Ọkha, Ikhinmwin and Iroko: Intersections Between Beliefs in the Spirituality of Trees and in Witchcraft in Benin Thought: Realities, Questions, Prospects 5

[Oluwatoyin Adepoju]

                 

                                                                                        

                                                           

                                                               Ọkha, Ikhinmwin and Iroko 

                  Intersections Between Beliefs in the  Spirituality  of Trees and in  Witchcraft in Benin Thought

                                                             Realities, Questions, Prospects

                                                                                       5       

 

                                                                         Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju

                                                                                   Compcros

                                                        Comparative Cognitive Processes and Systems

                                        ''Exploring Every Corner of the Cosmos in Search of Knowledge''

                                                             Abstract

A first-hand account of relationships between beliefs in the spirituality of trees and in witchcraft in the traditional thought of the people of Benin-City, Nigeria, in conjunction with questions about these ideas and the creative possibilities they may suggest,  presented through accounts of my encounters with various trees and culture bearers in Benin-City, correlated with other examples of ecosystemic spirituality.

The visual force of trees, specifically the ọkha, ikhinmwin and iroko, among the most significant arboreal forms in traditional Benin spirituality, is projected through  pictures taken and  edited by myself at times suggesting their aesthetic power, their  atmosphere shaping  character and evocative potencies, images aligned with commentary describing their cultural significance and my responses to their inspirational force. The pictures were taken using an iPhone 6s and edited on an HP laptop.

I could not use all the images I would have liked to employ for this essay on account of the limitations of Google Mail, my primary template for essay composition. The essay is also complemented by videos I made and by many other pictures I took, which, ideally, should be referenced in the essay, linking to the online locations of these video and image libraries, a comprehensive mapping of my discoveries which I intend to present with time.

 

Contents

A Mystical Quest

Textual Contexts

Between Animism and Mysticism at an Intercultural Nexus

Thanks to Donors

A Mystical Quest

What is the source of the cosmos, its concealed  roots providing the nutrients expressed as the trees and branches constituting its evident nature?

How may I reach those roots, how may I know them? Can they be understood intellectually, through reasoning? May they be grasped through identification with nature, representing the trunk of the tree, its branches constituted by the various realms of human activity?

Could reflection on this central network of existence lead one to the roots of being? Reflection composed of meditation on nature, on admiration of its beauty, that beauty possibly leading one to perceiving its ultimate source, the ground of possibility enabling the cosmological and terrestrial processes directly enabling the existence of being?

Textual Contexts

These are the questions that led me to exploring nature's beauty through the treescapes of Benin-City more than ten  years before I left Benin for England on an educational pilgrimage in January 2003.

Through exposure to growth in studies of nature spiritualities and philosophies in older and contemporary times in Asia, the West and other regions, my journeys further sensitized me to the significance of what I had discovered in Benin. Further expanding my appreciation of the the philosophical and spiritual significance of nature, particularly vegetative spaces, in the African context,  are such inspiring texts as works on Nigeria's Osun Forest, in relation to the sculptural and architectural achievements of Susanne Wenger and her collaborators, Celia Nyamweru and Michael Sheridan' s edited  African Sacred Groves: Ecological Dynamics and Social Change, Thomas Coburn's  ''Climbing the Mountain of God,'' on Tanzania's  Ol Doinyo Lengai, in the Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Wole Soyinka on Yoruba and African ecological spiritualities in Myth, Literature and the African World and The Credo of Being and Nothingness,  Mazisi Kunene's account of nature centred Zulu cosmology in his introduction to his Anthem of the Decades, Ayi Kwei Armah's mapping of nature grounded philosophy distilled from Akan thought in the conversation between Densu and Damfo in The Healers, Germaine Dieterlen on nature as cosmological matrix in Fulani thought in ''Initiation Among the Peul Pastoral Fulani,'' in African Systems of Thought, edited with Meyer Fortes, among other texts.

I also came to appreciate investigations of natural sacred spaces as a zone of enquiry in which African examples of such explorations  do not seem to me to have reached  the same scope as in the West and perhaps Asia. Compared to the explosion in varieties of engagement with nature in Western publishing,  the African examples point to the distance between the literature about a continent  for which nature has been, since earliest known times,  a central feature of its relationship with the sacred and the  range of engagements with this vast field, a gap suggesting latent possibilities crying out for investigation.

Having moved from Benin-City to England on my ongoing educational pilgrimage, I used to vow to myself, ''when I return to the spiritual centre of global significance that is Benin-City, I will know what to do,'' critically examining and meticulously documenting the wonders I know this metropolis of ancietness and modernity to contain, an aspiration emerging from my growing awareness of these possibilities as honed by expanded exposure to diverse cultural and scholarly contexts.

I returned to Benin in October 2022 after twenty years of absence to further investigate what I had earlier discovered about Benin, broaden my explorations and share with others what I learn, having now gained the publishing platforms and expanded the conceptual and expressive capacities vital for the task.  

