RE: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Understanding and Shaping Life throughStudying and Creating Yoruba Poetry of Laughter, Delight and Wonder

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OLAYINKA AGBETUYI

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Dec 11, 2020, 10:08:57 AM12/11/20
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This is a misrepresentation of what Ofo as a cosmic force is about.

I remember when I had a tutorial with my HOD the late Oyin Ogunba on the use of Ofo.
.

He told me he had been invited to demonstrations of the magical efficacy of Ofo and that at the last moment the organisers prevaricated.  He said he did not have any evidence of the magical efficacy of Ofo.

I reminded him that he was a ' foreigner' among the practitioners and they would be reluctant to share their secrets with him, like they would not with a westerner  knowing he would encourage broadcasting it for gains without a return to the owners of the 'patent'  ( I could not believe this came from an Ìjębú professor who were reputed among the Yoruba for their especial proficiency in the magical arts.  I thought he was only telling me what western education allowed him to divulge and not what he actually believed. The Awo whom I consulted within the same period for effective remedy which I narrated here was actually in Ìjębú land.)

I reminded him that the verbal arts which he wanted to treat merely as literature has an esoteric side involving actual psysical potencies.  He merely chuckled in his characteristic style.

What Toyin Adepoju seems to be misrepresenting falls along the same pathway:  that the words alone will produce magical power.  I do not believe this is possible.

How is Toyin Adepoju going to use the literary power of words to change the life of participants in a seminar?  The Awo I consulted did not just heal me with the power of words contained in the Ęsę Ifá he chanted.  He handed me a bottle containing herbs and tree bark in solution which actually did the healing.

An etymology of Awo comes in handy here.  It means a covenant not to divulge the workings and formula of the products of a particular guild and therefore represents humanity's first attempt to evolve a copyright and patent system before western modernity.  It was primarily evolved to prevent abuse by the laity and protect the earnings of members from activities of fakes.

What Adepoju is misrepresenting is what psychoanalysis describes as the fallacy of the omnipotence of thought.  The literary effects of words cannot  procure the remedy which Adepoju is using this forum to falsely disseminate.  

Oyin Ogunba never told me that the literary effects of words can achieve the transformation in the problems in the lives of anybody.  He never advocated that people should be taught how to construct Ofo so that it can provide a remedy for human problems.
.

Adepoju has gone a step further as usual in presenting himself as an expert in what he does not fully understand in order to make a fast buck.

The proposed seminar is therefore sham and a money making gimmick.

If he wants to teach literature and literary analysis of Ofo as Oyin Ogunba did then that is a straightforward issue.  But he does not belong to any guild that knows the full circumstances of producing either Ìjálá or Ofò.


OAA



Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.



-------- Original message --------
From: Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju <toyin....@gmail.com>
Date: 11/12/2020 10:28 (GMT+00:00)
To: usaafricadialogue <USAAfric...@googlegroups.com>, Yoruba Affairs <yoruba...@googlegroups.com>, wolesoyin...@yahoogroups.com, Bring Your Baseball Bat <naijao...@yahoogroups.com>
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Understanding and Shaping Life throughStudying  and Creating Yoruba Poetry of Laughter, Delight and Wonder

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1. Mobilize Cosmic Force in Nature to Empower Your Life and Pursue Your Goals through Ofo, Yoruba Poetry of Incantations


Would you like to learn to use affirmations that draw on the cosmic force that pervades nature in energizing your life and pursuing your goals?

Masters of verbal art among the Yoruba of West Africa developed powerful systems for this purpose, ancient methods this course will teach you how to understand and use.


Mobilizing patterns in nature through powerful imagery, they directed ase, creative, cosmic force, for the achievement of specific goals.

You can do the same too, with the guidance of this course.

The course will be taught in English.

2. Studying and Creating Ese Ifa, Literature of Laughter and Worship,  Adventure and Delight


Some people, somewhere, laugh at their gods.

Yet they worship them.

No humans, no gods, they say.

Earth existed before the gods, they assert.

In this world, no one fights to defend any god or belief.

The sheer beauty of the celebration of nature in this world, the delightful variety in their depictions of the divine, funny and sublime, are glorious.

This is the world of ese ifa, one of the world's great bodies of literature.

It comes from the Yoruba people of West Africa.

Encounter this ancient and magnificent tradition and learn how to create such literature as those inspired masters.

No literary background is required.

The course shall be taught in English.


3.Forest as Cosmos

 Learning from and Constructing Ijala, Yoruba Poetry of Hunters


Poised to bring down the magnificent beast, I yet marvelled at it's amazing grace within such brute power.

Hidden in the forest, lying flat with my gun pointing at at the baboon, I seemed to be doing him homage.

Is the life of a hunter a life for a thinking man?

This is a description from "Salute to the Baboon," a poem of Ijala, poetry of hunters from the Yoruba of West Africa, with a reflection on it's implications.

Wole Soyinka describes Ijala as celebrating the deity Ogun, as well as "animal and plant life, the relationships of growing things and the insights of man into the secrets of the universe.'

Abiola Irele depicts Ijala as expressing the world of the hunter seen as a navigation of the forest, peopled by animal and spirit powers, reflecting the variety and complexity of the cosmos.

