African Ancestral Studies Between Spirit and Intellect, Between Contemplation and Analysis: My Journey Part 2
Oluwatoyin Adepoju
My Journey
Part 2
Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
Comparative Cognitive Processes and Systems
''Exploring Every Corner of the Cosmos in Search of Knowledge''
Abstract
In this essay, I continue adapting to my own use Toyin Falola's engagement with the concept of ancestors. This effort is inspired by his account of the inspiration of ancestors in the acknowledgement pages of his Ifa Priestcraft: Ifayemi Elebuibon and Yoruba Ancestral Knowledge Systems, as well as his proposing the Africa centred academic field of Ancestral Studies.
The acknowledgements depicts the spiritual inspiration of ancestors while African Ancestral Studies uses the idea of ancestors as a means of correlating the totality of indigenous African knowledge and its reverberations beyond its temporal and geographical origins, as this interdisciplinary field may be described.
Following that lead, I develop those initiatives as a spiritual and intellectual resource. I employ the intersection of faith and intellect, spirit and ratiocination, contemplation and logic.
Drawing upon my journey through Western esotericism, Tibetan Buddhism, and indigenous African spiritualities, I examine the concept of ancestors across diverse cultural and religious contexts, within and beyond Africa, from family lineage to religious progenitors, exploring the adaptability of ancestor veneration practices in contemporary situations, particularly within African knowledge systems.
This effort is amplified by the evocative power of visual art by ChatGPT and Grok in relation to Falola's work. The images and my commentary on them run across the essay at intervals.
I thereby work across reflection on personal practice, scholarly engagement, and contemplative methods. Historical scholarship, philosophical reasoning, artistic engagement and contemplative experience thereby cohere.
Through the integration of these methods, I argue for a unifying approach that honors both the rationalistic demands of the Western academy and the profound spiritual possibilities inherent in ancestral traditions, ultimately positioning my own approach to African Ancestral Studies as a field bridging intellectual inquiry and spiritual practice.
Contents
Image and Text: Indigo Sanctuary Beneath the Stars
Abstract
Introduction: The Intellectual and Spiritual Context
Image and Text: Inspiration and Expression
Defining Ancestors: Conceptual and Cultural Dimensions
Image and Text: World Tree of Knowledge: The Falola Knowledge Cultures Mandala
The Lotus
The Axe and the Beads
The Roots
The Global Network
Geographical Configurations, the Central Figure and the Tree
Visual Unities
Tree of Life, Tree of Knowledge
Ancestry as Inheritance and Continuing Presence
Images and Text: The Eck Masters
Images and Texts: Rhodia Mann's African Masters and Mystery Schools
Western Esotericism and My Encounter with Spiritual Ancestry
The Evolution of a Personal Practice Inspired by Dion Fortune's Idea of the Cosmic Ancestor
Image and Text: The Destitute Old Man
The Grounded Reality of Ancestor Veneration
Glimmers of African Ancestral Dynamism
Milarepa, My Family Ancestors and the Possibilities of Contemplative Kinship
Image and Text: Intersections of Time and Space
Image and Text: The Ever Present Departed
The Challenge of Adaptation: From Text to Practice
From Falola’s Acknowledgements to Ancestral Prayer
Image and Text: Illumination and Expression
The Concept of Living or Terrestrial Ancestors
Image and Text: A Shrine to Living and Departed Ancestors
Towards an Integrative Practice of African Ancestral Studies
Images and Text: The Eck Masters
The images above and below suggest a central strategy and subsequent appeal of Paul Twitchell's founding of the esoteric school Eckankar in 1965 through what may be described as a creative use of the concept of ancestors.
The paintings at the top represent the primary custodians of Eckankar, as described by Twitchell. They are described as Eck Masters, human beings, who, through long spiritual development, across various incarnations, have become as intimate as possible with the Sugmad, the creator of the universe, sharing in the consciousness of that ultimate identity, thereby participating most actively in the ultimate creator's activity as co-workers.
They are known as Eck Masters beceause they embody, to the highest level possible, the creative force issuing from the Sugmad, shaping the universe, a force known as Eck. This force is so described at the Eckankar website:
ECK is another word for the Holy Spirit, or Life Force, which can be experienced as Light and Sound. It is also known as the Audible Life Stream. Soul can become one with this Life Current—with the Voice of God.
ECK can also be used as a short form of Eᴄᴋᴀɴᴋᴀʀ.
Eᴄᴋᴀɴᴋᴀʀ means Coworker with God. It is the destiny of each Soul to become a conscious, living vehicle for God’s love.
