaphor in Oyo Yoruba Religion , Henry John Drewal in
"Art and the Perception of Women in Yoruba Culture"
and Babatunde Lawal in Gelede are doing exactly that, explaining the spiritual and philosophical implications of the secrecy and concealment you reference rather than refraining from such public discourse in the mistaken belief that physical apprehension is equivalent to the abstraction of discourse.
Ogboni sculpture reinforces such orientations through its highlighting of the same subject in images of Onile, referencing the human being through created forms in which that which is concealed in the human being may be safely apprehended beyond the concealment necessitated by the human form, even if that apprehension is reached in carefully controlled ritual contexts.
A conception of the epistemics of concealment and revelation
in Yoruba esotericism may thus be developed
on the basis of this imagery, dramatized through the privileged relationship between particular Yoruba religious institutions and specific feminine spiritual figures, Ogboni in relation to Onile, Ifa in relation to Odu, Gelede in relation to Iyanla, perhaps in a manner related to British ritual artist Carolyn Hillyer's Oracle of Nights in which the space in question becomes a cave of exploration of and recreation of self.
Yoruba Esotericism in Relation to Scholarship
On your views on Yoruba secrecy in relation to the esoteric in Ogboni and Ifa, are you not substituting your views for facts?
You state:
"The Yoruba do not believe everything should be and is dissectible in the manner of western empiricism the way you have carried on for a long time on all subjects in this forum thereby making the sacred profane, divesting them of their veneration and mystique just to satisfy western audiences. The Yoruba do not believe their existence is simply to satisfy western curiosity.
...
Yes,Ifa agency exists for the same purpose: to examine with the appropriate tact and reverence issues considered delicate or sensitive for general public discussions. That is the true meaning of 'awo' as you rightly guessed. Are you giving Yoruba discreet discourses the reverence they deserve for the sake of societal sanity. etiquette and reverence by letting everything "hang out' in your decided over analysing?"
Do your sweeping assertions not require a careful justification which you are not providing?
What is the kind of discourse that represents dissection divesting phenomena of their veneration and mystique?
You are making statements contrasting scholarly analysis of the sacred with the integrity of the sacred but you dont demonstrate how the work of Adepoju violates that integrity.
If you cant critically examine that qs then are you not guilty of a kind of superstition in which any open study of the sacred is equal to desecration?
Do Africans generally have no interest in depth of scholarly and open understanding of the sacred and the esoteric? Are Western audiences insensitive to "the veneration and mystique" of the sacred and the esoteric
within the centuries of study of these subjects in all kinds of discourses in those cultures?
You do not attempt to contextualize your views through even a brief mapping of comparative approaches to relationships between scholarship on the sacred and the enhancing or devaluing of religion, particularly since scholarship has been a central tool of both approaches.
You make sweeping statements about attitudes to the conjoining of discretion/secrecy and the sacred in Yorubaland, a sensitivity you describe Adepoju as contravening but dont address the fact that what he writes on Ogboni, one of the most secretive of Yoruba religious/esoteric groups, is got from scholarly literature, available through JSTOR and from books in the open market, some of which one can read online, texts he references in his writings, the rest of his work on Ogboni being extrapolation from those sources at times in relation to his own personal spiritual and philosophical journey.
Between Social and Epistemic Esotericism in Yoruba Thought
Even then, is it not pertinent to examine the character and significance of secrecy in Yoruba spirituality rather than assume a stance that can be seen as fetishistic of secrecy rather than a critical engagement?
The Yoruba term awo, perhaps the closest to the English esoteric, is used to refer to groups of people joined in the pursuit of sacred mysteries and power. It may also be used to refer to a kind of mastery, a form of adepthood, an immersion and a skill in managing such arcane realms, as in the term 'babalawo', which may be seen as questionably translated as 'father of secrets' bcs the term 'baba' in that term may be better understood, not as referring to fatherhood in a procreative, even if abstract sense, but in terms of adepthood, mastery, in relation to awo.
The Yoruba term awo, perhaps the closest to the English esoteric, is used to refer to groups of people joined in the pursuit of sacred mysteries and power. It may also be used to refer to a kind of mastery, a form of adepthood, an immersion and a skill in managing such arcane realms, as in the term 'babalawo', which may be seen as questionably translated as 'father of secrets' bcs the term 'baba' in that term may be better understood, not as referring to fatherhood in a procreative, even if abstract sense, but in terms of adepthood, mastery, in relation to awo.
To what degree is this awo which may be seen as at the core of the various meanings of the term a human creation, cultivated and sustained through the secrecy through which it is related with?
To what degree is it a character of the universe with which the human being relates, a quality to some degree significantly, if not wholly, independent of the human being?
To what degree is it a character of the universe capable of human cultivation
as in the Yoruba concept ase understood to empower all forms of existence, enabling creativity and change, adapted individualistically in all contexts but universal to existence ?
In sum, to what degree does the concept of awo reference a humanly constructed secrecy, what I describe as social esotericism or the secrecy of nature itself, those dimensions of existence that are beyond full encapsulation by the human mind even as they demonstrate unmistakable potency, which I describe as epistemic esotericism?
Along such lines, is the German philosopher Immanuel Kant not a powerful dramatization of similar ideas as he reflects on the glory of the power of human understanding even within the limitations of the human being in such texts as his account of the Sublime in A Critique of Judgement and on temporarility and eternity in A Critique of Practical Reason?
" The higher I ascended, the less I understood, transcending knowledge with my thought" declares the Spanish Christian mystic St. John of the Cross. " My words in describing my vision of the ultimate are no better than that of the child crying 'mama,papa'," states Italian writer Dante Aligheri at the conclusion of his cosmic journey in the Divine Comedy,yet those lines he describes as feeble are some of the world's greatest poetry.
Write and dissect ad infinitum, mystics declare as they write voluminously, what is being rendered escapes capture. It does not need to be hidden because it cannot be fully depicted on account of its own nature and of human limitations.
In the light of such insights, confirmed by my experience with various spiritualities, including practice of Yoruba Orisa and Benin nature spirituality, I wonder about the elevation of secrecy that is at times branded as a badge of authenticity in African spiritualities.
Exploring the Dynamic Potential of Yoruba, Particularly Ogboni Esotericism
Thus, may relationship with such phenomena not be susceptible to flexibility, to recreactive rethinking and adaption with time and changing contexts?
Is secrecy best treated as a fetish, its own justification or as a means to an end, a means adjusted in relation to time and changing exigencies?
If Ogboni were to reveal all their rituals to the world, for example, would that make the rituals less efficacious?
To what degree is Ogboni esotericism a means of creating a bond among members rather than an intrinsic requirement of its ritual culture?
One of the greatest spiritual texts ever created is the Golden Dawn, the core of modern Western esotericism. Yet the book is available for free online, the notion of the esoteric in Western thought going beyond secrecy.
Does its ready availability dilute the effectiveness of the spiritual culture and rituals of the book?
It was the release of those texts from secrecy that led to their pervasive effect on Western esotericism.
One of the most controversial magical texts in Western esotericism is the Book of the Sacred Magic of Abramelin, which describes a rich six month ritual for entering into a relationship with one's personal spirit, capped by an invocation of a hierarchy of demons for the empowerment of the magician, a cosmography experimented with in other circumstances by various magicians with challenging results, yet I bought my copy of that book in an open air book stall at Oba market in Benin-City.
Yet, people continue to report success with the ritual and with those demons as encountered in other contexts, sharing their methods and experiences publicly.
Ogboni Esotericism and the Expansion and Contraction of Knowledge in Public Space
Is this greater democratization of knowledge not central to Western development of widespread writing while Africa did not reach that level?
Is it not related to why scripts like the Nigerian Cross River Nsibidi of Ekpe esotericism did not mature into more flexible and widespread writing systems?
If Ogboni were to do a critical review of their fund of knowledge, deciding what to share with the world and what to keep confidential, possibly sharing perspectives on their philosophy and some of their rituals, even as their members share some of their journey on the Ogboni path, would that weaken Ogboni, unless the ignorance of the public is used as a tool of power?
Ogboni has become a byword for infamy in Nigeria, associated in the public mind with human sacrifice and desperate, inhuman quests for wealth and power, as Ogboni members continue to maintain their almost total secrecy.
Through my work on social media people are rethinking Ogboni. Even though I make it clear I have never been one nor do I intend to join Ogboni, preferring to work on my own, people approach me for guidance on life issues on account of my declaration of knowledge about Ogboni and as developing a new school of Ogboni.
People in France, the UK, US and Nigeria have acquired my book on this new school of Ogboni by making a donation of any amount of their choice.
Others have approached me on how to join what I am calling traditional Ogboni, describing themselves as being being burnt by scammers or by Ogboni members described as less than straightforward, and I am able to introduce them to my trusted contacts in the community of traditional Ogboni , even as I increasingly advise these aspirants to proceed cautiously, making sure as much as possible that the requirements at every stage of their progression are agreeable with them.
I am doing what nobody perhaps has ever done. Entering into sustained public discussion of the wealth of Ogboni philosophy, art and practices, a strategic foundation in classical Yoruba spirituality without which other Yoruba spiritual institutions closest in underlying philosophy to Ogboni, Ifa and Gelede, remain fragmented.
Between Demonisation and Valorisation of African, Particularly Ogboni Esotericism
Is this claim by you not a contradiction-
'It is because the West wanted to know every thing about any thing about every one for the purposes of control that the colonial masters through the agency of the Christian missionaries labelled such groups and such approaches, agencies of darkness and evil.
Are we still under colonialism? Are you a colonial agent?'
Do you gain knowledge of something by demonizing it? Does such demonizing not prevent knowledge of what is demonized by discouraging people from exploring it?
Is it not such labeling that made African esotericisms a no go area for many Africans, so that their own heritage is lost to them?
Classical African spiritual and particularly esoteric systems are demonized, so much so that the majestic beauty of Ogboni philosophy and art is unknown to most in Nigeria, so much so that Christian songs like "Jesus power, superpower, Ogboni power, powerless power" are a staple, in a country where in its commercial capital Lagos, I am yet to see any locally made art of God as a Black person in spite of the dominance of Christianity in the region, yet these kinds of comments are your response?
What is the paradigm of scholarship within which you approach these subjects? What is the source of that paradigm? How critical is your understanding of the possibilities and responsibilities of scholarship in this context?
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Emeagwali, Gloria (History)
Nov 2, 2019, 10:01:30 AM11/2/19
to usaafric...@googlegroups.com
Should we call the scenario described, “pornographic voyeurism” - and should undergraduates be among the spectators?
Professor Gloria Emeagwali
Prof. of History/African Studies, CCSU
Professor Gloria Emeagwali
Prof. of History/African Studies, CCSU
From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of OLAYINKA AGBETUYI <yagb...@hotmail.com>
Sent: Friday, November 1, 2019 5:16:55 AM
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Sent: Friday, November 1, 2019 5:16:55 AM
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Beauties of Lagos: Meeting Kant inthe Metropolis
Please be cautious: **External Email**
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Emeagwali, Gloria (History)
Nov 2, 2019, 11:06:37 AM11/2/19
to usaafric...@googlegroups.com
Should we classify the scenario described as pornographic voyeurism?Should undergraduates be
among the spectators? I ask this question in response to Olayinka’s comments. I doubt that Adepoju’s description of the unknown lady falls within that category but the previous incident mentioned seems to do so.
GE
Professor Gloria Emeagwali
among the spectators? I ask this question in response to Olayinka’s comments. I doubt that Adepoju’s description of the unknown lady falls within that category but the previous incident mentioned seems to do so.
GE
Professor Gloria Emeagwali
From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of OLAYINKA AGBETUYI <yagb...@hotmail.com>
Sent: Friday, November 1, 2019 5:16:55 AM
Sent: Friday, November 1, 2019 5:16:55 AM
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Beauties of Lagos: Meeting Kant inthe Metropolis
Please be cautious: **External Email**
Toyin:
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OLAYINKA AGBETUYI
Nov 2, 2019, 11:06:43 AM11/2/19
to usaafric...@googlegroups.com
Your question as to whether there is a moderator has been answered by MOA.
Perhaps the moderator like me does not believe in open censorship but prefers self censorship based on the overall interests of the listserv. So everyone needs to be self critical.
OAA
Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.
-------- Original message --------
From: Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju <toyin....@gmail.com>
Date: 02/11/2019 08:51 (GMT+00:00)
To: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Beauties of Lagos: Meeting Kantinthe Metropolis
OAA,
As I have asked you before, are you aware this is a moderated group?
I wonder if you appreciate the implications of my qs.
The Erotic and the Esoteric in Yoruba Discourse
The Erotic and the Esoteric in Yoruba Discourse
As for your perspectives on Yoruba secrecy in relation to the erotic, I wonder how accurate your views are.
You state:
"It not for nothing that the Yoruba named the female genitalia 'obo' ( that which must be apprehended in secrecy and concealment instead of coming to discuss the function of a woman's clitoris on a public listserv scholarly or no
scholarly) It is not a subject that is meant for public scholarly discussion."
Yet Rowland Abiodun in "Woman in Yoruba Religious Images", Loland Matory in
Sex and the Empire that is No More: Gender and the Politics of Metaphor in Oyo Yoruba Religion , Henry John Drewal in "Art and the Perception of Women in Yoruba Culture" and Babatunde Lawal in
Gelede are doing exactly that, explaining the spiritual and philosophical implications of the secrecy and concealment you reference rather than refraining from such public discourse in the mistaken belief that physical apprehension is equivalent to the
abstraction of discourse.
Ogboni sculpture reinforces such orientations through its highlighting of the same subject in images of Onile, referencing the human being through created forms in which that which is concealed in the human being may be safely apprehended
beyond the concealment necessitated by the human form, even if that apprehension is reached in carefully controlled ritual contexts.
A conception of the epistemics of concealment and revelation in Yoruba esotericism may thus be developed on the basis of this imagery, dramatized through the privileged relationship between particular Yoruba
religious institutions and specific feminine spiritual figures, Ogboni in relation to Onile, Ifa in relation to Odu, Gelede in relation to Iyanla, perhaps in a manner related to British ritual artist Carolyn Hillyer's
Oracle of Nights in which the space in question becomes a cave of exploration of and recreation of self.
Yoruba Esotericism in Relation to Scholarship
On your views on Yoruba secrecy in relation to the esoteric in Ogboni and Ifa, are you not substituting your views for facts?
You state:
"The Yoruba do not believe everything should be and is dissectible in the manner of western empiricism the way you have carried on for a long time on all subjects in this forum thereby making the sacred profane, divesting them
of their veneration and mystique just to satisfy western audiences. The Yoruba do not believe their existence is simply to satisfy western curiosity.
...
Yes,Ifa agency exists for the same purpose: to examine with the appropriate tact and reverence issues considered delicate or sensitive for general public discussions. That is the true meaning of 'awo' as you rightly guessed.
Are you giving Yoruba discreet discourses the reverence they deserve for the sake of societal sanity. etiquette and reverence by letting everything "hang out' in your decided over analysing?"
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/VI1PR04MB4493E4AE7AEEC03167DA6C9DA6620%40VI1PR04MB4493.eurprd04.prod.outlook.com.
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OLAYINKA AGBETUYI
Nov 2, 2019, 11:07:30 AM11/2/19
to usaafric...@googlegroups.com
Let me start with your oxymoron' open study of the sacred.' Your statement has inadvertently summed up the cogency of my position!
If it is sacred why indulge in its OPEN study?
The Ifa institution involves its acolytes in up to 15 years period of novitiate yet they will not invite cameras to record any aspect.
They KNOW that they know what they are doing and anyone who does not believe they know what they are doing can go jump in a lake for all they care! They know such disposition is all the patent they have got against exploitation and abuse of their calling
and that was the implication of your earlier suggestion of self initiation into Ifa priesthoid
Yoruba science does not have to be an exact replica of western science to be valid. This is why the world is now coming to terms with the existence of a multiverse rather than a universe (universe at whose behest? Westernization?
Your discourse assumes a universal ( western) ethos on beauty and that was the primaries where you foundered as Alagba Kadiri cogently pointed out to you. Even Shakespeare stated that beauty is in the eye of the beholder meaning what is accepted as beauty
is culturally determined indicating a multiverse of beauty. The outrage attendant on your post confirms that.
I am a Kant scholar and I know that under the Kantian Categories we are informed that the meaning imposed on the objects we perceive is mediated by the ( cultural) 'spectacles' through which we apprehend them. You have decided to don western spectacles
to interpret subjects constituted with African spectacles so you see mirage.
The Chinese have inexorably stuck to this position on multiverse.. The West has reluctantly accepted this verity which has opened a parallel path of Chinese medicine (acupuncture, etc , ) globally.
What the Yoruba authors you cited stated on the Ogboni and Ifa is what the extant authorities have authorised them to state. Who authorised your pronouncements? Those authors might as well come here to openly debate what is conveniently concealed under
the cover of books but they defer to the inappropriate nature if the exercise. They are mature enough to realise what kind of reception will be waiting for them; which is precisely what you got.
If you seek an enlightened discourse on your discreet topics contact an Oshugbo bearer of Ogboni or a membership of Ifa priesthood and stop usurping their roles and robbing them of their livelihood.
Direct other interested parties to them so they can perform their roles in situ. Trust me, if their professional ethics allows them, the moderator would have brought them on the llistserv (he is well grounded enough in Yoruba society) and they would not
need your surrogacy.
This is without prejudice to your rights to publish in any regular publication of your choice.