Learn how to draw upon such rich insights, ancient yet ever fresh, in an increasingly complex world, as the world of work replaces the forest, the daily commute the navigations of the hunter, lockdown isolation replaces his long hours waiting for animals to appear.

You will learn how to understand this art and use it in making sense of your life, shaping it's meaning and outcomes.

The seminar will be conducted in English.

All interested parties may contact me for directions at to how to take advantage of these courses.


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Dr BioDun J Ogundayo

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Dec 11, 2020, 9:59:01 PM12/11/20
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Esteemed participants,
Silence is truly golden. I have "lurked" on this forum as many great minds have enlightened us. Especially about the intellectual and spiritual hubris garbed (or garbled!!)  in the obvious robes of semantics, sophistry, and euphemisms, designed to bedazzle and bamboozle! In the manner of the deconstructionists and Derrida acolytes...

I am moved to state this. Words have power. Words are power. For the users of words to have the power of Ofo, they must be neophytes, initiates, and adepts at making the VERB work in specific and appropriate circumstances for specific and appropriate purposes. They must demonstrate not only knowledge of terms, but the humility to say them right, not necessarily correctly.Ofo also includes silence, or the ability to listen to the elements before acting.

Implicitly, esoterism is the defining and definitive nature of Ofo. I am not an Ifa initiate, but there is a whole odu on Oro as spirit. But as a student of language and translator,I know that the right word, pronounced with the right attitude, the right tone, at the right moment, begets the right result.

Even in our jaded, profane, banal, and quotidian drudgery, how we communicate involves some measure of esoterism, whereby the speaker and the hearer are in a complicit, knowing,"insider" relationship exclusive of all others... Consider the following and the obvious:
1. Passwords and your computer. We all know how deathly frustrating it must be being unable to gain access to the computer/internet/social media/email... if you miss just one character, the ofo has no potency because it has been denatured...
2. PIN numbers (pardon the redundancy): Forget the sequence of numbers, mix up the numbers, and you don't get to pay the bill, or get desperately needed cash from the damn ATM!
3. Diagnosis: Knowledge derived from you and your doctor (a profanely esoteric relationship in a culture obsessed with privacy). If you will not, do not, or cannot say what is the matter with you, the doctor with all his knowledge and expertise cannot proceed with a treatment. DIA-GNOSIS wisdom emerging from a dialogue between 2 insiders!
4. Yoruba say "bi owe, bi owe..." You have to be an ologbon, an onmoran, (an insider) to be able to participate in community of wordsmiths. Again esoterism (of OFO).
5. In one of the Harry Potter series, it would take Hermione's saying "Levy..Oosa!" the right way for the feather to lift up from the dining table and float away, after several futile attempts by the boys around her. Again and again esoterism of the spoken word( Ofo in Yoruba esoteric practice).
6. Poets are adepts of the esoterism of  the Verb in any culture--the griots, the bards, Plato's poets, cantors, preachers, (even charismatic politicians) are all practitioners of OFO in its countless iterations.
7. In Catholic tradition and mass, even man has to ask God to say the word "and my soul shall be healed" the ultimate step before the body of Christ is consumed and the union of man and the divine is consummated. Esoterism of Ofo at its most fundamentally religious form.
8. In Judeo-Christian tradition and mythology the world and we became through OFO. God spoke, uttered the Fiat Luxe, and the universe happened.
9. Allah commanded Mohammed, PBUH, an illiterate to recite and a whole new spirituality and theology (Qur'an) came forth.

Silence is GOLDEN. So is OFO. Don't  trifle with OFO, or you will be consumed by its flames and power!

'BioDun






To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/DB6PR04MB29820949F698B349A078520EA6CA0%40DB6PR04MB2982.eurprd04.prod.outlook.com.


--

There is no fear, but joy. Excellence is Virtue.
'BioDun J. Ogundayo, PhD
Arokesagun

Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju

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Dec 12, 2020, 8:12:25 AM12/12/20
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To clarify-

I see Ogundayo's summation as a critique of my position, giving much food for thought but which ironically only that looks to me as an effective means of reinforcing that position, from both a marketing angle and a philosophical angle.

marketing- this is the established view, but im here to show you how to go beyond it.

philosophical-what is the ultimate core of awo, the esoteric, as understood in Yoruba/Orisa cosmology, in my view, in relation to global esotericisms?

is it information that fellow humans are capable of keeping secret or the inability of humans, due to their inadequacy of their faculties, to penetrate the secrets of nature?

how do these two-

social esotericism- human withholding of info

and 

epistemic esotericism-nature's secrets inaccessible on account of human limitations and nature depths

as i characterize these two forms of the esoteric, derived from a study of awo, 

how do they intersect?

at what points may the esoteric  be accessed without the aid of traditional gatekeepers and info managers?

thanks

toyin



On Sat, 12 Dec 2020 at 08:51, Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju <toyin....@gmail.com> wrote:
Superb from Ogundayo.

It fits my project very well.

Beyond fair use quotation, I wish I could represent the entire piece, even if to advance an argument that builds on it in order to contradict it.

I would like to know, through this chat or private email, if I can use it in full, since I'll be using it in a commercial product.

I might not be able to give an adequate response now, but i'll do that later.

