A question for Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju

[Cornelius Hamelberg]

Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju, 

With avid interest, for more than a decade now, we have followed your various peregrinations in the occult and allied subjects, mostly via Compcros , and right now, after your latest and in anticipation of Thursday’s Webinar not on the theme Africanization of African Indigenous Religions, but on the theme “ ReAfricanization of African Indigenous Religions” - slightly different from Re-Africanization of African Indigenous Religions, I’d like to ask you the following question which I have wanted to ask you almost every day over these many many years reading your discourses: 

The colonialists did not penetrate India, China , and Japan, with their Christianity (God forbid) and we are to suppose that is because these countries have very strong indigenous spiritual traditions, the bulwark of the resistance….

Given the smörgåsbord of religious traditions, not least of all the rich canopy of indigenous religious traditions in Nigeria , especially the indigenous religious traditions of pre-colonial Nigeria, how is it that Nigeria succumbed to that sort of mass conversion ( like the Khazars, the so called “Thirteenth Tribe”) ?   

I understand that although it’s a simple question you are going to give a longish answer.

I seem to remember Socrates was accused of introducing new gods

Al Islam has characterised pre-Islamic Arabia as the age of Jahiliyyah

BTW, do you foresee a cultural renaissance and a mass return to the roots in your neck of the woods in Nigeria ?

Ami Koita ( 1998) : Djiguy 

[ovde...@gmail.com]

 Great thanks Cornelius.

Christianity did penetrate some of those countries, from what I recall of China and India, and possibly established a powerful presence in India, and English colonization of India lasted much longer than in Nigeria, but these external powers did not achieve in those places the degree of  abandonment of endogenous spiritual culture evident in Nigeria.

One of the reasons could be the ancient traditions of widespread writing and reading in those Asian cultures.

You cant successfully demonize ancestor veneration in Confucianism, a central Chinese philosophy, because an entire library of Confucisn texts exist, spanning centuries.

You cant successfully present negative images of Buddhism because its philosophical principles, its historical development and its creative penetration into various aspects of Indian, Chinese and Japanese culture, creating some of humanity's greatest achievements, is obvious, through texts explaining their logic and the logic of this development, enabling appreciation of the principles of Japanese gardening, Japanese haiku poetry, Zen Buddhist aesthetics in Chinese and Japanese art, in Japanese architecture and Chinese martial arts.

You cant successfully disparage Yoga, possibly India's greatest export, because of its rich textual foundations and  its immense practical value, evident even outside its religious contexts, the case being the same for Chinese and other Asian martial atts, which are better understood against the background of Asian philosophies and spiritualities.

At the headwaters of much of Asian thought is Hinduism, represented by an awesome textual tradition surpassing anything created by Christianity and perhaps even Islam, cultural creativities generating some of the world's greatest dance, architecture and visual arts, and even inspiring comparisons with scientific theory, as in Fritjof Capra's famous The Tao of Physics, unifying Asian philosophies in terms of a Hindu image and using this in developing a  dialogue with modern science. 

Tibetan Buddhism, recondite as it can be in its imagistic complexity and theoretical sophistication, is richly represented by great texts of theory, practice and individual histories, enabling the torch to be carried anywhere in the world. I learnt of all these spiritualities and read some of their classics while living in Benin-City up till  2002.

In that same Benin, when seeking for works on classical African spiritualities and frequenting practically every bookselling environment in the city, I did not see any book on Benin spirituality. My exposure to the work of Norma Rosen on Benin Olokun spirituality in the academic journal African Arts, to that of Iro Eweka on Olokun, to Joseph Nevadomsky on the Obas coronation ceremonies, Daryl Peavy on Oguega divination  and others occurred through my first readily available Internet access through studying in England, and more recently, through Osemwegie Ebohon's books which he gifted me, but which I doubt if he had published in those earlier years when we ere in Benin together. I also have Tam Fiofori's fine book on the Obas coronation ceremony bought from him in Nigeria. I also encountered a powerful work on the Obaship at a bookshop in Lagos which i intend to buy later on account of its less than cheap price. The same applies to Charles Gore's likely landmark book on Benin shrines.

