African Hairstyles and the Cosmological Imagination
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Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
Apr 18, 2018, 3:06:01 PM4/18/18
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African Hairstyles and the Cosmological Imagination
Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
Comparative Cognitive Processes and Systems
"Exploring Every Corner of the Cosmos in Search of Knowledge"
These hairstyles are actually cosmological constructs whose meaning, in terms of their aesthetic and semantic unity, may be best understood in relation to a broad range of African cosmological designs, which themselves demonstrate parallels with cosmographic forms worldwide.
The hermeneutic keys that facilitate the correlation between this body shaping cosmological art and other cosmological forms are discernible in the relationships between the graphic and gestural symbolism of African esoteric orders such as the Ekpe esoteric order, the complex of Afa/Ifa/Fa and other forms, the Kongo orders, Abakua, the Cuban version of Ekpe, among others.
The diffusion of these cosmological forms from pure abstraction to graphic forms, to textiles and to hair styles suggests a concern to embody the cosmological in everyday life and even inscribe it on the human body.
This integration of cosmological visualisation and the everyday forms used by people as well as on the human body demonstrates the metaphysics and epistemologies of embodiment these cosmologies represent, in which all dimensions, material, and non - material, are understood as unified.
Alabi Rasheed, in a different context, suggests a related way of perceiving reality:
"There are infinitely many layers of air.
I mean if you gather 'atmospheric air' and begin to peel it, it will take exactly infinite number of times to get to the end layer.
But amazingly, it takes an eye to see through all the layers as one.
And it will take 3 eyes from the same head to see the second layer, due to its 3-D overlapping, the intersection of the three diffracts the layer of the air making it visible."
The cultivation of the perceptual capacity to perceive various integrative dimensions through the medium of the full range of capacities of the eyes is known in Yoruba/Orisa esoteric epistemology as the cultivation of "oju inu" or the "inner eye", the capacities of which range from depth of reflection to imagination and extra-sensory perception, among other unconventional possibilities, as described by Babatunde Lawal in "The Self and its Metaphysical Other in Yoruba Art".
Those hairstyles in the picture above, for example, may be perceived as depicting the various forms of radiation of primal cosmic force in its manner of creating and organising the various dimensions that constitute reality.
These hairstyles visualise various configurations in terms of which this perpetual radiation emerges in successive waves.
Top is the star configuration, in which waves of rhythmic amplitude emerge from a central cluster, through an initial quaternary configuration.
Top could be seen as depicting the aggregation of dimensions in terms of a balance between pincer formations and threads of force running parallel on the cranium, the cranium itself evoking cosmic totality.
Top could be perceived as indicating the progression of lines of force in terms of a rhythm of valleys,peaks and straight lines.
Top is particularly exquisite in depicting what is now known as the sign for infinity.
Here, the design could be seen as evoking the interconnection of zones of reality in terms of a loop realizing spatial enlargement at two axes and intersection at a third axis.
The top and bottom axes constitute expansive spaces indicating the field of play in metaphysical terms.
These spaces evoke a state in which the possibilities of becoming are yet fluid.
The middle axis depicts intersection at the centre of possibilities, possibilities of being converging to constitute the state of the cosmos at a point in time, before diverging once more to expand into new configurations.
The patterns represented by these hairstyles demonstrate implications for metaphysics as well as scientific cosmology, as suggested, for example, by similarities between classical Adinkra symbolism and the Adinkrammatics mathematical symbolism of Michael Faux and Sylvester James Gates.
Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju's Body and Cosmos : African Hairstyles and the Cosmological Imagination develops the thesis outlined here but the book still exists in a different dimension yet to intersect with this one.
The book only exists for the moment, as a possibility, not yet an actuality, of this reality in which we discuss.
The extra-dimensional existence of this work might suggest that the basic thesis it presents might not correspond to historical reality in this dimension although it might in the dimension where the book exists at present, since history unfolds differently in different dimensions,.
The thesis might, therefore, be best understood in this dimension as an example of imaginative correlation, rather than as explication of historical fact.
Picture by J.D. Okhai Ojeikere
"Orisirisi irun didi ti ile Yoruba"
"A variety of hairstyles from Yorubaland"
As stated by Babatunde Lawal in "The Significance of Hair and Hairstyles Among the Yoruba" , hairstyles in Yorubaland demonstrate both aesthetic and philosophical value.
Their aesthetic value consists in the beauty they express.
Their philosophical value relates to their role as a celebration of the centrality of the head as biological centre of coordination as well as a symbol of the essence of the person, the ultimate embodiment of their potential,which transcends birth and death.
