Re: Reworking Ifa : Self Initiation into Èṣù through Contemplation, Invocation and Prayer Inspired by the Work of Toyin Falola Part 2
Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
Contemplating Èṣù
expanded
láìsí ènìyàn, imalẹ̀ kò sí
without humanity, divinity is not
imalẹ̀ kò si, ènìyàn kò si
no divinity, no humanity
gazing without talking -
what originally appears as a small wooden object
opens up a vastness of knowledge
its edges become borderless
its existence acquires a force.
It is he who glorifies me at the moment when I glorify him
It is he who worships me at the moment when I worship him
We are forced to move into the orbits of knowledge in which all component parts of the body tell their own story:
Ojú Èṣù, eyes of Èṣù-seeing into the essence of things
etí Èṣù, ears of Èṣu-hearing the sounds from the depths of being and becoming
imú Èṣù , nose of Èṣù-smelling that which cannot be otherwise known
There is a mode of being in which it is I who recognize him
whereas in the eternal hexeities, I deny him
okó Èṣù, penis of Èṣù- uniting spirit and matter
engorged with fierce blood
raised to full consciousness
penetrating the universe
obo Èṣù, vagina of Èṣù-the intersection of the transcendent and the terrestrial
yawning open in desire
letting the universe penetrate
at the core of the mutual penetration the supreme consciousness opens
But where I deny him, it is he who knows me
when it is I who know him, it is then that I contemplate him
ile omo Èṣù, womb of Èṣù - cauldron of the alchemical process creating life, welding skin and bone with the hidden spark
How can he be he who is sufficient unto himself
since I assist him and come to his help?
ògo Èṣù, forehead of Èṣù- concealer of wisdom
orí Èṣù, head of Èṣù- the head, as analogue of the immortal essence of the self, embodying its ultimate possibilities
inú Èṣù, inwardness of Èṣù, the zone of intelligence and emotions
Then it is Èṣù who causes me to exist
ojú ọ̀nà, the eye of the mind
ojú inú, inward vision, a movement beyond basic perception to the essential qualities of phenomena
gbogbo ara Èṣù, the totality that is Èṣù
Èṣù as embodiment of totality, the owner of all spaces, interior and exterior
But by knowing him, I in turn cause him to exist
Èṣù has entered your mental system. The image is activated.
The thought that you express to yourself and to others moves you back to the Èṣù image.
Its force becomes a part of you.
Taking you into visible and invisible realities of knowledge.
Ogbọ́n inú, inward wisdom, wisdom as an inward transmutation of cognitive elements, enabling perception of essences and relations of phenomena.
Of this the report has come down to us.
and in me the word of it is fulfilled.
Reworking IfaSelf Initiation into ÈṣùthroughContemplation, Invocation and PrayerInspired by the Work of Toyin FalolaPart 2"Exploring Every Corner of the Cosmos in Search of Knowledge"I love this Èṣù
sculpture for its consummate technical skill and its transgressive force, its restructuring of biology in order to project an idea about possibilities of transcending temporality as conventionally perceived. Human beings can recall the past while positioned in the present, but is it possible to rework the past? Can one throw a stone today and hit a bird yesterday, as is declared of Èṣù 's abilities in a particular celebration of his paradoxicalities? Many us would restructure our pasts and even that of entire groups we are attached to, if we could.
The perception of a past flowing into a present and a future is an illusion, some schools of thought, including Albert Einstein's Relatively Theory in scientific cosmology claim. The ability to transcend this illusion is enabled by penetrating into the eternal, a perspective states.
Positioned at the crossroads represented by the intersection of the vertical and horizontal lines inscribed on an opon ifa, a central Ifa cosmological symbol and divination template, Èṣù, mediator between possibilities, opener of doors connecting dimensions of space and time, guides the explorer into the diverse permutations that shape existence.