The Eck Masters are understood as historical individuals who reached their exalted state while living on Earth and have moved beyond Earth while continuing to serve humanity:
The ECK Masters are God-Realized individuals who have served humanity in every era. Some are well-known historical figures. Examples include Pythagoras, Milarepa, Epictetus, and Shamus-i-Tabriz. Yet most have worked quietly without recognition. They are Masters of life, pure lights of Divine Spirit.
These descriptions connect spiritual attainment with service: the unfolding of consciousness finds expression in becoming a vehicle for divine love.The Masters therefore embody both an achievement and a promise. They represent what humanity may become, while offering guidance towards that possibility. Their authority rests, within the tradition, on their intimate knowledge of the spiritual realities towards which they lead others.Here, ancestry extends beyond biological descent to encompass a spiritual kinship linking humanity with those believed to have realised its highest possibilities.
The more prominent
references to Eck Masters, however, are represented by images like those above,
from the Eckankar website, which are not paintings of historical
figures, although they at times, suggest such figures. Part of the appeal of
the image of the Eck Masters, as I understand it, is the thin line between the previously
unknown, one one hand, represented by those paintings and verbal descriptions of the Eck
Masters prominent in Eckankar literature, and, on the other hand, historical cultures and their
representatives in spiritual history.
Is the name of Lai Tsi, for example, the Chinese man with a long white beard on the bottom right,
an adaptation of ''Lao Tzu'' the famous Chinese Taoist master?
Does Rebazar Tarz, the black bearded man on the bottom left, represent drawing upon the fame of Tibetan Buddhism and its adepts, such as Milarepa?
Does Gopal Das, top left, indicate an effort to take advantage of the fame of ancient Egypt as a land of arcane knowledge?
I understand the Black Eck Master at the top middle, and the woman at top right, to be later additions to the images of Eck Masters. Does that represent efforts to accommodate the expanding demographics of Eckankar devotees? Their presence raises a significant question: how does a spiritual movement’s representation of perfected humanity respond to the diversity of those who seek perfection through it?
In sum, are the Eck Masters entities existing beyond the imaginative creativity of Twitchell and those who have reinforced that creativity by identifying with it, developing, inhabiting and transmitting his vision? Do the conceptions of the Eck and Eck Masters represent ancient, universal ideas, such as the ideas of cosmic force represented by the Yoruba ase, the Igbo ike, the Chinese chi and the Hindu Shakti, along with conceptions of exalted ancestors, that Twitchell has reworked in a new form? Do the ECK and the Masters reformulate longstanding spiritual ideas within a new vocabulary and narrative structure? Might these possibilities overlap?
Do such entities really exist but are accessed through human imagination, giving them form in ways appealing to the shaping mind, as the Western esotericist Dion Fortune depicts such efforts? Tana Alibi, in a personal communication, describes the extreme malleability of those cosmic individuals, who may assume even the appearance of a pin if the aspirant invests sufficient energy in visualising them in that form.
This interpretation understands imagination as a means of approaching realities that exceed the forms through which they become accessible. From this perspective, a Master’s appearance could be shaped by the aspirant’s cultural expectations without exhausting the identity of whatever is encountered.
Taken as a metaphysical proposition, this shifts attention from the stability of an appearance to the relationship between consciousness, symbolic form, and spiritual encounter.
Such an interpretation does not settle the question of the Masters’ independent existence. It does, however, complicate the assumption that imaginative participation necessarily invalidates an experience. It asks whether imagination might sometimes function as an organ of encounter, while leaving open the difficult question of how encounters mediated in this way might be assessed.
The issue of imaginative construction also intersects with questions about Twitchell’s sources. Twitchell has been accused of using ideas from other writers on spirituality without acknowledging his sources. The Eckankar website, which describes its teachings as the oldest in history, from which all other spiritual knowledge has branched out, responds thus to the presence of ideas from other schools of thought in Twitchell's work:
Did Paul Twitchell Borrow from Other Authors in His Writings?
Yes. Paul Twitchell was a master compiler. Different religions held bits and pieces of the original ECK teachings, but they had attached their own conditions. For example, they said one had to be a vegetarian, or needed to meditate a given number of hours a day to be a true disciple of a given path to God. Earlier teachings drawn from the original ECK works were geared for the spiritual needs of earlier cultures.
Paul’s task was to gather the time-tested, most accurate parts of what had been given in the past. He gathered up the golden teachings strewn around the world and released them from cultural trappings and social aims which limited their spiritual radiance. Paul reoriented these fragments to show the direct path home to God, making it readily available to all.
That explanation expresses the movement’s understanding of its origins. Historical inquiry asks a related but distinct set of questions: which texts and teachers influenced Twitchell, how were their ideas transformed, and how adequately were those debts acknowledged? Recognising the imaginative power of his work need not remove these questions from consideration.