Great thanks

toyin




To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/CACkhLWYvYko8U47jd6EUSUR%3DmjYz1A_Q9B6OEaTveQWA96d1iw%40mail.gmail.com.

Dr BioDun J Ogundayo

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Dec 13, 2020, 6:24:33 AM12/13/20
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Quick answers, and I return to my quotidian miseries...


1. I am not critique-ing, but gently admonishing against the seduction of self-righteousness, self-aggrandizement, etc...Especially since the Verb (Ofo) is no one’s personal, intellectual/material domain. Sociologically, it is informative that intellectual property and copyright seem to be uniquely products of western, materialist/property owning/individualist mentalities...
????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
By the way, would there be a correlation between the West’s conquest, subjugation and domination of Africa and emerging forms of capitalism, as implied in the codification of property rights? I don’t know o.
????????????????????????????????????????????????????)?????

2. It is not about monetizing, or materially enriching oneself. Indeed, in all societies, devotees, agents, and masters and guardians of the VERB are often materially bereft. How many life changing, life affirming/destroying writers, thinkers, acolytes of the Verb have ever been materially/financially wealthy, or bountiful? It is no coincidence that Yoruba Iyalawo, and Babalawo take the oath of poverty (the inimitable Wande Abimbola and wiser minds, please teach me!) at the end of their initiation to benefit humanity and community with wisdom acquired. They also are not self-seeking. The recognition, Nobel prize, adulation, etc.. accorded them is just society’s way of acknowledging the power of the Verb.

3. From Japanese calligraphy, to Chinese Shaolin monks, to Tibetan lamaseries, to Rabbis ergotating, and Kabbalists (at the Wailing Wall)until Madonna bastardized the Kabbalah,  to Sufi dervishes of Turkey, to the griots of the Sahel, to the gnawa practitioners of Imazhigen, to Yoruba devotees of Ifa/Orunmila, to the Okyeame of Asantene, there is an abiding HUMILITY vis-à-vis Ofo. 

4. This borne of the recognition of universal, transcendent, eternal, metaphysical essence of the Verb/Ofo. It is not property to be appropriated, expropriated, misappropriated for ego gratification. In the world of lit-crit polyphony is yet another iteration of the versatility of Ofo. Bakhtin, with his dialogism, would remind us of the fallacy of the perfect monologue.... 


Camara Laye’s Maitre de la Parole, Ifa’s Ejiogbe, etc all point to the nexus between knowledge, wisdom, and yes, OFO, or the Verb as voice, action, a bringing forth into manifestation, theurgy... In these specific examples, HUMILITY is key. Same thing in alchemy. Of the 7 gifts of the Holy Spirit, the last is NOT the least: it fear of the Lord (or Verb, or OFO).

5. Jesus, physically gone for millennia, still manifests today for most as the ultimate OFO-Verb made human and divine at the same time. BTW he left not a single written text. Buddha, same story. Mohammed, PBUH, same story. Buddha’s story seems to make my point. He went from immense material wealth to immense and abject material poverty, chanting Ofo to reach elightenment.

6. Finally, I chose esoterism, not esotericism, for reasons obvious for those in the know.

7. I return to silence on this matter.
‘BioDun


--
BioDun J. Ogundayo , PhD. Arokesagun

OLAYINKA AGBETUYI

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Dec 13, 2020, 6:24:53 AM12/13/20
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Well stated, Dr Ogundayo.


Can anyone who is not fluent in Yorùbá aver to the onomatopoiec power of Yoruba to affect the mutual Yoruba hearer of the Ofo, as I demonstrated to the late Prof Oyin Ogunba,  as part of the psychological efficacy of Ofo?

2.  Can this subliminal effect of language be carried over to another language by a non speaker of the first language who would not recognise these nuances let alone be able to translate and convey these to potential students?

3. Would there be cognate lexicon in the target language to produce the same effect in the hearer/ student?

4.  Would the world view that in part  produced the psychological effect in a Yorùba hearer be the same as that of the foreign language hearer/ student and produce similar/ identical results as Adepoju alleges?


OAA



Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.



-------- Original message --------
From: Dr BioDun J Ogundayo <akand...@gmail.com>
Date: 12/12/2020 03:09 (GMT+00:00)
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Understanding and Shaping LifethroughStudying  and Creating Yoruba Poetry of Laughter, Delight and Wonder

Boxbe This message is eligible for Automatic Cleanup! (akand...@gmail.com) Add cleanup rule | More info
Esteemed participants,
Silence is truly golden. I have "lurked" on this forum as many great minds have enlightened us. Especially about the intellectual and spiritual hubris garbed (or garbled!!)  in the obvious robes of semantics, sophistry, and euphemisms, designed to bedazzle and bamboozle! In the manner of the deconstructionists and Derrida acolytes...

I am moved to state this. Words have power. Words are power. For the users of words to have the power of Ofo, they must be neophytes, initiates, and adepts at making the VERB work in specific and appropriate circumstances for specific and appropriate purposes. They must demonstrate not only knowledge of terms, but the humility to say them right, not necessarily correctly.Ofo also includes silence, or the ability to listen to the elements before acting.