We can only debate general views on such institutions. We cannot usurp their Yoruba Constitutional rights to be source of arcane and restricted epistemology to guarantee Yoruba collective psychic equilibrium. To be empowered to do si you do need to
FORMALLY join them beginning your period of novitiate.
In sum you do not contrive universal ethos in beauty where there is a multiverse and surreptitiously impose a western universe of that notion on Yoruba and other diverse global epistemologies.
OAA.
Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.
-------- Original message --------
From: Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju <toyin....@gmail.com>
Date: 02/11/2019 08:51 (GMT+00:00)
To: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Beauties of Lagos: Meeting Kantinthe Metropolis
OAA,
As I have asked you before, are you aware this is a moderated group?
I wonder if you appreciate the implications of my qs.
The Erotic and the Esoteric in Yoruba Discourse
The Erotic and the Esoteric in Yoruba Discourse
As for your perspectives on Yoruba secrecy in relation to the erotic, I wonder how accurate your views are.
You state:
"It not for nothing that the Yoruba named the female genitalia 'obo' ( that which must be apprehended in secrecy and concealment instead of coming to discuss the function of a woman's clitoris on a public listserv scholarly or no
scholarly) It is not a subject that is meant for public scholarly discussion."
Yet Rowland Abiodun in "Woman in Yoruba Religious Images", Loland Matory in
Sex and the Empire that is No More: Gender and the Politics of Metaphor in Oyo Yoruba Religion , Henry John Drewal in "Art and the Perception of Women in Yoruba Culture" and Babatunde Lawal in
Gelede are doing exactly that, explaining the spiritual and philosophical implications of the secrecy and concealment you reference rather than refraining from such public discourse in the mistaken belief that physical apprehension is equivalent to the
abstraction of discourse.
Ogboni sculpture reinforces such orientations through its highlighting of the same subject in images of Onile, referencing the human being through created forms in which that which is concealed in the human being may be safely apprehended
beyond the concealment necessitated by the human form, even if that apprehension is reached in carefully controlled ritual contexts.
A conception of the epistemics of concealment and revelation in Yoruba esotericism may thus be developed on the basis of this imagery, dramatized through the privileged relationship between particular Yoruba
religious institutions and specific feminine spiritual figures, Ogboni in relation to Onile, Ifa in relation to Odu, Gelede in relation to Iyanla, perhaps in a manner related to British ritual artist Carolyn Hillyer's
Oracle of Nights in which the space in question becomes a cave of exploration of and recreation of self.
Yoruba Esotericism in Relation to Scholarship
On your views on Yoruba secrecy in relation to the esoteric in Ogboni and Ifa, are you not substituting your views for facts?
You state:
"The Yoruba do not believe everything should be and is dissectible in the manner of western empiricism the way you have carried on for a long time on all subjects in this forum thereby making the sacred profane, divesting them
of their veneration and mystique just to satisfy western audiences. The Yoruba do not believe their existence is simply to satisfy western curiosity.
...
Yes,Ifa agency exists for the same purpose: to examine with the appropriate tact and reverence issues considered delicate or sensitive for general public discussions. That is the true meaning of 'awo' as you rightly guessed.
Are you giving Yoruba discreet discourses the reverence they deserve for the sake of societal sanity. etiquette and reverence by letting everything "hang out' in your decided over analysing?"
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/VI1PR04MB4493E4AE7AEEC03167DA6C9DA6620%40VI1PR04MB4493.eurprd04.prod.outlook.com.
--
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OLAYINKA AGBETUYI
Nov 2, 2019, 2:24:32 PM11/2/19
to usaafric...@googlegroups.com
And for the avoidance of doubt let me assume the book for which you are collecting donations from France, the US and the UK is not a compendium of Internet lifting from the said authors which you said are readily available on the Internet.
If it is not goid luck; if it is on the other hand you draw attention of Internet Police to yourself as Internet scammer (419) profiting from the sweat of others.
OAA
Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.
-------- Original message --------
From: Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju <toyin....@gmail.com>
Date: 02/11/2019 08:51 (GMT+00:00)
To: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Beauties of Lagos: Meeting Kantinthe Metropolis
OAA,
As I have asked you before, are you aware this is a moderated group?
I wonder if you appreciate the implications of my qs.
The Erotic and the Esoteric in Yoruba Discourse
The Erotic and the Esoteric in Yoruba Discourse
As for your perspectives on Yoruba secrecy in relation to the erotic, I wonder how accurate your views are.
You state:
"It not for nothing that the Yoruba named the female genitalia 'obo' ( that which must be apprehended in secrecy and concealment instead of coming to discuss the function of a woman's clitoris on a public listserv scholarly or no
scholarly) It is not a subject that is meant for public scholarly discussion."
Yet Rowland Abiodun in "Woman in Yoruba Religious Images", Loland Matory in
Sex and the Empire that is No More: Gender and the Politics of Metaphor in Oyo Yoruba Religion , Henry John Drewal in "Art and the Perception of Women in Yoruba Culture" and Babatunde Lawal in
Gelede are doing exactly that, explaining the spiritual and philosophical implications of the secrecy and concealment you reference rather than refraining from such public discourse in the mistaken belief that physical apprehension is equivalent to the
abstraction of discourse.
Ogboni sculpture reinforces such orientations through its highlighting of the same subject in images of Onile, referencing the human being through created forms in which that which is concealed in the human being may be safely apprehended
beyond the concealment necessitated by the human form, even if that apprehension is reached in carefully controlled ritual contexts.
A conception of the epistemics of concealment and revelation in Yoruba esotericism may thus be developed on the basis of this imagery, dramatized through the privileged relationship between particular Yoruba
religious institutions and specific feminine spiritual figures, Ogboni in relation to Onile, Ifa in relation to Odu, Gelede in relation to Iyanla, perhaps in a manner related to British ritual artist Carolyn Hillyer's
Oracle of Nights in which the space in question becomes a cave of exploration of and recreation of self.
Yoruba Esotericism in Relation to Scholarship
On your views on Yoruba secrecy in relation to the esoteric in Ogboni and Ifa, are you not substituting your views for facts?
You state:
"The Yoruba do not believe everything should be and is dissectible in the manner of western empiricism the way you have carried on for a long time on all subjects in this forum thereby making the sacred profane, divesting them
of their veneration and mystique just to satisfy western audiences. The Yoruba do not believe their existence is simply to satisfy western curiosity.
...
Yes,Ifa agency exists for the same purpose: to examine with the appropriate tact and reverence issues considered delicate or sensitive for general public discussions. That is the true meaning of 'awo' as you rightly guessed.
Are you giving Yoruba discreet discourses the reverence they deserve for the sake of societal sanity. etiquette and reverence by letting everything "hang out' in your decided over analysing?"
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/VI1PR04MB4493E4AE7AEEC03167DA6C9DA6620%40VI1PR04MB4493.eurprd04.prod.outlook.com.
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Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
Nov 4, 2019, 11:57:37 AM11/4/19
to usaafricadialogue
Thanks OAA.
Great thanks for your response linking various aspects of Yoruba esotericism and philosophy in relation to aesthetics.
Dialogue Between Exoteric Surfaces and Esoteric Depths
You state:
"Let me start with your oxymoron' open study of the sacred.' Your statement has inadvertently summed up the cogency of my position!
If it is sacred why indulge in its OPEN study?"
But, the open disclosure and study of the sacred is the foundation of most of what we know of religion.
Religions thrive significantly through scriptures, largely verbal, but also visual and gestural, symbols encoding the inspirational core of those spiritualities.
Most scriptures are publicly accessible, while the esoteric dimension of the religions in question represent ways of interpreting and applying those scriptures.
The Zohar, central to Jewish esotericism, is an imaginative interpretation of Jewish scripture as publicly understood.
Regardless of whatever esoteric depths the babalawo may enter into, ese ifa, Ifa literature, accessible even to non-initiates before the advent of widespread writing and now widely accessible globally through a constant stream of written texts, is the primary cognitive system of Ifa.
Christian Apophatic Theology and Public Christian Discourses
Various Christian mystics reference the divine transcendence of all cognitive categories, apophatic theology, with the image of the cloud of simultaneous obscuration and enlightenment dramatizing this perspective, an image possibly derived from Moses' encounter with God in the cloud within which he received the ten commandments, a picture interpreted in cognitive terms in such images as St.John of the Cross' "the dark cloud that illumines the night".
The primary inspirational point for these journeys to and from the readily accessible, however, is the exoteric core of Christian spirituality, the Bible, made available to all through great sacrifice, even of life, as with William Tyndale who was executed for translating the Bible into English, a risk taken by Tyndale, in the understanding adapted from St. Jerome, that ignorance of the Bible is ignorance of Christ, as the Encyclopedia Britannica 1971 sums up Tyndale's vision, a vision eventually proving critical for the Protestant Reformation, a further democratization of Christianity marked by translating the Bible into indigenous European languages, as with Martin Luther's seminal translation into German.
The Face as External Expression of Inward Being in Yoruba Thought as
Demonstrated in Odu Ifa
This understanding of scripture as both the face, the outward expression and the concentration of an infinite essence that may be deduced through continuous study of that outward expression is suggested by Wande Abimbola's characterization in either Ifa Divination Poetry or An Exposition of Ifa Literary Corpus, of the visual expression of odu ifa, the primary organisational forms of Ifa.
Abimbola describes these visual mathematical permutations
as "oju odu ifa", "the face/s of odu ifa", a description in keeping with the understanding of the significance of the human face in classical Yoruba thought.
These conceptions of the face are summed up in the expression "oju loro wa", translated by Pius Adesanmi as "the face is the abode of discourse".
They are also subsumed in the expression "oju inu", "inward vision/ eye or inward, penetrative perception".
Oju" in Yoruba may represent either the face or the eyes embedded in the face.
"Oju inu"
signifies a progression into the ontological depths of phenomena. This cognitive movement begins from "oju lasan", basic perception, or the outward eye which perceives only the externals of phenomena.
I discuss
this ideational continuum
in "Oju L'Oro Wa : From Physical Vision to Witchcraft and Mystical Insight: An Intercultural Exploration of the Face as Epistemological and Metaphysical Matrix in Yoruba Thought" (USAAfrica Dialogues Series Google Group) and "Adapting Yorùbá Epistemology in Educational Theory and Practice in Nigeria" (
Yorùbá
Studies Review).
That characterization from Abimbola suggests the odu ifa are best understood in terms of a progressive apprehension of their symbolic and existential depths, from an exoteric surface to esoteric foundations, from their mathematical visual structures to the literary expressions those visual forms symbolise, ese ifa, the scriptures of Ifa, perhaps the best known of what may be described as scriptures of the Orisa tradition to which Ifa belongs.
The study of these "faces " of odu ifa would further proceed from the identity of these symbolic matrices as human cultural constructs represented by mathematical visual forms and literary structures to their understanding as expressions of entities whose essential identity is beyond the scope of human culture even while it embraces that scope.
At this foundational level, the odu ifa are understood as spirits, sentient agents described as emerging from orun, the world of ultimate origins, into Earth, as depicted by Abimbola, akin to
Nyornuwofia Agorsor's reverential address to these forms, as I compile this in "Performative, Visual and Lyric Spirituality: Nyornuwofia Agorsor" and reinforced by Benin babalawo Joseh Ohomina, who, in a personal communication, describes the odu ifa as pre-human entities, embodiments of all possibilities of existence, a small fraction of whose significance as accessible to humanity is encoded in Ifa and whose non-human language the Yoruba pioneered the translation of into a human language, Yoruba, as I describe this perspective in "Cosmological Permutations : Joseph Ohomina’s Ifa Philosophy and the Quest for the Unity of Being".
Transforming Theology into Scripture
Beyond scripture's role in terms of a dialogue between exoteric surface and esoteric depths, beyond what may be understood as that first order discourse in spirituality, "faith seeking understanding" is one definition of theology, an often public wrestling with the meaning of faith, with theological texts at times proving so seminal they become part of scripture.
Examples of this are the Biblical Letters of Paul, the first systematic effort to reflect on and express in expository terms the meaning of the Christian message, or such literary forms as the Jewish tales of Nahman of Bratslav, the Islamic literature of Jalal ud din Rumi, these becoming forms of scripture for devotees of schools within larger religions, even though these texts are understood as ultimately pivoting around the primary Jewish Scriptures with Nahman's works or the Koran, as with Rumi.
The proliferation of Hindu sacred texts may also be related to the movement from reflection on scripture to the creation of new scriptures, exemplified by such Sakta-female centred spirituality-texts as the Soundaryalahari to Shaivite-a central male deity- texts as the Shiva Sutras, but all ultimately constellating, in terms of their primary metaphysical and epistemic premises, around the earliest and most influential, the Mahabharata,the Ramayana and the Upanishads, this summation however, useful as a starting point of inquiry, being perhaps a crude summation of the development of Hindu literature.
Illuminating Religion through Critical Scholarship
Beyond the work of believers in constructing scripture or theology, is the indispensability of scholarship not necessarily emerging from believer's perspectives. The philosophy of religion, along with other disciplines as they relate to religion, from neuroscience to sociology to history, are indispensable in the understanding of religion,even for a good number believers, helping them situate their faith within a critical depth and cultural breadth.
So, I am having difficulty grasping why you, a self professed scholar, and one essentially trained in the Western tradition-bcs in spite of your disavowal of what you describe as Western perspectives , I doubt if you have received education in any other context at the same level as you have been trained in Western thought constituted by both disciplinary contents and investigative procedures-is able to declare that understanding the nature of the sacred is not assisted by its open study.
Ifa Training Between Openness and Secrecy
On occlusion of information in Ifa, keeping its sacred practices deeply shielded from the outside world, are you not referencing Ifa of decades ago?
Is what you are describing not Ifa of the days of limited literacy in pre-technological Yorubaland?
Things have changed. Current Ifa study is heavily savvy in the use of a broad range of media, from print to digital, from electronic opon ifa which can be programmed to 'da fa', perform Ifa divination, to the ever growing ocean of books and articles on Ifa, including Dutch diviner Jaap Verdjuin's book teaching how to do Ifa divination without being initiated into Ifa or learning it in the traditional sense, to my own efforts in creating new ese ifa, some of my efforts in various branches of Ifa even being poached by people presenting themselves online as babalawo, to correlations between Ifa and various branches of knowledge, such as Olu Longe's landmark inaugural Ifa Divination and Computer Science, developments, which, from the slowly growing picture evident in various developments online, are being taken on board in the evolution of Ifa training.
Truly up to date Ifa training needs to be both sensitive to its traditional roots and its contemporary developments across disciplines, as well as looking towards the future as a partner in shaping the human agenda.
A survey of approaches to Ifa from Nigerians of various races in Nigeria and Ifa devotees across the world, as evident in various social media platforms, websites and books, makes it clear that Ifa is steadily emerging into the full flowering of a modern movement, rooted in tradition but reflexive in relation to tradition, adapting to various social and technological contexts, intimately sacred yet facing the world.
Some Representatives of Contemporary Ifa and Orisa Spirituality
Solagbade Popoola and Yemi Elebuibon are two Yoruba babalawo who have been able to make themselves relevant in Nigeria and the West through making their insights accessible through a modern idiom.
Among diaspora babalawo, African-American Obafemi Origunwa is prominent in developing a brand of Ifa directed at the business of daily living, insights fed by his Ifa training as well as his academic training in the social sciences.
Caucasian babalawo Awo Falokun is remarkable in the sensitivity and scope of his Ifa philosophy, reflexive and multi-disciplinary, his latest initiative being his unfolding of his ides using his Facebook wall.
African-American olorisha and Ifa devotees Melba Farrell and Iyalemole Ngozi-Fabuluje , in their various Facebook Ifa, Orisa and African spirituality groups are mounting a sustained critique of patriarchy and misogyny in Ifa, as they work at developing what they name American Ifa, striving to excavate what they understand as pristine value from patriarchal encrustations in Ifa thought and practice in building a from of Ifa adapted to the distinctive circumstances of the American Orisa community.
Their work is complemented by that of Ifa and African spirituality adept Ayele Kumari, who not only reinterprets traditional Ifa hermeneutics in ways privileging the female presence in Ifa, has developed a female centred Africana and world spirituality communicated through the digital platforms of her school.
Even before these current developments, photographic evidence exists, though limited, of Ifa initiation and Ifa shrines in the work of such researchers as Margaret Thompson Drewal in such works of hers as "An Ifa Diviner's Shrine in Ijebuland" and Yoruba Ritual: Performers, Play, Agency.
A Yoruba babalawo she worked with, Kolawole Ositola, published an article in a Western academic journal, reflecting on his practice as an Ifa priest, "On Ritual Performance: A Practitioner's View",(TDR (1988-), Vol. 32, No. 2 (Summer, 1988), pp. 31-41, The MIT Press
URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/1145850).
A Yoruba babalawo she worked with, Kolawole Ositola, published an article in a Western academic journal, reflecting on his practice as an Ifa priest, "On Ritual Performance: A Practitioner's View",(TDR (1988-), Vol. 32, No. 2 (Summer, 1988), pp. 31-41, The MIT Press
URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/1145850).
Diverse Forms of Science and Philosophy?
What is Yoruba science? Science in the Western context has undergone significant change in its epistemologies from the Greeks to what may be seen as its eventual consolidation in the 17th century Scientific Revolution, leading to the nature of science as a method of enquiry and of ideas developed form such enquiry as generally understood today.
