Developing the Philosophical and Mystical Possibilities of the Coronation Ceremonies of the Oba of Benin 1 : Vision and Method
Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
Developing the Philosophical and Mystical Possibilities of the Coronation Ceremonies of the Oba of Benin 1
Vision and Method
Figure 1
Oba of Benin Coronation Mandala
Oba of Benin coronation mandala, adapting the design of a Buddhist artistic form, the mandala, in projecting activities actualized by the coronation ceremonies of the Oba of Benin, summing up the sublime values associated with the role of the Oba.
The central image is Joseph Eboreime's map of the route traversed by Oba Erediauwa I in his 1979 coronation, from Eboreime's "Coronation as Drama: The Installation of a Benin Monarch as a Study in the Continuity of Kingship: The Transformation and the Manufacture of Ethnic Identity", a depiction of the spatial progression actualized by the coronation rites, unifying physical space and its associated social space through the person of the Crown Prince, and, eventually, the monarch, moving in symbolic action through that space.
On top of the map is Enotie Paul Ogbebor's painting Aisagbonrioba "You Don't Become a King on Earth, You Have to be Ordained", an evocation of the understanding of the Oba's office as a point of transmission between the divine and the human, this transmission suggested by the supplicating hands bathed in a triangle of light.
At the bottom is an image depicting the graceful power of the eben, a Benin ceremonial sword, in the British Museum.
I am developing a project exploring the philosophical and mystical possibilities of the coronation ceremonies of the Oba of Benin, the latest demonstration of these rites having taken place in the October 2016 crowning of Oba Ewuare II. Philosophy, in this context, refers to ideas about the meaning of existence clarifying the processes through which these conceptions have been constructed while mysticism is centred in the quest for direct encounter with ultimate reality.
This initiative
aspires to contribute to understanding about the meaning of human existence, in
particular, and of being as a whole, by exploring an aspect of experience,
the coronation festivities of the Oba of Benin, as a demonstration of the
effort to organize history in a manner that enhances a sense of the significance
of reality, as this value is actualized in particular contexts. Perception of
the meaning of existence, framed by its realisation in human life, is
inexhaustible, such enquiry being a central driver of human investigation in a
mysterious universe, novel vantage points constantly being sought from which to
approach this ultimate question.
I am
conducting this exploration through visual and verbal accounts of each point on
the Oba's coronation journey. This is being done through pictures depicting the
actions that define each stage of the coronation progression, explaining the explicit
significance of these activities, their specific roles in building the immediate,
conventionally ascribed significations of the coronation, as well as reflecting
on the further implications of these actions and their symbolic values for
human experience in general beyond the coronation context and Benin culture. The
project thus develops an understanding of the Oba’s coronation journey in terms
of a symbolic dimension that is both explicit and immediate as well as implicit
and extrapolative. Within the breadth of this context, the Oba is perceived as standing
for any and all human beings on the terrestrial journey.
I am working towards building the far reaching symbolic
implications of the coronation into a map of human life, a totality of human
development, in which the figure of the Oba is re-imagined in terms of the
medieval European conception of Everyman, better understood as EveryHuman. The
ultimate symbolic significance of the Oba’s coronation progression is depicted
as culminating, not in the crowning of the Oba and his subsequent ritual
actions as demonstrated at the coronation, nor in the linear progression
of human biology as actualised in the depiction of the Oba's coronation odyssey
as evoking the movement of human life. The
ceremonial dynamic of the coronation is described as consummated in the
conjunction of the idea of life as journey and the journeys of expansion of
awareness that may be undertaken within the larger framework of the flow of
life from birth to final transition. These journeys of knowledge unfold, within
this perspective, in terms of aspiration to a cognitive and spiritual crowning,
a crowning interpreted, in this context, in mystical terms.
This mystical perspective is adapted from Iro Eweka’s description, in "Olokun Symbols", of the Oba as understood in Benin cosmology as an interface between the spiritual and the human, the divine and the material. I transpose these ideas from their cultural context, demonstrating their possibilities beyond that originating framework. In a reinterpretation directed at empowering human beings in general, all respondents are thus invited to identify with the great celebration of the transmutation of history into timeless meaning enacted within time dramatized by the coronation ceremonies of the Oba of Benin.
This goal is inspired by the amazing wealth of symbolic interpretations of history within the context of brilliantly colourful spectacle represented by the coronation rites, exemplified for me by Victor Ekhator's picture of the Edigin N'Use waiting for the Crown Prince so they may both play the Akhue game through which the Prince will choose the name by which he will be known after his coronation as Oba, the picture's combination of dynamism and stillness, ancientness and presentness, sparking my imagination, initiating my interest in the coronation rites.
These solemn as well as celebratory activities constitute one of the richest visual and symbolic spectacles in the world, and by extension, in history. Their performative variety is unified by a hermeneutic thread, a conception of time, space and the human being converging to create and transmit meaning. These dramatizations are built on a motif of perennial resonance across time and space, a theme that integrates the totality of human experience in terms of a framework that is simple yet profound, capable of infinite expansion in its focus on an essence of humanity's terrestrial existence and the mystery of human direction beyond terrestrial being, the image of the journey.
This symbolic peregrination consists in the Oba traversing Benin from one point to another, a good part of the journey undertaken on foot, stopping at various locations of particular historical and sacred significance to engage in rituals, dances, game playing and other activities unique to each location, some religious, some secular, but all subsumed within the understanding of the identity of Oba as consummated within a matrix of meaning through which pulsates the life force enabled by his predecessors who have gone before him in a centuries long progression, their presence projected from beyond time and space into the newest assumption of the ancient and sacred office.
The entire sequence may be described as a ritual in which the Crown Prince is initiated into the historical, social and spiritual nexus embodied by the character and roles of the Oba of Benin, a ritual process shaped by a complex and far reaching symbolic architecture energised by action meant to invoke the unity of matter and spirit, of ruler and community.
The elucidation of this underlying interpretive logic is vital for an
adequate appreciation of the burst of colour and vitality realized by the
coronation's dynamics. Exploring their significance for humanity in general
opens up understanding of their demonstration of the profoundest human values.