Whatever conclusions one reaches about their historical or metaphysical status, the Eck Masters possess considerable literary and visual force. This is demonstrated by Twitchell's verbal descriptions of the Eck Masters in such works as Dialogues with the Master, where he depicts himself as encountering a number of them through journeys with his main teacher, the Eck Master Rebazar Tarz.
These include the poetic Stranger by the River or the more cosmic The Far Country. These verbal depictions are amplified by later visualisations of the Eck Masters, from Darwin Gross' initial offerings in The Right to Know to the lush depictions on the Eckankar website.
An image both compelling and attractive of aspiration is thereby constructed. A picture that is aesthetically rich and imaginatively fulfilling, ideationally powerful and comforting, in projecting an idea of exalted and even divinized humanity, a goal anyone may aspire to and reach through diligent effort.
These verbal portraits, together with the visual representations, give spiritual aspiration a memorable human presence. The Masters become figures through whom the seeker can imagine wisdom as a relationship: something encountered in a face, a voice, a conversation, or a journey shared.
Their appeal is aesthetic, intellectual, and emotional. They project an image of humanity transformed through spiritual discipline yet still responsive to the needs of others. The distance between ordinary existence and exalted consciousness becomes traversable because someone is represented as having crossed it—and as returning to help others make the journey.
The cover art of an edition of Twitchell's Stranger by the River, complemented by the book's contents, dramatize a core value of Eckankar and of the general perception of ancestors in its various levels of intimacy and elevation, the idea of companionship with another entity who is human yet beyond the limitations of humanity.
The figures in the drawing represent Twitchell and Rebazar Tarz, meeting by the banks of a river. The lyrical visual composition, highlighting the sinuous flow of the body of water, is complemented by the poetic text of the book.
The river's motion may suggest the movement of consciousness, the passage of life, or the spiritual current towards which the teacher directs the seeker. Image and text cohere to generate the contemplative tone of the work, indicating the exalted state Twitchell describes his mind as being expanded into through his encounter with the Tibetan master. The landscape becomes part of the encounter’s meaning: the conversation unfolds within a world whose visible forms seem capable of disclosing an inward depth.
Image and text thus reinforce one another. The lyrical visual composition prepares the reader for the book’s poetic exchanges, while those exchanges invest the scene with the possibility of expanded awareness. The teacher’s presence makes transcendence intimate: an encounter beside flowing water, a voice heard nearby, a companionship through which the familiar world opens towards mystery.
Here, the comparison with spiritual ancestry becomes especially suggestive. Across different traditions, ancestral relationships may sustain the conviction that wisdom and care can remain accessible beyond the limits of an individual lifetime. The Eck Masters invite a comparable sense of continuity, extending spiritual kinship across cultures, historical periods, and planes of existence.
Their imaginative power lies partly in this union of intimacy and immensity. They offer a universe in which the seeker may be accompanied, and in which humanity’s highest possibilities can be contemplated through figures who appear both recognisably human and radiant with what humanity might become.
Images and Texts: Rhodia Mann's African Masters and Mystery Schools
As evident in various accounts, such as Alisa LaGamma's Eternal Ancestors: The Art of the Central African Reliquary African traditions of ancestor veneration demonstrate varying levels of complexity, from the familial and intimate to the mythic and cosmic.
The details of this knowledge system, however, suffer from the limitations of a largely oral tradition, circumscribing the degree to which they are known and their openness to being further developed.
However, the East African writer Rhodia Mann integrates conceptions of Masters of Wisdom from Western esotericism, of which Eck masters as previously discussed are a variant, with Western origin conceptions of the sacredness of nature and knowledge of diverse African natural landscapes in building a picture of Masters of Wisdom in the African context in her book African Masters and Mystery Schools.
The images directly below are my adaptations, using ChatGPT, of Mann's line drawings of her African Masters of Wisdom, translating the delicate lines of her renditions, at times not fully realized in terms of the uniqueness of a portrait, into clearly definable physical features.
She describes herself as perceiving the appearance of the Masters through visionary insight. My own effort at reworking the images she has visualized takes her efforts forward, in a related though not identical imaginative continuity. She claims to have seen the Masters through an inward vision. The Masters, however, are understood as transcending human perceptual capacity but as adaptable to human perception. They are also understood as transcending race, the same Masters, as described by Mann, having been incarnated in various races across their lifespan, and even having lived on other planets.
.jpg?part=0.3&view=1)
The Bantu Master
''...the Bantu Master, whose Mystery school is in Zaire, deep in the Ituri Forest. From there, he peers about, looking for those in need of help. You may sense him join you in your meditations for peace on Earth.
He has another mission, involving the animal kingdom. He somewhat resembles an ape or a primate. Gorilla, chimpanzee, small velvet monkey...or great olive baboon: he is all these animals in one. He teaches animal allies.
