Epistemic Roots, Universal Routes and Ontological Roofs of African Ritual Archives: Disciplinary Formations in African Thought 2
Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
Epistemic Roots, Universal Routes and Ontological Roofs
of
African Ritual Archives
Disciplinary Formations in African Thought
Engaging the Toyin Falola Reader
Abstract
An exploration of the significance of developing
Epistemic and Metaphysical Integrity in Ifa
What unusual ways of knowing, what unconventional epistemologies, may emerge from the reformulations Falola is suggesting? Could these lead to novel perceptions of the nature of phenomena, and of the place of such phenomena within the network constituting the totality of possibility? Could fresh conceptions of the potential of human understanding emerge through these reconstructions? Falola exemplifies this idea of disciplinary reconstruction by referencing the Yoruba origin Ifa system of knowledge, spiritual discipline and divination:
Experts work around each component, so that a scholar can study Ifá in various departments—Philosophy, Music, Drama, Literature, Linguistics, Religious Studies, Government, Sociology, Art, Anthropology, and History. In each of the disciplines, Ifá may become disconnected from the multilayered and intricately connected indigenous epistemology that produces it in favor of the concerns of the disciplines framed from other epistemologies external to the indigenous. In this regard, Ifá has been disembodied and fragmented.
The questions posed can become “external” to its own organic make up, for example, whether Ifá is a philosophy or religion. Are incantations magical texts or creative literary texts? If Ifá verses are originally recited orally, what happens when they become printed texts? Do the printed texts, when read, become as effective as divination?
These are very rich questions, foregrounding the question of the logic of disciplinary characterisations. These questions also project enquiry on the relationships between different kinds of textuality. An adequate response to such queries can only be arrived at or even approached through an examination of comparative modes of knowing and of understanding forms of existence, as these investigations are conducted in relation to Ifa.
Such understanding may be developed in terms of the logic of the institutionalising of knowledge developed within particular cultures. The dominance of one such culture, the West, may give the impression of the unassailable logic of the disciplinary characterisations cultivated in this culture. The characterisation and organisation of disciplines, however, as demonstrated by Michel Foucault in The Order of Things and Madness and Civilisation, among other texts, are now generally understood as shaped by circumstances incidental to the distinctive epistemic histories of various cultures. Along such lines, as understanding has grown of a plurality of approaches to critical knowledge, credence is given, even within Western scholarship, to contrastive ways of understanding the nature of philosophy, an accomodationist stance beautifully demonstrated by Edward Craig’s Philosophy : A Very Short Introduction.
Biodun Jeyifo, in “Abiola Irele: The Scholar as Critic”, describes Irele’s “In Praise of Alienation” as open to interpretation in terms of Gaston Bachelard’s and Louise Althusser’s conception of an “epistemological break”, an idea of dialectical progression in the social development of knowledge, in the “forward movement of culture and thought throughout history”:
By this reasoning, every culture and society has to break fundamentally with accustomed modes of thought, with received traditions of the organisation of knowledge for it to experience historical advance to a higher, more humane stage of development (134).
This perspective suggests that the post-classical African experience may be better appreciated, not in terms purely of a disruption of the endogenous integrity of African cognitive systems, not only in terms of their fragmentation by the colonial encounter. It may be more fully grasped in terms of an expansion of possibility enabled by the colonial experience.
The epistemic violence of the colonial encounter may be seen as facilitating in classical African thought a greater openness than before to possibilities different from those of its native cultural range. Within this expansiveness, the student of Ifa, for example, may recognise its affinities with the Greek understanding of philo-sophia, the love of wisdom, but also recognise its differences from the ratiocinative character of the Aristotelian formulation of philosophy and the dialogical critiques of Plato as well as the dialogical Tantric tradition of India, while recognising its affinity with the parabolic and mythic constructions of Platonic and Indian thought.