The mystical orientation in terms of which I interpret the entire process facilitates
the distillation of the crowning of the Oba into a template that can be adapted
by others, transposing the political/sacred framework of the Obaship into a
philosophical and spiritual context which people anywhere may apply to
themselves.
Figure 2
The Oba Crosses a Symbolic Bridge, Attended by Two Chiefs and His New Wife and Watched by a Crowd
This magnificent picture by Akintunde Akinyele is the most powerful, in image quality, subject matter and composition, I have seen so far in the outpouring of pictures from the coronation. It shows the Oba attended by two chiefs and his new wife, evident through her foot barely visible behind the Oba, and watched by an excited and deeply attentive crowd, crossing what may be described as the symbolic Bridge of Transformation, an image that may be seen as summing up the explicit and implicit symbolism of the coronation ceremonies.
In "Pageantry and Politics Mix as Nigeria's Benin City Crowns
New Ruler" Akinyele and other contributors in Reuters,
Oct 21, 2016, describe the image as
showing "Newly crowned Oba of Benin Kingdom...guided through a symbolic
bridge by the palace chiefs during his coronation in Benin city, Nigeria,
October 20, 2016".
The bridge crossing could be perceived as encapsulating the coronation, a journey
from one zone of Benin to another, a progression reconstructing conceptions
of historical events, perspectives representing the restructuring of experience
within an interpretive framework in a manner resonant with the construction of
the bridge in this picture built for the express purpose of the coronation.
The river the bridge symbolises consists in a "shallow side (River
Oteghele) and a deeper, far side (River Omi)", as described in
Joseph Nevadomsky's " "The Benin Kingdom: Rituals of Kingship and their Social
Meanings 1" which Oba Ewedo in the 13th century crossed over in
the Oba's migration from his old palace to a new one in order to consolidate
his power in freedom from the Uzama, the councillors of state, who lived in the vicinity of the old palace,
an account pointing to the various challenges in the development of the Obaship
re-enacted in the coronation rites. The crossing was effected with the aid of a
ferryman, here depicted in the picture in the person of the chief with the
golden paddle. The other chief could suggest the military and political
implications of the crossing, as symbolised by the ceremonial sword he carries
with such majesty.
I am also inspired by the conjunction I perceive between the hermeneutic initiative, the conception of how to construct meaning, represented by the coronation rites, and the perceptions I have gained from walking long distances in Benin and her surrounding communities, experiencing the city's distinctive blend of ancient and modern urbanscape, in visual and contemplative dialogue with her sacred spaces, her human-made, and particularly, her natural shrines, which concretize the integration of spirit and matter, of erinmwin, the world of spirit, as understood in Benin cosmology and agbon, the physical world, through the location of dense groves within busy urban spaces, groves at times acting as historical markers, memorials of events associated with them, such as the grove on Oro street linked with Idia, the Queen Mother in the time of the 16th century Oba Esigie, a grove described as to have remained standing at that spot since that time by a man I spoke to who lives near the location.
The unfolding of Benin hermeneutic genius represented by the coronation rituals guides me to the integration of my diverse efforts in giving voice to my growing awareness of the possibilities of the relationship between space and meaning represented by the Benin urbanscape. This project aspires to unify my exploration of spatial values in relation to Benin, visible at my blog Great Benin, and my investigations, evident at another blog, Olokun, of the symbolism of Olokun, the spirit of the world's waters, the most prominent deity in Benin cosmology, a deity embodying the dramatization of the pervasive character of aquatic form in shaping existence, as summed up in Norma Rosen's " Chalk Iconography in Olokun Worship", an essay related to this project through Rosen’s exposition of the use of Olokun symbolism in delineating physical and spiritual space and time within an overarching metaphysical framework.
In
being centred on styles of engaging with history, this project is also
correlative with my earlier essay "Memory
and Amnesia: An Intercultural and Interdisciplinary Exploration",
"exploring presentations on remembering and forgetting from various
spatio-temporal frames, conjoining these with art from different cultural
contexts and periods, and distilling insights in relation to the Yoruba origin
Ifa system of knowledge as a strategy for investigating the intersection of
past, present and future", quoting the summary at that essay.
Figure 3
Ominigbon Divination Pattern Oghitan- Odin
Peavy analyses the gnomic language of Ominigbon as metaphorical expressions evoking Benin history in the context of Benin cosmology. I aspire to do something similar, but in relation to a more expansive frame of reference actualized by reflecting on images of the coronation ceremonies in terms of the historical and sacred activities they demonstrate, exploring the rationale suggested by these actions as strategies of constructing meaning within physical and social space, and discussing the possibilities of understanding relationships between these Benin centred activities and human experience in general, climaxing with an engagement with the coronation dynamics in terms of a movement towards an encounter between the human being and ultimate reality symbolized by the crowing of the Oba, thereby adapting the understanding of the monarch as existing within the nexus constituted by Osanobua, the ultimate creator, and Olokun, the spirit of the world's waters, the most prominent manifestation of Osanobua in Benin cosmology.
The construction of Benin city space as a hermeneutic matrix actuated by
the coronation ceremonies may be correlated with Ekpenede Idubor's
visualization of Ighitan-Odin, an Ominigbon configuration. In a
personal communication, he describes his use of a blue background in depicting
this visual form as symbolizing the ocean, representing the Edo
understanding of life as being like an ocean which Ominigbon is consulted
as an aid to navigating. Each circle in that visual framework constitutes an
associative space, the conjunctions between these spaces converging to build
the complete significance of the pattern. Similarly, each expression of the Oba’s
coronation itinerary is like a drum, the sounds emanating from which ripple
outward in a potentially infinite circle of associations.
The explicit and associative power of images is central in this effort on account of the remarkable variety and quality of pictures that have emerged from the 2016 coronation, a visual feast inspiring this initiative. The project aspires to mobilize as broad a range as possible of Benin arts, cosmology and history in constructing the associative scope of each of the photographs reflected upon, and moving beyond this configuring of Benin discourse to engage with forms outside the Benin context in terms of a tightly woven web of associations, springing from the platforms represented by specific images and image sequences to integrate the universe understood in terms of the frames of reference inspired by the associative force of these visual forms.