The Bantu Master is the Logos of animals. He has followed the concept from its inception, many billenia ago, following the process through various Other-World Realities, Dimensions, and onto the Gateway stars to Earth.
He studies animals so deeply that he knows what they think and feel, how they relate to humans, and what they need to eat. By now, he is fifty-fifty-a perfect synthesis of animal and human. He bridges the gap between them."
Rhodia Mann, African Masters and Mystery Schools.
This collage depicts my rendition of diverse figures in Mann's book, adapting her images to generate more clearly individualistic features.
The nature background suggests the ecological framing of the presence of these spiritual adepts, the images being of various African natural locations where Mann describes the masters as having their schools.
''Lespen [ visualised here as a woman at bottom left ] watches universes come into being, and others moving to new positions in the heavens'', a passion leading to... teaching cosmology- ''the theory of the universe as an ordered whole'' from ''a small hut on top of a small, small hill in the Great Rift valley of Northern Kenya. Imagine that you stand on top of a high cliff, with a sheer drop to the valley floor. Lespen will come to fetch you and gently lead you there.''
''The Touareg [ bottom right], the noble warrior who left his retreat high in the Atlas Mountains, not to fight armed battles but rather to give us succour [as] a master of physical immortality-the art of keeping your body youthful and vibrant...no matter how 'old' you are.
His school is in the middle of the Sahara Desert, out in the open air. There is the sweetest ozone, that is where you will find him. Don't look for camels or large encampments of nomads: he has made his small sector of the desert into a special retreat. There, pure turquoise ethers float around you, calming your nervous system: relax and enjoy your lesson...climb up behind him on his great black horse named Amruel, and fly off into the cosmos''.
From a retreat in the Atlas mountains, the Ashanti Lady, bottom middle, teaches gratitude for each day, while El Morya, top left, advises us to ''focus on little joys around us:a child taking its first shaky steps, a bird pecking delightedly at crumbs, laughter, or the smell of fresh-baked bread''.
At ''an oasis in the Egyptian desert where seven stately palm trees protect the entrance'', you will find the Lady Nazrah, in blue, top, extreme right, a teacher of the power of the word, a great writer in various forms of writing and in several languages across the Earth, ''day and night,waiting for you patiently''.
Rhodia Mann, African Masters and Mystery Schools.
A mosaic of figures inhabiting the intersections of the animal, vegetal, celestial and human worlds animates the universe Mann evokes in this book of rare achievement. From mysterious schools nestled within magnificent African landscapes, these inspired teachers illuminate cosmology, the depths and joys of writing, and the simple yet profound delight of being alive. Their teachings embrace both cosmic mysteries and everyday pleasures, inviting us to “focus on little joys around us: a child taking its first shaky steps, a bird pecking delightedly at crumbs, laughter, or the smell of fresh-baked bread.”
Western Esotericism and My Encounter with Spiritual Ancestry
Ironically, my introduction to the idea of ancestors occurred in Benin-City through books on Western esotericism, which can be described as a cultural strain different from the dominant, rationalist strands of Western modernity, although Western esotericism also develops approaches to various forms of rationality.
In its 19th century efflorescence and subsequent vigorous development, Western esotericism achieved its current prominence in a climate of thought fed by Theosophy, itself shaped by Buddhism, in which the idea of deified ancestors is richly developed. The Western equivalent of this came to be known as the Masters of Wisdom, people pperceived as having passed beyond life on Earth, but on account of their high level of spiritual development, are now assimilated into the mind of God as co-workers in the divine plan.
These figures are therefore held up as models for human aspiration, and aspirants are encouraged to call to them for guidance in the journey of growth into an ever expansive divine identity.
The Evolution of a Personal Practice Inspired by Dion Fortune's Idea of the the Cosmic Ancestor
Encountering
these sublime ideas in various books, I took advantage of them and gradually
began to adapt them to my growing study and practice of classical African
spiritualities. I was particularly inspired by the work of Dion Fortune,
who describes the ultimate mission of every race as embodied by a now
divine progenitor. This is an ancestor so advanced in the development of its
consciousness it has become part of the structures of the universe. It
has become constitutive of the possibilities of consciousness shaping
existence.What fascinated me was the movement from ancestry as historical
succession towards ancestry as participation in a cosmic order.
I would visualize my mind as spreading outward in waves reaching towards this
ultimate ancestor, this primal identity, one of the Lords of Mind, embodying
the esoteric mission of a root race, as Fortune describes this idea in Applied
Magic.Through that imaginative movement, ancestry became a contemplative
means of approaching the relationship between individual consciousness and a
more expansive spiritual reality.