Implicitly, esoterism is the defining and definitive nature of Ofo. I am not an Ifa initiate, but there is a whole odu on Oro as spirit. But as a student of language and translator,I know that the right word, pronounced with the right attitude, the right tone, at the right moment, begets the right result.

Even in our jaded, profane, banal, and quotidian drudgery, how we communicate involves some measure of esoterism, whereby the speaker and the hearer are in a complicit, knowing,"insider" relationship exclusive of all others... Consider the following and the obvious:
1. Passwords and your computer. We all know how deathly frustrating it must be being unable to gain access to the computer/internet/social media/email... if you miss just one character, the ofo has no potency because it has been denatured...
2. PIN numbers (pardon the redundancy): Forget the sequence of numbers, mix up the numbers, and you don't get to pay the bill, or get desperately needed cash from the damn ATM!
3. Diagnosis: Knowledge derived from you and your doctor (a profanely esoteric relationship in a culture obsessed with privacy). If you will not, do not, or cannot say what is the matter with you, the doctor with all his knowledge and expertise cannot proceed with a treatment. DIA-GNOSIS wisdom emerging from a dialogue between 2 insiders!
4. Yoruba say "bi owe, bi owe..." You have to be an ologbon, an onmoran, (an insider) to be able to participate in community of wordsmiths. Again esoterism (of OFO).
5. In one of the Harry Potter series, it would take Hermione's saying "Levy..Oosa!" the right way for the feather to lift up from the dining table and float away, after several futile attempts by the boys around her. Again and again esoterism of the spoken word( Ofo in Yoruba esoteric practice).
6. Poets are adepts of the esoterism of  the Verb in any culture--the griots, the bards, Plato's poets, cantors, preachers, (even charismatic politicians) are all practitioners of OFO in its countless iterations.
7. In Catholic tradition and mass, even man has to ask God to say the word "and my soul shall be healed" the ultimate step before the body of Christ is consumed and the union of man and the divine is consummated. Esoterism of Ofo at its most fundamentally religious form.
8. In Judeo-Christian tradition and mythology the world and we became through OFO. God spoke, uttered the Fiat Luxe, and the universe happened.
9. Allah commanded Mohammed, PBUH, an illiterate to recite and a whole new spirituality and theology (Qur'an) came forth.

Silence is GOLDEN. So is OFO. Don't  trifle with OFO, or you will be consumed by its flames and power!

'BioDun






On Fri, Dec 11, 2020 at 10:08 AM OLAYINKA AGBETUYI <yagb...@hotmail.com> wrote:


--

There is no fear, but joy. Excellence is Virtue.
'BioDun J. Ogundayo, PhD
Arokesagun

--
Listserv moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin
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OLAYINKA AGBETUYI

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Dec 13, 2020, 8:43:56 AM12/13/20
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Well, Toyin Adepoju's choice of the word ' critiquing' is absolutely correct in this context.  Note that he did not state that you criticised.  A critique is an evaluation, and that was what you did, positively or negatively.

The matter of money making.

The idea that the West introduced capitalism to the world is what needs to be deconstructed.  Various cultures had been on the road to capitalism by different routes before the West accelerated  the pace to their own advantage through the trans Atlantic slave trade and Western Colonialism ( Rome had colonies too, as did the Yorùbá, so colonialism was just a change of batons in an age-long race.

The fact that West Africa developed cowries as monetary exchange meant they were on the way to leaving feudalism and barter exchange  behind and the relativity of capitalism is what impelled Marxist theorists to coin the phrase 'late capitalism.'  There were the rudiments of capitalism during the time of Jesus, hence the saying ' It is easier for the camel to enter the eye of the needle than the rich man the kingdom of God.'

Critically appraised as I stated earlier 'awo' signified exclusion of the generality of the Yorùba ( and later the generality of the world when Ifa went universal through the slave trade long before Toyin Adepoju was born) That meant their products were patented only for fellow Awo members world wide after initiation by members of the collective.  

The same thing goes for Ęsę Ifá which thereby became copyrighted for bonafide members of the guild after graduation and initiation.

Yes, these ceremonies entitled them to earn a living from their products.  The Awo I consulted was not a pauper.  He had an Ìyálé  (senior wife) and Ìyàwó kékeré ( younger wife) and an Omo Awo ( understudying acolyte)  who was called in and instructed to bring in my medication after confidential consultation in the 2pm afternoon sunlight ( and not work of darkness as prejudicially described by Christian liars.  A senior female colleague of mine, confidant of my mother, reported to my mother a similar day time consultation  with Àwíşę Wândé Abímbólá)

This was why I asserted that the Yoruba were among the first to evolve a patent and copyright system in antiquity to protect abuse of the products of one of their guilds and also protect their incomes.  

This reality may not sit well with generally received stereotypical dichotomies of the West and its others but it is an incontrovertible fact.  In many instances the West actually forcefully borrowed the garbs of others and adorned them.


OAA



Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.



-------- Original message --------
From: Dr BioDun J Ogundayo <akand...@gmail.com>
Date: 13/12/2020 11:29 (GMT+00:00)
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Understanding and Shaping LifethroughStudying  and Creating Yoruba Poetry of Laughter, Delight and Wonder

Boxbe This message is eligible for Automatic Cleanup! (akand...@gmail.com) Add cleanup rule | More info
Quick answers, and I return to my quotidian miseries...