The project would thus actualize, in an epistemic sense, the Benin expression "Edo ore isi agbon", "Edo is the centre of the universe", an expression I first encountered in Tony Erha's "A Trafalgar Square in Benin City", from NEXT, July 23, 2010, the profound stimulus of which I first responded to in "Edo Ore Isi Agbon: Edo is the Centre of the Universe: Journeys Across Space and Time", engaging with the saying's invitation to an expansive interpretative range reached through pursuing as deeply as possible the implications of the web of far reaching significations actualized by Benin.
This breadth of interpretive possibility is also suggested by another Benin expression quoted by Joseph Nevadomsky in his foreword to Ekhaghuosa Aisien’s Benin Pilgrimage Stations, "Agha se edo, edo rree", "When one arrives in Edo [Benin], Edo is distant". This summation encapsulates the character of Benin as a space explicitly constructed to operate as a significatory matrix of vast, often esoteric proportions, the mind expanding influence of this observation inspiring my reflections in “Agha Sẹ Ẹdo,Ẹdo Rree”, "When One Arrives in Benin, Benin is Distant : Spatial, Temporal and Cognitive Dislocation and Conjunction Through the Lens of Benin Epistemology and Social Theory: Part 1 : Basic Framework", published, among other platforms, on the Edo centred site Otedo.com, along with the rich discussion it inspired on Edo language and philosophies.
Beyond discussing the hermeneutics of the coronation in its visual and ideational force, its significance as a cognitive template that has value beyond its spatial, temporal and cultural contexts, I am working on describing it as a form of living that can be adapted to individual or even group use. I would thus demonstrate its distillable value as a framework for exploring ultimate meaning that can be employed in a modified form by others, hence my interpretation of the ceremonies in terms of a mystical progression, a template for understanding spatial motion between meaning charged locations. This structure could be applied in a contemplative, purely mental manner or through a physical, ambulatory method, imitating the Oba’s actions of symbolic physical motion by re-enacting them oneself.
Figure 4
Physical and Cosmographic Space in Benin Thought
The simultaneous actualization of physical and cosmographic space in Benin thought, as depicted by Nosa Ekpenede Idubor. "The nine gates" he states, "represent the nine entrances to Ancient Benin and the half circle on both ends and between the gates stands for the shape of the Benin wall. The circle in the middle of each door or gate symbolizes the Palace, which is the heart and soul of Edo spirituality. The lines that converge on the4circles connote the roads that lead to the palace".
The Uselu Setting Forth
The Oba-to-Be, the Crown Prince, begins the coronation itinerary from his residence as the Edaiken of Uselu, Uselu being a section of Benin profound in historical and spiritual significance as demonstrated by the presence on Oro street in Uselu of a fenced and densely vegetated grove which no one may enter without the permission of the Oba, a natural space surrounded by various complexes of urban development, but coruscating with an uncanny energy, an esoteric core eloquent in its blazing presence at frequencies beyond the perception of most people, but the existence of which may be keenly sensed by a person who takes time to contemplate the unusual atmospheres, the fields of energy, energy marked by its power to affect the human mind, that characterizes Benin's culture of natural shrines, each with their own distinctive atmospheric signatures.
This grove was described to me by a resident of the area as the place where an Oba hid his mother, Idia, I expect, when he ascended to the throne in order to protect her from the fate of death that awaited the Queen Mother when her son became Oba, perhaps to avoid her influencing him in the independent execution of his royal duties. I was also informed that the grove served as a centre of spiritual power and zone of arming for war by Idia when preparing to go to war on behalf of her son.
I was also informed that the grove served as a centre of spiritual power and zone of arming for war by Idia when preparing to go to war on behalf of her son. The story suggests the nexus between time and space in Benin spatial symbolism, its use of physical markers of conceptions of how particular spaces shape history as well as the need to encapsulate these understandings by relating with these locations through symbolic actions such as the story of the Queen Mother moving to Uselu on the Oba's ascension, like the Oba moves from Uselu to Use and then into the heart of Benin for his coronation, traversing space as a way of traversing centuries of history represented by the places at which he stops to engage in ritual and dramatic actions.
Having successfully protected her life, laying a foundation that enabled the Oba break the practice of putting the Queen Mother to death on his assumption of office, the Queen Mother, in recognition of the protection Idia was given by the people of Uselu in that centuries gone transformative historical experience, moves to Uselu to take up residence when her son becomes Oba.
The story suggests the nexus between time and space in Benin spatial symbolism, its use of physical markers of conceptions of how particular spaces shape history as well as the need to encapsulate this understanding by relating with these locations through symbolic actions such as the story of the Queen Mother moving to Uselu on the Oba's ascension, like the Oba moves from Uselu to Use and then into the heart of Benin for his coronation, traversing space as a way of traversing centuries of history represented by the places at which he stops to engage in ritual and other dramatic actions.
Figure 5
Benin Walls and Moats as Imaginative Matrix
The 'three walls and moats dug at different times', surrounding Benin, as visualized by Nosa Ekpenede Idubor. This image is adapted here in suggesting the character of Benin as a cognitive matrix, a space that inspires expansion of the boundaries of cognition through the pervasive positioning of its symbolic and sacred spaces, facilitating interaction between various forms and states of being. The significance of these spaces is activated by the Oba’s coronation itinerary, actualizing the symbolic geography of the city as a theater of becoming.
It is morning yet on creation day, an African expression states, as quoted by Chinua Achebe in a book of the same title.
The calligraphic forms suggest arcane beauty.
The Akhue Game
The climax of the coronation pilgrimage, according to Abieyuwa Edigin in "Benin Crown Prince to Announce Coronation Name Thursday", a Nigeria Newspapers report of October 19, 2016, is the Crown Prince’s journey to Use to engage with the Edigin N'Use, the clan head of the Edigin family, in playing the Akhue game through which the Crown Prince will assume the new name he will bear as Oba, a process that reflects, par excellence, the concretisation of these ceremonies in some of the most fundamental and yet far reaching understanding of how humanity makes meaning out of what would have been the otherwise instinct driven progression of pure survival that is the most basic level of human existence, naming being core to human identity as affirming both individuality and the relationship between the individual and the social, symbolizing the emergence of one's humanity out of a biological substratum, and, in this instance, encapsulating the values represented by the ancient and yet continually re-energised identity that is the Obaship.
