BENIN OLOKUN SYMBOLISM:FROM SPATIO-TEMPORAL COORDINATES INTO INFINITY (SHORT STORY IN PROGRESS)

[toyin adepoju]

                                                             BENIN OLOKUN SYMBOLISM

                                                                                    FROM 

                                                  SPATIO-TEMPORAL COORDINATES INTO INFINITY

                                                                                                                                           Toyin Adepoju

The spatio-temporal analogues of the horizontal and vertical axes of igha-ede rise into consciousness,projecting Agharedo's brain into one,two,three dimensions,using those in framing a launching pad into infinity.

What is infinity? This question always challenged him when he was about to enter lae-lae,the continuum experienced but little understood. As the massive waves washed over him,as the luminescent blue of the sky shone through in a blinding flash, he knew that these manifestations were only his brain processing, in terms of images it found in its memory banks, a phenomenon it could not process in its essential nature .

Within the zone where there is nether stasis nor motion,the map inscribed in him,the map of the ancient city, blazed with a blue fire as the points of power established in that city for centuries linked with the centres of power in his own body,powering his transposition from earth to the small planet deep inside the Andromeda galaxy.

The mind is time- and on that flash he rested now the problem of Infinity at last. The mind is sole coefficient of time and space.The thoughts of Soyinka who sustained himself in prison with reflections that had moved thinkers across the centuries were with him as the transposition moved forward. Even in this freedom from the prison of my body that enables me to transcend space am I not still in prison?True knowledge of the cosmos is impossible without true knowledge of the self, insight from Chittick on Arabi.I may range across the cosmos but am I not still a prisoner of the cosmos,as I am a prisoner of my body?The key to freedom would be in becoming a resident of eternity or a person who understands it,not only an adabi,using lale-lae as a portal of motion through space,rather than for an understanding of timelessness,from which,according to some schools of thought,the cosmos derives.

As always I will return from my journey with some new knowledge but is that more than an addition to a small island in a vast,untravelled sea?

These thoughts continued to challenge Agharedo as he completed manifestation on Ekenekputa in the Andromeda galaxy.

Manifestation proceeded through the reconstitution of the semantic matrices that constituted his mind and body.Building on the discovery by Ikaladeron that the components of mind represented by each cell in the body contain the intelligence represented by the entire cellular structure of the body,one method of space travel had been to create a map of coordinates of the cellular structure embodied by each person and project this into the Odu nexus where all possibilities of the cosmos converge.

To the untrained mind,this nexus is a maelstrom of possibilities where the abstract and the concrete,events and emotions,the celestial bodies and the teeming thoughts of all beings in existence were constantly being funneled through converging universes of possibility.Without a sense of direction one could get lost in this torrent,leading one to experience into infinity an unending,never replicated sequence of possibilities represented by the various points of convergence of one's distinctive spatio-temporal coordinates with those of others.

Central to the training of an adabi was that of developing the ability to construct such a map and use it as a means of navigation across space and time.No map constructed for each occasion was identical with the other.Each effort at spatio-temporal navigation represented a unique event in which the convergence between space,time and consciousness needed to be plotted afresh.The instrument for plotting this is the igha-ede, a structure of coordinates for plotting one's spatio-temporal location through relationships between the four quadrants of space and their extra-dimensional analogues and between the temporal and extra-temporal unities of past,present,future, and infinity.

Manifestation completed,Aghararedo walked towards his destination.His balance was assured through the gravity compensators built into his cells through his adabi training.This enabled his body to adjust to the gravitational field of any environment in which he found himself.

The use of the technologies that enabled spatio-temporal relocation,the ancient concept of 'travelling' having been superseded by the nullification of the gap that separated particular locations and temporal zones, a gap which had necessitated the ancient concept of 'travelling' , an ancient practice now adopted out of choice,not necessity,was instinctive to Agharedo but he remained baffled by certain cracks in the architecture of knowledge represented by the edifice constructed by humanity across the ages.

In fact,not just cracks but the entire framework that constituted the conditions of possibility that enabled and defined the character of knowledge in the first place. 

Moving effortlessly by drawing ase from the surface,an energy that unifies the cosmos,gravity being a manifestation of that energy,he did not need a vehicle to move at any speed he wanted.The four fundamental forces of nature,electromagnetism,the strong and weak nuclear forces and gravity, had been unified centuries ago through the discovery of their emanation from a fifth force,ase,a force that unifies matter and consciousness,thereby enabling an actualization of the vision depicted so tantalisingly at the17th century Scientific Revolution by the thinker of Cambridge who explained the phaenomena of the heavens and the sea by the power of gravity,but could not assign the cause of this power although certain that it must proceed from a cause that penetrates to the very centres of the sun and planets, a most subtle Spirit which pervades and lies hid in all gross bodies,enabling bodies to attract and repel each other, allowing the emission of light,the exciting of sensations in bodies,enabling physical motion according to the will through nerves connecting the brain to internal and external organs...concluding as to his limitations...I frame no hypotheses...these are things that cannot be explained in few words,nor are we furnished with that sufficiency of experiments which is required to an accurate demonstration and determination of the laws by which this electric and elastic Spirit operates .

Images one,four and five:

Benin Olokun igha-ede symbols from Norma Rosen, " Chalk Iconography in Olokun Worship", African Arts, Vol. 22, No. 3 (May, 1989), pp. 44-53+88:http://www.jstor.org/stable/3336778.

Image two:

"Cartesian coordinate system with the circle of radius 2 centered at the origin marked in red. The equation of the circle is x2 + y2 = 4." from" Cartesian Coordinate" at Wikipedia:http://www.floatingorigin.com/mirror/Cartesian_coordinate.htm


Image three:

"A right-handed three-dimensional Cartesian coordinate system with the +z axis pointing towards the viewer" by Sakurambo from "3D coordinate system" at Wikimedia:

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:3D_coordinate_system.svg

In italics:quotations from

1. Wole Soyinka,The Man Died: Prison Notes of Wole Soyinka. London:Rex Collins,1976.258.

2.William Chittick,The Self Disclosure of God: Principles of al-Ibn Arabi's Cosmology.New York:State University of New York Press,1998.xii.

3.Karl Rahner,Foundations of Christian Faith:An Introduction to the Idea of Christianity. London:Darton Longman and Todd,1978.22.

4.Para 13.From "explained" to end of italics: Isaac Newton,The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy in On the Shoulders of Giants: The Great Works of Physics and Astronomy. ed Stephen Hawking.Philadelphia:Running Press,2002.

Also blogged at Olokun Waters, presented  under "Research Programs" at Olokun Centre for Research in the Humanities and Sciences and under "Notes"  at Toyin Adepoju:Facebook