These conjunctions and divergences could be appreciated in the context of exploring various forms of rationality, linear, non-linear and imaginative, among others significant in Ifa, examining how the varied expressions of these rationalities may enrich each other.
In this style of thinking, the emphasis is on the recognition of the fragmentation decried by Falola as better appreciated as a stage in a creative progression. This progression demonstrates the expansion of the creative potential of Ifa through encounter with various points of emphases within the scope of human rationality. The intrinsic possibilities of the endogenous character of Ifa may thus be expanded through this extrinsic exploration. In that sense, Falola’s goal of re-validating African ritual archives and fully blending them with the Western academy would be achieved, transforming the negativities of Western imperialism into an ultimately creative outcome for those outside the West and the West itself.
From an original endogenous unity to a fragmentation through insertion within an externally developed cognitive system, the endogenous may then move towards another self-generated integration by drawing the lessons gained from the external encounter within its own circle of knowledge, thus reaching the stage so described by Falola:
Texts, as in the case of ẹsẹ Ifá chants, taken out of odù Ifá, are entry points to the understanding of history, philosophy and literature, grounded in the epistemologies of cosmology and mythology. But the cosmology and mythology cannot operate without forms of rationality, as they need to explain other issues such as medicine, politics, and critical appreciation.
In those lines, Falola may be seen as working out a reintegration of Ifa. He can be understood as moving from the fragmentation of Ifa under the impact of Western forms of disciplinary organisation to a reintegration using those same forms but in terms of an orientation derived from the epistemological implications of the cosmological core of Ifa, as this cosmological centre operates through mythic discourse.
What is the nature of this epistemology? What kind of rationality/ies does it demonstrate? How may these forms of rationality impact on the holistic exploration of Ifa as well as on the study of its various component disciplines and of those disciplines to which Ifa might be seen as having a more distant relationship? What may be seen as the ultimate possibilities of these explorations?
A cosmology may be perceived as implying a relationship between the person constructing that cosmology and the cosmos the cosmology interprets. This relationship is constructed through the structure of ideas represented by that cosmology. The cosmology is thus an interface, an interpretive matrix, between the human being and the world beyond themselves which they try to comprehend through this structure of ideas.
This understanding of the relationship between cosmology and epistemology is based on the idea that all understanding is made possible by the connexions between the perceiving subject, represented by their cognitive faculties, the process of reaching understanding and the character of what is understood. This description adapts a triadic configuration derived from the Srividya and Trika schools of Indian thought, although the basic idea resonates across Western and Asian philosophies and what I know so far about African ideations.
What may be perceived as the central ideas on the nature of the human being in Ifa, on the character of the cosmos and the relationship between these two units in the scale of the larger framework represented by the cosmos and one of its units, the human being?
The conception of the babalawo, which may be translated as “adept in the esoteric knowledge of Ifa”, a crowning grade of development in traditional Ifa practice, could act as a guide in answering these questions.
The following elaboration on the concept of the babalawo comes from my response to a 30th October 2017 Facebook post by humanities scholar Adeleke Adeeko. His description of Ifa in our exchange emphasises its humanistic thrust and multidisciplinary integration, while my response insists on the need to recognise the grounding of that multidisciplinary dynamic in particular cosmological conceptions. Countering my interpretation of the concept of the babalawo, Adeeko responds that:
It is more profitable in scholarly contexts, I believe, to take "awo" to mean laborious, high learning and knowing (ìmọ̀), so valuable and specialized that it requires years of commitment and elaborate certification. The esoteric part of ifá … does not appeal to me so much as its accessible poetry of knowledge coding, its grounds of knowing and disclosure, its centering fecund interpretation, its privileging of the client. I am completely convinced that láìsí ènìyàn, imalẹ̀ kò sí (without humanity, divinity is not).
I engage with Adeeko’s response using his analytical categories as a springboard.