The generally understood values of naming achieve greater depth in the context of the historical account that grounds the Use naming rite. The story projects the idea of the name that is not given to one but is uttered by oneself as a demonstration of one's arrival at a climatic point of self awareness, a point demonstrated by the narrative of the first Oba of Benin, Eweka 1, who, described as dumb from birth, is depicted as uttering his first word “Owomika!" "my hand has struck it!", in triumph as he gained victory in the Akhue game by striking with his own seed the last remaining seed his fellow players had not been able to strike, a game introduced by his father Oranmiyan, in order to guide the prince into activating his capacity to speak, a sense of paternal transmission enshrined in the male exclusiveness of the Obaship.
Within this very brief summation a wealth of ideas is already evident or suggested, ideas that radiate in many directions across various cultures and temporal zones, from conceptions of names as social conventions integrating associations encapsulating a person's history as it is filtered through its perception by that person and others, to the more remote perception of names as embodiments of the metaphysical essence of a phenomenon, integrating the ultimate potential of their referent, cosmic matrices, metaphysical permutations articulating, in their own distinctive ways, the sonic vibrations constituting the originating and structuring forces of the cosmos.
The Crown Prince moves from Uselu to Use and then into
the heart of Benin for his coronation, traversing space as a way of navigating
centuries of history represented by the locations at which he stops to engage
in various ritual actions and other performances.
This journey within a journey is described in this context as a cognitive
and spiritual progression culminating in a mystical crowning, a motion in
which the symbolism of the Oba's coronation itinerary is understood in terms of
a correlative range of values.
These values
are grounded in the perception of the unfolding of the coronation as
a transposition of history in the present. They may be further appreciated as
enabling the conjunction of the immediacy represented by time, space, matter
and mind with the subtlety of spirit.
This understanding may be further expanded into a perception of the coronation as a map of possibility within which a person may travel vicariously with the Oba, reaching beyond the immediate grasp of the symbolic situations that constitute the coronation journey to interpreting these contexts as cosmological frameworks, means of relating the entire journey to the totality of existence within the configuration of ultimate reality, as the traveller moves forward in the aspiration to a direct encounter with the ultimate, a mystical interpretation adapted from Iro Eweka's description in "Olokun Symbols" of the Oba as understood in Benin thought as an interface between the spiritual and the human, the divine and the terrestrial.
Eweka's essay, in relation to my memory of him as a person who embodies some of the values discussed in that essay, an embodiment suggesting the existential possibilities of the integration of metaphysical mystery and human identity in relation to humanity in general represented by the Obaship, inspired my earlier effort at correlating human individuality and the cosmological through the lens of Benin Olokun cosmography in "Iro Eweka : The Human Face, the Human Mind and the Possibility of a Mysticism Inspired by Benin Olokun Symbolism".
Versions of Lukasa
Various designs of lukasa, demonstrating aspects of the variety within recurrent patterns in the creation of spatial relations demonstrated by this artistic form. Evident here are the use of beads and of geometric and figurative structures in which the individual identities of the various shapes and the relationships between them represent mythic and historical accounts, political relations, landscape features, flora and fauna and the configurations of these referents within a cosmographic frame. The symbols on the lukasa are “loci of memory”, acting as cues to the performance of the ideas associated with them, as Mary and Allen Roberts describe this semiotic system in "Memory: Luba Art and the Making of History".
Like the landmarks, the pilgrimage stations, in Aisien's words, of the Benin chieftaincy and Benin Oba 's coronation rites, these lukasa structural configurators operate as memory facilitators, mechanisms catalysing the convergence of history, myth, spirituality and politics as perceptions of these intersections are re-enacted in the present.
Is it possible to develop the Oba of Benin's coronation ceremonies into such a distillation of spatial and symbolic relations, perhaps ultimately enabling a fusion of images and ideas within the mind, the kindling of the triple fire of knowledge, meditation, illumination, adapting the mystical theory of the Hindu Katha Upanishad, opening a window into the source of reality in a zone in which the temporal is absorbed in the infinite, and the particulars of being assimilated into the ground of existence?
Image sources: Top: From Mary Nooter Roberts and Allen F. Roberts "Memory: Luba Art and the Making of History" (26). Bottom left : from the collection of the Brooklyn Museum through Wikipedia on lukasa. Bottom right: From Pinterest through "On the Water: Forced Crossings". All accessed 3rd Jan.2017.
The conjunction of the Oba and Olokun enables a broad range of interpretive potential, particularly in relation to the coronation progression as a hermeneutic enterprise, an effort by the creators of this ceremonial cycle to mobilize a large range of ideas about Benin history and culture. The space the Oba traverses in his journey may be understood as physical space, as historical space, as space symbolizing the possibilities of human development, as cosmic space and ultimately as hermeneutic space, a constellation of interpretive actualisations invoking particular possibilities out of the hermeneutic potential enabled by Benin history, this sea of possible interpretations being evocative of the primal generative role in terms of life on earth of the aquatic realm understood as Olokun's domain, a correlation between religious thinking and scientific thinking on the origins of terrestrial life developed by John Mason in Black Gods: Orisa Studies in the New World,Olokun being one of the deities shared by the Benin and the Yoruba whose religion is Mason's focus, an aspect of their cultural and historical intertwining.
The convergence of the immediate and the cosmological, of spatial location with ultimate possibility represented by this project is also demonstrated in my adaptation, in the film Meditation on Christopher Okigbo's Labyrinths, of a similar effort by the poet Christopher Okigbo. In his poetic cycle Labyrinths, Okigbo depicts Idoto, the spirit of the river of his village Ojoto, in Nigeria's Igboland, as " the water spirit that nurtures all creation".