AbstractThis essay is an exploration of the orisa, the deity Èṣù from the Yoruba origin Orisa cosmology, in terms of human nature as understood in Yoruba philosophy. It describes how the aspirant may cultivate a relationship with the divinity in the name of expanding the capacities of the individual, developing their total human potential. This work proceeds through a reworking of Toyin Falola's meditation on a sculpture of Èṣù in his essay "Ritual Archives" in The Toyin Falola Reader, 2018. Falola's lines are rearranged in terms of poetic structure actualizing a ritual and contemplative rhythm, values enhanced by my own words explaining the meanings of the Yoruba expressions Falola uses in describing Èṣù, amplified by ideas from an inter-cultural network of sources. The verbal text is complemented by images of Èṣù, of his Voodoo incarnation, Papa Legba and of evocations of Legba, all from various online sources, accompanied by my brief commentaries on the images.This verbal and visual collage continues my efforts in developing an individualized approach to the Yoruba origin Ifa system of knowledge formally initiated by my essay "Reworking Ifa: Self Initiation and Self Development in an Ancient African Tradition: Democratizing African Esoteric Systems" ( academia.edu, Scribd,Facebook, Ifa Student and Teacher blog, USAfrica Dialogues Series Google group), followed by " An Ifa Self Initiation Ritual" ( academia.edu, Scribd, Facebook, USAfrica Dialogues Series Google group ).This reworking of Ifa constructs a distinctive philosophy and a personal spirituality using the structures provided by the Ifa system. This recreation of Ifa is meant to be of intimate value for myself but also relevant to other people, demonstrating my own approach to concerns universal to humanity as projected by the ancient system.
Èṣù image installation suggesting radiation of a field of force, force that may stimulate an expansion of ideas."[ Some images give] the imagination an incentive to spread its flight...animating the mind by opening out for it a prospect into a field of kindred representations stretching beyond its ken"-Immanuel Kant. Critique of Judgement.
Toyin Falola's Èṣù Meditation as a Method of Initiating a Relationship with the Deity
In "Ritual Archives", Falola approaches the process of cultivating a relationship with Èṣù through contemplating a figurine of the deity rather than through the traditional employment of physically dramatized ritual processes involving concrete forms, organic or inorganic, such as animal sacrifices or parts of animals. The abstraction represented by the divinity is thus approached through a concrete structure, a physical frame, however, which is subsumed within the abstraction represented by the human mind, the ritual space and performance emerging at the invisible but dynamic intersection between the mind of the contemplative and the work of art.
Falola's contemplative strategy dramatizes the insights expressed in the following lines from "Ritual Archives", the order of which I have slightly modified as well as added a few one word or phrasal connectives, in order to facilitate the flow of the quotations,
and eliminated words that focus the text in non-Western cultures in order to highlight its character as a superb summation of global relevance in image theory,libertiesfor which I beg forgiveness:
Objects and images encode the character of the being they represent. They are philosophical expressions, connected with thought and life, representing mentalities, power, and strength, which may move one towards the spiritual and religious through the aesthetic idea living within the image, enabling what Nietzsche calls an 'army of metaphors', generating a wide range of imaginations and thought systems, a process exemplified by seeing an Èṣù image in terms of its projection of force and strength, of power, epistemic responses and metaphysical perceptions, insights about the body in its physical and non-physical realms, generating a conglomeration of texts, symbols and performances that allow us to understand the
...world [ of the artifact] through various bodies of philosophies, literatures and histories, combining these disciplines in providing an understanding of the centres of [ the relevant] epistemologies, unifying their ontologies and facilitating their conversion to theories of universal value.
The kind of contemplation demonstrated by Falola's engagement with the Èṣù sculpture is a form of what is known in Buddhism as Deity Yoga, described in the rich linked Wikipedia essay, and in the Western magical tradition, as depicted in Israel Regardie’s The Tree of Life : A Study in Magic, as the Assumption of God Form, in which a devotee imaginatively identifies themselves with a deity in order to share in the qualities of that entity.
Falola does something similar in describing a meditation on an Èṣù figurine, reworking the religious element in a creatively dynamic manner through free association, the unscripted emergence of ideas within the mind under the impetus of contemplating the artistic form. This freewheeling approach inspires intimacy of identification with the specific conceptions traditionally associated with a particular artistic structure, complemented by the freedom to go beyond those ideas.
