From Terrestrial to Cosmic History: The Global Cosmology Introduction and the Acknowledgement Pages of Toyin Falola's Ifá Priestcraft: Ifáyemí Elébuìbon and Yorùbá Ancestral Knowledge Systems: Ifá Priestcraft Review No.4, Part 2
Oluwatoyin Adepoju
From Terrestrial to Cosmic History
The Global Cosmology Introduction and the Acknowledgement Pages of Toyin Falola's
Ifá Priestcraft: Ifáyemí Elébuìbon and Yorùbá Ancestral Knowledge Systems
Ifá Priestcraft Review No.4
Part 2
Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
Comparative Cognitive Processes and Systems
This essay describes my
sense of elevation on reading the introduction, "Cosmologies in
Global Historical Context", the preface and acknowledgements pages of Toyin Falola's Ifá Priestcraft:
Ifáyemí Elébuìbon and Yorùbá Ancestral Knowledge Systems. I examine the
introduction's pioneering effort in locating the indigenous Yoruba Ifa knowledge system and one of its adepts
within the global sweep of cosmologies, from the mythic to the scientific.
I
also explore the ramifications of this achievement for Falola's own work, in
general, as well as mine, in relation to Falola's dedicating the book to me,
complemented by a fulsome passage thanking me in the book's acknowledgements, where he also describes his own spiritual orientations as they feed his scholarship. A picture emerges
of scholarly and spiritual vocations operating in rhythm in an oscillation between personal and cosmic history and meaning.
The main essay is complemented by pictures that either visualize its references or dramatize the inspiration and challenge the book embodies for me. This inspiration and challenge are represented by the book's pioneering identity in terms of its scope of scholarship in embedding indigenous Yoruba cosmology and its Ifa system within global cosmology, integrating that expansive and yet focused exploration with the study of an Ifa adept. Ifa Priestcraft thereby contributes to the embryonic field of the study of masters in indigenous African spiritual cultures, generating for them a prominence that resonates with the globally penetrating visibility of great figures in other spiritual and philosophical traditions, such as Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity, Islam and Western esotericism.
''How could one emulate this achievement?" I ask myself.
I therefore provide images and verbal snapshots of my own work in the study of adepts in classical African spiritualities, to complement the discussion on the book on Elebuibon and to motivate myself to emulate the intrepid scholar who wrote that book. Such emulation would involve unifying the diffuse publication strategies represented by my work with the more concentrated approaches demonstrated by the Elebuibon book. I would thus be fulfilling a goal on escalated scholarly projection long advised by Falola and by Nimi Wariboko, another scholar and friend I met through Falola.
Contents
Image and Text: Collage Showing Ifayemi Elebuibon at Various Stages of His Life
Abstract
The Silence Before Dawn
Image and Text: The Flow of History
Elebuibon and Ifa Within a Global Cartography of Cosmology
Image and Text: Nimi Wariboko
Elebuìbon Amongst Great Cosmological Minds
Image and Text: Joseph Ohomina
From African History to Cosmic History
Image and Text: Bruce Onobrakpeya
The Unexpected Mirror
Image and Text: David Ebengho and his Shrine Complex
"A Cosmologist from His Mother's Womb"
Image and Text: Onome Odogu
''Know Thyself''
The Caravan to Infinity
Image and Text: "Eniyan Ni Aso Mi", ''People Are My Clothing''
Scholarship and Spiritual Identity
I am not aware of any book on Susanne Wenger, a pivotal figure in endogenous Yoruba spirituality in Nigeria, written by a Nigerian, although a good number of essays exist.
''Monstrous'', signalling the inadequacy of conventional, positive evaluations of a phenomenon, compelling recourse to unconventional forms of expression, inverting the negative in order to create shock value, thereby evoking the shattering of conventional evaluative matrices by the phenomenon referenced.
How can one learn from and possibly emulate this whirlwind of scholarship and writing?
The development of balance between inspiration and intellect, spontaneity and order must be well honed. One needs to think in terms of long spans of time through which creativity moves across various thresholds to emerge in the bookfest that is the yearly avalanche of Falola publications.
Cultivating such qualities is vital to taking my work, as depicted in this essay, from its current fragmentation and need for comprehensive depth across all its subjects, to the solidity and thoroughness constituting Falola's scholarly ideal.