The
Eweka/Okigbo/Idoto/Olokun inspirations are also unified by the idea of the
aquatic element of the earth, in its nurturing character and pervasive
presence, as demonstrating divine presence, Olokun being understood as the
spirit of the world's aquatic forms. This pervasive nurturing personality is
associated with the Oba of Benin in Benin thought, as described by Iro Eweka in
"Olokun Symbols" "... in Edo tradition Olokun and Osalobua [ the
creator and sustainer of the cosmos ] are virtually co-terminus...the Oba
is [ seen as] the human embodiment of Olokun [ ideas reinforced by ] the Olokun symbol "Owen Iba Ede Ku"
meaning 'the Sun never misses the day' [ which may also evoke'] the Oba,
Olokun and Osalobua, covering the world with radiant light".
Inspired
by these ideas, I reinterpret the Oba's coronation progression as a
cognitive template that has value beyond its spatial, temporal and cultural
contexts, a mystical progression, a template for understanding spatial motion
between spaces of unique semantic value, adaptable as a contemplative or even
ambulatory style of exploring ultimate meaning, the latter actualized through
the understanding of the act of walking between the locations traversed as
demonstrating philosophical significance.
Correlating Benin and Non- Benin Hermeneutic Systems
The Lukasa
I aspire to interpret the coronation progression as an integration of
geography, history, art and the sacred within a cosmographic frame, a visual and ideational depiction of the metaphysical structure and
dynamism of the cosmos, a conception of its source and ultimate
orientation that is uniquely Benin but which speaks to the deepest human needs.
Such an interpretive structure would combine the visual beauty and
abstract resonance of a lukasa, a Luba memory board, and the combination of
simplicity and capacity for infinite symbolic elaboration of a Yoruba Orisa
cosmology origin opon ifa, these examples suggesting the orientation of this
project in contributing to the development of the contemporary and timeless
significance of classical African hermeneutic systems, theories and
practices of interpretation grounded in African cultures.
A lukasa is "a sophisticated memory device", according to Wikipedia, an example of Luba art from what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo, used to "delineate the cardinal points of a socially and ideologically significant space", employed, not to "symbolize thought so much as stimulate it", as described by Mary Nooter Roberts in "Luba Art and Divination" , through which colours and spatial configurations of abstract objects are used in evoking the Luba cosmos in terms of the interrelationships of time, space and the dynamism of human and non-human actors within these coordinates.
Along similar lines, the coronation ceremonies of the Oba of Benin need to be understood as a historiographic framework, a style of engaging with history, whether understood in literal terms, as a direct correspondence between historical action and historical record, or as Nevadomsky argues, as exemplifying the distillation of actual events in symbolic terms or as imaginative inventions portrayed as enactments of historical occurrences, as Oberime argues maybe the case in aspects of Benin oral history memorialized in the coronation or combinations of such strategies.
Mathematical Symbols
The lukasa example also suggests the possibility of taking further the focusing of history in terms of contemporary occurrences represented by the Oba's coronation pilgrimage by distilling this conglomeration of dynamic humanity, distinctive in the profound excitement and ordered cacophony of the experience, into abstract symbols, through which this cultural performance may be transformed into a platform for further reflection. Like mathematical symbolism representing what Tim Gowers describes of the essence of mathematics as the capacity for abstraction in Mathematics : A Very Short Introduction, and as mathematical symbols have been used in various cosmologies, from the Jewish Kaballah to Benin cosmology, these symbols may facilitate the mind's climbing into increasingly greater degrees of abstraction and inclusiveness of reference as it rises from a grounding in concrete reality into a network unifying the coronation progression but going beyond it to encapsulate the Benin cosmos, the cosmos as seen from a platform grounded in Benin conceptions of the place of the historical within the cosmological.
Hermeneutics of Time
The pictures that constitute the focus of this project, along with other images complementing these central visual forms, facilitate this process of recollective abstraction. Adapting Mary and Allen Roberts' discussion, in "Audacities of Memory", of the visual forms that make up a lukasa in terms of strategies of recollection evident in European history, one may approach the visualization of the pilgrimage stations, borrowing Ekhaguosa Aisien's term in The Benin-City Pilgrimage Stations, for the locations visited by Benin chiefs in their own investiture ceremonies, as depicting matrices of memory, spatial locations at which past and present converge through the enacting of historical narratives dramatizing conceptions of Benin history at the sites the Royal Leopard is depicted as traversing.
The pictures of the coronation employed by this project, amplified by other visual forms discussed in tandem with them, facilitate the contemplation of the ceremonies as actualizing the past in the present in a manner meant to shape the future. This thrust of the project is better appreciated through the intersection of investigations of the coronation rites, explorations of memory in other contexts and studies in generating conjunctions between the known and the unknown through the mediation of history.
The construction of social consciousness through the coronation ceremonies is represented by Joseph Nevadomsky's "The Benin Kingdom: Rituals of Kinship and their Social Meanings 1", with Daniel E. Inneh, "Kingship Succession Rituals in Benin. 1: Becoming a Crown Prince", "Kingship Succession Rituals in Benin. 2: The Big Things" and "Kingship Succession Rituals in Benin. 3: The Coronation of the Oba" and Joseph Eboreime's "Coronation as Drama: The Installation of a Benin Monarch as a Study in the Continuity of Kinship: The Transformation and the Manufacture of Ethnic Identity" and "The Installation of a Benin Monarch: Rite De Passage in the Expression of Ethnic Identity in Nigeria".
Tina
van der Vlies, in her "Multidirectional
War Narratives in History Textbooks", drawing on Michael Rothberg's
concept of multidirectional
memory from his
Multidirectional
Memory: Remembering the Holocaust in the Age of Decolonization (Cultural Memory
in the Present) discusses how school textbook
narratives generate new meanings by combining different histories, places
and times, thus facilitating understanding of new, unknown
situations by putting them in familiar frames of reference. She describes this
strategy as developing interpretive multidirectionality, making
sense of the past by generating continuity and meaning through
interpretations of the present and the future.
Angulu Onwuejeogwu's Afa
Symbolism and Phenomenology in Nri Kingdom and Hegemony: An African Philosophy
of Social Action, examines Igbo Afa divination as framing the
past, the known, in terms of the unknown, in order to address questions about
the future arising in the present.
The Yoruba origin Ifa divination conflates historical contexts and imaginative transmutation. The culturally congruent Benin Iha Ominigbon divination is presented by Daryl Peavy in "The Benin Monarchy: Olokun and Iha Ominigbọn" as actualizing the imaginative reworking of Benin history as a divinatory strategy.