On what grounds,
using what criteria, are particular elements of Yoruba culture, particularly its cosmology, beyond obvious technological forms such as metal smelting and scientific forms such as mathematical structures, to be understood as science, ?
Conceptions of a multiverse are ubiquitous, being central to societies operating within systems prior to the development of Western science and technology up till the 20th century, but are those conceptions identical with the scientific approaches to similar ideas?
The same goes for the Hindu and Ghanaian Ewe idea, the latter as described by Ghanaian visual and musical artist and thinker Nyornuwofia Agorsor, in her interpretation of her Cosmos Series of paintings of a cyclical universe, recurrently destroyed and regenerated, to which scientific cosmologist Roger Penrose's relatively recent cosmological model in Cycles of Time: An Extraordinary New View of the Universe, is similar, but does that make the Hindu and the Ewe ideas examples of science bcs a scientist in the modern Western understanding of the term has developed a similar idea?
The same goes for ideas of the universality of consciousness, a central idea of animism and similar to
panpsychism, a recent development in Western philosophy, a similarity I discuss in "Between Classical African and Contemporary Western Philosophies of Nature and of Consciousness : A Study in Comparative Ecological Metaphysics".
What are the implications, however, of the different epistemic contexts in terms of which both sets of conceptions are developed and assessed?
Establishing the possibility, and even more so, the existence, of a form of science different from that fed by various civilizations across time but reaching its climax in the modern West needs to proceed through a rigorous process that is not intellectually inferior to the rigour of contemporary scientific practice and philosophy of science.
Aside from that, religion and science can be correlative, can even inspire each other, but they are not identical even when they demonstrate similar ideas.
African, Western or Individualistic Aesthetics?
What are African as different from Western aesthetics and is anyone bound to identify with an understanding of such aesthetic practices?
I am not trying to describe African aesthetics in this context.
I am depicting my own aesthetics, drawing parallels with African, Asian and Western expressions that have fed my own aesthetic formation as an African with an international cultural background operating in an international space.
In doing this, I point out the complexity of aesthetic perspectives evident in African history, counteracting monolithic and uncritical descriptions of this rich landscape.
On Forms of Inspiration and Authority in Spirituality
On your views on my usurping the rights of traditional bearers of Yoruba esoteric knowledge, you state-
"We can only debate general views on such institutions. We cannot usurp their Yoruba Constitutional rights to be source of arcane and restricted epistemology to guarantee Yoruba collective psychic equilibrium. To be empowered to do so you do need to FORMALLY join them beginning your period of novitiate.
What the Yoruba authors you cited stated on the Ogboni and Ifa is what the extant authorities have authorised them to state. Who authorised your pronouncements? Those authors might as well come here to openly debate what is conveniently concealed under the cover of books but they defer to the inappropriate nature if the exercise. They are mature enough to realise what kind of reception will be waiting for them; which is precisely what you got."
The reality is that once a person or a community develops and makes known a body of knowledge, it is no longer their sole property.
Thus, Wole Soyinka is not known as an Ogun priest or priest of any Yoruba spirituality in the traditional sense, but the study of Yoruba spirituality is incomplete without his work on Ogun and Yoruba cosmology.
Same goes for the magnificent work of various writers on various spiritualities, such as the Methodist priest Bolaji Idowu whose Olodumare: God in Yoruba Belief remains the best book length overview of Yoruba cosmology known to me and perhaps the best in existence.
Another is Ulli Beier whose The Return of the Gods: The Sacred Art of Susanne Wenger is a classic on the intersection of art and spirituality.
With Idowu's book, Beier's book and Soyinka's Signposts of Existence, anybody has got what I understand as the best or among the best summations of Orisa cosmology, without acquaintance with which any comprehensive study of the field, particularly in English, the major language of the spirituality, is lacking strategic exposure, in my view.
A good no of luminaries in various spiritualities were not priests or did not begin as priests. The iconic St. Francis of Assisi was a layman, same with Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Jesuits, who composed his seminal Spiritual Exercises, the initiatory text for Jesuit novices and central to Catholic spirituality, well before he became a priest. The greatest work of Christian literature outside the Bible is possibly Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy written by a man of letters and politician, not a priest.
"The spirit bloweth where it listeth and none knows whence it cometh or whither it goeth" declared another layman with no priestly training whose revolutionary interpretation of Judaism is the nucleus of one of the world's most influential religions, the religion of Francis and Ignatius.
The Yoruba concept ase, the Igbo ike and related ideas in other African spiritualities, ideas described by John Mbiti in African Religions and Philosophies as unifying African religions, are fully consonant with the view of the Judaic reformer, ideas emphasizing universal enablement which may be cultivated in distinctive ways by anyone.
What religious and other spiritual organisations do is create systems of access to such possibilities. These systems are often the innovation of a person or a group eventually adopted by others. Adaptations from the originating branch occur as with the development of Neo-Platonism from Platonic thought, and of various forms of Buddhism from the insights of the Buddha, new initiatives at times emerging outside traditional priestly contexts.
What various lay innovators have done in Christianity and Buddhism are what I am doing in various spiritualities. All I need are the relevant ideas, interpreting them as an inspirational core, the group's codification of its self understanding. The creative possibility of a human being to interpret and adapt knowledge is the root of my self generated authority.
The Dynamic Globalization of Orisa Spirituality
Yoruba origin spirituality, Orisa spirituality, is better understood as a world spirituality, not an ethnic spirituality, on account of its intercontinental and intercultural breadth, from Nigeria to South and North America and Europe and its similarities to other African and non-African spiritualities, from the consonances between Ifa and the Igbo Afa, the Benin Oguega and the Dahomean Fa and the Chinese I Ching, along with the broader input of Orisa tradition in American and Haitian Voodoo and more, across various ethnic formations globally, a scope reflected by such books as Osun Across the Waters: A Yoruba Goddess in Africa and the Americas and Ifa Divination, Knowledge, Power and Performance, described as exploring Ifa throughout the Afro-Atlantic.
So, what is at stake in these permutations is not 'Yoruba psychic equilibrium' sustained by a traditional band of custodians as an unchanging configuration across time but the dynamism of the spirituality originating from Yorubaland, undergoing change across space and time, while its originating core remains a point of reference subject to constant reinterpretation.
Between Originality and Negative Appropriation in My Work on Ogboni
You state-
And for the avoidance of doubt let me assume the book for which you are collecting donations from France, the US and the UK is not a compendium of Internet lifting from the said authors which you said are readily available on the Internet.
If it is not good luck; if it is on the other hand you draw attention of Internet Police to yourself as Internet scammer (419) profiting from the sweat of others.
As a self described Scholar of the Marketplace, in the Socratic spirit of developing knowledge within the context of public activity,
social media being my primary publishing platform, almost all my work on Ogboni is published on social media, as summed up in the following compilation, with links to the relevant writings, of my full length essays on the subject,
published here, on Facebook and on the open access document archive academia. edu,
"My Journey in Developing Universal Ogboni Philosophy and Spirituality, a New School of the Ogboni Esoteric Order".
My book of invocations and prayers in the Universal Ogboni Fraternity, the school of Ogboni I am developing, is a compilation of texts first published on this group, , while I have composed and posted another body of texts on Facebook, accessible through the Facebook group I founded, The Universal Ogboni Fraternity.
The public visibility of my work means that anyone can assess it for its originality, the level of creativity in its use of sources,the scope of credit given to my sources and its total cognitive honesty.
Tools of Spiritual and Philosophical Quest
A person can, at a point in a long journey, do things that others do not understand how what the person is doing is possible.
If one invests, one reaps.
Spiritual systems are ideally built on deep investments, time spent in searching for the hidden, making the arcane second nature.
My major tools are listening ( to oneself and the outside world) looking ( within and outside oneself) , reading, thinking, writing.
The possibilities of these tools are infinite.
Thanks
Toyin
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OLAYINKA AGBETUYI
Nov 4, 2019, 4:30:24 PM11/4/19
to usaafric...@googlegroups.com, usaafricadialogue
Toyin
Thanks for this long winded piece which conflates so many issues. If I may start from the end what is univeral Ogboni and on whose behalf was it established since there is a specific organisation within Yoruba land with that mame who have sole authority
to use that name?
Have you applied to the Ogboni as constituted in Yoruba land in western Nigeria and have they invested you with the authority to establish a universal Ogboni on their behalf?
If not your activity is clearly fraudulent!
You also stated that you have created your own ese Ifa. if you know the origins of the traditional ese Ifa you will realise that name dropping Wande Abimbola will not enable you to be a bonafide person capable of creating even a single line of ese Ifa.
I am afraid this is another 419 on your part. Only bonafide Ifa priests who have gone through the proper novitiate and gone through the proper rankings create genuine ese Ifa. So whatever you created is fake and must be treated as such. No wonder your prolegomenary
gambit of self initiation priest hood. ( no such thing exists except perhaps in the charlatanry of the border lines of pentecostalism -which is why they are rife with scandals including sex for grades.) Proper religions have good organisational structures
with strictures on how progress and not your abracadabra method.
You cite Orisa culture in diaspora. This is another 419 gimmick. Those who started Orisa culture in the diaspora took it from Yoruba land in the Middle passage and adapted it to their new locales ( same with the West African coast line.) But here is
Toyin Adepoju seated in the original home land of Ifa and Ogboni culture in Yoruba land where he should defer to the authorities for these organisations faking residency abroad after ejection from the United Kingdom, the locus of his original plans. Are you
adapting Ifa and Ogboni to their home lands in Lagos or Benin? To delude the world along these lines of self delusion you state:
Yoruba origin spirituality, (sic) Orisa spirituality
is better understood as a world spirituality,
not an ethnic spirituality, on account of its
intercontinental and intercultural breath...
Yes, it is but it has an extant ethnic cote and those who live within that ethnic core practice the ethnic variant. An American can not stay in the UK since child hood ( I actually had such students in the UK) till adulthood and start broadcasting abroad
American iEnglish as international English!
Let me ask you a wuestion: Why have you not chosen to adapt Islam and lets see if a fatwa will not be pronounced ? You said:
What religious and other organisations do is
create systems of access to such
possibilities. These systems are often the
innovation of a person or a group eventually
adopted by others.
You stated that you were not trying to describe African aesthetics but depicting your own aesthetics, Is your name Immanuel Kant? Everyone on this listserv knows you by the name Vincent Oluwatoyin Acepoju.
Your translation of " Oju loro wa" as well as Adesanmi's misses the point of what the Yoruba mean by its usage. What is more, the image of the woman you posted showed no face but the hips: what is the correlation?
You have been missing the point in much of your studies because you refuse to seek the guidance of experts. Do not pass on the ignorance!
OAA
Sent from Samsung tablet.
-------- Original message --------
From: Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju <toyin....@gmail.com>
Date: 04/11/2019 16:59 (GMT+00:00)
To: usaafricadialogue <USAAfric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Beauties of Lagos: Meeting Kantinthe Metropolis
This message is eligible for Automatic Cleanup! (Thanks OAA.
Great thanks for your response linking various aspects of Yoruba esotericism and philosophy in relation to aesthetics.
Dialogue Between Exoteric Surfaces and Esoteric Depths
You state:
"Let me start with your oxymoron' open study of the sacred.' Your statement has inadvertently summed up the cogency of my position!
If it is sacred why indulge in its OPEN study?"
"We can only debate general views on such institutions. We cannot usurp their Yoruba Constitutional rights to be source of arcane and restricted epistemology to guarantee Yoruba collective psychic equilibrium. To be empowered
to do so you do need to FORMALLY join them beginning your period of novitiate.
What the Yoruba authors you cited stated on the Ogboni and Ifa is what the extant authorities have authorised them to state. Who authorised your pronouncements? Those authors might as well come here to openly debate what is conveniently
concealed under the cover of books but they defer to the inappropriate nature if the exercise. They are mature enough to realise what kind of reception will be waiting for them; which is precisely what you got."
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Dompere, Kofi Kissi
Nov 4, 2019, 7:20:59 PM11/4/19
to OLAYINKA AGBETUYI, usaafricadialogue
Greetings ALL,
Interesting discussions. These are SPIRITUAL GODS of Yoruba according to the formulation and retention
from BAHIA, BRASIL
KOFI
From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of OLAYINKA AGBETUYI <yagb...@hotmail.com>
Sent: Monday, November 4, 2019 2:10 PM
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>; usaafricadialogue <USAAfric...@googlegroups.com>
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>; usaafricadialogue <USAAfric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Beauties of Lagos: Meeting Kantinthe Metropolis
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Gloria Emeagwali
Nov 5, 2019, 5:18:24 AM11/5/19
to usaafric...@googlegroups.com, OLAYINKA AGBETUYI
An interesting debate. Good
bibliographic references.
If Adepoju planned to formulate a new
aesthetics , vision, school, interpretation,
theory, theology or model- why not?
We don’t have to be perpetual
consumers of the theories of
others - especially since some of the
latter (Kant included) are
perpetuators of prejudice and
bigotry and are often over valued.
That does not exempt the final
product from the kind of
scrutiny that is being applied.
In the long run incisive criticism and
cautionary notes
would assist in the improvement
of Adepoju’s proposed theory.
GE
africahistory. net
Sent from my iPhone
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<GODS OFYOULOBA.doc>
Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
Nov 5, 2019, 9:14:00 AM11/5/19
to usaafricadialogue
Thanks Gloria.
I appreciate your contributions to such criticism.
toyin
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Cornelius Hamelberg
Nov 6, 2019, 6:10:11 AM11/6/19
to USA Africa Dialogue Series
This evening I attended this lecture at the Paideia Institute, on "The History of Hasidism" by Prof. David Biale . As it turns out, the 850-page work is actually authored by eight people working in concert, in itself a miracle of co-operation to have eight people writing as one and speaking/singing as one voice when we already have the saying “ two Jews, three opinions”
Given the notorious flimflam of the 419ers and the magnetic flux of the ethnic mix, the 250-plus ethnicities, religious and political identities, persuasions, indigenous philosophies, it’s about time we coin the saying, “Three Nigerians, five opinions!” – as is being amply demonstrated in this thread.
Personally, I look forward to Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju’s forthcoming magnum opus which will no doubt be on the Ogboni Society or on Ifa, I look forward to that publication seeing the light of day as much as I look forward to as to both the critical acclaim for his fresh perspectives and no doubt, the kinds of critical perspectives that we are to expect, will be brought to bear upon it by other experts, semi-experts, not to mention fellow ignoramuses like yours truly.
It is to be expected that Adepoju’s work should attract critical attention for precisely the reasons he is being criticised and forewarned by some of his traditional enemies and precisely because of the fresh insights he is likely to bear on the subject matter - from the vantage cross-cultural viewpoints of comparative mythologies, mysticisms, secret schools.
Nowhere has Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju declared that he is setting himself up as the Qutb, , the Rebbe or a Rebbe, or Satguru , or Babalawo or Moshiach or the king of kings of the Ogboni or the Ifa - in which case even the not so righteous might regard him as a “ charlatan”, so, as Gloria In Excelsis Emeagwali herself is asking, why should anyone (erudite scholars included) be in agony just because Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju proposes a study, “If Adepoju planned to formulate a new aesthetics, vision, school, interpretation, theology or model- why not?”
Baba Kadiri ( mature holy virgin up to a late age) offers a different perspective; that too has to be addressed, appropriately...
On Tuesday, 5 November 2019 15:14:00 UTC+1, Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju wrote:
Thanks Gloria.I appreciate your contributions to such criticism.toyin
An interesting debate. Goodbibliographic references.
<div style="font-size:large
Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
Nov 6, 2019, 6:10:13 AM11/6/19
to usaafricadialogue
thanks for this info, 'Dompere.
toyin
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OLAYINKA AGBETUYI
Nov 6, 2019, 6:10:13 AM11/6/19
to usaafric...@googlegroups.com
GE.
If that were Toyin Adepoju's goal, he needed to have stated so unambiguously from the opening paragraph.
On the contrary, as you have critiqued previously he gave the misleading impression ( and even supported the view) that his theory was consistent with and in furtherance of Kant's view in the Critique of Judgement. The title is also suggestive of that
position. We cannot have it both ways!
We might come to an agreement that this is work in progress that needs more thinking over before a definitive version is re- presented that reflects on questions on taste and methodological rigour suggested.
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Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
Nov 6, 2019, 6:38:55 PM11/6/19
to usaafricadialogue
Great thanks Cornelius-
" Personally, I look forward to Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju’s forthcoming magnum opus which will no doubt be on the Ogboni Society or on Ifa, I look forward to that publication seeing the light of day as much as I look forward to as to both the critical acclaim for his fresh perspectives and no doubt, the kinds of critical perspectives that we are to expect, will be brought to bear upon it by other experts, semi-experts, not to mention fellow ignoramuses like yours truly.
It is to be expected that Adepoju’s work should attract critical attention for precisely the reasons he is being criticised and forewarned by some of his traditional enemies and precisely because of the fresh insights he is likely to bear on the subject matter - from the vantage cross-cultural viewpoints of comparative mythologies, mysticisms, secret schools.
... why should anyone (erudite scholars included) be in agony just because Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju proposes a study, “If Adepoju planned to formulate a new aesthetics, vision, school, interpretation, theology or model- why not?”
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Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
Nov 7, 2019, 4:07:58 AM11/7/19
to usaafricadialogue
Thanks Olayinka.