I am using the word ''terrible'' as an adaptation of the Italian ''terribilità'', an ''art-historical term meaning an awe-inspiring, sublime quality of powerful will, emotional intensity, and fierce grandeur. It was first used by 16th-century contemporaries to describe the overwhelming force and psychological depth of the masterpieces of the sculptor, painter, architect and poet Michelangelo Buonarotti'' understood by some as the greatest artist in history. (Google AI)
Chiagoziem Orji is a consummate demonstrator of the aesthetic and ideational power of classical Igbo spirituality and philosophy. My most detailed study of her work so far is ''Onye Kwe, Chi Ya Ekwe'', ''My God Affirms, When I Agree": Chi, Creativity, and Cosmic Nexus in the Art and Thought of Chiagoziem Nneamaka Orji: The Way of the Calabash 5''.
Picture from Orji.
The Unexpected Mirror
The acknowledgements pages of Ifa Priestcraft include a fulsome celebration of my own work, complementing the dedication of the book to me and Falola's rich online essay explaining why he made that dedication.
Ironic, beceause I'm still trying to understand the logic of my style of scholarship and of my larger commitment to the development of knowledge.
Falola's celebration of my writing provokes me to plunge into my own oscillations between individual and cosmic history, into my quest for ultimate meaning in relation to myself as a cosmic traveller passing through Earth on a journey the rationale, beginning and destination of which are unknown to me, as is the case with most of humanity.
A quest for the meaning of existence as I remain enmeshed in trying to make sense of the terrestrial construction and cosmic context of my life in the decades of my movement from the day I was born in Ibillo, in Nigeria's Edo State to this day in Lagos.
A quest within my sense of myself as akin to a spider hanging in space, neither belonging to the ceiling nor to the ground, located in space but not located on any space, a social outsider and cognitive wanderer.
Image and Text: David Ebengho and his Shrine Complex
Collage by myself showing David Ebengho, centre bottom, his ephemeral shrine art, top left, one of his Shango shrines, top centre,
his Azen shrine, top right, one of his Olokun shrines, bottom left, and what might be a Mammy Water votive assemblage, bottom right.
Collage by myself Showing David Ebengho, top left, one of his shrines to the Benin/Edo God of the Waters, Olokun, centre, and his certificates of recognition as an indigenous doctor.
David Ebengho has assembled, over a lifetime, a magnificent, multi-deity shrine complex at his house at 2nd Cemetery Road, Benin-City. I have written what I expect are the first studies of that shrine.David Ebengho and His Cosmological Shrine collects my essays on his shrine and spiritual practice. My Magnificent Shrine and Fellowship of Chief Ebengho in Benin-City is the first image collection of the shrine and activities performed there. All pictures from 2022.
Pictures by myself.
"A Cosmologist from His Mother's Womb"
Falola states in the dedication of his book-" to Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju, a cosmologist from his mother's womb".
That is meant metaphorically but it takes my mind to when the cosmological hunger hit me as a teenager, on reading, in my family's library, the account of the Buddha's life and thought in Charles Connell's World Famous Rebels. I was so moved by the force of that story that, sitting in meditation on the verandah of my family's house in Lagos, I resolved not to rise from that spot until I had received enlightenment into the ultimate meaning of existence, as the Buddha did under a bodhi tree after years of unfulfilled quest in pursuit of that understanding. His perseverance paid off as he describes himself as gaining the illumination he sought while seated in meditation at that spot.
Of course, when time for dinner came, I went in to eat, my resolve forgotten, but that metaphysical hunger, ignited by reading that book, has remained a lifelong flame, shaping every aspect of my life.
Image and Text: Onome Odogu
These images represent all I have left of Onome Odogu, a great shrine artist and priestess of Ekene and other deities in Agbahar-Otor in the Niger Delta. She refused to let me take her picture beyond this image of her hand holding a sacred object at her door, with her husband in the background.
''My juju no go gree'', ''My spirits will not
agree'', she declared in pidgin English, the only language we shared, in response to my request to photograph her and her shrines. ''E go be as if I dey sell my juju'', ''It would give the impression I am selling my spirits'' she concluded, even as she acknowledged that the publicity generated by my sharing online pictures and information about her and her spiritual and herbal practice would attract paying customers to her.
Amazed that such principled reticence could still exist in the world of 2024 when I met her, while perhaps most others are pursuing maximisation of visibility in the Internet powered world, I had to be content with pictures of her hand and of the single shrine she let me photograph.