The
Ominigbon diviner reads the spatial configurations of the divination
instruments in terms of narratives drawn from Benin social contexts utilized to
speak for the present and the future, a hermeneutic strategy that resonates, in
different ways, with memory mobilizations across cultures.
Pictures of the coronation can be used as templates for evoking, not only specific historical incidents and ritual actions undertaken at the ceremonies, but the total range of associative possibilities they enable through the intersection of space and action, of past and present, of history and historiography, of spatiotemporal coordinates in relation to cosmology.
"The leopard is the symbol
of the Great Benin Monarchy, one of the King’s praise names being Ekpen N'Owa
or the Home Leopard , and I have used the footprints of the leopard in
illustrating all the nine stations the heir apparent to the throne must
visit before being crowned Oba of Benin, from Eguae Edaiken, his palace as
Crown Prince at Uselu, at the bottom of the image, to his choosing of the name
he will bear as Oba, at Use, in the middle, to his crowning at Urho-Okpota, the
Gate of Okpota, near the top and his symbolic battle with Ogiamien at Ekiopagha
at the top, a battle representing the Oba of Benin gaining total control over
the territory eventually known as Benin.
In ancient times Great Benin had nine entrance gates and, to date, a heir to the throne goes through nine stations to get crowned. The number nine, in Edo thought, represents something that is pregnant or that is about to reveal something new to the world.
The stations move from the
bottom to the top, beginning with Eguae Edaiken where the journey of the heir
apparent starts. On a fixed date he is escorted from there by the people of
Uselu on his way back to Benin, where he stops at an historic palm tree called
Udin Ama-Mieson-Aimiuwa which translates to "work before pleasure".
He will climb the tree symbolically, a ceremony that goes back to the time
of Oba Ewuare N'Ogidigan, Oba Ewuare the Awesome, whose life as heir apparent
to the throne was characterized by long suffering which included periods when
he had to climb palm trees on this spot to cut the fruits for a living.
At Iya Akpan the Uselu
nobles take leave of the Edaiken, the Crown Prince, while Oredo nobles would
then escort him into the city. He spends three days at Eko Ohae or Bachelor's
Camp. He proceeds from Eko Ohae to Usama which is the venue of the coronation,
where he will stay for seven days. From there he visits Use where he chooses a
name before the end of his seven day stay at Usama and he then returns to
Usama where he is crowned Oba of Benin. He does not know beforehand which name
he will be crowned with.
He stops at Isekhere to perform the ceremonial crossing of a bridge. A reminder
of the day Oba Ewedo [crossed] a river on Isekhere territory. He proceeds to
Urho-Okpota, the Gate of Okpota, which dates to the 15th century. Okpota was a
great traditional doctor who prepared charms that brought prosperity to Benin
kingdom. From Urho-Okpota he then heads to the Palace . He engages in a mock
battle with Ogiamien at Ekiopagha, a reminder of the 13th century battle
between Oba Ewedo and Ogiamien".
Image and verbal text by Nosa Ekpenede Idubor. Text quoted by Idubor from handouts given to guests at the 1979 Coronation of Oba Erediauwa 1. Slightly modified and with the addition of Idubor's explanation of the symbolism of the number nine in Benin thought. Image and text from Idubor's Facebook account post of 15/10/2015. Accessed 21/11/2016.
The Home Leopard in Benin City Space
Nosa Ekpenede Idubor's visualization of the Oba's coronation itinerary in terms of the footprints of the monarch in his characterization as the Home Leopard (Fig.6), for example, is correlative with Nigerian Cross River Ekpe esoteric order Nsibidi iconography, its visual symbolism evoking the footprints of a leopard, the totem animal of the order, through alternating white and blue triangles, arranged in a grid or meeting at their apexes to constitute the centre of a structure through their convergence.
This abstract evocation of the graceful presence of the powerful jungle creature is complemented by depictions of the animal in terms closer to its physical reality as evident in Ukara cloth art, a central expression of Nsibidi. These abstract and figurative evocations belong to a continuum of identification with the leopard, reflecting what may be described as the character of Ekpe as inspired by the world of the forest perceived as an agglomeration of various forms of being, material and non-material, an ecology in which spirits coexist with animals, inspiring the perception of animals in terms of both the qualities intrinsic to them and of spirits associated with them, an artistic articulation of cosmology I expound on in the series of essays that constitute the “Nsibidi/Ekpuk Philosophy and Mysticism : Research and Publication Project”.
Elliott Leib and Renee Romano's "Reign of the Leopard: Ngbe
Ritual", describes the mobilisation of these ideas in Ngbe/Ekpe ritual, Ekpe
being its Efik name, Ngbe, its designation by the Ejagham ( 48, 52, 54):
The cultural control of nature is concretized through the secret iconography and ritual performance of Ngbe. The ekat, the secret recesses of the Ngbe lodge, reproduces the natural domain of the leopard in the forest within the confines of the lodge.
Secrets learned during initiations in [ wild vegetative natural spaces] have their material and ideographic representations concealed in the ekat. It is there that the leopard spirit is kept in captivity with a 'chain around (his) neck to lock him while sleeping.' Only the iyamba can unloose the chain. The leopard spirit emerges from the ekat, where he has been ritually prepared, passing underneath the starch-resist, blue-and white- dyed ukara cloth to the sounds of the Ngbe voice [sacred drum]. Numerous nsibidi signs on the cloth depict what is to be found in the secret chamber, among them the pictographic symbols learned during initiations.The member who can decipher the meaning of a sign also knows the material object it represents. The most common of these signs is the paw print of the leopard,composed of alternating blue and white triangles. Also found are hieroglyphs of other Ngbe [wild] animals, most commonly the tortoise, crocodile, [wild ] cow, lizard, and snake. In the leopard dance, the symbolic imagery of the Ngbe secrets is embodied in a dynamic rite of social control. In a bold spectacle of music, song, and dance, the leopard spirit demonstrates its natural prowess.
A magnificent evocation is thus developed of the confluence of the numinous and the organization of society in terms of a natural entity, the leopard, amidst the forest of symbols constituting the Ekpe/Ngbe cosmos, resonating with the constellation of associations in terms of which the Benin monarchy is constructed.