“Babalawo” may be described as “adept in the esoteric knowledge of Ifa,” integrating a metaphorical interpretation of male elderhood in the word “baba” and a metaphysical principle in the concept “awo”. The Yoruba word “baba” operates at a scale ranging from the literal to the metaphorical. In literal terms, it refers to fatherhood. Metaphorically, it signifies a male elder. At a further metaphoric level, it may also be adapted to refer to the conjunction of the venerable and the authoritative that comes with mastery of a discipline. Thus, I render it as “adept” in translating the term “babalawo'.
'”Awo” refers to esoteric knowledge, spiritual mystery, also adapted in colloquial contexts to mean something secret.
The term “awo” also occurs in contexts that do not require “laborious, high learning and knowing, so valuable and specialized that it requires years of commitment and elaborate certification” an impressive summation of the institutional framing of the babalawo concept as a crowning grade of development in traditional Ifa practice, but which might not be as valid for other forms of spirituality and magic that do not necessarily demonstrate the pedagogic rigour associated with Ifa.
Thus, “awo” may refer to any form of esoteric spiritual knowledge and activity, but not necessarily in relation to Ifa. Within the term “babalawo”, however, “awo” becomes specific to Ifa.
Awo Fa'lokun Fatunmbi in "Obatala:Ifa and the Chief of the Spirit of the White Cloth", describes “awo” as
…a body of wisdom...which attempts to preserve the rituals that create direct communication with forces in Nature. [ It] refers to the hidden principles that explain the Mystery of Creation and Evolution. Awo is the esoteric understanding of the invisible forces that sustain dynamics and form within Nature. The essence of these forces are not considered secret because they are devious, they are secret because they remain elusive, awesome in their power to transform and not readily apparent. As such they can only be grasped through direct interaction and participation. Anything which can be known by the intellect alone ceases to be awo.
Aina Olomo in a post of 3rd August 2010 on the Yoruba Affairs Google group, under the thread “Esoteric Knowledge and Power in the Orisa Tradition”, also defines “awo” :
Awo is the inexplicable power of transformation. It is stored in the mystical dimension of Awo; it is a realm of phenomena that is unavailable for total absorption by the human mind. Its power carries out actions initiated by the cosmic consciousness of the Infinite Mystery or Source and then manifests that power in the three dimensional world of humanity. The realm of Awo is a parallel world without boundaries, constantly regenerating, expanding its breadth and depth; this is the dimension of consciousness where the sum total of humanity's inspirations and experiences are alive, existing forever in the minutes of today, never solely attentive or restricted to yesterday or tomorrow.
This power brings everything in the Universe into existence. Its apparatus is dialectical, creating harmony- dysfunction, joy – sadness, awareness - unconsciousness, and matter – thought, light – darkness, as they co-exist in the consciousness of Source simultaneously. Awo is the space in the universe where the illusive answer to how dwells. Awo is inexhaustible because of its closeness to the ultimate and Supreme Being, the Infinite Mystery.
The concept of “awo” may be clarified with reference to the Christian concept of mystery and philosopher of religion Rudolph Otto’s idea of the numinous developed in his The Idea of the Holy. Webster's Third New International Dictionary (1966) defines the numinous as “an invisible but majestic presence that inspires both dread and fascination and constitutes the non-rational element in vital religion”.
Mystery in the Christian context does not refer simply to what the Catholic theologian Karl Rahner describes as “the unfortunate remainder of what is not yet known” in “Living into Mystery: Karl Rahner’s Reflections on his 75th Birthday”. In Rahner's words in the same interview:
The true system of thought [ in theology] really is the knowledge that humanity is finally directed precisely not toward what it can control in knowledge but toward the absolute mystery as such; that mystery is not just an unfortunate remainder of what is not yet known but rather the blessed goal of knowledge which comes to itself when it is with the incomprehensible One... With other words, then, the system [ of my theology] is the system of what cannot be systematized.