To what degree has the situation changed since 2002?

Is there any book that sums up endogenous Benin spirituality with the same comprehensiveness and sensitivity to the Benin language as Bolaji Idowu's Olodumare: God in Yoruba Belief, one of my most important books, and which I bought at Oba Market in Benin?

I would like to know about it.

Does any other endogenous Nigerian spirituality have such scholarly yet generally accessible books? What of  the equivalent of a Wole Soyinka innimitably  dramatizing  the imaginative power of Yoruba spirituality? Achebe and Christopher Okigbo have achieved something similar for Igbo thought but at less impactful level for various reasons,  including the relative slimness of their productions ,even though great works. When you add such a titan as Susanne Webger, one of the world's greatest spiritual writers, inimitable on Yoruba thought, the difference becomes clearer than ever.

But even the Yoruba textual achievement, great as it is, stretching from earlier periods to the Idowous, to Wande Abimbola's magnificent works on Ifa divination, to the more recent achievements of Akinwunmi Ogundiran on the history of Ypruba thought, to Toyn Falola's work in book after book exploring aspects of this system, to its explosion on the Internet, particularly social media, is yet a fraction of the Asian achievement in any of their spiritualities.

Happily, Nimi Wariboko, a master in the majestic presentation of Kalabari thought, has just published in Nigeria The Soul of Kalabari Culture, helping to bridge this  textual divide.

A good number of the best books on Nigerian spiritualities are published in the West, to which the scholars either migrated from Nigeria or where the Western researchers reside. These books are therefore hardly visible in Nigeria or expensive when visible.

I expect it is impossible to achieve a mass return to classical African spiritualties in Nigeria. The impact of Christianity and Islam is too strong, for various reasons, one of them again  being superior textualisation.

Anyone can pick up a Bible, almost anywhere, and read something for inspiration in it. In Southern Nigeria, access to varieties of Koranic translations in English is not so accessible but they also exist.

What books exist to read for inspiration even in the best textualized of Nigerian religions, classical Yoruba spiritualities?

Soyinka's Seven Signposts  seven stanza poem, published in Nigeria,  is pre-eminent but not well known. Akomolafe Wande has recently  brought out a series of  fa texts and accompanying meditations but the price would be prohibitive for many Nigerians. Another one he is working on promises inspiring texts from Ifa.

Wamde Abimbola's Ifa books are magnificent and Sixteen Great Poems of Ifa is cheap and readily available, but the inspirational  universe of such works is not as variegated as that of the Bible, for example, where the the soaring aspiration of the Psalms co exist with the homespun wisdom of Jesus parables, and the erotic force of the Song of Songs with Jesus ethical and spiritual teaching.

A similar ideational and expressive synthesis can be achieved in Nigerian sacred texts, but might have to be pursued through an elevation of creativity, bringing out the best texts, which also penetrate beyond doctrinal limitations, and perhaps amplifying them though recourse to artistic forms from their parent cultures, which communicate with a force different from written text.

A very different level of expressive force is achieved when one combines such visual symbols as Ghanaian Akan/Gyaman Adinkra, Nigerian Cross River and Cameroonian Nsibidi, Igbo Uli, Benin Olokun chalk art, Yoruba opon ifa symbols, in dialogue with visual texts.

Ultimately, textualities of Nigerian sacred cultures may best succeed within a pan-Nigerian and pan-African synthesis, as Ulli Beier achieved in African Poems, in which these spiritualites are presented as variants of the same system of thought and action, like the variants of Christianity.

We also need texts of people who live according to these spiritualities, inspiring emulation. Christianity and Buddhism are based on great exemplars. Muhammeds life is an inspirational template for multitudes. Saints are strategic for Hinduism and Catholic Christinity. Beyond such biogragies as that by the Ifa priest Yemi Elebuibon, and possibly by Ebohon, autobiography and  biography are still embryonic in classical Nigerian spiritualities.

Even when all that has been achieved  in terms of textulsation, the sheer social, educational, economic, political,  architectural  and artistic  impact of Christianity and Islam in Nigeria is so powerful that there can be no return  to the dominance, or even equality, of classical African spiritualities  unless perhaps a supreme calamity of some sort takes place to inspire that.

