Textuality, Spirituality, Knowing: Between Toyin Falola's "Ritual Archives" and Deborah Harlness' A Discovery of Witches in Film, Books and Scholarship: A Few Words

[Oluwatoyin Adepoju]

Anytime I watch the TV series adaptation of Deborah Harkness' novelistic sequence A Discovery of Witches, particularly in my second watching which Im doing now on Showmax, I think of Toyin Falola's essay "Ritual Archives" in terms of forms of archive, material and non-material, natural and textual, human and non-human, in relation to African and Western contexts, resonating with the Asian, beceause the film explores this theme profoundly, through all elements of film making, from cinematography to plot, maximizing the setting of the action in Oxford University, showcasing it's magnificent libraries and architecture, in relation to a quest for the archival form par excellence, a book, a magical book, both spiritual and scientific in it's contents, a quest bringing together humanity's fascination with the question of the cosmos of species beyond those conventionally understood, at the centre of which is the motif of the witch, an image Falola grapples with in a number of his writings, but which receives it's most trenchant expression in the image of his mentor Iya Lekuleja in his autobiographies A Mouth Sweeter than Salt and Counting the Tiger's Teeth, although Leku is not described as aje, the Yoruba equivalent of "witch" in the various depictions of that term in the history of English, nor does he refer to her as a witch, but she is the closest to that category in his writings I've read so far and fits very well with modern Western conceptions of that image.

The film led me to read the first volume,which I own, of the book series, and to research the book's author, learning that she is a scholar in the intersection of the occult and the intellectual in Western culture, particularly in the context of the convergence of these cognitive categories in the 17th century Scientific Revolution. 

Falola has engaged himself with the question of possible correlations between the contribution of the occult to the  Western intellectual tradition and Western modernity and whether or not such a correlation could not also be claimed for the occult, particularly witchcraft, in the African context.

He overstates his case, though, in asserting such a correlation in relation to witchcraft in the African context, because, to the best of my knowledge,such a correlation between witchcraft beliefs in Africa and consolidated systems of knowledge does not exist and does not even exist in the pre-modern Western context, the occult systems that fed the Western intellectual traditions being such approaches as Hermeticism, alchemy, astrology and ceremonial magic, these being highly textualized, highly theorized and very practical systems, as different from the largely superstition constituted form of pre-modern Western witchcraft, as I understand it, before Gerald Gardner's 20th century founding of Wicca.

There does exist, however, an example of  a relatively coherent African system of beliefs which shares similarities with pre-modern and modern Western witchcraft, in terms of the centralization of women in relation to occult powers, the Yoruba idea of "aje", also known as "awon Iya wa osoronga" , "our mysterious mothers". Similar ideas exist in other parts of Africa and are correlative with centralizations of female power in various African contexts.

Can these ideas be synthesized and constructed into a philosophy and a spirituality in terms of theory and practice?

Yes.

Having written these quick thoughts, I'll return to the delightful film, returning to a scene shaped by "crepuscular lighting"( an expression I enjoy, better than simply writing "dim lighting"), the lighting suggesting relationships between the esoteric and the exoteric, revelation and concealment, as a witch and a vampire hold a conversation, as I recall my need to return to my ongoing conversation with Falola on forms of knowledge, exemplified by "Ritual Archives,  by his Decolonizing African Knowledge and it's resonance with his autobiographies and with his recent suggestion about creating new bodies of study such as academic courses in Ifa, kingship and witchcraft, a rich idea, powerfully resonant in the Yoruba context where ideas about these contexts are interwoven, as suggested by both the implicit and explicit symbolism of Olowe of Ise's great sculptural tableau which once stood in the courtyard of the Ogoga of Ikere, now dismantled across different museums, the central image of the king's wife standing behind him as he seats now resident in a US museum, the bird on the king's crown representing the power of the "avian powered ones", moving bird like through physical and spiritual space, their human embodiment concretized in the potent presence of the queen standing behind the king, her presence reinforcing the symbolism of the bird on his crown, both evoking the "mothers without whom I could not rule", as Rowland Abiodun quotes a Yoruba king's reference to "awon iya wa osoronga" in Yoruba Art and Language, the entire sculptural tableau of wives, children and mounted warrior  evocative of the complex of possibilities through which Ifa divination seeks to map the outcomes of situations, a divination system that has been central to Yoruba kingship, as Abiodun also points out.