Rahner thus suggests a zone of being that transcends human efforts to encapsulate it in knowledge and yet is accessible to the human person. The image of Kaidara as described by Ahmadou Hampate Ba in Kaidara: A Fulani Cosmological Epic from Mali, evokes such conceptions of relationship between presence and distance in the context of the scope and limits of the knowable in the figure of a decrepit and dirty old man who is yet a beam of light from the hearth of Gueno, creator of the universe, a disguise created to test, among people he encounters in his peregrinations around the world, their readiness to receive the knowledge he embodies of the ultimate possibilities of human understanding.
The “awo” in “babalawo” may be seen in a similar context as evoking the sense of an inscrutable mystery, potent but opaque, mysterious but dynamic, compelling in its distance from conventional human grasp but active in various situations.
On Ifa as a literary and epistemic system, beautifully summed up by Adeeko in terms of “its accessible poetry of knowledge coding, its grounds of knowing and disclosure, its centering fecund interpretation, its privileging of the client”, it is Ifa's grounding in an esoteric core that validates all those configurations.
What are the grounds of knowing and disclosure in Ifa? Is it limited to interpreting its symbolic forms, the odu ifa, purely in terms of readily accessible information? No. The odu ifa are described, not purely as information matrices, as collections of literature, but as sentient entities in their own right, abstract identities expressed in the form of humanly created symbols, conceptions demonstrated by Wande Abimbola in An Exposition of Ifa Literary Corpus and Ifa Divination Poetry, in which he references oral traditions depicting the odu ifa descending to earth from orun, the world of metaphysical origins where Olodumare, the creator of the cosmos is centred.
In a personal communication by babalawo Joseph Ohomina, Ohomina describes the odu ifa as “spirits whose origin we do not know and of whose significance we understand only a small fraction and yet who represent the spiritual names of all possibilities of existence”, a summation I discuss in “Cosmological Permutations : Joseph Ohomina’s Ifa Philosophy and the Quest for the Unity of Being”.
Is Ifa literature, its primary means of organisation and expression, limited to its evident structural and thematic values? No. That literature is mobilised in divination as a means of communicating the voice of an oracle, an intelligence described as divine, requiring supra-intellectual methods to access.
Self and Cosmos in Ifa
How does Ifa privilege the client? Simply by consulting the oracle on behalf of an enquirer? No. The consultation is understood to operate at the nexus of interaction between the primordial and yet historically grounded wisdom represented by the odu ifa and the essential identity of the client, their ori, their metaphysical head and ultimate centre of direction, the embodiment of their ultimate potential, a core of being whose cooperation or alignment with a purpose is vital for success, hence it is stated that no orisa or deity can bless one without the consent of one's ori, the only deity who can follow its devotee on any journey, even the ultimate journey of death, since the existence of the ori is understood as preceding terrestrial birth and outliving the death of the body.
Thus, while Ifa can be discussed in secular terms, it is not a secular but a spiritual discipline, rooted in conceptions in Yoruba metaphysics and epistemology that unify Yoruba philosophy and spirituality.
These conceptions provide fruitful ground for explorations at the intersection of hermeneutics, theory of interpretation, epistemology, theory of knowledge and metaphysics, theory of being, in relation to such strategic ideas in Yoruba thought as the relationship between ase, a form of cosmic force, and language as an expression of this force, among other conceptions, as I describe in “Orality and the Metaphysics of Language in Yoruba Thought”, building on Rowland Abiodun’s discussion, in Yoruba Art and Language: Seeking the African in African Art, of oro, discourse in Yoruba philosophy, in relation to ase.
An adequate excavation of the ideational possibilities of Ifa is possible only by careful attention to its philosophical and spiritual grounding, relating these to any tasks the student of Ifa wishes, transposing them in secular terms or further developing their understanding as engagements with unconventional forms of sentience and power.
Western and Asian hermeneutics have taken this route and recurrently draw more possibilities from the foundational wells located in their sacred text and their associated practices.