What strikes me about this Èṣù figurine are its imaginative boldness and the technical finish through which this is actualised, the robust discipline of the structuring of its conceptual transformation, actualizing the sense of a personage, human yet creatively different from the human, its almost full covering by what looks like a cloak of cowries, cowries being instruments of Nigerian shrine structures, often contributing to evoking a sense of meaning removed from the mundane, thereby suggesting, for me, in this instance, a sense of the occult, a personage adorned in a mobile carapace of eldritch forces, a coruscation accumulated through countless crossings of the intersections between dimensions where palpitate opaque potencies akin to those active in the Nothing before being, the double visages calmly contemplating the multi-dimensional focus of their gaze, a multiplicity evocative of the lines of division and conjunction
constitutingthe connections between the fissures of Oyigiyigi Ota Aiku, the Mighty Immovable Rock That Never Dies, splitting into four calabashes embodying the totality of being,.this split marked by the horizontal line and the vertical, the vertical, forward moving arrow of time and the horizontal bisection of hidden or unactualised possibilitiesas well asthe spatial division and unification of the four quarters.“ in the priest's face he read awe, power, wisdom...In a fraction of a second he relived his past life. In turns he felt deep affection for the priest and a desire to embrace him, and nauseating repulsion ...he felt a sickening nostalgia for an indistinct place he was sure he had never been to
.’'"... I encountered the [ One] , steadfast in devotion, both speaker and silent, neither alive nor dead, both complex and simple, encompassed and encompassing.
Then I was informed about the station of that youth, and his being untouched by Where or When [ space or time]. When I recognized his station and landing place [ a position within a cosmological matrix], and I saw with my own eyes his place in existence … I kissed his Right hand... and I said to him, ‘Look at the one who seeks to sit with you and desires to be intimate with you... Show me some of your mysteries, so that I would be one to transcribe your beauties.’
He said, ‘Observe the sectioned segments of my cobble-stoned whole and the ordered arrangement of my shape and you will find what you are asking of me to be imprinted throughout me... He pointed to me with an enigmatic gesture, [saying, I am] innately configured such that [ I speak ] to no one except in metaphor and [am] only spoken to metaphorically... the purest language of the pure speakers does not perceive [me]and [my] articulation is not attained by the eloquence of the most eloquent.
I am knowledge, the known, and the one who knows. I am the ḥikma (wisdom), the muḥkam (the fount of wisdom secured from ambiguity), and the ḥakīm (who decides wisely).’ "
In the first paragraph the image of Oyigiyigi Ota Aiku, the Mighty Immovable Rock That Never Dies, is a classical Yoruba characterisation of ultimate being from Bolaji Idowu's Olodumare: God in Yoruba Belief. The idea of the splitting of Oyigiygi into four calabashes embodying
cosmictotality is from Awo Falokun Fatunmbi's "Esu-Elegba: Ifa and the Spirit of the Divine Messenger". The description of the quaternary symbolism of the fissured rock is an adaptation from my interpretation of the quaternary symbolism of the division of the opon ifa, a primary cosmological form and divination template of the Yoruba origin Ifa system of knowledge.The second paragraph is from Elechi Amadi, The Concubine, evoking classical Igbo spirituality.
The third paragraph is from Islamic mystic Ibn Arabi's lines in his Futūḥāt al-Makkīya, one rendering of which is The Meccan Revelations, as translated in Stephen Hirtenstein’s The Unlimited Mercifier : The Spiritual Life and Thought of Ibn 'Arabi.
The fourth paragraph is from the continuation of the same encounter as rendered in Eric Winkel's "Understanding and Translating the Futūḥāt al-Makkīya, along with in-text clarifications by me, the passage coming from my "Manifestations at Cosmogenesis: Universal Implications of Three Yoruba Cosmogonic Narratives 1".
Contemplating Èṣù
gazing without talking -
what originally appears as a small wooden object
opens up a vastness of knowledge
its edges become borderless
its existence acquires a force.