[Oluwatoyin Adepoju]

Edited in 3rd and 4th paragraphs

Anytime I watch the TV series adaptation of Deborah Harkness' novelistic sequence A Discovery of Witches, particularly in my second watching which Im doing now on Showmax, I think of Toyin Falola's essay "Ritual Archives" in terms of forms of archive, material and non-material, natural and textual, human and non-human, in relation to African and Western contexts, resonating with the Asian, beceause the film explores this theme profoundly, through all elements of film making, from cinematography to plot, maximizing the setting of the action in Oxford University, showcasing it's magnificent libraries and architecture, in relation to a quest for the archival form par excellence, a book, a magical book, both spiritual and scientific in it's contents, a quest bringing together humanity's fascination with the question of the cosmos of species beyond those conventionally understood, at the centre of which is the motif of the witch, an image Falola grapples with in a number of his writings, but which receives it's most trenchant expression in the image of his mentor Iya Lekuleja in his autobiographies A Mouth Sweeter than Salt and Counting the Tiger's Teeth, although Leku is not described as aje, the Yoruba equivalent of "witch" in the various depictions of that term in the history of English, nor does he refer to her as a witch, but she is the closest to that category in his writings I've read so far and fits very well with modern Western conceptions of that image.

The film led me to read the first volume,which I own, of the book series, and to research the book's author, learning that she is a scholar in the intersection of the occult and the intellectual in Western culture, particularly in the context of the convergence of these cognitive categories in the 17th century Scientific Revolution. 

Falola has engaged himself with the subject of contribution of the occult to the  Western intellectual and scientific  tradition and Western modernity and whether or not such a correlation could not also be claimed for the occult, particularly witchcraft, in the African context.

He overstates his case, though, in asserting such a correlation in relation to witchcraft in the African context, because, to the best of my knowledge,such a correlation between witchcraft beliefs in Africa and intellectual and scientific  systems of knowledge does not exist and does not even exist in the pre-modern Western context, the occult systems that fed the Western intellectual traditions being such approaches as Hermeticism, alchemy, astrology and ceremonial magic, these being highly textualized, highly theorized and very practical systems, as different from the largely superstition constituted form of pre-modern Western witchcraft, as I understand it, before Gerald Gardner's 20th century founding of Wicca.

There does exist, however, an example of  a relatively coherent African system of beliefs which shares similarities with pre-modern and modern Western witchcraft, in terms of the centralization of women in relation to occult powers, the Yoruba idea of "aje", also known as "awon Iya wa osoronga" , "our mysterious mothers". Similar ideas exist in other parts of Africa and are correlative with centralizations of female power in various African contexts.

Can these ideas be synthesized and constructed into a philosophy and a spirituality in terms of theory and practice?

Yes.

Having written these quick thoughts, I'll return to the delightful film, returning to a scene shaped by "crepuscular lighting"( an expression I enjoy, better than simply writing "dim lighting"), the lighting suggesting relationships between the esoteric and the exoteric, revelation and concealment, as a witch and a vampire hold a conversation, as I recall my need to return to my ongoing conversation with Falola on forms of knowledge, exemplified by "Ritual Archives,  by his Decolonizing African Knowledge and it's resonance with his autobiographies and with his recent suggestion about creating new bodies of study such as academic courses in Ifa, kingship and witchcraft, a rich idea, powerfully resonant in the Yoruba context where ideas about these contexts are interwoven, as suggested by both the implicit and explicit symbolism of Olowe of Ise's great sculptural tableau which once stood in the courtyard of the Ogoga of Ikere, now dismantled across different museums, the central image of the king's wife standing behind him as he seats now resident in a US museum, the bird on the king's crown representing the power of the "avian powered ones", moving bird like through physical and spiritual space, their human embodiment concretized in the potent presence of the queen standing behind the king, her presence reinforcing the symbolism of the bird on his crown, both evoking the "mothers without whom I could not rule", as Rowland Abiodun quotes a Yoruba king's reference to "awon iya wa osoronga" in Yoruba Art and Language, the entire sculptural tableau of wives, children and mounted warrior  evocative of the complex of possibilities through which Ifa divination seeks to map the outcomes of situations, a divination system that has been central to Yoruba kingship, as Abiodun also points out.