This opportunity to further explore African vegetative spaces eventually came about in relation to immersion in the glory of the university in the forest, Obafemi Awolowo University, which I discuss, among other essays,  in ''Ecosystemic Microverses at the Campus of the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife,''  a wonderful experience partly compensating for what I would later discover to be the loss, to urbanization, of the Ogba forest in Benin, the sublime nature space in relation to which I had aspired to build a spiritual, intellectual and artistic practice, as I describe in ''Urban Transformations: Landscape and the Sacred in Benin-City:The Glory and Destruction of the Ogba Forest: An Ecological Tragedy and Human Flourishing in an Autobiographical Context.''

Between Animism and Mysticism at an Intercultural Nexus

“Some trees in the forest are witches and can initiate one into witchcraft,” stated Osemwegie Ebohon, a self described witch in the context of Benin spirituality, in a discussion we had well  before my current exploration of this system of knowledge.

If witchcraft in Benin culture and the related Yoruba cultural context is perceived as centered in the ability to move and act beyond the limitations of the human body without the use of technological aids, have I not been initiated into such possibilities through my relationships with the catalyzing powers of trees in Benin-City, thereby suggesting my encountering the possibilities Ebohon was describing?

Seeking to pierce through the material forms of trees to their rootedness in an ultimate reality, spending hours  admiring the beauty of trees in Benin in the hope that this beauty would lead me to its source, the ultimate creativity underlying the cosmos, enabling its myriad manifestations, that beauty of which the African Christian mystic St. Augustine of Hippo declares, “ O Beauty, so ancient and so new, too late have I loved you,” I was led, not to the cosmic unity demonstrated by insights like those of the English poet William Wordsworth, for whom nature’s beauty opened into cosmic grandeur, a “power that sweeps through all things,” as depicted in ''Tintern Abbey,'' but to something closer to Charles Baudelaire’s depictions, in ''Correspondences,'' of “nature as a temple of living pillars speaking forth in sounds barely understood, a forest of symbols, within which strange, familiar eyes watch passing human creatures from the leaves above,” the French poet’s evocation of a tension between mystery and insight within the intersection of human and non-human intelligences, evoking my gradual opening into animistic sensitivities, an aura around trees, efforts to communicate telepathically with a particular iroko tree leading to the growth of an idea  which I understood as projected by the tree into my own mind, an abominable idea confirming for me accounts of inhumanities associated with iroko trees, accounts co-existing with beliefs in their creative powers, along with encounters with the Sublime, in the German philosopher Immanuel Kant's sense, in his Critique of Judgement,  of something both elevating and humbling, and encounters with the numinous, “an invisible but majestic presence that inspires both dread and fascination and constitutes the non-rational element in vital religion,” as Webster's dictionary represents the German philosopher of religion Rodolph Otto  in  The Idea of the Holy, sensitivities eventuating in an encounter in a non-physical dimension entered into through imaginative contemplation of the numinous presence of  Benin-City’s Ogba forest,  closing my eyes in contemplation in my study and opening them to find myself elsewhere,  in wordlessly eloquent dialogue with a woman welcoming me to this unknown place and opening my eyes again to find myself back in my study.

Did I thereby stumble on the kinds of powers attributed to witches in Nigeria? Since this experience has no relationship with the evil often ascribed to witchcraft in that country does the experience suggest that the transdimensional capacities ascribed to witches there may be cultivated in a manner uplifting of oneself and others and perhaps lead eventually to the ultimate glory of which the grandeur I had experienced in the Ogba forest is an expression?

Thanks to Donors

Great thanks to all those donors, of money, time, guidance and moral support, who made possible the exploratory journey represented by this essay, within Ife and from Ife to Benin, from the 5th of October 2022 to the 9th of November 2022.

These include  Arit Oku, whose enthusiasm for the forest beauties of the OAU campus fired my resolve to explore the place and whose logistical guidance proved providential in my living in Kufoniyi Hostel while I was at Ife, a magnificent environment for initiation into the natural glories of the campus,  the friendliness and efficiency of the hostel staff in the context of flexible costs making my time there most memorable.

Jane Ineritei, communicating from Port-Harcourt, shared the enthusiasm of the trip, responding to my  images of traversing the powerfully forested landscapes of Southern Nigeria in inter-city transport and participating in my unfolding sensitivity to the potential of the journey.

Djakou Natalie's commission to write about her work just as I was pondering whether or not to extend my trip was pivotal in providing funds and inspiration enabling the extension of a journey unrelated to research into a research exploration.

Ato Arinze and Arit Oku's swift responses to my donations appeal, in their verbal reactions and  by making their own donations, helped catalyze my resolve to transform the journey into a research enquiry, Arinze also firing my amazement at the OAU campus with his own enthusiasm, directing me to Babasehinde Ademuleya, Professor of Art at OAU, whose enthusiasm for and knowledge of the beauties of the  OAU campus sealed the inspiration of the campus for me,  a sacramental sharing of vision, projecting me further on my decades long quest, miraculously opening beyond its anticipated scope at a time and place unanticipated.