In order to assist readers follow my navigation of the various issues you have raised, I provide the following title, abstract and outlineoutline:
Between Concealment and Revelation: Recreating Yoruba Esotericism
In order to assist readers follow my navigation of the various issues you have raised, I provide the following title, abstract and outlineoutline:
Between Concealment and Revelation: Recreating Yoruba Esotericism
Abstract
An exploration of vision and method in Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju's recreation of classical Yoruba esotericism represented by Ogboni and Ifa, inspired by a debate with Olayinka Agbetuyi on the USAAfrica Dialogue Series Google group.
Contents
New Expressions of Yoruba Origin Ogboni Esotericism
New Expressions of Yoruba Origin Ogboni Esotericism
What is Universal Ogboni Philosophy and Spirituality?
What is the Universal Ogboni Fraternity?
Recreator of Yoruba Esotericism and Ifa
Who is Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju?
On Authority and Legality in Developing a New School of Ogboni
Between Classical and Post-Classical Ese Ifa, Ifa Literature
Studying Ese Ifa
Studying and Constructing Ese Ifa
Studying and Constructing Hybrid Ese Ifa
Creating and Studying New Ese Ifa Using Traditional Models
Constructing New Ese Ifa in Terms of Novel Structures
What Makes Literature, Particularly Ifa Literature, Sacred?
Exploring Principles in the Categorization of Ese Ifa
Disruption and Re-Recreation in Religion
Between Concealment and Revelation
New Expressions of Yoruba Origin Ogboni Esotericism
You asked-
' If I may start from the end what is universal Ogboni and on whose behalf was it established since there is a specific organisation within Yoruba land with that name who have sole authority to use that name?"
What is Universal Ogboni Philosophy and Spirituality?
Universal Ogboni Philosophy and Spirituality is a body of ideas and practices centred in the veneration and study of Earth and of humanity as children of Earth. It is an Earth grounded and yet transcendentally directed orientation
inspired by the Yoruba origin
Ogboni esoteric order,
while reaching out in dialogue with related philosophies and spiritualities around the world.
Its ultimate goal is the development of a strategy through which anyone may construct their own approaches to the challenges faced by the human being in the midst of the complexity of existence, providing tools for the cultivation of a personal cosmology, one's own methods of navigating the integration of Earth and cosmos that is the core of Ogboni philosophy.
This is a form of Ogboni in which the initiate embodies in themself the principles of Earth/cosmos unity represented by the microcosm that is the traditional Ogboni iledi or sacred meeting house, a form of Ogboni transparent as a way of life amidst the forest complexity of this world in the journey between aye, Earth and orun, the world of ultimate origins, the primary cosmological polarities as understood in Yoruba thought.
Universal Ogboni Philosophy and Spirituality is both exoteric and esoteric. It is exoteric in being advanced through public activity. It is esoteric in being centred on the recognition of the
depth and hiddenness of nature, opaque zones requiring all human efforts at a penetration that can never be fully consummated.
Universal Ogboni Philosophy and Spirituality
builds upon textual materials about Ogboni in the public space, as well as new information as it emerges into the public sphere.
Its focus
is on the close study of information on Ogboni available to the public and extrapolating from that limited but rich foundation.
It is inspired by but does not represent traditional Ogboni.
What is the Universal Ogboni Fraternity?
The Universal Ogboni Fraternity is the constellation of figures, past, present and future, explicitly or implicitly identified with Ogboni thought in its classical and post-classical developments, from the now unknown adepts who founded Ogboni, to its luminaries across the centuries to those inspired by its ideas in generating such new conceptions as Universal Ogboni Philosophy and Spirituality to all those outside this aspirational lineage whose ideas and practices resonate with those of Ogboni as a celebration of Earth and humanity in union.
Reacreator of Ogboni Esotericism and Ifa
You state:
'here is Toyin Adepoju seated in the original home land of Ifa and Ogboni culture in Yoruba land where he should defer to the authorities for these organisations faking residency abroad after ejection from the United Kingdom, the locus of his original plans. Are you adapting Ifa and Ogboni to their home lands in Lagos or Benin? '
Who is Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju?
Universal Ogboni Philosophy and Spirituality and the idea of The Universal Ogboni Fraternity are initiated by myself, inspired by what I have read about classical Ogboni, further illuminated by my personal spiritual and philosophical quest within African, Asian and Western schools of thought, although I have never been a member of nor do I seek membership of traditional Ogboni, preferring solitary activity as more in keeping with my temperament and insulating me from the strict secrecy mandated of Ogboni members.
My work on Ogboni emerges from my vocation as a seeker for ultimate meaning and ultimate knowledge and a developer and creator of cognitive systems. My life is centred in the effort to understand the "why" and the "how" of existence, its ultimate, fundamental rationale and its processes, the essence, structure and dynamism of the cosmos and the development of cognitive structures through which this goal is pursued.
I am particularly inspired by the intersection of the diverse but correlative methods of knowing represented by the visual and verbal arts, philosophy, spirituality and science, interdisciplinary directions shaping my work on Ogboni, Ifa and other knowledge systems.
I operate in terms of a dynamic rootedness, within a personal environment that is more epistemic than geographic, yet shaped by exposure to inspiring ideas, practices and sacred spaces within and beyond my native Nigeria, observing conjunctions between the world's quest for meaning amidst various forms of knowledge, taking Benin, where I matured into my essential identity, with me as I moved to England, and taking Cambridge, where that identity reached a climatic expansion, with me as I moved to Lagos, integrating with these spatial influences my explorations in Asian systems of thought, convergences flowering in my initiatives on Ogboni.
On Authority and Legality in Developing a New School of Ogboni
You question:
"Have you applied to the Ogboni as constituted in Yoruba land in western Nigeria and have they invested you with the authority to establish a universal Ogboni on their behalf?
If not your activity is clearly fraudulent!"
Is the name "Ogboni" a name legally protected in such a manner that no one may use the name in building a philosophy or group without taking permission from traditionally recognized or duly registered Ogboni organisations?
From whom or through what processes, for example, did the Reformed Ogboni Fraternity derive its authority on developing the best known alternative to more traditional Ogboni groups such as Oshugbo?
From whom or through what processes, for example, did the Reformed Ogboni Fraternity derive its authority on developing the best known alternative to more traditional Ogboni groups such as Oshugbo?
Is the alleged leadership role of the founder of ROF in traditional Ogboni a sufficient explanation of the authority foundational to founding ROF?
What is the legal standing of the proliferation of the extant Ogboni organisations in this confederacy of esoteric groups?
What is the legal standing of the proliferation of the extant Ogboni organisations in this confederacy of esoteric groups?
This is a subject I need to explore but I get the impression that what seems to be conflict about leadership amongst the various Ogboni groups suggests that Ogboni represents a non-centralised leadership system, related to the non-centralisation of Ifa leadership within Yorubaland, in Benin, between Yorubaland and Benin, and across the world.
The impression I am getting about Ogboni, as I know about Ifa and classical Yoruba spirituality generally, and perhaps other African systems, is that in their decentralisation and non-insistence on dogmatic uniformity among diverse groups under the same ideological umbrella, they are closer to Hinduism and Buddhism than to the repressive Christian approaches of the pre-modern era, in which doctrinal conformity was sustained through force.
You state:
"You also stated that you have created your own ese Ifa. if you know the origins of the traditional ese Ifa you will realise that name dropping Wande Abimbola will not enable you to be a bonafide person capable of creating even a single line of ese Ifa. I am afraid this is another 419 on your part. Only bonafide Ifa priests who have gone through the proper novitiate and gone through the proper rankings create genuine ese Ifa. So whatever you created is fake and must be treated as such."
Between Classical and Post-Classical Ese Ifa, Ifa Literature
Ese ifa is literature, sacred literature, a form of imaginative verbal expression employing the standard forms of such expressions, centred in ese ifa in metaphorical imagery, particularly personification, along with such stylistic techniques as parallelism.
The structures of ese ifa are easily defined and mapped across the various forms in existence.
That being so, they can be composed by anyone who understands these traditional structures.
Studying Ese Ifa
I explicate these literary qualities, in essays focused on analysis of ese ifa:
As in:
A discussion of some length on the basic qualities of a form of Ifa poetry.
In:
An ideationally, trans-culturally and interdisciplinary robust analysis of three ese ifa on the creation of the universe and the world, enriched by an intercultural sequence of visual art complemented by rich interpretations.
Inspired by the magnificent first chapter of Rowland Abiodun's Yoruba Art and Language: Seeking the African in African Art.
Studying and Constructing Ese Ifa
Ese ifa organizational structures and modes of reference being easily defined and mapped across the various forms in existence, they can be composed by anyone who understands these traditional structures and ideational expressions.
Studying and Constructing Hybrid Ese Ifa
Within such constructions, the composer may choose to build on extant ese ifa, expanding an existing text by elaborating upon its content using a literary form, creating what I describe as hybrid ese ifa, as I do in the following examples, which include careful studies of the texts thus developed:
This hybrid approach to creating ese ifa includes the elaborate recreations and analysis of ese ifa represented by the Iya Agba series:
This is an ideationally complex text built on a delightfully simple narrative frame open to infinite expansion. The body of the poem and the detailed notes identify its various sources and explain the rationale for their use. An inter-cultural and trans-disciplinary network of ideas is integrated in interpreting and expanding an already long ese ifa, rich in intriguing symbolism.
I quote and discuss
at some length
the original of this ese ifa in "Classical Ese Ifa: Igbadu: Odu, the Venerable Old Woman Becomes a Calabash : Orisa Cosmological Narrative with Extensive Commentary".
A basic introduction to the symbolic depths of the original ese ifa is provided by my "Initiation into Ifa through Odu/Iya Agba at Cosmic Nexus by Wande Abimbola and Judith Gleason".
A debate at the discussion thread of "Creating Hybrid Ese Ifa Using Classical Models: Igbadu: Odu, the Venerable Old Woman, Becomes a Calabash" is very rich on questions of relationship between inspiration and construction in religious literature with particular reference to ese ifa.
Creating and Studying New Ese Ifa Using Traditional Models
The composer may also create new ese ifa, but with its structure based upon traditional models, as I do in:
"Creating Ese Ifa Using Classical Models : Infinity and Time : Esu and the Journey from Orun to Aye"
and
both of which dramatise the Orisa or deity Eshu and his role within Yoruba cosmology in terms of a playfully exploratory use of scientific cosmology and its mathematical forms.
Constructing New Ifa in Terms of Novel Structures
The creator may also choose to create totally new ese ifa, without modeling them on existing structures, leading to the question
" What constitutes an ese ifa, its content, its purpose or both?" and "should there be a demarcation between sacred and secular ese ifa?"
What Makes Literature, Particularly Ifa Literature, Sacred?
What makes literature and particularly
ese ifa, sacred?
The sacred, particularly in terms of human expression, may be understood as a function of purpose and impact. The creator may have a sacred goal. The audience might experience the work in a sacred sense.
Thus scripture is constituted by a range of factors intrinsic and extrinsic to the text.
Along those lines, post-classical ese ifa is sacred by virtue of the intentions of its creator and the degree of its acceptance as such by its audience.
As ese ifa is better understood, as greater understanding emerges of its constructed character at the nexus of human aspiration and ideological goals, as its appreciation moves away from the uncritical approach to it as purely divinely inspired as developed by some devotees, perhaps influenced by fundamentalist approaches to Abrahamic scripture , as appreciation of ese ifa moves closer to the more robust hermeneutic developments of older written sacred texts, as in the long development of Christian
hermeneutics, I expect greater development of this literary form, fed by the efforts of people like myself demonstrating the expressive power of various kinds of ese ifa structure, from that exemplified by Wande Abimbola's Ifa Divination Poetry to the prose forms of Cromwell Osamaro Ibie's Ifism, poetry and prose being the two major forms of ese ifa I am informed about.
Exploring Principles in the Categorization of Ese Ifa
How do you decide which odu, which category, a new ese ifa belongs to, someone asked about this approach.
Its either the categorization of ese ifa in terms of the odu is systematic or not or a variant of both. From my exposure so far, I have not found any systematic argument about a sweeping structural unity of that kind, given the variety of subjects of ese ifa within each odu. Some scholars however, are developing an understanding of thematic centres of each odu. This can be cross checked for validity and if valid, developed. If not, one could build a categorization scheme by oneself using various indices.
Disruption and Re-Recreation in Religion
You state:
"No wonder your prolegomenary gambit of self initiation priest hood. ( no such thing exists except perhaps in the charlatanry of the border lines of pentecostalism -which is why they are rife with scandals including sex for grades.) Proper religions have good organisational structures with strictures on how progress and not your abracadabra method."
You invoke Pentecostalism, one of the world's most contemporarily influential religious movements, a disruption from the Protestant Reformation, the latter itself a disruption of the Western church in its time, just as the church is a disruption from Judaism, inadvertently suggesting that religion often thrives through rupture and re-creation, cleavages and transformations dramatizing possibilities inherent in the originating core but needing new approaches to achieve actualization.
No one is bound to defer to any religious authorities anywhere in developing variants of that religion.
How come that an Olayinka Agbetuyi compels himself to challenge Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju on Yoruba esotericism, representing bodies of knowledge supposed to be beyond access by outsiders? What is the character of Adepoju's efforts that make Agbetuyi think Adepoju is capable of garnering attention that could deprive babalawo and Ogboni adepts of attention and income?
Ogboni is more dreaded than mentioned across a good part of its Nigerian home yet someone is disturbed that Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju presumes to discuss Ogboni in public space though Adepoju's knowledge derives from what is already public but little known.
A sign that the ideational ecosystem and its social configuration has changed.
Between Concealment and Revelation
You state:
"Why have you not chosen to adapt Islam and lets see if a fatwa will not be pronounced ?"
I pray I am able to take further advantage of Islamic mysticism and philosophy, complementing my essay "Hijab Aesthetics and Mysticism", an exploration spanning various forms of hijab aesthetics in relation to various Islamic visual and verbal arts, philosophies and historical contexts, an article resonating with Yoruba epistemology of the face and vision in the article's concentration on the framing of the face by the hijab as an aesthetic strategy pointing to ideas of concealment and revelation in relation to seeking the face of the ultimate.
May one not relate this dynamic in Islam to your question arising from the picture of the lady that initiated this discussion, of which you question , "the image of the woman you posted showed no face but the hips: what is the correlation?" " alluding to my earlier reference to Yoruba epistemology of the face.
The female body and female self in both formal and informal Yoruba discourse, within the esoteric and the mundane, the philosophical and the bawdy, as I earlier referenced these registers in this discussion, are understood in terms of a dialectic of concealment and revelation correlative with that hidden face in relation to which an exquisite back view is revealed.
Was it not the back view alone vouchsafed to the leader out of bondage who was hid in the cleft of a rock as the divine one passed?
I salute this master:
"Elliot Wolfson has long been preoccupied with the insights of Jewish mystical traditions that approach an imageless god through the mediation of an intensely visual symbolic imaginary. His painted canvases communicate a corresponding sense that vision hovers ever on the borders of appearing and disappearing, disclosure and hiddenness. As the imagination seeks to give form to what remains nonetheless formless, the quintessentially human endeavor of hermeneutics is already caught up in the transcending eros of a divine creativity.
"Elliot Wolfson has long been preoccupied with the insights of Jewish mystical traditions that approach an imageless god through the mediation of an intensely visual symbolic imaginary. His painted canvases communicate a corresponding sense that vision hovers ever on the borders of appearing and disappearing, disclosure and hiddenness. As the imagination seeks to give form to what remains nonetheless formless, the quintessentially human endeavor of hermeneutics is already caught up in the transcending eros of a divine creativity.
In the visionary experience imagination serves a primary function, transmuting sensory data and rational concepts into symbols of those things beyond sense and reason.
Fundamentally challenging the conventional distinction between experience and exegesis, revelation and interpretation, the experience of a vision is inseparable from the process of interpretation. "
( On Wolfson's Through a Speculum That Shines: Vision and Imagination in Medieval Jewish Mysticism )
The Sublime humbles and elevates, states the Konigsberg master, Immanuel Kant. Does the Sublime exist only in grand nature or glorious human construction?
May the form of that one who leans first on one leg and then another to move forward, as described by Cheik Hamidou Kane in Ambiguous Adventure, the exquisitely shaped bipedal creature, not also demonstrate the Sublime?
Thus was I struck dumb after posting the image in till forced to speak.
Why not educate the world on the meaning of "oju loro wa" as you understand it? So you may join Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju in "Oju L'Oro Wa : From Physical Vision to Witchcraft and Mystical Insight: An Intercultural Exploration of the Face as Epistemological and Metaphysical Matrix in Yoruba Thought" and "Adapting Yorùbá Epistemology in Educational Theory and Practice in Nigeria", Pius Adesanmi in "Oju Loro Wa", Rowland Abiodun in "Yoruba Art and Language: Seeking the African in African Art ", Babatunde Lawal in "Aworan: Representing the Self and its Metaphysical Other in Yoruba Art", Barry Hallen and Olubimi Sodipo in The Good, the Bad and the Beautiful: Discourse on Values in Yoruba Culture, on the discussion of Yoruba epistemology of vision/visuality?
As it is, that of Adepoju is duly documented and available for study and analysis.
Is yours available?
Fulminating against heretics like Adepoju is of no use. What is stake is- make your contribution so it can be assessed.
Attempts at denigration, etc are of no effect in this grand enterprise that was in motion well before you woke up to it.