One may wish to study Ifa purely in secular terms, but it instructive to note that in doing so, one is bracketing out one possibility out of a much larger matrix.
What may be the implications for scholarship, for critical relationship with ideas, for the view of the metaphysical core of Ifa represented by the concept of awo? What may be the significance of that idea for the study and use of ideas from Ifa, for an adaptation of them to strategies of thinking and insight, of reflection and perception? Must one identify with the awo concept to be able to use Ifa ideas in full recognition of their metaphysical ground as Falola advocates, as different from a sundering of them from their cosmological roots, a fragmentation Falola decries?
I would think that what is imperative is exploration into the cosmological framework of Ifa, into its epistemic strategies and metaphysical roots, explorations which might not lead to the same conclusions by different people, as suggested, for example, by comments in the discussion on Ifa quoted by Falola in “Ritual Archives”, in which Babatunde Emmanuel poses a question deriving from his interest in transposing Ifa into science, perhaps under the inspiration of its mathematical structure and its aspirations to comprehensive mapping of phenomena:
How does a religious matrix based on revelation and symbolic classification transform into an empirically validatable and refutable source of knowledge that will not depend on dogma and persecution to justify and corroborate its views as valid?
Since Mathematics is the language of science because it is logic in symbols, in order to make anything scientific, it must be mathematically replicatable, refutable, and verifiable. When will Yoruba Renaissance occur that will move claims of Ifa from the realm of belief to the realm of fact?
Archeologist-cum-Historian Akin Ogundiran gave an immediate answer:
Ifa is not based on revelation. It is based on learning, and its processes and outcomes can be replicated. My own field research has proven this in multiple places, over several years. Moreover, the intellectual communities from which Ifa developed are not based on dogma. … It is based on openness of thought, critique, and experimentation.
Ifa is a corpus of different categories of knowledge, not just religion. It is also a body of knowledge on history, philosophy, etc… Computer scientists, such as Dr. Tunde Adegbola, are doing fascinating work that shows that “the scientific basis of Ifa is the same with the subject of simulation in Operations Research” (Adegbola).
What is important in the methodology that Dr. Adegbola is using is that he is also doing ethnographic field research in order to systematically collect the data needed for his systems analysis work. As far back as the 1990s, Oba Pichardo and his Lukumi collaborators in Miami (FL) were able to write computer codes that allowed them to conduct computer-based Ifa divination. It was a preliminary work when I saw it around 2007. It is possible that they have expanded the work since then.
A number of scholars from different fields have started to answer these questions. What their studies are telling us is that one cannot stand outside a tradition or a system of knowledge to make declarations about that knowledge. …Dr. Wariboko stated, Ifa offers...rich fodder for theorizing a diverse range of ontological issues. These areas will continue to be relevant. However, the area of systems and mathematical analysis offer a very fascinating path of inquiry. This effort should involve the collaboration of traditional academics, scientists, and practitioners.
Olu Longe’s pioneering “Ifa Divination and Computer Science”, Femi Alamu et al’s “A Comparative Study of Ifa Divination and Computer Science”, my “Rethinking Ifa : From Classical to Post-Classical Geometries 1 : The Ifa Vectors of Moyo Okediji” take forward ideas of the scientific significance and potential of Ifa and the debate I edited “Ifa/Afa/Efa/ Fa, Science and Comparative Scholarship” examines the same subject in the context of the epistemic procedures through which the various interlocking dimensions of Ifa may best be explored.
I acknowledge the full scope of Ifa as a spiritual discipline embracing a range of aspects that may be significantly deployed without reference to the spiritual centre of the system. Such fragmentation, as Falola might put it, is vital for enabling access to and use of the protean character of this broad ranging body of knowledge, a task that would be hampered if some of its more abstract philosophical and spiritual ideas cannot be bracketed out while exploring its convergence with secular thought and creativity in different disciplines.