1. I am not critique-ing, but gently admonishing against the seduction of self-righteousness, self-aggrandizement, etc...Especially since the Verb (Ofo) is no one’s personal, intellectual/material domain. Sociologically, it is informative that intellectual property and copyright seem to be uniquely products of western, materialist/property owning/individualist mentalities...
????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
By the way, would there be a correlation between the West’s conquest, subjugation and domination of Africa and emerging forms of capitalism, as implied in the codification of property rights? I don’t know o.
????????????????????????????????????????????????????)?????

2. It is not about monetizing, or materially enriching oneself. Indeed, in all societies, devotees, agents, and masters and guardians of the VERB are often materially bereft. How many life changing, life affirming/destroying writers, thinkers, acolytes of the Verb have ever been materially/financially wealthy, or bountiful? It is no coincidence that Yoruba Iyalawo, and Babalawo take the oath of poverty (the inimitable Wande Abimbola and wiser minds, please teach me!) at the end of their initiation to benefit humanity and community with wisdom acquired. They also are not self-seeking. The recognition, Nobel prize, adulation, etc.. accorded them is just society’s way of acknowledging the power of the Verb.

3. From Japanese calligraphy, to Chinese Shaolin monks, to Tibetan lamaseries, to Rabbis ergotating, and Kabbalists (at the Wailing Wall)until Madonna bastardized the Kabbalah,  to Sufi dervishes of Turkey, to the griots of the Sahel, to the gnawa practitioners of Imazhigen, to Yoruba devotees of Ifa/Orunmila, to the Okyeame of Asantene, there is an abiding HUMILITY vis-à-vis Ofo. 

4. This borne of the recognition of universal, transcendent, eternal, metaphysical essence of the Verb/Ofo. It is not property to be appropriated, expropriated, misappropriated for ego gratification. In the world of lit-crit polyphony is yet another iteration of the versatility of Ofo. Bakhtin, with his dialogism, would remind us of the fallacy of the perfect monologue.... 


Camara Laye’s Maitre de la Parole, Ifa’s Ejiogbe, etc all point to the nexus between knowledge, wisdom, and yes, OFO, or the Verb as voice, action, a bringing forth into manifestation, theurgy... In these specific examples, HUMILITY is key. Same thing in alchemy. Of the 7 gifts of the Holy Spirit, the last is NOT the least: it fear of the Lord (or Verb, or OFO).

5. Jesus, physically gone for millennia, still manifests today for most as the ultimate OFO-Verb made human and divine at the same time. BTW he left not a single written text. Buddha, same story. Mohammed, PBUH, same story. Buddha’s story seems to make my point. He went from immense material wealth to immense and abject material poverty, chanting Ofo to reach elightenment.

6. Finally, I chose esoterism, not esotericism, for reasons obvious for those in the know.

7. I return to silence on this matter.
‘BioDun
--
BioDun J. Ogundayo , PhD. Arokesagun

--
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Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju

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Dec 14, 2020, 6:22:20 PM12/14/20
to usaafricadialogue
Thanks Ogundayo.

Your response seems to conflate a no of issues- earning money from a sacred literature with materialism and materialism with pride.

You seem to oppose to this conjunction another one you construct- between poverty and humility, humility with wisdom and spiritual powers and give a list of spiritual cultures and spiritual masters who exemplify these qualities.

Jesus depended for his food on his disciples, who were fishermen, members of the working class.

Buddha depedend on people who gave him gifts.

The various monastic cultures you mentioned depend on both what they generate and gifts they are given.

So, there is always a principle of exchange in action. 

Someone is producing value and getting something material in relation to that value.

Beyond that basic level, is the stupendous growth of various religions thinkable without vast commercial networks enabling the writing, translation, publishing and distribution of sacred texts, including the support of those who created and/or manage these texts?

In the light of these considerations, I wonder how developing an ofo centred practice is necessarily seen as going against principles of spirituality.

Even then, I have a huge body of writings on social media and other platforms that are freely accessible and I continue to publish using that approach.

That is my fundamental approach.

I am complementing it with one in which the scholarly/artistic/spiritual vocation is being developed to pay for itself.

On intellectual property in relation to ofo, anybody is within their rights to publish and make money from existing ofo, as is done in books on Yoruba literature, ideally in collaboration with the sources and creators of the examples of the verbal art, or through the permission of the writer and publisher of the book in which they are published.

My interest is in using such extant ofo as examples of the character of the genre in order to explore how this may be adapted to uses beyond it's originating context.

On the issue of orality vs writing, would Jesus and Buddha's ideas have achieved the global impact they did over the centuries if they had not been committed to writing eventually?

On spiritual masters in the Yoruba tradition, is it really true that they take a vow of poverty?

There is a difference between minimality of living and poverty,although the idea of poverty is open to diverse interpretations.

The current trend in the Orisa community in Nigeria and the Americas does not suggest a correlation between spirituality and minimality, talk less poverty, although that is a complex subject not easily summed up.

As for those in the secular world getting Nobel Prizes, Soyinka was paid for his work through grants, academic salaries, lecture fees etc while we know how J.K. Rowling became the world's first billionaire author on the basis of books representing a magical culture similar to ofo.

Those are the issues I see as clear cut in your submission.