Even through this debate, you assist Adepoju to clarify himself to himself as well as to others.
thanks
toyin
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OLAYINKA AGBETUYI
Nov 7, 2019, 9:06:57 AM11/7/19
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Toyin Adepoju did indeed set himself up as Babalawo, even though he had attended NO Babalawo course any where in the world and was NOT initiated by any AWO conclave who MUST know they would be breaking their own laws by endorsing and engaging in such futile
rites contrary to your assertion. He tried to cover up in advance by stating self- initiatiin should be possible and proceeded to ACT on his own sole advice by:
2. Engaging in an activity which is the exclusive preserve of seasoned Babalawo by ( on his own admission) composing his own Ese Ifa ( as if it is one of Chidi Anthony Opara's spontaneous poems) a sacrilegious act in itself which was why I asked him
to do the same for Islam if he was so sure of his principles. Even a Toyin Falola for all his global authority and acclaim can not claim the authority and ability to compose a single line of Ese Ifa! See the case of the two Toyin as invited by MOA..
Toyin Adepoju then trawled sundry global mythologies to justify this sacrilege ( pray how many Indians have penned parallel 'universal' versions of the Ramanayah and Upanishads ( translating a religious text is not the same as creating a wilful 'universal'
text with a clear departure of the original, which is a literary engagement in itself in the exclusive meaning of that phrase- I am a LITERARY translation expert myself and I know the difference.)
The King James version translation of the Bible which he mischievously cited did not proactively set out to alter the contents of the Psalms of David in the Source Text otherwise it would be deemed sacrilegious.
OAA
Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.
-------- Original message --------
From: Cornelius Hamelberg <cornelius...@gmail.com>
Date: 06/11/2019 11:24 (GMT+00:00)
To: USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Beauties of Lagos: Meeting Kantinthe Metropolis
This evening I attended this lecture at the Paideia Institute, on "The History of Hasidism" by Prof. David Biale . As it turns out, the 850-page work is actually authored by eight people working in concert, in itself a miracle of co-operation to have eight people writing as one and speaking/singing as one voice when we already have the saying “ two Jews, three opinions”
Given the notorious flimflam of the 419ers and the magnetic flux of the ethnic mix, the 250-plus ethnicities, religious and political identities, persuasions, indigenous philosophies, it’s about time we coin the saying, “Three Nigerians, five opinions!” – as is being amply demonstrated in this thread.
Personally, I look forward to Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju’s forthcoming magnum opus which will no doubt be on the Ogboni Society or on Ifa, I look forward to that publication seeing the light of day as much as I look forward to as to both the critical acclaim for his fresh perspectives and no doubt, the kinds of critical perspectives that we are to expect, will be brought to bear upon it by other experts, semi-experts, not to mention fellow ignoramuses like yours truly.
It is to be expected that Adepoju’s work should attract critical attention for precisely the reasons he is being criticised and forewarned by some of his traditional enemies and precisely because of the fresh insights he is likely to bear on the subject matter - from the vantage cross-cultural viewpoints of comparative mythologies, mysticisms, secret schools.
Nowhere has Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju declared that he is setting himself up as the Qutb, , the Rebbe or a Rebbe, or Satguru , or Babalawo or Moshiach or the king of kings of the Ogboni or the Ifa - in which case even the not so righteous might regard him as a “ charlatan”, so, as Gloria In Excelsis Emeagwali herself is asking, why should anyone (erudite scholars included) be in agony just because Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju proposes a study, “If Adepoju planned to formulate a new aesthetics, vision, school, interpretation, theology or model- why not?”
Baba Kadiri ( mature holy virgin up to a late age) offers a different perspective; that too has to be addressed, appropriately...
On Tuesday, 5 November 2019 15:14:00 UTC+1, Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju wrote:
Thanks Gloria.
I appreciate your contributions to such criticism.
toyin
An interesting debate. Goodbibliographic references.
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OLAYINKA AGBETUYI
Nov 7, 2019, 9:30:43 AM11/7/19
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Please ask Toyin Adepoju to produce a 'universal' version of the Torah ( the religious disrespect might as well go all the way round!)
OAA.
Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.
-------- Original message --------
From: Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju <toyin....@gmail.com>
Date: 06/11/2019 23:53 (GMT+00:00)
To: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Beauties of Lagos: Meeting Kantinthe Metropolis
This message is eligible for Automatic Cleanup! (Great thanks Cornelius-
" Personally, I look forward to Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju’s forthcoming magnum opus which
will no doubt be on the Ogboni Society or on Ifa, I look forward to that publication seeing the light of day as much as I look forward to as to both the critical acclaim for his fresh perspectives and no doubt, the kinds of critical perspectives that we
are to expect, will be brought to bear upon it by other experts, semi-experts, not to mention fellow ignoramuses like yours truly.
It is to be expected that Adepoju’s work should attract critical attention for precisely the reasons he is being criticised and forewarned by some of his traditional enemies and precisely because of the fresh insights he is likely to bear on the subject matter - from the vantage cross-cultural viewpoints of comparative mythologies, mysticisms, secret schools.
... why should anyone (erudite scholars included) be in agony just because Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju proposes a study, “If Adepoju planned to formulate a new aesthetics, vision, school, interpretation, theology or model- why not?”
On Wed, 6 Nov 2019 at 12:10, Cornelius Hamelberg <cornelius...@gmail.com> wrote:
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Salimonu Kadiri
Nov 8, 2019, 5:09:41 PM11/8/19
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Baba Kadiri (mature holy virgin up to late age) offers a different perspective, that too has to be addresses, appropriately - Rabbi
Hamelberg. I have never proposed that virginity should be kept up to late age. What I said , rather, is that sexual intercourse, whether for pleasure or procreation, should only take place between a married or cohabiting man and a woman. It is in marriage
or cohabitation that a man or a woman should lose his or her virginity. Writing in her 1999 book, A RETURN TO MODESTY, Wendy Shalit informed her readers that ''Modesty isn't about snubbing men, but about postponing sexual pleasure until the time
is right (p. 84)."
The subject being discussed is the Beauties of Lagos epitomised two pictures of a faceless person depicting a woman with large buttocks stocked inside trousers. I regard
the pictures as a pimp's distorted view of women being sexual objects. The display of sociopathic lifestyle conveyed by the two pictures of a faceless woman stocked in trousers with protruding large buttocks has nothing to do with
IFA or OGBONI cult. When glaring defamation of Nigerian womanhood has occurred it is the duty of those of us, sons and daughters women, who are not nurtured or natural fools to register our objection and protest strongly. Wendy Shalit noted in :
A RETURN TO MODESTY thus, "As one 27-year-old Orthodox (Jewish) woman put it to me, with a toss of her long black hair, 'there is a saying that goes *Ein b'not yisrael hefker.* It means that the
daughters of Israel are not available for public use (p.131)." Similarly, I say to who ever it may concern that
the daughters of Nigeria are not available for sexual exploitations by men. In my previous contribution on the
Beauties of Lagos, I pointed out that the environment from which the photographer
sneaked behind the woman to take pictures of her buttocks without her consent was inhabitable for humans and animals. Tastes may be different from persons to persons and that is why some people, like magotts,
see pit latrines as five-stars hotell habitat. And the beauty of Lagos was demonstrated by the death of husband and wife, caused by cholerea. They lived in one room in a house containing 14 rooms and shops with no water and two pit toilets for the tenants.
S. Kadiri
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Cornelius Hamelberg
Nov 8, 2019, 7:33:48 PM11/8/19
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Dear Baba Kadiri,
As you may have noticed, I have not called you since I posted that which you quoted. I have not called you because my conscience has been accusing me of having touched a very sensitive or a very sacred nerve, when I wrote that “Baba Kadiri (mature holy virgin up to a late age) offers a different perspective, that too has to be addressed, appropriately”
The conscience was pricking me because I know how highly you elevate Yoruba ethics , Yoruba morality and Yoruba sexual morality to the extent that you believe that in the pre-colonial period there was no Yoruba word or even euphemism for the world’s oldest profession , for the simple reason that nobody belonged to that professional guild anywhere in Yorubaland.
Anyway, I’m sure that you’ve heard of the Biblical Rahab
I really shouldn’t have said anything about “mature holy virgin up to a late age”. Too late. It was only after I had pushed the send button that I began to realize that had I written thus about e.g. Mr Inyang (“heng-an-dey”) our geography teacher in the third form ( he was of Efik ethnicity, from Calabar) – I’m sure that he would have reserved a special cane with which to deliver a dirty dozen on my thinly, Khaki-covered buttocks, as a result of which I’m sure that I would not have been able to sit on the aforementioned bottom for at least a week – and of course, as a result of which – and indeed, that would have taught me, I’m sure , that I should never ever say such a thing again. “Spare the rod and spoil the child” was probably the motto from the jungle that he came from. (The “Heng-an dey” was the nickname that we had given him, because back then he wore Michael Jackson style trousers, with the hem hanging about six inches above his ankles/ shoes. He also had a unique way of pronouncing “vary” as “vah -ri”)
But concerning “mature holy virgin up to a late age” – with regard to a woman, plain or beautiful, she would have been regarded as an “old maid”. With regard to Baba Kadiri, to begin with, let me tell you unequivocally that I really admire your personal feat of maintaining your equilibrium - defeating lurid temptation ( and “provocation is next to madness” – my grandmother used to say since I assume that many a Swedish Eve must have flaunted her charms at you many a time – on the dance floor, at the beach, at her place, at your place, not least of all in what some boast was the sexually liberated Sweden of the 1960s in the midst of which I believe you arrived as a very masculine Yoruba youth in the full glory of manhood – surrounded by an endless bevvy of hungry young and willing damsels.
Concerning modesty, about a year ago the Orthodox Rabbi in Stockholm ( Amram Maccabi Hayun) when extrapolating on a certain section of the Shulchan Aruch advised that in all modesty, the male should undress under the blanket (at which precise moment I thought, “ but the Almighty Himself can see through any blanket, anyway ”)I understood the rabbi to mean that in the name of modesty the male should not go around waving his penis at his woman, like a serpent, or slapping her face with it, that he must undress under the blanket. (I almost wrote “under the carpet”
Indeed, I believe that orthodox Judaism would agree with you fully about what you say is the purpose of sex – not merely enjoyment, but more importantly, procreation. The very first time I met a conversion rabbi ( circa, 1997) the very first thing he said to me, even before “Shalom”, or “how are you?” and other pleasantries, the first thing he said to me, almost shouting at me, was “ You must be fruitful and multiply !” – at which point I also thought, “ Yeah! Stay on the scene, like a sex machine! Indeed, we must replenish the earth, especially after the Holocaust during which world Jewry lost six million souls - not to mention earlier and later pogroms.”
Well if you want to really know how it’s supposed to be, by all means, you must watch this documentary : Sacred Sperm
One last thing Baba Kadiri: methinks that you are being too hard on Oluwatoyin. Thou shalt not exaggerate. In my opinion and relatively speaking, that is a photograph of a rather modestly dressed female. I’m sure that in this day and age, for all your puritanical, holier-than-thou talk about “large buttocks stuffed inside trousers”, you have most probably seen worse.
Gloria Emeagwali
Nov 9, 2019, 8:30:13 AM11/9/19
to usaafric...@googlegroups.com
Cornelius the Wise,
Thank you for that last link.The DNA
geneticists are going to be on her trail
and would eventually market her
butt genes- without her consent
of course.
Adepoju is probably on
his way to Ivory Coast, right now.
But Kadiri, let us be fair. Adepoju
has his weak points. I went strongly
against him in his anti- Fulani rants
and I agree with you that he is guilty
of not even asking for permission
from the subject of his butt eulogy -
and much more.
BUT let us not downplay his brilliance.
He has the capability to go beyond
the Germanic.
GE
Sent from my iPhone
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Cornelius Hamelberg
Nov 9, 2019, 12:44:14 PM11/9/19
to USA Africa Dialogue Series
Gloria In Excelsis Emeagwali,
Many thanks for saving my xss.
Well, there’s Akintola Wyse, the wise. He was a Methodist. I guess he still is. We were very close friends, classmates 1958-1965 and college roommates 1965-1966. I was also his lookout man. On Sundays (visiting hours) I used to vacate the room for him. Me? I’m still yours truly, Cornelius Ignoramus.
My plan was that I would silence Baba Kadiri, since, prude that he is, he would not like to see anything “worse” than the photo Adepoju posted - which means in effect that he would not click on any link that says “worse”. So, I’m sure that the blessed virgin did not click on that link. Maybe he did, and like Paul, he was temporarily struck, blinded by what he saw.
Heaven forbid that anyone should downplay his competencies. The man is a true African: According to his own self-confession, it looks like when Oluwatotin Vincent Adepoju saw her behind/ saw her from behind, it was like lightning struck. In which case, one would have expected that he would do the follow-up, go up and talk to her – introduce himself, “Hi babe, I’m new in town, I’m Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju, connoisseur of feminine mystique and now star-struck by your eminence, the prominence and sheer beauty of your booty. Believe me babe, when I first saw you from behind, it was like lightning struck! It was so sudden and so overwhelming and it’s so difficult to explain. It’s now an idée fixe. You know, that which is created through thought, is beyond the power of thought to fully understand and express. You know something else? We could be so good together, you and me.”
At which point the great Adepoju invites her for some coffee/ a cup of tea, maybe, even some pepper soup.
Fast forward. He goes beyond the Germanic.
A few weeks later
He could be singing
Hopefully, since Baba Kadiri did not click on the link he should not be able to/ be in a position to attack me on such grounds, telling us all that I’m worse than Adepoju for posting that link in celebration of Lucy’s granddaughter entering the Guinness Book of Records for what in Ebonics/ Black talk is known and appreciated as “big booty”
Two, three things that could be helpful, if we understand:
1. There’s the generation gap. Stiff upper lip Baba Kadiri is some years my elder, but I think that we belong to the same generation, representing the old order. You and Adepoju and some of the folks here belong to the generation after ours. This was forcefully brought to my attention about two decades ago when I saw a theatre performance of “Tickets and Ties” featuring some actors from Nigeria, Ghana and Sierra Leone ( about the problems between immigrant parents from West African and their children born in England) and also recently ( about six weeks ago) when Stevie Nii-Adu Mensah did his theatre monologue It's cold oo about his father, Chief Mensah an important music culture patriarchal personality, one of the early Ghanaian immigrants to Sweden. You can factor in culture when talking about a generation gap. Imagine, when I tell my son Ola Nathanael that I’m going to arrange his marriage to a nice Yoruba woman. He politely reminds me that “ we're not in Africa!”
2. I’m (as always) very impressed with Baba Kadiri. Imagine, he has spent more than fifty years of his life ( 50 years) in Revolutionary Sweden, without swimming like a fish in the Mälaren or getting stuck in the mud or snow. Right now I’m feeling a little sorry for him, because just like last year, he will soon be having to clear all that snow, from his front door, with a shovel. Good exercise. IN the summer and autumn, he spends a lot of time gardening. Maybe we should buy some land and start farming. More exercise. Baba Kadiri’s strongest point is his ethical stance. As you historians know, a general moral collapse generally presages and precedes the downfall of a civilisation. We are forewarned.
3. Some of the esoterica and allied concerns that Oluwatoyin is busily promoting is merely a cog in a much bigger wheel. This is eloquently explained in Seraphim Rose’s seminal Orthodoxy and the Religion of the Future ( parts 1-14) and summarised in the Epilogue to the Fifth Edition : Further Developments in the Formation of the Religion of the Future by Hieromonk Damascene – available here in pdf Orthodoxy and the Religion of the Future ( pdf)
Some music: Junior Delahaye : Movie Show
An interesting debate. Goodbibliographic references.
<div style="
Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
Nov 10, 2019, 4:42:26 AM11/10/19
to usaafricadialogue
Bristling with pleasure at being flattered by Gloria Emeagwali in her latest post I have read on this thread, I missed the significance of the following comment by her in the same post:
"I went strongly against him in his anti- Fulani rants"
She thus refers to my critique of those I consistently and painstakingly described as
right wing Fulani
and as
Fulani herdsmen terrorists
and
Fulani herdsmen militia
A group composed of politicians, civil society spokespeople and a military wing pursuing an ethnic supremacist, national domination, land acquisition scheme in Nigeria through terrorism consisting of massacres of communities, driving them off their land and taking over the land, raping, killing, mutilating, extorting and kidnapping across Nigeria, amassing huge amounts of money through ransoms,
even as the
federal
govt led by Nigeria's national ruler, the right wing Fulani Muhammadu Buhari awarded them 100B of Nigeria's money ostensibly to address kidnapping in their ranks, all with the protection of the Buhari govt whose security agencies make sure the terrorists and their spokespeople are never brought to book even as these bloodthirsty people openly justify the massacres they commit.
The political wing of this terrorist organisation is headed by Muhammadu Buhari as demonstrated by his policy initiatives directed at empowering the terrorist group through gifting them with Nigeria's land and money, his strategies of ignoring or excusing their openly terrorist activity and the behavior of his govt agencies in making sure these terror agents are never brought to book even as they justify and execute their activities in brazen openness.
The spokespeople of the group and coordinators of this terrorist militia are led by Miyetti Allah Fulani Socio-Cultural Organisation, headed by Nigeria's most elite Fulani, most prominent among whom are the Sultan of Sokoto and the Emir of Kano, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, ex-central bank governor of Nigeria, a group that, since Buhari came to power in 2015, have consistently worked at intimidating Nigerians in pushing the supremacist schemes of the terrorist coalition, creating an image of blood drenched immunity by openly justifying the massacres carried out by their troops even as these spokespeople, prominent people in society, are never questioned talk less brought to book by the security agencies.