[Oluwatoyin Adepoju]

 Great thanks.

Christianity did penetrate some of those countries, from what I recall of China and India, and possibly established a powerful presence in India.

English colonization of India also lasted much longer than in Nigeria.

But these external powers did not achieve in those places the degree of  abandonment of endogenous spiritual culture evident in Nigeria.

Textualization

     Asian Spiritualities

One of the reasons could be the ancient traditions of widespread writing and reading in those Asian cultures.

You cant successfully demonize ancestor veneration in Confucianism, a central Chinese philosophy, because an entire library of Confucisn texts exists, spanning centuries.

You cant successfully present negative images of Buddhism because its philosophical principles, its historical development and its creative penetration into various aspects of Indian, Chinese and Japanese culture, creating some of humanity's greatest achievements, is obvious, through texts explaining their logic and the logic of this development, enabling appreciation of the principles of Japanese gardening, Japanese haiku poetry, Zen Buddhist aesthetics in Chinese and Japanese art, in Japanese architecture and Chinese martial arts.

You cant successfully disparage Yoga, possibly India's greatest export, because of its rich textual foundations and  its immense practical value, evident even outside its religious contexts, the case being the same for Chinese and other Asian martial arts, which are better understood against the background of Asian philosophies and spiritualities.

At the headwaters of much of Asian thought is Hinduism, represented by an awesome textual tradition surpassing anything created by Christianity and perhaps even Islam, cultural creativities generating some of the world's greatest dance, architecture and visual arts, and even inspiring comparisons with scientific theory, as in Fritjof Capra's famous The Tao of Physics, unifying Asian philosophies in terms of a Hindu image and using this in developing a  dialogue with modern science. 

Tibetan Buddhism, recondite as it can be in its imagistic complexity and theoretical sophistication, is richly represented by great texts of theory, practice and individual histories, enabling the torch to be carried anywhere in the world.

 I learnt of all these spiritualities and read some of their classics, along with gaining a rich exposure to Western esotericism, Jewish mysticism and Christianity, often through books,  while living in Benin-City up till  2002.

      Endogenous Nigerian Spiritualities

           Benin

In that same Benin, when seeking for works on classical African spiritualities and frequenting practically every bookselling environment in the city, I did not see any book on Benin spirituality. 

My exposure to the work of Norma Rosen on Benin Olokun spirituality in the academic journal African Arts, to that of Iro Eweka on Olokun found online, to Joseph Nevadomsky on the Obas coronation ceremonies, also in an academic journal online, Daryl Peavy on Oguega divination  and others occurred through my first readily available Internet access through studying in England, and more recently, through Osemwegie Ebohon's books which he gifted me, but which I doubt if he had published in those earlier years when we were in Benin together. 

I also have Tam Fiofori's fine book on the Obas coronation ceremony bought from him in Nigeria. I also encountered a powerful work on the Obaship at a bookshop in Lagos which i intend to buy later on account of its less than cheap price. The same applies to Charles Gore's  landmark book on Benin shrines published in England.

To what degree has the situation changed since 2002?

Is there any book that sums up endogenous Benin spirituality with the same comprehensiveness and sensitivity to the Benin language as Bolaji Idowu's Olodumare: God in Yoruba Belief, one of my most important books, and which I bought at Oba Market in Benin?

I would like to know about it.

     Yoruba, Igbo, Kalabari

Does any other endogenous Nigerian spirituality have such scholarly yet generally accessible books? 

What of  the equivalent of a Wole Soyinka innimitably  dramatizing  the imaginative power of Yoruba spirituality?

 Achebe and Christopher Okigbo have achieved something similar for Igbo thought but at a less impactful level for various reasons,  including the relative slimness of their productions ,even though great works. 

When you add such a titan as Susanne Wenger, one of the world's greatest spiritual writers, inimitable on Yoruba thought, the difference becomes clearer than ever.