The shrine is created as an aid to reaching towards Osanoboa, the Urhobo name for the creator of the universe. This process is evoked by the elegant stick pointing towards the sky on the platform above which it is raised. On that platform would be placed assorted fruit offerings. That shrine, however, though elegant in its simplicity in relation to its lofty goal, does not suggest the artistic grandeur of Onome Odogu's shrine art.
While planning in later 2024 to visit her again and encourage her to let me take pictures of her and her work, I was informed she had passed away.
Thus a great master of the sacred left the world, with no visual record of her magnificent art, nor of her vigorous ritual dancing, which I watched with great appreciation, no record kept of what must have been a rich spiritual journey eventuating in the superb shrines I witnessed.
Her house, shown in the picture, was basic, unplastered, with an open air kitchen outside the house and few windows. It may have belonged to her or to her and her husband, was solidly built but was quite basic, suggesting that their money may have been invested more in their spiritual practice than in material comforts.
''Requiem For but Not Goodbye to an Adept of Urhobo Spirituality, Mrs Onome Odogu'' is my previous tribute to her.
Pictures by myself.
''Know Thyself''
Falola has succeeded in channelling his own cognitive hunger into institutionally operational scholarship.
I have tried the same, without success. "A person who should be in academia roaming on social media" is how Professor Michael Afolayan once described me in an expression of puzzlement or frustration. A bewilderment which, I, too, long suffered, in terms of what Afolayan, in another context, describes as my ''epistemic mission'' in its peculiarity of expression. My own sense of pained confusion as my scholarly career has unfolded in unanticipated ways has given way to acceptance.
To each his own. The fish can thrive only in water, not in any other liquid. All animals cannot be assessed in terms of their ability to climb a tree. The jungle is home to various kinds of creatures.
The Caravan to Infinity
Do the acknowledgements of Ifa Priestcraft illuminate Falola in terms of his own cosmic journey, one out of a multitude of creatures coming and going on Earth?
It suggests him as a person sensitive to the absolute significance of the opportunity granted him to be alive and conscious. Therefore he seeks to understand as much as possible about the existence in which he is enmeshed, focusing his attention on the contexts represented by his own being- hence his continually unfolding sequence of autobiographical publications. This context extends to his Yoruba ethnicity, demonstrated by his kaleidoscopic range of writings on the Yoruba, as a group and as individuals.
This personal framework further expands into continental Africa, the near full range of the existence of which Falola burrows into in numerous writings. This contextualisation further escalates into the transcontinental, people of African descent beyond Africa, also richly illuminated by Falola's work. The ultimate context, the global, is demonstrated by his locating Africa in its larger human framework as well as his forthcoming study of humanity's journey of knowledge as coexisting units of a collective yet individually distinctive complex of journeys, a project he titles Knowledge Empires.
Within this complex of belongings, of travellers from the unknown to the unknown, the companionship of fellow travellers proves invaluable for him, sharing their own insights and perplexities, their joys and struggles, enriching his grasp of the tapestry of existence as dramatizing the cosmic dynamism of human being expressed through the intersecting individualities of the innumerable inhabitants of the planet.
His eloquence on this in relation to Africa is spell-binding:
My friends and fellow thinkers, my believers and those who share
my visions of a free and self-determined African future: thank you, every one of you, for confirming my determination not just to let our culture survive
but to help it thrive. I appreciate your friendship and support in both
the quiet times and the times of turmoil. And I also acknowledge, in the secret
places of power and grace, the unseen hands and voices: the ancestors who whisper
in the ears of seekers;
the spirits of knowledge who open roads
when people close doors;
and the cosmic
forces of creation
that insist, without
cease, that who we are can never be ended, and that what we know can never be forgotten. I would not have this book realized
but for your blessing; it remains in this acknowledgement to all who believe
in the divine intelligence of our heritage.
(p.346)
Image and Text: "Eniyan Ni Aso Mi", ''People Are My Clothing'' 
Unrobing and Rerobing Sequence at Falola@65 Banquet
(Flickr)
These pictures depict
what I describe as the unrobing and rerobing sequence of the banquet of
Tuesday, 30 January 2018, at the International Conference Centre, Ibadan, part
of the Toyin Falola@65 Conference and festivities. Adeshina Afolayan assists
Toyin Falola in putting on the agbada, an elaborate form of classical Nigerian
male couture, presented to Falola by the conference organising committee
composed of himself, Samuel Oloruntoba, looking on, smiling at Afolayan's
right, Wale Ghazal and Olajumoke Yacob-Haliso.