One of the latest outrages from this
terrorist
group is an apology from Miyetti Allah to the governor of Benue state, a state that has been at the centre of their carnage, making them people who decide on the terms of massacre of others and of justice in relation to the horrors of destruction of life and displacement of people they have created, impunites underlining their character as the openly terrorist wing of the Buhari led govt, creating and executing their own laws, even as they are likely to retain the communities they have overrun in the Middle Belt and as various governors in the SE are engaged in efforts to dislodge them from their stranglehold on the region.
The federal govt meanwhile is moving to settle Fulani herdsmen across West Africa in Nigeria using Nigeria's money, in the name of a scheme to resolve conflicts emanating from the activities of these herdsmen, thereby expanding the voting force and military potential of a particular demographic who have been used as a deadly tool by right wing Fulani.
I shall be responding to Salimonu Kadiri's last efforts some months ago on this group to distort the reality represented by my compilation of admissions of complicity by Miyetti Allah in the massacres undertaken by their troops.
I was busy at the time but need to find time to present for what it is Kadiri's efforts to distort history.
Nation building is not about false political correctness.
Ethno-religious terror groups are not new in history.
Omar al Bashir did it in Sudan with the janjaweed.
Hitler did it in Germany with various organisations and the SS.
Buhari and Miyetti Allah are doing it with with Fulani herdsmen militia.
I am not likely to respond further to this subject on this thread so as not to soil a discussion of the beauty of life with efforts to unravel the life destroying cunning of humans.
I am happy to respond to the subject on another thread possibly created for that purpose.
I am responding to this here only bcs of Gloria Emeagwali's characterization of my efforts on this group to describe this terrorist scourge, dismissing that initiative of mine as "anti-Fulani rants" when in fact the existence and activities of the Fulani terrorist militia is publicly documented by many sources in Nigeria over the years, attested to by victims, public spokespeople and news-media across Nigeria,
from the Middle Belt to the South East, from the SW to the Midwest, and even acknowledged by the fed govt in justifying their activities as in the Minister of Defense and the Inspector General of Police blaming a massacre carried out in Benue state by these terrorists as the fault of the laws created by the state govt to protect the state agst their murderous lawlessness, as well as providing money for them as in Nigeria's 100B given to Myetti Allah ostensibly to address in its ranks the very kidnapping which some apologists pretend is not largely carried out by Fulani terrorists as attested by victims.
The activities and scale of destruction of lives and livelihoods by Fulani militia have also been carefully mapped by various internationally focused terrorist monitoring organisations, information that some people either pretend not to notice
or try to wish away
even as it is recurrently presented on this group.
Thanks
Toyin
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/869A3020-7F35-4A48-85AE-583393EAF98B%40gmail.com.
Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
Nov 10, 2019, 4:42:33 AM11/10/19
to usaafricadialogue
Major Editing
Bristling with pleasure at being flattered by Gloria Emeagwali in her latest post I have read on this thread, I missed the significance of the following comment by her in the same post:
"I went strongly against him in his anti- Fulani rants"
She thus refers to my critique of those I consistently and painstakingly described as
right wing Fulani
and as
Fulani herdsmen terrorists
and
Fulani herdsmen militia
A group composed of politicians, civil society spokespeople and a military wing pursuing an ethnic supremacist, national domination, land acquisition scheme in Nigeria through terrorism consisting of massacres of communities, driving them off their land and taking over the land, raping, killing, mutilating, extorting and kidnapping across Nigeria, amassing huge amounts of money through ransoms, even as the federal govt led by Nigeria's national ruler, the right wing Fulani Muhammadu Buhari awarded them 100B of Nigeria's money ostensibly to address kidnapping in their ranks, all with the protection of the Buhari govt whose security agencies make sure the terrorists and their spokespeople are never brought to book even as these bloodthirsty people openly justify the massacres they commit.
The political wing of this terrorist organisation is headed by Muhammadu Buhari as demonstrated by his policy initiatives directed at empowering the terrorist group through gifting them with Nigeria's land and money, his strategies of ignoring or excusing their openly terrorist activity and the behavior of his govt agencies in making sure these terror agents are never brought to book even as they justify and execute their activities in brazen openness.
The spokespeople of the group and coordinators of this terrorist militia are led by Miyetti Allah Fulani Socio-Cultural Organisation, headed by Nigeria's most elite Fulani, most prominent among whom are the Sultan of Sokoto and the Emir of Kano, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, ex-central bank governor of Nigeria, a group that, since Buhari came to power in 2015, have consistently worked at intimidating Nigerians in pushing the supremacist schemes of the terrorist coalition, creating an image of blood drenched immunity by openly justifying the massacres carried out by their troops even as these spokespeople, prominent people in society, are never questioned talk less brought to book by the security agencies.
The latest outrage from this terrorist group is a threat to governors in the South to create settlements for Fulani herdsmen if they want peace in their states, to which threat state govs across the South and civil society spokespeople have risen up in rejection of their bloodstained impunity.
Before that,
Miyetti Allah
sought to further position themselves as creators of law in Nigeria through an apology to the governor of Benue state for the carnage caused in relation to their presence in the state, without making clear the terms of justice for a state that has been at the centre of their murderous sweep, thereby projecting themselves as people who decide on the terms of massacre of others and of self absolution from punishment and restitution in relation to the horrors of destruction of life and displacement of people they have created, impunites underlining their character as the openly terrorist wing of the Buhari led govt, creating and executing their own laws, even as they have overrun in the Middle Belt and as various governors in the SE are engaged in efforts to dislodge them from their stranglehold on the region.
The federal govt meanwhile is moving to settle Fulani herdsmen across West Africa in Nigeria using Nigeria's money, in the name of a scheme to resolve conflicts emanating from the activities of these herdsmen, thereby expanding the voting force and military potential of a particular demographic who have been used as a deadly tool by right wing Fulani.
I shall be responding to Salimonu Kadiri's last efforts some months ago on this group to distort the reality represented by my compilation of admissions of complicity by Miyetti Allah in the massacres undertaken by their troops.
I was busy at the time but need to find time to present for what it is Kadiri's efforts to distort history.
Nation building is not about false political correctness.
Ethno-religious terror groups are not new in history.
Omar al Bashir did it in Sudan with the janjaweed.
Hitler did it in Germany with various organisations and the SS.
Buhari and Miyetti Allah are doing it with with Fulani herdsmen militia.
I am not likely to respond further to this subject on this thread so as not to soil a discussion of the beauty of life with efforts to unravel the life destroying cunning of humans.
I am happy to respond to the subject on another thread possibly created for that purpose.
I am responding to this here only bcs of Gloria Emeagwali's characterization of my efforts on this group to describe this terrorist scourge, dismissing that initiative of mine as "anti-Fulani rants" when in fact the existence and activities of the Fulani terrorist militia is publicly documented by many sources in Nigeria over the years, attested to by victims, public spokespeople and news-media across Nigeria, from the Middle Belt to the South East, from the SW to the Midwest, and even acknowledged by the fed govt in justifying their activities as in the Minister of Defense and the Inspector General of Police blaming a massacre carried out in Benue state by these terrorists as the fault of the laws created by the state govt to protect the state agst their murderous lawlessness, as well as providing money for them as in Nigeria's 100B given to Myetti Allah ostensibly to address in its ranks the very kidnapping which some apologists pretend is not largely carried out by Fulani terrorists as attested by victims.
The activities and scale of destruction of lives and livelihoods by Fulani militia have also been carefully mapped by various internationally focused terrorist monitoring organisations, information that some people either pretend not to notice or try to wish away even as it is recurrently presented on this group.
Thanks
Toyin
Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
Nov 10, 2019, 4:42:34 AM11/10/19
to usaafricadialogue
Great thanks, Gloria and Cornelius.
Thanks for the links on esoterica, Cornelius.
I'll check them out.
I tried to engage the subject of the surreptitious photograph after taking it but she ignored me.
A friend has advised me to seek her out and confess but I wonder...
I'll consider consulting my internal Ifa- most likely another heretical notion in the eyes of Olayinka- as to what to do.
thanks
toyin
On Sat, 9 Nov 2019 at 14:30, Gloria Emeagwali <gloria.e...@gmail.com> wrote:
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/869A3020-7F35-4A48-85AE-583393EAF98B%40gmail.com.
Gloria Emeagwali
Nov 10, 2019, 5:58:23 PM11/10/19
to usaafric...@googlegroups.com
Adepoju,
When Ivoirian politician,
Laurent Gbagbo, unleashed his
venomous policy of ethnic based
killings, I went against him full scale.
There he was, claiming hypocritically
that he was a pan-Africanist, and
fanning the flames of hatred and
Rwanda type genocide.
In your case, at one point you claimed that
that the Fulani were not true
Nigerians or Africans and I had to
remind you that in fact the Fulani
were in about five African countries.
I was wrong then. I have discovered
that they are Indigenous to 17 African
countries. By the way, when we
speak about Boko Haram, Isis,
or al- Shabaab, their
ethnic identity is not central to
the discourse so what makes this
group of terrorist different?
Sorry that you were upset at
the statement cited. Unfortunately I
have no intention of retracting it.
You are really at your best in
intellectual and scholarly
discourse.You have a lot to offer
in that arena, and as I said before,
we look forward to new perspectives
on African religion, metaphysics and
mysticism - an understudied field.
That comment I will also not retract.
Professor Gloria Emeagwali
Sent from my iPhone
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/CALUsqTTOnkbkKnmmSbG0Ede_A%3Dv2_2gnXO3Uupjm5HD3ZSBNgw%40mail.gmail.com.
Cornelius Hamelberg
Nov 10, 2019, 5:58:26 PM11/10/19
to USA Africa Dialogue Series
Today is the birthday of the Prophet of Islam – salallahu alaihi wa salaam!
This is serious : At the pleasure of the authorities, Omoyele Sowore is presently lingering in a detention facility awaiting the full wrath of the law that will be flung at him, for allegedly having committed treason.
We are to assume that if Sowore had justified or undergirded his proposed revolution / Revolution Now with some of the libel, slander, character assassination, false and fake news, accusations without basis or proof being presented by Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju in this thread, then just like Sowore he too should be facing similar if not identical charges, in which case just for the sadistic fun of it, if I were the attorney-general prosecuting Adepoju , I would be asking for nothing less than his head, and a blood-thirsty president (which Brother Muhammadu Buhari is not) would probably be requesting for Adepoju’s head delivered on a platter, just as Salome requested of Herod that the head of John the Baptist be delivered on a platter, and in her case ( poor John) the bloody request was granted.
There is freedom of speech and a free press in Nigeria, but it’s not a freedom without limits nor does it grant a free card for irresponsible citizens to practice incitement or to instigate revolutionary lawlessness in the name of that freedom. You can’t do that anywhere in the world and get away with it. So, assuming that there’s no extradition agreement between those two nations, it’s possible that Adepoju is writing from the relative safety of the Ivory Coast where he may be at the moment - not that he has fled all the way there or necessarily feels that he is in danger and is therefore fleeing justice , but he may be in search of doing another kind of Justice - as suggested by Gloria In Excelsis Emeagwali when she wrote , “ Adepoju is probably on his way to Ivory Coast, right now” in search of greener pastures or some more big buttocks, more than enough reason for him to be “ Bristling with pleasure”.
Let’s face it: It’s an on-going ad nauseam with what he himself describes as his “consistently and painstakingly”, unending Islamophobic rant consisting of the following mantras; “ Miyetti Allah“, “ Northern hegemony” “right wing Fulani”, “ Fulani herdsmen terrorists” and every other bearing of false witness that he is guilty of in his latest atrocious accusations of Mr. President and all that he is said to represent. In this latest chapter of his unending diatribes , Adepoju, totally lacking in respect and decorum does not spare Nigeria’s two pre-eminent Muslim leaders, the venerated Sultan of Sokoto and the venerable Emir of Kano.
All of the above was only putting it mildly. I could do it a lot worse.
I notice that my IP is now banned by http://dialogueseriesnew.blogspot.com/
But that’s just a little bit of nothing…
Nowhere has Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju declared that he is setting himself up as the Qutb, , the Rebbe or a Rebbe, or Satguru , or <a href="https://www.google.com/search?newwindow=1&rlz=1C1CHBF_svSE852SE852&ei=mO_BXeTrFrCQmwWbzLcg&q=Babalawo&oq=Babalawo&gs_l=psy-ab.12..0l10.
Salimonu Kadiri
Nov 11, 2019, 1:21:47 PM11/11/19
to usaafric...@googlegroups.com
Dear Rabbi Hamelberg,
I don't see any connection between my garden and snow in front of my house and the topic, THE BEAUTIES OF LAGOS, symbolized by Mr. Adepoju's
two pictures of a faceless woman with enlarged buttocks. I can't remember ever complaining to you that it pains me to take care of my garden and the snow in front of my house. Why then do you need to feel sorry for me? That aside, let me go straight to some
of the issues you raised.
You claimed that I have told you that there was no Yoruba word for what you termed
(prostitution) the world oldest profession. If you have not forgotten, you will remember that I told you there are equivalent words in Yoruba language for, a male, a female, a woman, a man, a husband, a wife, a daughter, a boy, a concubine, and
a bastard. Of course there is also Yoruba word for polygamy. The word prostitution became known in Nigeria after the first World War, when Nigerian soldiers who were recruited to fight in Burma by Britain returned to Nigeria. Thereafter, there were varieties
of names for prostitution in all Nigerian ethnic languages. Even in Sweden which you referred to, the proliferation of prostitution was traced to 1864 by HJÖRDIS LEVIN who in her 1986 book wrote thus,
In 1864, the law that criminalized sexual intercourse between unmarried man and woman was abrogated, except that the man was fined 100kr in case fatherhood trial found the man culpable to obligatory maintenance. With the abrogation of the law prohibiting
unmarried man and woman toto engage in sexual intercourse, the Church and Teachers carried nationwide propaganda that masturbation was harmful to men. This propaganda according to her, probably contributed to the proliferation of prostitution in Sweden.
On prostitution, Levin wrote : A thing which on one hand is equated to satisfying the need of nature is on the other hand considered suitable to establish as a profession. She then fumed that if prostitution is approved as a profession because it serves
the call of men's nature, then, shitting and sleeping must also be approved as professions. (TESTIKLARNAS HERRAVÄLDE av HJÖRDIS LEVIN; roughly translated to, HEGEMONY OF THE TESTICLES. I agree with Hjördis Levin that prostitution is not a profession
even when decadents think otherwise.
I have clicked on the
worse link supplied by you and found the Ivory Coast woman, Eudoxie Yao flaunting her 60 inch bum in imitation of the American celebrity,
Kim Kardashian. Whatever opinion one may have about her bleached physical features she is responsible for her own publicity. Unlike the pictures in
Beauties of Lagos, the photographer tip-toed like an old-fashion thief behind a woman to take pictures of her buttocks without her consent. The woman is involuntarily advertised as a sexual object by the author of
the Beauties of Lagos who specifically point at her buttocks as treasure. Those are the differences. Nevertheless, there are fat women all over Africa and in Nigeria wearing the indigenous attires make both slender and fat people look elegant.
Imagine when I tell my son Ola Nathanael that I'm going to arrange his marriage to a nice Yoruba woman. He politely reminds me that ''we're not in Africa!"- Rabbi Hamelberg.
Many things are concealed in the expression, 'we are not in Africa. In Europe and America, there is something called gender neutrality, where an individual decides its gender regardless of what is in between the legs. In Africa, the genitalia determine
who is a male and who is a female. In the Swedish Journal of Social Medicine, nr 9-10, 1993, a professor of Social anthropology, Kajsa Ekblom Friedman, authored an article titled,
Central African View on Male Sexuality (my translation from Swedish to English). The purpose of the article was to confirm the accusation against Africans in Sweden as the main spreader of the HIV in the country since they refused to deploy condoms in
casual sex engagements. She wrote : My own research has, to great extent concerned societies and cultures in Central Africa. I have, beside from 1985 and upwards, at different periods, done field work in Congo. The otherwise view on sexuality which I
am going to present here is valid of course in the first hand in this part of Africa, but there are clear indications that such practices exist in other parts of the Continent South of Sahara (p.484). She continued
: For a Central African it is not easy culturally. He is firstly heterosexual and beside he has a view on sex which runs counter to the use of condoms. …//… Sex and the deposit of sperm in her is one and the same thing. Potency lies self in the sperm.
Homosexuality is very scarce in Africa South of Sahara. That can be explained with elder men's control over youth's sexuality. The youths were married away at young age and were not allowed to decide themselves. Homosexuals were there but they had no possibility
to live out their homosexuality. Although African women were in 1993 projected in the West as not having control over their sex and being oppressed by their men, professor Kajsa Ekholm Friedman narrated a story she heard during her research sojourn
in the Congo. *A man who had stayed a long time in France, and from there got new ideas, tried to practise oral sex with the woman he married with on returning home. Rumour spread immediately within the quarters, the woman did not understand at all his
behaviour and she sought as usual counsel from the neighbours, who advised her to report to the village head. What was he really attempting to do, was he trying to eat her, or what was the question about? There he stood with tears running along the cheeks
as he tried to explain himself before dumbfounded audience (pp 484-485). Long before European incursion into Africa, every part of human body had indigenous name in our different languages and physiological functions were ascribed to them. Mouth generally
is supposed to be used for eating, drinking and talking and it is not a sexual organ. As professor Friedman narrated her story, she was rebuking the African woman for not knowing that sexual intercourse could be performed with the mouth contrary to the description
of the ancient Yoruba euphemism : ADÙN MÁ DEEKÉ roughly translated to sweet that is not felt in the mouth.