The Ekpe/Ngbe symbol space is constituted by depictions of animal, plant and celestial forms as well as abstractions responding to these natural forms. This symbolism suggests the emphasis on human interaction with nature that is at the heart of the Ekpe/Ngbe universe and its correlations with the culture of nature veneration in Benin, nature being recognized as a partner in humanity's efforts to relate with spiritual reality, even as a guide to engaging with the ultimate, as indicated to me in conversation by the Isiekhure, then chief priest of Benin.
Within the Ekpe/Ngbe contexts, the leopard becomes evocative of humanity's identification with forces of nature in which nature may be understood in terms of forest as cosmos, the ecological complexity and biological vitality of the forest as a microcosm of the cosmos in its integration of various forms of being. This perspective is also suggested by Abiola Irele's description of Ijala, Yoruba hunter's poetry, in "Tradition and the Yoruba Writer : Fagunwa, Tutuola and Soyinka", as I demonstrate in "Forest as Cosmos : Abiola Irele on Classical Yoruba Philosophy of Nature. A related orientation is also evident in other African cosmologies such as that of the Beng, as depicted in Alma Gottlieb's "Loggers vs Spirits in the Beng Forest, Coite d'Ivoire: Competing Models" from Michael Sheridan and Celia Nyameru's African Sacred Groves : Ecological Dynamics and Social Change . Ayi Kwei Armah, in a personal communication, describes himself as having adapted from Akan thought his dramatization of the navigation of the forest as paradigmatic for manoeuvring within human social experience in his philosophical novel, The Healers, the foregoing examples being aspects of the correlations I make between various ways of navigating space understood as a cosmological construct in "Hermeneutics of Space : Soyinka, Irele, Armah".
The Oba of
Benin integrates a similar breadth of cosmological values in the navigation of Benin city space represented by
his coronation rites. He moves across an urbanscape configured as a dialogue
between sacred and secular space represented by the variety of
natural and human made shrines existing in close proximity with the expressions
of the busy life of a modern metropolis, interacting with these
different instantiations of spatial identity in terms distinctive to each. The Oba,
the Home Leopard, amalgamates both human and non-human values of nature through
navigating Benin city space, exemplifying the convergence of spirit and matter,
of erhinwein and agbon, that is the Benin cosmos.
The project is organized using a website, Benin Cartographic Mysticism : Exploring Space, Body and Mind through Benin-City, which presents the unfolding of the coronation in images and verbal texts, elaborating on the various ideas involved. Cartographic mysticism is described in my "Cartographic Mysticism in the Context of Benin Spatial Symbolism", as "the use of relationships between spatial locations as a means of mapping the cosmos in order to gain intimate experience of its essential nature".
Another essay, "The Edigin N'Use, the Oba of Benin and the Akhue Game: A Symbolic Enactment of Benin History", is in preparation, directly inspired by Victor Ekhator's arresting picture of the Edigin N'Use waiting for the Crown Prince to arrive at the Edigin's palace for the Akhue game. Another essay in development, tentatively titled "Crossing the Bridge of Transformation", engages with Akintunde Akinyele's photograph of the newly crowned Oba symbolically enacting Oba Ewedo's (1255 AD) crossing of a river in the lsekherhe territory in order to move to a new palace that would enable him shield himself from the conflicts generated by living in the same location as the Uzama, the councillors of state.
Figure 8
Elegance and associative force come together in this Olokun cosmogram, a collage created as a visual depiction of the cosmos. It is adapted, in this context, in symbolizing the cosmographic coordinates actualized by the Oba's coronation progression.
The central image depicts the initiatory progression of a person being inducted into Olokun mysteries and it comes from Norma Rosen's redrawing of Benin Olokun chalk art in "The Initiation of a Priestess: Performance and Imagery in Olokun Ritual" with Joseph Nevadomsky. The two igha-ede, circles bisected by radiating lines, are used, among other purposes, in indicating the division and convergence of material and spiritual space and time, in relation to infinity. They are from Rosen's rendition of Olokun chalk art in her "Chalk Iconography in Olokun Worship".
The concentric circles bisected
by vertical lines at the top and bottom of the symbol may connote a point of
departure at the bottom and a point of consummation at the top, representing
the Crown Prince's movement from his palace at Uselu to his eventual crowning
as Oba and the completion of the coronation ceremonies represented by
his subsequent movement into his palace in Benin.
The motion evoked by the vertical lines rising from and into the concentric
circles, in tandem with the spatio-temporal coordinates projected by the
igha-ede symbols, indicate the correlation between the royal progression
and the human quest for ultimate meaning actualized through an engagement with
the parameters of one's experiences at a point in time and space. The
concentric circles at the bottom may also stand for one's spatio-temporal
location and its psychological and social framework and the circles at the top
for the ultimate reality one strives to orient oneself towards. The intersecting lines at the mid-point of the
vertically ascending lines evoke climatic points in the progress of this
orientation, a progression also suggested by the ladder on the right.
The circular igha-ede further configured by intersecting lines and flanking the tableau indicate the convergence of contrastive but complementary aspects of being in constituting existence, with the human being positioned at the centre of the metaphysical matrix represented by the circles, perceving the cosmos as an integral part of the totality it actualizes, or depicted as looking upon it from outside, an effort to cognise this totality from a standpoint outside its wholeness, the latter aspiration possibly impossible in practice for a human being, but an imaginatively plausible stance, indicating human ability to conceive transgressive expansions of its own defining cognitive frameworks.
Looking at the books in his library, which, in the spirit of supreme writers like the Italian writer Dante Alighieri in his Commedia, try to encapsulate the cosmos, the character in “The Yellow Rose” from Collected Ficciones of Jorge Luis Borges, reaches the realization that these texts constitute simply another addition to the cosmos, not a reflection of them, “the tall, haughty volumes that made a golden dimness in the corner of his room were not (as his vanity had dreamed them) a mirror of the world, but just another thing added to the world's contents”, Borges thereby exploring his abiding theme of the human hunger to grasp ultimate reality and the challenges that compulsion involves.