But even the Yoruba textual achievement, great as it is, stretching from earlier periods to the Idowus, to Wande Abimbola's magnificent works on Ifa divination, to the more recent achievements of Akinwunmi Ogundiran on the history of Yoruba thought, to Toyin Falola's work in book after book exploring aspects of this system, to its explosion on the Internet, particularly social media, is yet a fraction of the Asian achievement in any of their spiritualities.

Happily, Nimi Wariboko, a master in the majestic presentation of Kalabari thought, has just published in Nigeria The Soul of Kalabari Culture, helping to bridge this  textual divide.

Finding Inspirational Texts in Classical African Spiritualities

A good number of the best books on Nigerian spiritualities are published in the West, to which the scholars either migrated from Nigeria or where the Western researchers reside. These books are therefore hardly visible in Nigeria or expensive when visible.

I expect it is impossible to achieve a mass return to classical African spiritualities in Nigeria. The impact of Christianity and Islam is too strong, for various reasons, one of them again  being superior textualisation.

Anyone can pick up a Bible, almost anywhere, and read something for inspiration in it. In Southern Nigeria, access to varieties of Koranic translations in English is not so accessible but they also exist.

What books exist to read for inspiration even in the best textualized of Nigerian religions, classical Yoruba spiritualities?

Soyinka's Seven Signposts  seven stanza poem, published in Nigeria,  is pre-eminent but not well known. Akomolafe Wande has recently  brought out a series of  Ifa texts and accompanying meditations but the price would be prohibitive for many Nigerians. Another one he is working on promises inspiring texts from Ifa with rich reflections by him.

Wande Abimbola's Ifa books are magnificent and his Sixteen Great Poems of Ifa is cheap and readily available, but the inspirational  universe of such works is not as variegated as that of the Bible, for example, where the the soaring aspiration and agonized invocations  of the Psalms co exist with the homespun wisdom of Jesus' parables, and the erotic force of the Song of Songs with Jesus ethical and spiritual teaching.

Seeking Creative Selectivity and Synthesis

A similar ideational and expressive synthesis can be achieved in Nigerian sacred texts, but might have to be pursued through an elevation of creativity, bringing out the best texts, which also penetrate beyond doctrinal limitations, and perhaps amplifying them though recourse to artistic forms from their parent cultures, which communicate with a force different from written text.

A very different level of expressive force is achieved when one combines such visual symbols as Ghanaian Akan/Gyaman Adinkra, Nigerian Cross River and Cameroonian Nsibidi, Igbo Uli, Benin Olokun chalk art, Yoruba opon ifa symbols, in dialogue with visual texts.

Ultimately, textualities of Nigerian sacred cultures may best succeed within a pan-Nigerian and pan-African synthesis, as Ulli Beier achieved in African Poems, in which these spiritualites are presented as variants of the same system of thought and action, like the variants of Christianity.

The Need for Inspiring Life Stories in Classical Nigerian Spiritualities

We also need texts of people who live according to these spiritualities, inspiring emulation.

 Christianity and Buddhism are based on great exemplars. Muhammeds life is an inspirational template for multitudes. 

Saints are strategic for Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam and Catholic Christinity.

Beyond such biogragies as that by the Ifa priest Yemi Elebuibon, and possibly by Ebohon, autobiography and  biography are still embryonic in classical Nigerian spiritualities.

The Need to Move Beyond Excessive Dogma and Esotericism 

Related to those issues of visibility related to textualisation is that our endogenous spiritualities are still too esoteric, too tied  to dogmas and taboos that limit a critical study of them as well as curtail their public exposure.

The Ekene spirituality of Agbahar in the Niger Delta, for example, has a rich theological, artistic, architectural and ecololgical culture but forbids photography while one of the chief priestesses I met there last year insisted that Ekene is for Agbahar people only. 

I also met a great shrine artist there, Onome Jagbo, if I recall her name well,  who refused to let me photograph her shrines or herself or even to interview her purely on audio, on account of the intergrity of her vocation,  leaving me hoping to return to persuade her, only for me to get news that she has passed away, provoking the question of what can be preserved of her legacy.