On being presented with the splendid agbada, Falola spontaneously removed his
cap and the exquisitely prepared agbada he was already wearing, in order to put
on the new one he was being presented with, in recognition of the grand
symbolism represented by the presentation, in a culture,
Yoruba/Nigerian/African, in which clothes are central symbolic forms, artistic
and scriptic signifiers, at times functioning as an entire library of semiotic
configurators, as in Nigerian Cross River ukara cloth encrusted with the cosmos
spanning Nsibidi symbolism and Ghanaian Adinkra symbolism originating from its
use in symbolising messages brought from beyond birth and messages taken beyond
life in the world.
"Eniyan ni aso mi", states the Yoruba proverb, which may be
translated as "People represent the clothes with which I am splendidly
adorned", a saying that encapsulates the symbolism of the presentation
ceremony at the Falola conference banquet, a ceremony that incidentally sums up
the implications of the festivities dramatized by the celebration of Falola.
Falola's younger professional associates whose lives he has contributed to
shaping positively have chosen to expand the scholar's self adornment generated
by the reach of his scholarship by showcasing that achievement through this
conference and its festivities, achieving the monumental scope of the
celebrations by drawing upon the goodwill of numerous people positively
impacted by the master scholar's intellectual and pastoral genius as thinker,
institution builder and mentor, the triadic configuration of Falola's career,
as outlined by Gloria Emeagwali in her keynote speech at the conference.
Without the recognition of one's achievements by others, how will the
significance of that achievement be actualised among humanity? Without helping
to build others through recognition and cultivation of their potential, how
will the commonwealth of human well being expand?
Falola has adorned himself. Falola has adorned others. Those others whom he has
adorned have chosen to adorn him in turn.
What the pictures lack in resolution, they makes up for in their evocation of the
kinetic power of the experience they capture.
Pictures by myself.
Scholarship and Spiritual Identity
Falola is writing, therefore, as a scholar who shares in the cognitive universe of the babalawo, the adept in Ifa's esoteric knowledge, whom his book his about. His childhood in Ibadan's Ode Aje initiated him into the compelling force of indigenous Yoruba spirituality, Islam and Christianity, as narrated in his autobiographies A Mouth Sweeter than Salt, Counting the Tiger's Teeth and Malaika.
This spiritual fashioning is amplified and focused through his intellectual development issuing in his education and practice as a scholar.These convergences have made him into an adept in spiritual culture in his own right.
He demonstrates a multivalent spiritual culture evidenced by his accounts of spiritual guidance ( Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju, "The Journey of Toyin Falola", Parts 1, 2, 3, 4 and the acknowledgements pages of Ifa Priestcraft) the quality of his writing on such subjects, from the critical ( Sacred Words and Holy Realms; Yoruba Metaphysics), to the narrative and poetic ( Malaika and the Egungun section of In Praise of Greatness) and combinations of these (''Ritual Archives" and "Terrapolis and Orisa Energies").
In Ifa Priestcraft, therefore, Falola's central subject is classical Yoruba cosmology in relation to Elebuibon, but in sections of the book, such as in the acknowledgements and the preface he opens up about his own cosmological orientations as a traveller on a knowledge road similar to Elebuibon's, enabling him give credence to the foundations of the knowledge universe in which Elebuibon lives, vivifying his explorations of that world through the force of his own testimony.
The pan-cultural Traditionalist school of scholarship represented by Titus Burckhardt, Rene Guenon, Amanda Coomaraswamy, and by implication, Ahmadou Hampate Ba and Nimi Wariboko, come to mind as exemplars of a similar culture. Even Immanuel Kant, understood as a destroyer of Christian beliefs is adequately understood only in terms of his conjunction of the sacred and the secular, the non-rational and the rational in his writings where he reexamines the foundations of Christian thought and it seems, of his earlier writings.
An epistemologically plural cognitive identity is emerging in Falola's scholarly writings, integrating the spiritual intelligence of Malaika: A Memoir of My Encounters with Islam with the superbly intellectually refined synopsis of the ''Author's Notes'' in Yoruba Metaphysics: Spirituality and Supernaturality.
Ifá Priestcraft: Ifáyemí Elébuìbon and Yorùbá Ancestral Knowledge Systems is also a personal testimony, as the author pursues, in his own way, the quest Elebuibon is on, the very fact of existence as a constantly unfolding puzzle, writer and subject, priest and researcher, walking to the drum beat coming from everywhere and nowhere.