Let us take this further.
Yoruba spirituality demonstrates a rich tradition of female centred thought and action which needs to be much better known in terms of writing in English.
Within this context, may we not see female hairstyles as matrices for concentrating and directing ase,the creative cosmic force that enables being and becoming as it is concentrated in the cognitive centre that is the head?
May we not perceive those intricate patterns as three dimensional versions of the Ifa odu, embodiments of cosmic possibility normally inscribed as two dimensional symbols?
Can these symbols not be understood as expressed in terms of hairstyles so structured that the dynamic forms generated by the weaving of hair frames the movement of ase or cosmic force into a pattern that represents a particular configuration in the intersection of being and becoming?
One account of the related Igbo Afa system of knowledge describes the system as begun by a woman who gained the inspiration for it while lying under a tree.
She then spent a long time encoding her knowledge in symbols, one of which was in female hairstyles, one could imagine.
A concept of the Indian philosophy and practice of Yoga is that of the crown chakra, a coruscation of energy at the top of the head, the point of contact between the human being and the most refined energies that constitute the cosmos.
This energy centre is often visualised as a lotus opening in bloom, the degree of its blossoming expressing the degree of the individual's openness to this energy stream.
May we not perceive the spectrum of Yoruba artistic forms celebrating the beauty and power of the head in relation to women, from hairstyles to the fashion headgear known as gele to the performance art of Gelede, in terms of similar evocations of an energy nexus at the top of the head?
Would such an energy nexus not make the head a womb of a kind, a portal opening into the source of life, as the womb in the stomach enables the entry of a disembodied entity into the world through a human body formed by the meeting of egg and spermatozoa?
Our Mothers, the most holy ones, are celebrated in Gelede through masks worn on the head, masks that often combine placidity of features, calm of countenance, with dynamic force, a calm human face and depictions of animals in actions, at times combative action, a balance of still inner depth and the creative dynamism that calm may project.
What is perhaps being spoken to us here in symbols?
May we not perceive in these hair styles a rhythm in variety, in which the shape of the head influences the possibilities of visual patterns that may run on the dome of the head?
Emerging on these cranial landscapes are designs depicting various forms of convergence between centre and circumference, the cone or pillar,the upstanding net of energy, ziggurats of energy, placid rivulets running from top to bottom and vice versa, the spike of force, among other possibilities, all evocative of universal patterns in the shaping of form, particularly in nature and architecture,archetypal forms in which the rhythm of the cosmos is manifest.
From Eji-Ogbe to Ofun-Ose, from the 1st to the 256th odu or centre of being in Ifa, there flows a river of force that peaks at various points.
The character of this flow of energy, its modes of peaking, its varieties of convergence, its expression in terms of vertical and horizontal projection, of cosmic emergence from and withdrawal to a centre, of energy coruscations, these are some of the various manifestations of living energy expressed here in terms of patterns of hair styling.
These hair patterns are themselves a further expression of the unity of symbolism and what is symbolised, in which the form symbolised dwells in the symbol.
The hair styles are not simply symbolic of odu patterns, they are in themselves odu configurations.
The forces and identities known as odu expressed in other contexts as vertical lines, as numerical patterns, as spatial configurations and as literature, are here embodied in terms of ways of arranging human hair.
You have not come across this understanding before?
We learn everyday.
If you doubt me, meditate each night before going to bed, on one style of the sixteen hairstyles in this picture, sixteen being the number of cosmic foundation and transformation, the number of the primary odu, the building blocks of being.
Then note your experience of each night.
Some truths can be told only to those who already know.
To others it is like the everyday passing of the breeze.
You will see that I reveal but a thimble of the reality of the intersection of microcosm and macrocosm that is the the intersecting horizontal and vertical lines on the opon ifa, of which the head, particularly as demonstrated by female hairstyles, is a manifestation in human form.
Is the opon ifa not the space of being and becoming as symbols constellate what is, what was and what may be?
Is the head not the zone of cognitive possibility through which present, past and future may be navigated as one stands in the present?
Are those hairstyles not evocations of various configurations of ase,the creative force within each of us that enables all possibility?
How did I know of this?
It was a journey of many years, until one day meditating on the original tree of life, the mothers in the great forests, as described by their daughter Naa Ayela Kumari,it was revealed to me.
Am I serious?
Am I joking but serious?
Am I neither joking nor serious?
I leave that for you to contemplate.
Let the hand knock and the door shall be opened.
Is there any pointer to whether what I am saying could be true?
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