Contrast the current opaqueness of such procedures as Ifa divination, the logic of animal sacrifice and more, even up to taboos against photography, the fear of sharing through writing and taboo against sharing with outsiders, with the openness of Christianity, where every corner of their theology and practice has been examined inside out and is still being studied, within institutions devoted to such study and practice against the background of global culture, from Europe which it shaped decisively to the whole world where it has spread to.

How can classical Nigerian spiritualities, many of which are only just moving out of their ethnic enclaves, compete with that?

The Totalistic Penetration of Christianity and Islam

Even when all that has been achieved  in terms of textualisation, the sheer social, educational, economic, political,  architectural  and artistic  impact of Christianity and Islam in Nigeria is so powerful that there can be no return  to the dominance, or even equality, of classical African spiritualities  unless perhaps a supreme calamity of some sort takes 

place to inspire that.

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[Cornelius Hamelberg]

Oluwatoyin,

Badly pressed for time, I'm only responding very briefly to half of your first paragraph -with regard to the India that you mention....

Are the Hindus happy about Christian missionary activities in their country ?

Their very souls are at stake, and obviously they don’t want to see the Coca-Cola-i-s-a-tion of their people’s culture 

How to approach this delicate subject ?

To begin with, some Jewish communities such as the Cochin Jews, have lived in India for thousands of years 

Furthermore, history records that the Hindus have never persecuted the Jewish People…

Crudely put, but not anything remotely like an exact equivalence of Christianity's concept known as “The Holy Trinity", there’s Hinduism’s Trimurti , the Trinity ( so to speak) comprising Brahma, Vishnu , Shiva

It is widely believed that Thomas the Apostle (one of Jesus’ twelve disciples) travelled all the way to Kerala (the Southernmost part of India) and established a few churches there,hence we have this interesting history of Kerala and Christianity

Given The Hindu view of Jesus and Christianity I don’t suppose the colonial missionaries could have have had a hard time selling the ideas known as "incarnation" and must have had very interesting discussions about “reincarnation”, perhaps gilgul  too, as an explanation of John the Baptist being asked “ Are you Elijah come back?” 

Bear in mind that in the realm of hagiography, there are those who also view Mahatma Gandhi as an incarnation of Lord Vishnu 

And from a Hindu point of view, the possibility of Jesus-in-the-mortal-flesh being accepted as an incarnation of a deity/ the Supreme Deity - according to the Torah, the One who said “You shall have no other Gods before me”  - for I am a jealous God etc….is perhaps not such  an insurmountable proposition but to get adherents of the Bhakti movement initiated by Chaitanya Mahaprabhu to switch from chanting Hare Rama Hare Krishna to chanting Hare Jesus and from singing Bhajans along with Hari Om Sharan and Bhimsen Joshi  to joining the Southern Baptist Gospel Choir or Pope Leo XIV speaks would be more than a cultural quantum leap…

Maybe I shouldn't be glib about this; the other day, to my surprise, the Sierra Leone funeral Service I attended via Zoom had a world class choir…. like many a Yoruba Choir 

Climate-wise, many of the people from Kerala who I met in Nigeria were quite at home in  what was then Rivers State. They were all Christians,  my colleague Dr Chacko, Thomas, and Mr Dulip of Kerala with whose family we spent New Year’s Eve of 1981 was a staunch member of the Oral Roberts Congregation. Paradoxically he spoke highly of his atheist friend, Tai Solarin., who, by the way, I wanted to nominate for the Alternative Nobel Prize. I remember Mr Dulip & family most fondly and that New Year’s Eve when the news came through that Junior Jesus ( as J.J. Rawling was also reverentially  referred to - as the man who came twice)  when he struck on New Year’s Eve of 1981 - in Ghana. From the same playbook  Brother Buhari & Kabudu followed in his footsteps exactly two years later on 31/12/1983 when they quietly deposed Brer Shehu Shagari in a bloodless coup .

Tomorrow ( 2nd October) is Yom Kippur , the holiest day in the Jewish Calendar ,the day when even the stonehearted sinners and war criminals will be all repenting and asking the Almighty for forgiveness. Perhaps it will impact our Palestinian survivors who remain to rue the day in Gaza's devastated, war-torn landscape….