We are forced to move into the orbits of knowledge in which all component parts of the body tell their own story:
Ojú Èṣù, eyes of Èṣù-seeing into the essence of things
etí Èṣù, ears of Èṣu-hearing the sounds from the depths of being and becoming
imú Èṣù , nose of Èṣù-smelling that which cannot be otherwise known
okó Èṣù, penis of Èṣù- uniting spirit and matter
engorged with fierce blood
raised to full consciousness
penetrating the universe
obo Èṣù, vagina of Èṣù-the intersection of the transcendent and the terrestrial
yawning open in desire
letting the universe penetrate
at the core of the mutual penetration the supreme consciousness opens
ile omo Èṣù, womb of Èṣù - cauldron of the alchemical process creating life, welding skin and bone with the hidden spark
ògo Èṣù, forehead of Èṣù- concealer of wisdom
orí Èṣù, head of Èṣù- the head, as analogue of the immortal essence of the self, embodying its ultimate possibilities
inú Èṣù, inwardness of Èṣù, the zone of intelligence and emotions
ojú ọ̀nà, the eye of the mind
ojú inú, inward vision, a movement beyond basic perception to the essential qualities of phenomena
gbogbo ara Èṣù, the totality that is Èṣù
Èṣù as embodiment of totality, the owner of all spaces, interior and exterior
Èṣù has entered your mental system. The image is activated.
The thought that you express to yourself and to others moves you back to the Èṣù image.
Its force becomes a part of you.
Taking you into visible and invisible realities of knowledge.
Ogbọ́n inú, inward wisdom, wisdom as a transmutation of cognitive elements, enabling perception of essences and relations of phenomena.
The power of this strange conjunction of forms is undeniable. A delicate feminine face, in harmony with luscious breasts and a securely attached child, alert in the glow of his eyes to the world around him, as his mother kneels in votive service. The ensemble composed by her form and that of her child is counterpointed by a delicately curving but visually potent cylindrical form rising from her head. Who is that person, covered in what might be cowries, seated diminutively on the floor near her? Is that Esu Elegba himself, the one who is both a child and an old man? Is the kneeling woman Esu, the one who can be both male and female? The form rising from the woman's head, a recurrent structure on a good number of sculptures of Esu, is often interpreted in the literature as a phallus, making its presence in this work even more striking in the power created by its integration within what would otherwise have been an impressive but conventional sculptural tableau.
"[Hans ]Witte [ in Ifa and Esu: Iconography of Order and Disorder (1984)] too takes issue with [Joan] Wescott's emphasis [ in The Sculpture and Myths of Eshu-Elegba, the Yoruba Trickster: Definition and Interpretation in Yoruba Iconography] on Esu's autonomous nature and disruptive proclivities, and argues that in the end he symbolizes balance and integration, particularly between the sexes. The phallic allusions do not reinforce his maleness but reformulate his masculinity in such a way that it no longer defines a radical opposition to the female sex (1984:17). According to Witte's reading, the hair is a mediating sign merging both phallus and female hairstyle".FromSarah Watson Parsons,"Interpreting Projections, Projecting Interpretations: A Reconsideration of the Phallus in Esu Iconography".
In the spirit of Falola's generation of both mental and physical intimacy with an Esu figurine in the meditation that inspires this essay, let us see a picture evoking a related intimacy between the Esu shrine sculpture above and an Esu devotee:
"Priestess and her Esu cult figure. Photo. Marilyn Houlberg
Such images are owned and used by the priestess of Elegbara( Esu) and Sango. ...T.he sexual imagery in the hairstyles of both the figure and the priestess complicates the conventional connection between Esu's masculinity and Yoruba men.
From"Sarah Watson Parsons,"Interpreting Projections, Projecting Interpretations: A Reconsideration of the Phallus in Esu Iconography".
"Devotee of the Yoruba deity, Esu, embodiment of paradox, opener of doors between possibilities and forms of being, his phallic head potrusion evoking his penetration and linking of contrastive dimensions in demonstrating their complementarity in difference, resonating with the dynamism of the upward flaming hair of the devotee, her reverent concentration mobilised through physical focus on the figurine she holds, as others look on this classic scene of devotion between devotee and deity, the entire tableau further activated by the woman's bare skin and eloquent hands, exuding a sense of
arcane power evoked most memorably by the uncanny force generated by the hair that seems to rise of its own will over the emotively focused face, a map of concentration." Commentary on this image from my "Expanding African Female Centred Spirituality from a Base in Yoruba Iyami Aje Witchcraft Thought: Theory, Practice, Images".
Method and Goal of
this Composition
The goal of this verbal/visual composition is that of demonstrating the possibilities of approaching Èṣù through visual meditation, as dramatized by Falola's example.