I'm not able to understand where humility comes into the equation.

Spirituality grows through innovation.

You need the self confidence to cultivate and project your innovation or you will be cheating yourself and the world.  

Will people not innovate because they want to be humble?

On the subject of silence, OAA and yourself, for the first time in my experience on this group, have taken pains to share their views on Yoruba origin spiritualities, in response to inadequacies they see themselves as perceiving  in Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju's perpetual sharing of his own views on that and other subjects.

Is the world not enriched thereby?

Is everyone not better informed for such sharing- your multicultural perspectives and the Orisa/Ifa/Yoruba centric views of OAA, all inimitably expressed?

Social media writing is enabled by the ease of use and informality of the medium, both workshop and publishing platform.

Great thanks

Toyin


Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju

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Dec 14, 2020, 6:22:24 PM12/14/20
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Response to OAA on Ofo.

Ofo operates in terms of basic literary principles of which onomatopoeia is only one.

These literary principles are evident in all literatures.

Their distinctiveness in ofo is the end to which they are directed, an end that ofo shares with other magical forms of verbalization.

In adapting the aesthetics of ofo for use outside it's originating context, the relevant conceptual context can be presented in a manner easy for a user to understand.

These concepts are actually universal concepts, expressed in particular ways in the Yoruba context and enriched through recognizing their parallels with similar ideas within and beyond the Yoruba context, the cognate African context close to the Yoruba, the larger African context and beyond Africa.




OLAYINKA AGBETUYI

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Dec 15, 2020, 2:04:34 PM12/15/20
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Does Adepoju have enough understanding of Yorùbá language to pinpoint these onomatopoeia in the original language, why they have been deployed in the particular way they were deployed and the particular effects instead of reading them in translation into English and shortchanging prospective students.


Generalities glossed over amongst languages dont help do they?

Can Toyin Adepoju translate the effect of the following if found in Ofò and explain the likely effect?

'Gbędę nií ro kókò lágbàrá
Gbędęgbędę  ni kó rí fun ęgbę won.


Or

(This from an actual Ofò)

Won ni kánmàn kánmán ni kán ję lé

Wìrìwìrì lohùn ewìrì


OAA



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Date: 14/12/2020 23:24 (GMT+00:00)
To: usaafricadialogue <USAAfric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Understanding and ShapingLifethroughStudying  and Creating Yoruba Poetry of Laughter, Delight and Wonder

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Response to OAA on Ofo.

Ofo operates in terms of basic literary principles of which onomatopoeia is only one.

These literary principles are evident in all literatures.

Their distinctiveness in ofo is the end to which they are directed, an end that ofo shares with other magical forms of verbalization.

In adapting the aesthetics of ofo for use outside it's originating context, the relevant conceptual context can be presented in a manner easy for a user to understand.

These concepts are actually universal concepts, expressed in particular ways in the Yoruba context and enriched through recognizing their parallels with similar ideas within and beyond the Yoruba context, the cognate African context close to the Yoruba, the larger African context and beyond Africa.




On Sun, Dec 13, 2020, 12:24 OLAYINKA AGBETUYI <yagb...@hotmail.com> wrote:

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segun ogungbemi

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Dec 17, 2020, 6:44:08 AM12/17/20
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I know Ofo works very effectively in a very limited way if used by a competent practitioner as a medicine man and not as a magic wonder. 
I knew Prof. Oyin Ogunba. He was the Dean of Faculty of Arts at Ogun State University, Ago Iwoye, Ijebu-Igbo campus in the mid 80s. I had worked very closely with him in those days. I knew he
had doubts about the efficacy of African magical powers just as I did then. The question l still grapple with is that, if African ancestors had such magical powers, how come, a handful of Europeans took them into slavery? 
The practitioners of Ofo, in my view,  use it on emergencies. 
Segun Ogungbemi. 


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OLAYINKA AGBETUYI

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Dec 17, 2020, 11:51:15 AM12/17/20
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Thank you prof.


.What we need to appreciate is that, what is characterised as magic:  that which principle of operation are closely guarded by a few knowledgeable elite.  Their decided secrecy was their 'patent' and 'copyright'


One of such elites in Biblical times was Moses.  He, together with Aaron and others knew the principles of what was represented as 'magic' to outsiders, which the Rabbinical class embellish with fantastic tales to confound and assert their magical nature.  The Inner circle knew how to crack the code of information encoded in the lore wrapped in agreed metaphors.  We must remember that the etymological roots of the word magic was the word 'magi', a select group like the the Ifá priesthood or the Ògbóni cultists.

Isaac Newton was reputed to have through diligent studies cracked the code of such Biblical lores and established the basis of alchemy which later grew to modern Chemistry by substitution of letters and number codes for the literary and lexical codes.  Biblical codes entail use of what we  literary comparatists would call agreed Metonymical and Synechdochal words by such closely knit knowledgeable guilds.  For example the head of an antelope was discovered to refer not to the actual animal but was  stand- in name for a precious metal. ( Ifá uses this strategy a lot!)

As for Ifá and Ofò they would never   agree to demonstrate the basis to a western trained outsider like the late ' Baba Dean' ( as my sibling who was at the  Ogun State University said they called the late Oyin Ògunbà.) What would be the point of demonstrating the basis of their ' patent' to him and losing their exclusive rights to the products, thus undercutting themselves.?