Finally I have nothing against Oluwatoyin Adepoju but series of coprolalia he has committed on this forum. For instance, on Thursday, 6 September 2018, he posted Julian
Phillips and Ideals of Manhood. Citing one Taiwo Makinde, Mr. Adepoju wrote,
Motherhood as a source of empowerment of Women in Yoruba Culture describes the goddess Iyamapo as associated with the water from vagina, a part of which is considered as the place harbouring the secret of woman's power.
I least expect a son of a woman to write about water in the female vagina as Mr. Adepoju did. It does not make sense, biologically, physiologically and anatomically to talk about water in the vagina. Not being done, he cited one Adeyinka Bello in Yoruba
thus, "Ìbà okó t'o d'orí kódò ti ò ro; Ìbà òbò t'o d'orí kodò ti ò s'èjè.
Mr. Adepoju then went on to translate the two verses thus, "I pay homage to the penis that is hung without bringing sperm; I pay homage to the vagina that has stopped mensturating. Adepoju's coprolalia was wrongly translated into English because
of his obsession for vulgarity and perversity. The correct and right translations should be :
Homage to the penis that hangs down without whittling; Homage to vagina that hangs down without bleeding. The Yoruba name for sperm is ÀTÒ and I pay Homage in Yoruba is MOJÚBÀ. I point this out just to expose how Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju, the
man from Okpameri has been counterfeiting Yoruba culture in other spheres.
S. Kadiri
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Cornelius Hamelberg
Nov 11, 2019, 8:35:12 PM11/11/19
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Baba Kadiri,
“That corpse you planted last year in your garden,
Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year?
Or has the sudden frost disturbed its bed?”
Just kidding (The Waste Land)
This is merely a reply to the concern you expressed in your very first paragraph. I have read no further. I’ll respond to the rest of what you have to say, later.
Habibi, what has anything got to do with anything? I give myself permission, grant myself this freedom - I can’t help it :
I see connections everywhere, between molecules and atoms, between men and women, between men and men, between women and women, even between seemingly disparate things whether located in Sweden, Sudan, South Legon, the book of proverbs from the Holy Bible or all the poetry about Jahannam. I see whole lotta connections….
On the spur of the moment, when I wrote the following, I was only expressing some affection and maybe, unfortunately, some untoward familiarity; as my Hindu friend once told me, he no longer sleeps with his wife. I asked him, why have you stopped “sleeping” with your wife? His reply was, “Familiarity breeds contempt!”
On the spur of the moment, when I wrote the following, I really wasn’t aiming to satisfy your sometimes so pedantic, ofttimes your, so gradgrindian standards, or your stiff upper lip. I was taking some liberties to be sure, but 100% not telling any lies.
I was only trying to situate you in relation to me
in the diaspora where we both happen to be
waiting for the good winter weather when I wrote to Gloria In Excelsis Emeagwali and the forum, hoping that just these few words of mine could increase their understanding of where you’re coming from - and “ where you’re coming from” is merely an idiomatic expression and does not mean quite literally , geographically speaking, “ where you’re coming from”. We all know that Baba Kadiri is a pious / holy Yoruba man and he comes, is coming from and came from Ondo State, which is in the Yorubaland section of The Federal Republic of Nigeria. Philosophically and ethically speaking he is probably coming from the good pre-colonial Yoruba home training that he inculcated, probably, originally delivered together with his mother’s milk. All that and more - maybe some ( tiny) influence from Sweden where he has continued to live as a supreme swan, uncorrupted by any of what I assume he sees as some of the surrounding, decadent culture, surrounded as he is by big booty and decadent sexual mores, as is implied in this brief paragraph:
“I'm (as always) very impressed with Baba Kadiri. Imagine, he has spent more than fifty years of his life (50 years) in Revolutionary Sweden, without swimming like a fish in the Mälaren or getting stuck in the mud or snow. Right now, I'm feeling a little sorry for him, because just like last year, he will soon be having to clear all that snow, from his front door, with a shovel. Good exercise. IN the summer and autumn, he spends a lot of time gardening. Maybe we should buy some land and start farming. More exercise. Baba Kadiri's strongest point is his ethical stance. As you historians know, a general moral collapse generally presages and precedes the downfall of a civilisation. We are forewarned.”
There are men who masturbate all day and spurt wet dreams all night and still hold on tenaciously to their virginity or their quaint notions of virginity, whilst some of their contemporaries have been shooting from the hip( and hope to be shooting from the hip when they arrive in paradise…
As the bard sang,
“You got men who can't hold their peace and woman who can't control their tongues
The rich seduce the poor and the old are seduced by the young.”
(To be continued)
Cornelius Hamelberg
Nov 12, 2019, 9:59:11 AM11/12/19
to USA Africa Dialogue Series
Baba Kadiri,
I ask Habibi,
what is empathy?
I didn’t hear her complaining, but out there in Edgware, my mother Adekumbi had a British heavyweight boxer (Lee Thompson a friend of my two youngest brothers) work her garden – it gave him a little exercise, he told me, all in tune with this piece of advice which I too have taken to heart:
“So, when you see your neighbour carryin’ somethin’
Help him with his load
And don’t go mistaking Paradise
For that home across the road” (The Ballad of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest)
Sure, you are/were not suffering from amnesia or Alzheimer when you can't remember ever complaining to me that it pains you to take care of your garden and the snow in front of your house. You ask, why then do I need to feel sorry for you?
The answer: Even if you are as patient or as long-suffering as Job, do you have to complain about pain for me to feel sorry for you? To pray for you? To wish you good fortune, long life and prosperity, or do I have to witness a decrease for me to top my best wishes with a “May your tribe increase”?
“I suppose that he told you everything
That I keep locked away in my head.” ( The Master Song)
There’s so much poetry and quiet wisdom in these Leonard Cohen Lyrics
I respect the Blessed Virgin Mary. It’s not that I am wrong and you are right. I mostly respect the rest of all that you say, just as I respect and to some extent understand our differences, the difference between you and Adepoju, between you and me, between me and the Fulani herdsmen, some of the disagreements between the poets, and physicians, between the experts and the authorities, e.g. between the Shia and the Sunni. Really.
I thought of you yesterday when I read the latest on this subject: Transgender not a mental disorder
On Monday, 11 November 2019 19:21:47 UTC+1, ogunlakaiye wrote:
Salimonu Kadiri
Nov 12, 2019, 10:22:07 PM11/12/19
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Rabbi Hamelberg!!
My late mother used to warn me never to wrestle with a pig because if I do, I will get dirty and the pig will be exceedingly happy for relegating me to its own sanitary condition. However, my last contribution on this matter
will be on your happiness that the WHO has declared transgender (whatever that means physiologically or biologically) healthy. You are aware that countries controlling the United Nations, and thereby WHO, have long time ago declared homosexuality, sodomy,
lesbianism (tribadism), coprophilia (scatology) i.e. eating faeces of partner, sado-masochism, flagellation, paedophilia, and zoophilia (bestiality) i.e. sex with animals by humans, as healthy. With that said, read your Torah on Fridays and Saturdays of the
week and be free to choose your gender as well as feel that you are a woman from Sunday to Thursday of every week.
S. Kadiri
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Cornelius Hamelberg
Nov 13, 2019, 4:14:35 AM11/13/19
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Baba Kadiri!!
It would seem that our late mothers were of a mind (one mind) with regard to the prohibition against wrestling with pigs. Cheers. I must tell you that for Muslims the bottom line is pork and the pig ( so there was the Indian Rebellion of 1857) for Jews, I believe it is the Brit milah.
Your next thought is problematic. Addressing “Rabbi Hamelberg” you wrote, “However, my last contribution on this matter will be on your happiness that the WHO has declared transgender (whatever that means physiologically or biologically) healthy.”
Don’t you think that it is unfair to attribute “happiness” to me, about this very contentious issue, even when I know next to nothing about it? Is this not a kind of “bearing false witness against thy neighbour “, or against thine enemy, anointing me with “ happiness” about these matters, when I never told you that I was “ happy” or ”glad” or indeed “unhappy” about such matters?
Moreover, you close any possibility of a further discussion with your Parthian shot, that it is your “last contribution on this matter”- which however, does not preclude my right of reply in which I do not intend to accuse you falsely.
To begin with, I am as heterosexual as they come. HASHEM made me that way. I am also allergic to the prohibited seafoods, such as lobsters, crabs, etc…
N.B: There are the Sexual prohibitions in Leviticus, the legislated foundations of the prohibited sexual relations in Judaism.
It would seem that you think that the Torah is only read “on Fridays and Saturdays of the week”. Torah is read every day of the week, indeed Torah Study is what a Jew is supposed to be engrossed in ( I know of people - in Antwerp - who study Torah and Talmud something like sixteen hours a day) so as to know what Hashem wants and so that the Torah, currents of Torah will circulate as intellectual currents in the heart, the veins and the brain. The coming Sabbath Torah portion is supposed to be studied in advance, this week it is Vayera (Genesis 18:1–22:24) and the haftarah
Post-enlightenment there is Moses Mendelssohn – his Jerusalem would suit you nicely
And by the way, Baba Kadiri, O son of Ogun, who made you the world’s sexual policeman?
Just asking…
As you know, monkeys will continue to be monkeys, unless of cause you want to change their nature since there are people who see monkeys as their distant ancestor, hence you have the saying, you can take the monkey out of the jungle but you can’t take the jungle out of the monkey…
Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
Nov 16, 2019, 1:56:59 AM11/16/19
to usaafricadialogue
Acknowledgements
I thank all contributors to this debate for their passionate and conceptually powerful contributions. A rich web of contrastive ideas has been deployed in response to my posting here a picture of a random but, for me, inspiring visual encounter. I am particularly grateful for the help of this debate in helping me better understand the issues at play, issues central to my work as a scholar and writer.
If I may, I would like to sum up the issues in the following manner, using a title in encapsulating my understanding of the relationships between the ideational currents demonstrated, a list of contents in outlining how these relationships unfold and demonstrating these expressive interactions in the summation that follows.
Apologies for any misunderstanding represented by my efforts at summation.
From the Mundane to the Sacred
From the Sacred to the Mundane
The Image of the Feminine in the Dialectic of the Exoteric and the Esoteric
in
Yoruba Spirituality
Acknowledgements
Inspirational Context and Unfolding Discursive Web
Questions Arising
Self Celebration or Voyeuristic Invitation in Relation to the Picture of a Woman
Between the Celebratory Picture of a Woman and Yoruba Ogboni and Ifa Esotericism
Sacred Disclosures of Intimacy in Hindu Srividya and Yoruba Origin Ogboni
Concealment and Revelation Between Hidden Face and Eloquent Presence in the
Picture of a Woman and Ifa Literature on Odu
Movement Between Esoteric Core and Exoteric Expression in Ifa
Denigration or Empowerment in Reshaping Scriptural Traditions
Who is Qualified to Compose Scripture in Relation to a Religion?
Rethinking Religious Paradigms: The Ifa Babalawo
Creative Transformation or Charlatanry?
Acknowledgements
I thank all contributors to this debate for the priceless service their contributions are doing me in helping me clarify to myself and to others my understanding of the issues at play.
Inspirational Context and Unfolding Discursive Web
Their efforts are even more striking in that they have facilitated the development of an expansive discursive web from the picture I posted of a generously built and impressively dressed and beautifully groomed woman buying something by a roadside in Lagos.
That picture of a commonplace scene enlivened by the wonder of human physical architecture,
a natural construct and the manner in which I captured it on camera, has inspired the ideological currents displayed in this debate, at the intersection of the feminine, the aesthetic, the erotic and the esoteric, a discursive network central to my vocation as a scholar and writer.
The discussion has moved to and from the picture of the woman to such recondite cognitive systems as the Yoruba Ogboni and Ifa.
Questions Arising
Self Celebration or Voyeuristic Invitation in Relation to the Picture of a Woman
In emphasizing her buxom physicality through figure hugging clothes, is the woman not displaying what should be discreetly concealed?, Salimonu Kadiri's stance suggests, even as he is unimpressed by her physical charms.
Is my taking the trouble to take a picture of her emphasizing her magnificent back view not a perverse act amplifying her sartorial transgression ?, a question provoked by Kadiri's response.
Between the Celebratory Picture of a Woman and Yoruba Ogboni and Ifa Esotericism
"What has this abomination of indecent dressing, reinforced by the lecherous, pimping voyeurism of the photographer, as Kadiri understands these characteristics of the picture, got to do with the exalted institutions Ogboni and Ifa, discourse on which in relation to the sacred, Olayinka Agbetuyi has insisted on dropping into this straightforward discussion of sartorial propriety and visual morality?", as one may ask in the spirit of Kadiri's challenge to these juxtapositions. No relationship whatsoever, Kadiri declares.
"On the other hand, does the highlighting of her physique as demonstrated by the woman's dressing and my photographing her in a way that celebrates that visual strategy of hers, in contrast to the concealment that Kadiri favours, not a striking analogue to the dialectic of foregrounding and concealment, of emphases and discretion, of the exoteric and the esoteric, of the everyday and the arcane, the oppositions in terms of which Agbetuyi describes me as transgressing the borders of decent discourse on this group?"
He suggests these transgressions of mine as ranging from displays of female forms depicting provocative contours, to explicit erotica to esoteric systems which require concealment rather than revelation, a perspective on my discussion of feminine erotic and procreative spaces close to that also expressed by Michael Afolayan, for whom such discussion constitutes entry into "the Sanctum Sanctorum( Holy of Holies)", obsession with which leads into stepping from 'the holy to the profane' ".
Within this nexus of revelation vs concealment, Agbetuyi locates the sacred, describing me as further transgressing the proper limits of the engagement with the sacred by presuming to manufacture Ifa scriptures without being qualified to do so, a behavour he sees as consonant with my not knowing where to draw the line in engaging with issues, as in posting the picture of the buxom woman.
How factual are these claims?
Sacred Disclosures of Intimacy in Hindu Srividya and Yoruba Origin Ogboni
May insights be shed on these questions by the centrality of the feminine, projected through the female form depicted in clothed but erotic foregrounding in Hindu Srividya and in
naked grandeur in
Ogboni, these schools being two of my inspirations?
The naked mother of the pointed breasts and the elegantly explicit clitoris, the other, stern yet naked, clitoris prominent- so may be described central figures in Ogboni iconography, forms of Onile, Owner of Earth and House as Cosmic Microcosm, versions of the mother whose milk is sweet, as the Ogboni expression goes.
Every feature of the form of Tripurasundari is celebrated in Sri Vidya, climaxing in the journey through the various layers of her central erotic and procreative spaces as one approaches cosmic centre, a journey through the central feminine erotic and generative space where are situated the cosmographic constellation of all possibilities of existence, represented by the Ten Mahavidyas, Goddesses embodying all possibilities, from bliss to suffering, from the carnal to the transcendent, from the terrestrial to the cosmic, as stated in this conflation of the Sri Devi Khadgamala Stotram, Garland of Flowers Honouring the Divine Feminine and the Soundaryalahari, The Billowing Waves of the Ocean of Beauty, both celebrating Tripurasundari, with the Yoni Tantra, Discourse on Female Erotic and Procreative Spaces as Cosmic Matrix, celebrating women in general.
May we, therefore, in the image of the human being, and of the feminine, in particular, engage with the dialectic of the hidden and the revealed that is the core of penetrations in the quest for knowledge, evocative of the questions provoked by Kadiri's presentations on proper dressing and visual capture and Agbetuyi on esoteric discourse in private as opposed to public space?
Concealment and Revelation Between Hidden Face and Eloquent Presence in the
Picture of a Woman and Ifa Literature on Odu
Incidentally relating with the picture of the lady that provoked the debate, visible but her face concealed, at the root of Ifa is a woman, Odu, whose presence pervades the system, in the form of the odu ifa, the central Ifa cognitive system within which are organised the literature that is the expressive form of this cognitive system.
The system bears her name, but her "face", her explicit dramatization
in the numerous stories and poems constituting the information nexus of the system,
is occluded, while that of her male counterpart, Orunmila, is dominant, as evidenced in the central role he plays in many ese ifa, Ifa literary forms.
Reinforcing this concealment of Odu is the fact that her perhaps best known and most influential appearance in classical ese ifa is a story centred in her hiding herself from the other wives of Orunmila as she teaches him the arcane knowledge underlying Ifa.
One of these curious women succeeds in seeing Odu and is killed by Odu for breaking her taboo, a story, which, in the context of understanding ese ifa as scriptural mandate, is used in Ifa as the rationale for the prohibition of women from a climatic point in Ifa training, the seeing of Odu, thereby effectively disenfranchising women from full initiation as Ifa students, meaning they cannot become babalawo,
an adept in the esoteric knowledge of Ifa,
the consummation of Ifa training, at which the trainee becomes qualified to work on their own and can initiate people into Ifa.
These are restrictions Diaspora female Ifa devotees such as Iyalemole Queenchiku Ngozi-Fabuluje and
Melba Farrell
have long been fighting through debates in their Orisa and Ifa dedicated groups. Ayele Kumari
, another female Ifa devotee, advances a different reading of that ese ifa, a reading that limits Odu's injunction to Orunmila's wives as Odu encounters them in the universe of the story and not to all women.