I clarify the significance of Falola's exposition by correlating my quotations of his lines
in"Contemplating Èṣù" with my interpretations of those lines, beginning with the concluding words of the first line of the second stanzawhere I replace the original expression with "tell their own story". It continues with the English interpretations of the Yoruba expressions relating to Èṣù . These interpretations come after the comma following the Yoruba expressions and continue with the phrase after the hyphen. The interpretations go beyond translating the Yoruba terms to an individualistic rendering of their potential in the ritual context created by the poem.
"the zone of intelligence and emotions", however, the last phrase in the fifth stanza, is from Falola. The first and eighth stanzas are all selections from the Falola essay. Suggestions for other translations of the Yoruba expressions and further interpretations of their significance are welcome.
I have added to Falola's lines "obo Èṣù, vagina of Èṣù" and "ile omo Èṣù, womb of Èṣù", suggesting the art dealer ÌMỌ̀ DÁRA’s summation ,“Esu's power is often visually represented in ogo elegba [ Èṣù staffs] as male and female pairs; this is a metaphor to his ability to morph between the two sexes, turn death into life (through child birth) and to overcome the tension between both sexes". To okó Èṣù, one of Falola's lines, which means "penis of Èṣù", I have added "uniting spirit and matter/ engorged with fierce blood/ raised to full consciousness/ penetrating the universe", an adaptation of the interpretation of the metaphysical significance of the phallus of the Hindu God Siva in Daniel Odier's Tantric Quest: An Encounter With Absolute Love (Inner Traditions, 1997, 63), an adaptation enabled by identifications of Èṣù and his representation as the Dahomean Legba with phallic symbolism, as superbly summed up in Henry Louis Gates Jr's The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of African-American Literary Criticism ( Oxford UP,1988, 6):
"Esu is the guardian of the crossroads...the phallic god of generation and fecundity, master of that elusive, mystical barrier that separates the divine world from the profane. Frequently characterized as an inveterate copulator, possessed by his enormous penis, linguistically Esu is the ultimate copula, connecting truth with understanding[ "Whereas Ifa is truth, Esu rules understanding of truth", Gates, Signifying, 39], the sacred with the profane, text with interpretation..."
I have added to Falola's lines "obo Èṣù, vagina of Èṣù -the intersection of the transcendent and the terrestrial/ yawning open in desire/letting the universe penetrate", enabling the penetration of the universe by the penis of Èṣù , "at the core of the mutual penetration the supreme consciousness opens". I have also added "ile omo Èṣù, womb of Èṣù" cauldron of the alchemical process creating life, welding skin and bone with the hidden spark”. These lines adapt a related strategy in Hindu depictions of the relationship between the God Shiva and the Goddess Shakti in order to develop the cosmological potential of Èṣu's composite masculine/feminine identity.
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Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
I have also been inspired by the Christian tradition of the litany and the Indian sutra tradition in recreating Falola's lines in poetic terms. Indian sutra literature
This poeticisation of Falola's
prose lines and the explanation of the logic of that transposition is a development from my essay "Epistemic Roots, Universal Routes and
Ontological Roofs of African Ritual Archives: Disciplinary Formations in
African Thought: Engaging the Toyin Falola Reader", published on
Facebook as Part 1
, Part 2
and Part 3
and on the USAAfrica Dialogues Series Google group as Part 1,
Part 2
and Part 3.
A pdf version is forthcoming.
Something truly beautiful has been created here out of what is the most elementary Èṣu form, a conical
Philosophical Values Demonstrated by Falola's Contemplation of the Èṣù Figurine
This reworking of Falola's lines has been created to take advantage of the potential of his expressions as a ritual and contemplative text. The composition highlights Falola's evocation of the values associated with Èṣù through his description of a meditation on a sculpture of the deity. This sculpture being anthropomorphic, Falola’s reflections demonstrate how the image may inspire identification with a human being. This identification emerges through conjunctions between the values associated with the humanization of the deity and the human figure.
These values demonstrate Yoruba philosophy as ascribing various perceptual significance to different organs of the body within the context of a holistic assessment of the totality of the self as a unified physical and non-physical entity. The non-physical, in this context, includes and extends beyond "ori lasan", "the basic head", the human head evoking the biological enablement of the mind as an aspect of the mortal self conditioned by biology and terrestrial experience, to include, at the core of the self, an immortal centre, orí inu, "the inner or inward head", the head as metonymic for the totality of the individual’s possibilities as deriving from orí inu's origin in orun, the zone of primal origins beyond time and space, where the presence of Olodumare, the creator of the cosmos, may be described as concentrated and where the potential embodied by orí inu as it is to be actualized in a particular incarnation is enabled through interaction with Olodumare in preparation for the self to be born on earth.