Adepoju's proposed Ofò project does not fit in into the traditional use of Ofò as you said.  It hoes beyond the ordinarily literary because the guild had evolved an idiolect specific only to them and not shared by the Yoruba generality.  So even if Adepoju is generally proficient in Yoruba ( which he is not) it would still be an un-doable project for him unless he belonged to the guild that composed the Ofò.  What is crucial here is that words were not used in their denotational level but in their  exclusive concentrated connotational level ( language within a language if you wish.)

When Àwíse Wândé Abímbólá for instance was doing a literary analysis of sixteen poems of Ifá, he would limit himself to this denotational use and would not reveal the deeper connotational meanings shared with fellow members of Ifá guilds with the public.


OAA



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From: segun ogungbemi <segun...@gmail.com>
Date: 17/12/2020 11:48 (GMT+00:00)
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Understanding and Shaping LifethroughStudying  and Creating Yoruba Poetry of Laughter, Delight and Wonder

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I know Ofo works very effectively in a very limited way if used by a competent practitioner as a medicine man and not as a magic wonder. 
I knew Prof. Oyin Ogunba. He was the Dean of Faculty of Arts at Ogun State University, Ago Iwoye, Ijebu-Igbo campus in the mid 80s. I had worked very closely with him in those days. I knew he
had doubts about the efficacy of African magical powers just as I did then. The question l still grapple with is that, if African ancestors had such magical powers, how come, a handful of Europeans took them into slavery? 
The practitioners of Ofo, in my view,  use it on emergencies. 
Segun Ogungbemi. 


On Fri, Dec 11, 2020, 9:08 AM OLAYINKA AGBETUYI <yagb...@hotmail.com> wrote:

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Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju

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Dec 17, 2020, 3:34:42 PM12/17/20
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OAA,

Your description of esotericism represents a helpful starting point but it needs to be refined for accuracy in terms of its specific points and its application to Yoruba spirituality. 

Newton is a good example of an esotericist but I doubt if his achievements, beyond his work in alchemy specifically, can be described the way you have, as linking the Bible and alchemy through letter/word/image correlations. 

To gain a clearer idea of the character and scope of Newton's alchemical work,  one could see Richard Westfall's 1992 Encyclopedia Britannica  essay on Newton, the best summation known to me on the complex interweaving of Newton's  work across Hermeticism and its alchemical expression, his work in Biblical interpretation, mathematics and physics, a distillation of Westfall's monumental work, represented by his Never at Rest : A Life of Isaac Newton and the shorter A Life of Isaac Newton.

It might be the same article in the online Britannica on Newton.

For a short and yet rich examination of the same subject, one could see Rob Ilfe, Isaac Newton : A Very Short Introduction.

Your claims about Moses and Aaron I understand as best described as popular speculation not grounded in any definitive investigation of those two great figures, speculations that try to describe them as workers of arcane knowledge outside Biblically described devotion to God.

The Western esoteric tradition, however, as represented by such a seminal figure as Aleister Crowley, who described his magical system as centred in the goals of religion pursued through the methods of science, has devoted itself to the project of exploring and describing how magic works, with the use of imagination, often allied to metaphoric language, as you reference, being at the core of this understanding.

 Denotative and connotative  registers of language are basic to studies of language. It is well known that connotation is the core of evocation and invocation, the central operations of magic.

Your argument would have been better helped through a discussion of kinds of connotation.

The connotative level of ofo and ese ifa look quite straightforward  to me and are the subject of various studies.

The more esoteric kind of connotation is represented by sounds the significance of which cannot be understood unless divulged by the cognoscenti. 

Ese ifa and ofo, in contrast, operate largely within the realm of everyday suggestive fields. Their diction and evocative values are drawn from language as conventionally understood, even when adapted in poetic ways.

In contrast, examples of the restricted landscapes of signification I refer to are what are known in Hinduism as  beeja, beej or bija  mantras, which are not drawn from the lexical field of the language as used in any other context.  

Examples are the following sequence which opens the main body of the Sri Devi Khadgamala Stotram ritual, dedicated to the Goddess Tripurasundari, as presented by the Shakti Saddhana group:

                                                                   om aià hréà çrém aià kléà sauù

Those sounds, taken individually, have no meaning in Sanskrit, the original sacred language of India, outside their specific meaning in ritual, meanings that won't be understood unless divulged, in which context ''om'' is understood as the sound through which the cosmos came into being and through which it is sustained, while the other sounds embody the Goddess understood as essence of being and cosmic manifestation, from the dust of whose feet the vast multiplicity of worlds constituting the cosmos was created, as declared by the Soundaryalahari, the Billowing Waves of the Ocean of  Beauty.

According to Douglas Renfrew Brooks in Auspicious Wisdom :Texts and Traditions of Sri Vidya Sakta Tantrism in South India, in the chapter ''The Srividya Mantra'', as understood by devotees, those sounds do not refer to the Goddess, they are the Goddess in her identity as sound.