Michael Afolayan, a person able to appreciate one's strengths and weaknesses, guiding one to actualize those strengths even if he does not always agree with one's approaches, a person  preventing one from falling into potholes one might not have been able to escape otherwise, brother, may God bless you for your gifts of guidance and income.

Jhalobia Nigeria Ltd, the premier Nigerian landscaping company that are perennial sponsors of my work even when they don't understand it, may the rain that fertilizes your tireless creativity ever fall.

Who does not like to be appreciated?  Mathew Oyedele, sending financial blessings my way in confidence in my output, as he put it,  the donor who made his contribution in appreciation of an essay I wrote, describing it as reflecting what he depicted as my innovative work,  another who identified with what he referenced as my creative research orientations, a potential donor who would have liked to enrich my efforts but may have been challenged by varied demands, Seyi Ogunfuwa, who suggested my approaching the Olu of Ibadan for funding and Akeem Rufai, who advised how I should proceed with this, assistance that would be priceless in the future progress of this initiative, I salute you all. You all made the sun rise for me. Even a compulsive writer such as myself is fired by such empowerment.  May I be what you see in me and more.

I was blessed to meet the taxi driver who introduced me to Koosa Hotel, in Benin, efficient and friendly to the pocket, a most providential choice, being strategically located for access to various culture bearers and the shrines associated with them.

These culture bearers included the Ezomo of Benin, always open to enquiries and ebulliently enthusiastic in discussing Benin culture and spirituality in general.

They also include Chief Ebengho, combining accessibility and gravitas as befits such a patriarch of the spiritual journey, greatly honouring me by inviting me to his weekly shrine fellowship, where Chief Obaseki made himself available to respond to my questions as I took all the photographs and recorded all the videos I wanted. Osarobor, Chief Ebengho's son, friendly and communicative, also provided a richly nuanced approach to Benin spirituality.  Ebengho's acolytes Enoyogiere Iyen and Osayamon Ebengho enthusiastically took me round his shrine, explaining to me the significance of each aspect of the magnificent complex.

At the Oba's palace, Honourable Benjamin Omuemu gave invaluable guidance in a tour of the palace and a discussion of the ikhinmwin tree at the entrance, his dedication to Benin culture most inspiring as I made videos of the excursion and took pictures. 

Etin-Osa Omuemu directed me to the striking sacred grove at Use, where I also saw the superb architectural presence of the palace of the Edigin N' Use, where I was courteously welcomed by a member of the palace whose name I regrettably do not recall.

The palace of the Esogban of Benin, where I was directed by Mr. Jackson Agbonifi, and that of the Oliha at Siluko, where I was graciously received by the Oliha,  who further galvanized my interest in Benin culture through his identification with my explorations, along with a relatively small but exquisitely beautiful shrine on Ehaekpen street,  a short walk from my temporary residence on Koosa Hotel, are other glories of Benin architecture and Benin culture bearers I was fortunate to encounter.

Osaigbovo Juliana, my Facebook friend, was my companion on a number of these explorations, her warmth and acute sensitivity to and knowledge of traditional Benin spirituality providing an intimate insight into the lived realities of this tradition.

My family friend Mrs Helen Nekpen Uzzi was priceless in contextualizing the loss  of Benin sacred spaces through various factors and the necessity of preserving them as cultural mementoes, even as her superb gardens bring to mind the horticultural culture within which I grew up in the gardens of my mother, her friend, in Benin, eventually venturing beyond such domestications into the wild powers of the beauty of forests and trees in Benin-City. 

Mr. Jackson Agbonifi, sharing my enthusiasm for Benin spirituality,  provided a list of iroko tree locations in Benin which led me to most memorable findings, even beyond the quest for those legendary plant forms. Affable and informative, our relationship, along with that with his wife,  as neighbours from when I lived in Benin before leaving there in 2003, returning twenty years later in this trip, was crucial in unifying my history, helping to make me whole, a role also played by Mrs Uzzi , Auntie Patsy and Mrs Okpozu, family friends from my earlier life in that city, my spiritual home, as well as meetings with Tunde Adeleke and Kunle Mamudu, academic colleagues from my years at the University of Benin, figures helping to complete an arc of personal history in another story to be told about this journey.

I thank Toyin Falola and his USAAfrica Dialogues Series Google group, my primary publication platform. I thereby salute the omnivorous genius and his online publishing marketplace of ideas. ''In whose name have you come forth, what doctrine do you profess?'', as was asked of the Buddha after the enlightenment that initiated his mission.Thunderer-while-sitting, Where elephants take shelter when the heavens frown, canopy of knowledge, even the heavens admire you as you mirror their expanse, is an answer to those questions in relation to Falola, adapting Zulu oral poetry. 

My family and all others who welcomed me back to Lagos after weeks of anticipation of my return crowned the glorious trip.

Apologies to all whose names I have not included on account of the limitations of memory.