'"Ori inu", the "inward head", represents
the invisible essence of self understood as influencing but
transcending the mind and the course of the individual's terrestrial life. This
idea belongs to the same family of conceptions of "inu", inwardness,
represented by "oju inu", "the inward eye",
enabling perception that penetrates beyond the immediately perceptible
qualities of phenomena to their constitutive identities and possibly to
their essences. Falola's meditation on the Èṣù figurine may be seen as an
exercise in cultivating oju inu, enabling “what originally appears as a small
wooden object” [to open up] a vastness of knowledge”, as he puts it.
The Comparative Context of Falola's Meditation on the Èṣù Figurine
In describing his contemplative method as centred in "gazing
without talking", Falola suggests that the mind is left free to
concentrate on its stimulation by the Èṣù image, outward silence, no
talking, facilitating the evocation of ideas in an alchemical
process in which images and ideas are smelted at the conjunction of
the self and the work of art.
The kind of contemplation demonstrated by Falola's engagement with the Èṣù sculpture represents, particularly, a strategy developed in depth in the Indian origin discipline Yoga, beginning from parallels between Falola's method and the foundational Yoga systematization, the Yoga Sutras of Pantanjali. The second sutra of Pantanjali's work, in the translation by Alistair Shearer, reads "Yoga is the settling of the mind into silence", while Swami Parbhavnanada and Christopher Isherwood's translation, How to Know God : The Yoga Aphorisms of Pantanjali, renders the same line as "Yoga is the control of thought-waves in the mind". The control of thought is meant to lead the mind into silence and in silence to encounter the essence of consciousness.
Another approach, however, is that of contemplating something, abstract or concrete, in the name of penetrating to the essence of what is being contemplated, an essence identical with the essence of the contemplator, since both what is contemplated and the person contemplating originate from the same cosmological roots. Such an effort may be motivated by the effort to transcend the mind by gradually leaving behind images and ideas relating to what is contemplated, in order to experience what the Christian mystic St. John of the Cross describes, in Roy Thomas' translation, as "transcending knowledge with my thought".
Yet another contemplative method is not so much to seek the transcendence of thought but its integration and apotheosis. This technique aspires to catalyze the integration of ideas through free association or a combination of free association and deliberate structuring. The network of associations thus developed by contemplating an object or body of ideas is built into a microcosm of all possibilities, a cosmological template used as a contemplative platform aimed at unity between the mind and the cosmos as evoked by this model.
This conceptual unification is developed as what may be understood in Christian and Hindu mysticism as a ladder of the mind to ultimate reality, an idea developed with particular force in Christian mystics' adaptation of the Biblical image of a ladder leading from heaven to earth with angels moving ceaselessly up and down the ladder trafficking between earth and heaven, as developed in St. Bonaventura's The Journey of the Mind to God, as well as in the imagistic synthesis depicted by Surendranath Dasgupta's description, in the first volume of his History of Indian Philosophy, of Indian thinkers substituting for the earlier practice of the actual sacrifice of a horse, the visualization of the image of that horse in terms of the constitution of the cosmos. The ideational model or visual construct is directed at facilitating the experience of the cosmos from the vantage point represented by that model.
Ulli Beier, in dialogue with Susanne Wenger in The Return of the Gods: The Sacred Art of Susanne Wenger, describes each orisa, the deities of Yoruba origin Orisa cosmology, as the universe viewed from a particular perspective. Falola's meditation may be correlated with such cosmological aspirations in his projection of the vast network of ideas that may emerge from a contemplation of an Èṣù figurine, an expansiveness enabled by the intersection between the mental contents of the contemplator and the evocative force of the Èṣù sculpture.
A female form of Èṣù? The aerodynamic power of the protrusion from her head is counterpointed by the compact votice force of the kneeling figure, her breasts evoking the conical form of a projectile, yet erotic and maternal. A masterpiece of complementary contrasts.