A related kind of non-lexical sound occurs in the Yoruba/Edo oral poem "Abababalona," in the refrain "ma mu ma mu awo okatakpiri awo!" in which ''okatakpiri," according to Sonya Olatayo in a personal communication, if I recall his name accurately, has  no lexical meaning, its rhythmic combination of forceful consonants, used in combination with the evocation of the numinous in ''awo,''  hidden occult knowledge and power and its agents, to suggest overwhelming power, a threat issued by the man poised on the tree top as he addresses the various animals come to drink at the river where all animals come to drink, urging them not to drink but to respond to his question if the animal being addressed is the one who killed his father.

Even then, such a sound can be interpreted in terms of the associative values of its rhythmic pronunciation, an associative value   that does not exist for the mantras I reference.

In trying to understand esotericism, in general, and the embryonic field of African esotericism, in particular, we need to discriminate carefully between various kinds of understanding, different kinds of knowledge, identifying their ontological  implications-the kind of reality they relate to and their epistemic significance, the understanding of how the particular kind of knowledge they represent is gained.

Ese ifa and ofo may involve the kinds of sounds I describe as beeja mantras in Hinduism, but the examples of these literary forms I have seen so far do not indicate such sounds constitute the whole of the poetic form or even its operational core.

People are at times too much in a hurry to describe Yoruba spirituality in esoteric terms, when in fact, it has become a highly  textualized tradition, such that it can be effectively practiced purely from its written literature.

In such contexts, the esoteric contracts, moving further away from secret information- social esotericism- as I describe it- moving further into representation by  epistemic esotericism- knowledge that is unsharable because it can only be experienced in an individual manner, not passed from one person to another, regardless of the river of words and communicative devices employed, hence the Buddha described his teaching as being like a finger pointing to the moon, urging  you to  look at the moon for yourself.

We should  study Yoruba esotericism, not assume we know what it is.

 We should explore the spectrum of meaning  of the Yoruba terms dealing with the esoteric, such as ''inu'' inwardness, and  "awo."

Through such explorations, we would better positioned to cultivate sensitivity to  the points of intersection of esoteric and exoteric knowledge in Yoruba and Orisa thought and practice, within the global matrix of the subject.  

It could also be helpful, if along with intellectual and theoretical study, we explored these ideas in experiential  ways. 

We could explore the possibility of experiencing  ''oju inu,'' the inward eye, for example, a central concept of Yoruba epistemology, as a literal experience  rather than purely a metaphorical idea.

We could engage the possibility of  encounter with ase, another strategic concept, as a presence, intangible but palpable, rather than only as an abstract concept of cosmic force.

We could try to access the possibility  of experience with orisa and ancestors as interactive encounters rather than only a set of people's beliefs in deities and ancestors.

Such correlative theoretical and practical explorations could be priceless  in shaping the embryonic  field of study of African and Yoruba/Orisa esotericism.

thanks

toyin







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Harrow, Kenneth

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Dec 17, 2020, 4:49:32 PM12/17/20
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isn't the issue, with newton, not the mysticism of alchemy, but the approach of experiment and reflection leading to logical/rational postulations, i.e., scientific thought. no real difference between that and chemistry, in the end.
k


kenneth harrow

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dept of english

michigan state university

517 803-8839

har...@msu.edu

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Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju

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Dec 18, 2020, 6:10:45 AM12/18/20
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Thanks, Ken.

Newton could also have been committed to or influenced by the larger philosophical and spiritual project in which alchemy was involved as part of Hermetic philosophy, which dealt with an effort to understand the relationship between the microcosm and the macrocosm using a combination of intellect, imagination and other means and experiencing personal transformation thereby.

Newton was certainly a deeply religious thinker for whom his work in physics was an effort to understand the workings of God to whom he was devoted, as these workings point to the nature of the ultimate creator, as evident in the ''General Scholium'' the conclusion to his greatest work, The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy.

17th century European science, involving figures such as Newton, Rene Descartes and Johannes Kepler, is fully understandable only in terms of its varied demonstrations of its nature as Natural Philosophy, rather than the more restricted conception of science as we know it today.

A strong part of these developments was in various kinds of spirituality and philosophy, occult/alchemical and Biblical, as with Newton, occult/astrological/Platonic, as with Kepler, being an astrologer himself, Christian, as with Descartes.

Westfall concludes in his Britannica Newton article that-

" Under the influence of the Hermetic tradition, his conception of nature underwent a decisive change.  
.....
The attractions and repulsions of Newton’s speculations were direct transpositions of the occult sympathies and antipathies of Hermetic philosophy—as mechanical philosophers never ceased to protest. Newton, however, regarded them as a modification of the mechanical philosophy that rendered it subject to exact mathematical treatment.

As he conceived of them, attractions were quantitatively defined, and they offered a bridge to unite the two basic themes of 17th-century science—the mechanical tradition, which had dealt primarily with verbal mechanical imagery, and the Pythagorean tradition, which insisted on the mathematical nature of reality. Newton’s reconciliation through the concept of force was his ultimate contribution to science."

Pythagorean mathematics was a metaphysical mathematics, which described mathematics as the underlying nature of reality. 

I dont know if Newton was influenced by the larger spiritual project of the Pythagoreans, in which transformation of self culminating in  unity with the divine and the quest to perceive cosmic harmony were related to the metaphysics of numbers. 

thanks

toyin




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