Thus, aided by Agbetuyi's correlation of questions of discretion and openness in relation to the picture I took of the woman by a road in Lagos, we move from that image to the question of the feminine presence in a cognitive system originating in Yorubaland, where the picture of the lady was taken.
The picture of the woman by the side of the road may thus be appreciated as a hermeneutic nexus, illuminated by the light of day but its significatory depths unobvious, a luminous darkness, adapting St. John of the Cross on the ultimate significatory potential that is God.
Movement Between Esoteric Core and Exoteric Expression in Ifa
Along related lines of cognitive exclusivity and cognitive access, how true is my own view, in contrast to Agbetuyi, that the core of access to specialized knowledge and skill in Ifa, pointing to its esoteric dimension, is not in the ability to compose Ifa literature, which anyone can do at various levels of skill?
Like the essence/s of spirituality generally, I understand this esoteric core as being in something more abstract and fundamental, in depths of penetration of metaphysical foundations and of meaning.
It is demonstrated in Ifa in a quest for the intersection between self and circumstance, between ori, the embodiment of the self's ultimate potential, rooted in an immortal depth beyond space and time, and ori as the self in action in the world of time and space, as this intersection plays out within particular spatio-temporal contexts
unfolding human existence as a journey between Earth and orun, between the market of exchange of resources that is life on Earth and the consummation in eternity that is orun.
A journey worked out through the unfolding of the potential of ori inu, the "inward head", a timeless essence an aspect of whose potential is expressed as ori ode, the physical head representing everyday consciousness enabled by biology.
Ifa literature is a means to the crafting of this journey.
Denigration or Empowerment in Reshaping Scriptural Traditions
It would seem that I am taking advantage of the dilution of the social power of Yoruba spirituality by the imperialism of Christianity and Islam to bastardize the former spirituality by engaging in heresies that I might not dare with the powers represented by the latter currently socially commanding religions, as Agbetuyi's challenge to me to expand Islamic, Judaic or Christian scriptures as I do with Ifa literature may be seen as suggesting.
Along similar lines of expanding sacred texts, or creating new sacred ones, I have composed expansions as well as new formulations of a number of Asian, African and Western sacred texts, including the Hindu Sri Devi Khadgamala Stotram, the Fulani Kaidara, Cross River Ekpe Nsibidi symbolism in relation to the art of Victor Ekpuk, Oba of Benin coronation hermeneutics,
Benin Olokun hermeneutics and Ghanaian origin Adinkra visual and verbal symbolism.
Who is Qualified to Compose Scripture in Relation to a Religion?
In expanding existing sacred texts or in creating new ones, do I transgress the privileges of adepts in the spiritualities in question, particularly since I am largely self trained, not having undergone, for example, initiation into Sri Vidya or training with a Sri Vidya teacher or initiation into and training with an Ifa babalawo, yet presuming, according to Olayinka, to set myself up as a babalawo by engaging in activity which is the exclusive preserve of babalawo such as developing a system of initiation into Ifa and composing my own Ifa literature?
Religions often experience tensions as to who is qualified to take authoritative actions in relation to the tradition established by that religion. Within this tension, there emerge conflicts between conservatives and revolutionaries, between traditionalists and rebels.
Rethinking Religious Paradigms: The Ifa Babalawo
I am proposing a rethinking of the babalawo concept in Ifa. I suggest the idea is too rich to be restricted to characterizing a stage of development in Ifa training.
I propose that while the traditional understanding continues to hold, the idea should also be expanded to reflect its essence as a harmony between a metaphysical concept- the idea of awo, an understanding of mysterious powers foundational to existence- and the dimension of human activity represented by development in knowledge and practice that enables one to become an adept in understanding and relating with such powers.
Thus, the babalawo concept may also be seen as an ideal, an ideal taking its orientation from the classical formulation understood as a stage of development of the Ifa initiate, but adaptable beyond that definite training context.
I am keen on thinking through, seeing the universe in terms of, engaging the cosmos through the ideational and symbolic matrices provided by Yoruba philosophy and spirituality, in dialogue with other cognitive forms.
In seeking immersion in an esoteric depth in the context of the visual, verbal, philosophical and spiritual matrix of Ifa, one may be said to operate in relation to the babalawo ideal as one understands it, an ideal one may pursue without describing oneself as embodying it.
That is one approach to the babalawo ideal, a seeker of mysterious zones of knowledge accessed through various ways of knowing, moving from the visible to the invisible, the conventional to the unconventional, the human to the non-human.
Creative Transformation or Charlatanry?
Creative Transformation or Charlatanry?
Are these efforts at rethinking an ancient religious concepts and reworking the expressive vehicles of these systems a form of charlatanry or a creative formulation of a new "aesthetics, vision, school, interpretation" original while open to to the scrutiny of incisive criticism that could facilitate refinement of the project, as Gloria Emeagwali argues and as Cornelius Hamelberg concurs, anticipating "fresh insights [ Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju] is likely to [bring to] bear on the subject matter-from the vantage [ point of ] cross-cultural viewpoints of comparative mythlogies, mysticisms [and] secret schools", an illuminative potential outlined by Emeagwali, describing Adepoju" ...we look forward to new perspectives on African religion, metaphysics and mysticism- an understudied field".
thanks
Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
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OLAYINKA AGBETUYI
Nov 17, 2019, 7:54:58 AM11/17/19
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Vincent Oluwatoyin Adepoju:
A few clarificatiions.
:
Ifa is not an ancient religious system ooen to a rethinking by an oursider to the system.
It is extant and open to reformation from within if the priesthood see a need for it. A scholar can ANALTZE what is in current practice but can not impise change on the praxis except by the permission of the priesthood. This is not only true of Ifa.
Seminarians do not go into their seminaries to change the received scriptures but produce only produce exgesis on the document.. A single additional chapter cannot be added to the book of revelation no matter how clever the seminarian..
Of all the major religions Ifa is unique in the sense that it is the only non- closed scripture and designed from the start to be ever growing. But growth is internally generated by the priesthood and non initiates who profess self initiation and here
is why:
Contrary to your view that anyone can compose the outward form of Ese Ifa, the inward form represents the actual divination history of the prieshood and supplicants and this is why Ese Ifa is prefaced by "O dia fun' meaning a priest conducted Ifa consultations
with so and so. Who would the non priest say is the cause of the creation of his Ese Ifa for it to be genuine and not fake? Ese Ifa is not a creative enterprise as a piece of creative fictional writing. It is like comparing a degree in comparative literature
with a degree in history.
This is why I argued that theory does not work equally for the two: You cannot impose theory on history as you can on fiction. Fiction has no external refrents. It was only in the mind of its creator; history did. Its intersubjective.
Femininity does not merely have a presence in Ifa; it is central to it as I have argued what evolved to the deity of Ifa during Yoruba early stages was the earth goddess worshipped by all before the civilisation grew complex and the priestly cast represented
by Orunmila evolved an elaborate religion round her.
OAA
Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.
-------- Original message --------
From: Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju <toyin....@gmail.com>
Date: 16/11/2019 07:04 (GMT+00:00)
To: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Beauties of Lagos: Meeting Kantinthe Metropolis
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I thank all contributors to this debate for their passionate and conceptually powerful contributions. A rich web of contrastive ideas has been deployed in response to my posting here a picture of a random
but, for me, inspiring visual encounter. I am particularly grateful for the help of this debate in helping me better understand the issues at play, issues central to my work as a scholar and writer.
If I may, I would like to sum up the issues in the following manner, using a title in encapsulating my
understanding of the relationships between the ideational
currents demonstrated, a list of contents in outlining how
these relationships unfold and demonstrating these
expressive interactions in the summation that follows.
Apologies for
any misunderstanding represented by my
efforts at summation.
From the Mundane to the Sacred
From the Sacred to the Mundane
The Image of the Feminine in the Dialectic of the Exoteric and the Esoteric
in
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Gloria Emeagwali
Nov 17, 2019, 1:03:55 PM11/17/19
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“A single additional chapter cannot be added to
the book of revelation......”Olayinka
Well this seems to be exactly what Ethiopian
Well this seems to be exactly what Ethiopian
King Lalibela of the 12th century
Zagwe dynasty tried to do, writing
himself into the holy book!! I am not sure
about which one exactly. I have to
check my notes. Ethiopianists
should come to my rescue.
I guess the King would argue that
he was not just a scholar looking in
from the outside, as a critic,
but an actual holy participant with
spiritual powers, and the mandate
to create a new Jerusalem.
His eleven massive sculptured
churches at Roha, renamed Lalibela,
gave him some credibility.
Sent from my iPhone
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Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
Nov 17, 2019, 1:10:45 PM11/17/19
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wow.
' Ethiopian King Lalibela of the 12th century
Zagwe dynasty tried to do, writing
himself into the holy book!! I am not sure
about which one exactly. I have to
check my notes. Ethiopianists
should come to my rescue.
I guess the King would argue that
he was not just a scholar looking in
from the outside, as a critic,
but an actual holy participant with
spiritual powers, and the mandate
to create a new Jerusalem.
Gloria Emeagwali
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OLAYINKA AGBETUYI
Nov 17, 2019, 2:39:33 PM11/17/19
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As you have rightly pointed out Ethiopia is one of the ORIGINAL holy places of Christianity -to the extent that it was there that the holy of holy of Christianity ( the Mosaic Ark of the Covenant was believed to have been secreted during the sack of
Jerusalem and dispersal of the Jewry. This was in view of the Solomonic links and the House of David ( the other two centres being Jerusalem and Rome) Coptic Christianity ( which produced the New Testament)as a derivatory of Ethiopian Christianity got its
clout in this manner. ( in the same way the Eastern Church - Constantinople- derived irs clout in relation to Rome when Christianity grew imperial.)
Thus Bible as we know it got its additions and subtraction through such priestly guidance and not through a maverick,loner outsider ( the systematic doctrines and nature of Christ in relation to the Father through the Antinomian debates and interventions
of the Council of Nicea.) and not through the Tyndale translation that Toyin Adepoju erroneously cited.
So King Lalibela could claim authority of the Solomonic dynasty even though he would in that wise be supplanting the authority of the priesthood which even his forebear King Solomon would nit dare do since that would be violating the checks and balances
inscribed into both Jewish, ancient Egyptian and Yoruba civilisations via the deliberate separation of powers of the priesthood and Royalty.
OAA.
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Kissi, Edward
Nov 17, 2019, 5:02:21 PM11/17/19
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Brother OA,
As a student of Ethiopian history, I would advise that you don't take seriously the "Solomonic myth" and the "Solomon-Sheba story" and their associated "beliefs" about Ethiopia as the final destination of the "Ark of the Covenant."
As the renowned Ethiopian historian Tadese Tamrat once told a lecture audience at the library of the Institute of Ethiopian Studies, at Addis Ababa University (at which I was present), these foundational myths of Ethiopian nationhood have an irony and an antisemitic trope buried in them that few have cared to notice. They are bewildering stories of seduction and theft.
Just figure that out.
Edward Kissi
As a student of Ethiopian history, I would advise that you don't take seriously the "Solomonic myth" and the "Solomon-Sheba story" and their associated "beliefs" about Ethiopia as the final destination of the "Ark of the Covenant."
As the renowned Ethiopian historian Tadese Tamrat once told a lecture audience at the library of the Institute of Ethiopian Studies, at Addis Ababa University (at which I was present), these foundational myths of Ethiopian nationhood have an irony and an antisemitic trope buried in them that few have cared to notice. They are bewildering stories of seduction and theft.
Just figure that out.
Edward Kissi
From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of OLAYINKA AGBETUYI <yagb...@hotmail.com>
Sent: Sunday, November 17, 2019 1:35:40 PM
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
To view this discussion on the web visit
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Gloria Emeagwali
Nov 18, 2019, 7:00:17 AM11/18/19
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Well another view is to see the alleged
theft as rightful compensation for sexual
harassment and even child support,
in today’s terms. But you are right
it paints Solomon as a seducer
and a trickster and could well be an
anti- Semitic slur. The line that says
I am Black BUT comely is also insulting.
The day you reject all that stuff is the day
of liberation.
Gloria Emeagwali
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Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
Nov 18, 2019, 7:00:17 AM11/18/19
to usaafricadialogue
but was Jesus himself not a 'maverick loner and outsider', the son of a carpenter, a self styled reformer who presumed to reform an ancient tradition, even though he had no priestly training in the tradition ?
all the characterization of Jesus as Son of God, miraculously birthed, plus being a descendant of David might be better understood as the work of revisionists.
i quoted Tyndale as the first translator of the Bible into English.
is that not factual?
Toyin
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OLAYINKA AGBETUYI
Nov 18, 2019, 7:00:18 AM11/18/19
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Edward:
Can you elaborate? Is the Sheba- Solomonic myth untrue or is it that anti semites want to engage in denial? Okay no one can verify the Ark story precisely because it is alleged to be hidden away for security purposes so its of little use to historians
like the Israeli nuclear bomb myth which is shrouded in mystery but which Israeli Arab enemies will deny at their own peril.
Can we deny the Coptic origins of the New Testament which confirms that Christianity as a religion has its roots IN AFRICA? (without the New Testament all we are left with is Judaism.)
OAA
Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.
-------- Original message --------
From: "Kissi, Edward" <eki...@usf.edu>
Date: 17/11/2019 22:14 (GMT+00:00)
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Beauties of Lagos: Meeting Kantinthe Metropolis
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Brother OA,
As a student of Ethiopian history, I would advise that you don't take seriously the "Solomonic myth" and the "Solomon-Sheba story" and their associated "beliefs" about Ethiopia as the final destination of the "Ark of the Covenant."
As the renowned Ethiopian historian Tadese Tamrat once told a lecture audience at the library of the Institute of Ethiopian Studies, at Addis Ababa University (at which I was present), these foundational myths of Ethiopian nationhood have an irony and an antisemitic trope buried in them that few have cared to notice. They are bewildering stories of seduction and theft.
Just figure that out.
Edward Kissi
As a student of Ethiopian history, I would advise that you don't take seriously the "Solomonic myth" and the "Solomon-Sheba story" and their associated "beliefs" about Ethiopia as the final destination of the "Ark of the Covenant."
As the renowned Ethiopian historian Tadese Tamrat once told a lecture audience at the library of the Institute of Ethiopian Studies, at Addis Ababa University (at which I was present), these foundational myths of Ethiopian nationhood have an irony and an antisemitic trope buried in them that few have cared to notice. They are bewildering stories of seduction and theft.
Just figure that out.
Edward Kissi
From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of OLAYINKA AGBETUYI <yagb...@hotmail.com>
Sent: Sunday, November 17, 2019 1:35:40 PM
To view this discussion on the web visit
https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/VI1PR04MB449370C4BDAF2CE21F9488C3A6720%40VI1PR04MB4493.eurprd04.prod.outlook.com.
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Cornelius Hamelberg
Nov 18, 2019, 7:00:18 AM11/18/19
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Baba Kadiri,
I should just like to qualify what I said earlier that “for Muslims the bottom line is pork and the pig (so there was the Indian Rebellion of 1857) for Jews, I believe it is the Brit milah” so that I don’t inadvertently mislead anybody about treif or trivialise the matter, because from the strictly kosher point of view, eating pork is reprehensible, although, faced with the choice between eating some pork or being put to death, I think that the choice should be clear enough for the Jew who would prefer to survive and to serve the Almighty.
I’m posting this after reading this curious news item about a police sergeant provoking his Jewish colleague with this kind of anti-Semitic and anti-social behaviour:
Leviticus
Chapter 11 : 1-8 :
1 And HaShem spoke unto Moses and to Aaron, saying unto them:
2 Speak unto the children of Israel, saying: These are the living things which ye may eat among all the beasts that are on the earth.
3 Whatsoever parteth the hoof, and is wholly cloven-footed, and cheweth the cud, among the beasts, that may ye eat.
4 Nevertheless these shall ye not eat of them that only chew the cud, or of them that only part the hoof: the camel, because he cheweth the cud but parteth not the hoof, he is unclean unto you.
5 And the rock-badger, because he cheweth the cud but parteth not the hoof, he is unclean unto you.
6 And the hare, because she cheweth the cud but parteth not the hoof, she is unclean unto you
7 And the swine, because he parteth the hoof, and is cloven-footed, but cheweth not the cud, he is unclean unto you.
8 Of their flesh ye shall not eat, and their carcasses ye shall not touch; they are unclean unto you “
So, as you may have noticed, camel meat is halal in al-Islam but not kosher in Judaism
A further note on the pig and pork concerning verses 4 – 8, the Stone edition Chumash note reads as follows:
“The next four verses give cases of animals that are forbidden because they have only one of the two required signs of kashrus. Homiletically, Kil Yakar notes that in listing the non-kosher animals the Torah first gives the kosher sign, instead of simply explaining that the animal is not kosher because of the sign it lacks. This suggests that the presence of a single kosher sign makes it worse. The presence of one sign symbolizes hypocritical people of who always try to publicize their occasional good deeds or virtuous traits, instead of concentrating on eliminating their shortcomings. It is such dishonesty that stamps them as “non-kosher”
This concept has entered the Yiddish idiom which describes the hypocrite as a chazzer fissel , or “pig’s foot”, because the pig tends to lie on the ground with its feet forward, displaying its cloven hooves as if to mislead onlookers into thinking that it is kosher.”
Just in case Dear Baba Kadiri has his reservations about all of the above, I’m sure that this at least, should bring a shmile to Dear Baba Kadiri’s face…
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