The undulating lines that frame the visual dynamism of the Olokun cosmogram represent waves of water, suggesting Olokun's aquatic domain. They are used here, in addition, in connoting the flow of ise, vital force, as understood in Benin cosmology, a force enabling change within stability in the construction of the cosmos. Ise, described by Daryl Peavy in "Ase or Vital Force of Transformation and Empowerment" and "The Benin Monarchy : Olokun and Iha Ominigbon" (112,118-9 ), is a concept correlative with similar ideas presented by John Mbiti in African Religions and Philosophy as unifying various African cosmologies, an idea also correlatable with Mbiti's depiction of the perception of the rhythm of rainfall as suggesting cosmic dynamism in those world views.
Peavy points out in his essay that similar
conceptions are also evident beyond African systems, as Edward Goldsmith also
observes, a classic example of this being the use of the imagery of
water in connoting related ideas in Chinese thought, as discussed in Sarah
Allan's The Way of Water and Sprouts of Virtue.
The idea of vital force seems to have been made prominent in studies of African cosmology by Placide Tempels in his Bantu Philosophy, the controversial character of his analysis, evident, among many other responses, in B. Matolino's "Tempel's Philosophical Racialism".
A foundational definition of the concept comes from the English Oxford Living Dictionaries, defining the idea in terms that draw upon Western thought but which may also be understood as summing up an aspect of the African perspective:
(in some theories, particularly that of [French philosopher Henri ] Bergson) [ it is ] a hypothetical force, independent of physical and chemical forces, regarded as being the causative factor in the evolution and development of living organisms.
This creative potential is further associated in African thought with consciousness and with the ability of the human being to direct their own embodiment of this force in the creation of change, the discussion of the equivalent Yortuba concept, ase, in Henry John Drewal et al's Yoruba: Nine Centuries of African Art and Thought and of the Igbo variant, ike, by Chinua Achebe in "The Igbo World and its Art", being two other highly suggestive expositions of this rich idea in African metaphysics.
The triadic structure realized by the design of the Olokun cosmogram as defined by the three undulating lines, the three concentric circles, and the three vertical and intersecting lines, may be understood as adapting Barbara Winston Blackmun’s account in "Icons and Emblems in Ivory: An Altar Tusk from the Palace of Old Benin" (156-7) of the triadic principle, particularly in connection with the Oba, as central to Benin thought and Iroko Eweka's demonstration, in "Olokun Symbols", of a triadic configuration actualised by the Oba/Olokun/Osanobua correlation in Olokun graphic art.
In this context, the Oba may symbolise EveryHuman in relation to Olokun, as expressed in the aquatic constitution of the earth and the human body, an aquatic presence understood as a divine identity, a divine identity grounded in Osanobua, the ultimate reality that enables existence.
Figure 9
Coronation Progression Framed by Olokun Cosmograms
Collage evoking terrestrial progression within cosmographic coordinates, as actualized by the coronation ceremonies of the Oba of Benin.
The central image in the collage is Nosa Ekpenede Idubor's depiction of the footprints of the Home Leopard, the Oba of Benin, in his coronation journey from Uselu to Ekopagha. On this central form are superimposed examples of Benin Olokun chalk as recreated by Norma Rosen in "Chalk Iconography in Olokun Worship", top and bottom, and by Iro Eweka in "Olokun Symbols”, middle.
Spatio-temporal coordinates are traversed by the coronation pilgrimage at the intersection of matter and spirit, of time and eternity, of the divine and the human.
The igha-ede recreated by Rosen evokes these conjunctions of diverse but complementary modes of being. The Olokun symbol reproduced by Eweka conjoins these synergies in terms of an evocation of solar illumination representing the invigoration of being by the human/divine matrix of the Oba, Olokun and Osanobua.
Sources for Images and Explanations of the Coronation Ceremonies
I know of five groups of sources for images, explanations and interpretations of the coronation ceremonies of the Oba of Benin. These are pictures, films, art, published texts and the oral accounts of informed people. The richest visual sources for the 2016 coronation known to me are the pictures on individuals' Facebook accounts, films on YouTube and Facebook and images in online news reports, the websites of photo agencies such as Getty Images and the image collections of photographers who covered the coronation.
Images
The most informative collection of pictures I have encountered so far are at the Facebook account of Victor Ekhator, their value consisting in his organizing and labelling the photographs in terms of the sequence and dates of the coronation rites, in the quality of the pictures and his explanations of the significance of some of the images. Complementing Ekhator's matching of sequence, images and explanation are the Facebook pictures of Benin chief Ambrose Osuan, particularly the often high quality photographs with explanations, depicting his strategic roles in the 2016 coronation of Oba Ewuare II and the 1979 coronation of the Oba's father Erediauwa I. Edo centred Facebook pages, such as Edo House, also display rich image collections of the 2016 and 1979 coronations. Continued searching on Facebook and access to more individual Facebook accounts, mainly those whose immediate ancestry is Benin and who were at the coronation, will yield more pictures and information.
Verbal and Video Accounts and Online Information Archives
Most news reports on the coronation provide general information and some detail, and between them, contribute significantly to building the pictorial image of the ceremonies. The YouTube videos of the grand activities project vividly the excitement and pageantry of the celebrations. Bringing together what I discover, I display my online sources at Studying Great Benin, a Facebook page I set up for the project. I use the Facebook group Research for saving links to potential ideas or information sources outside Benin studies, but which could be relevant for my work on Benin and for other projects.
The most detailed and analytically encompassing verbal accounts known to me of
the sequence, symbolism and further interpretive possibilities of
the coronation ceremonies come from the scholarly articles of Joseph
Nevadomsky and Joseph Eboreime. The most comprehensive of these are
Nevadomsky's detailed examination of the 1979 coronation of Oba Erediauwa I,
beginning from the ascension of the Crown Prince to his role as Edaiken of
Uselu, the sending off of the departed Oba, his father, and
the eventual crowning of the Edaiken of Uselu, the Crown Prince, as Oba
Erediauwa I, represented by the essay with Daniel E. Inneh, "Kingship Succession Rituals in
Benin. 1: Becoming a Crown Prince" ( African Arts, Vol. 17, No.
1, Nov., 1983, pp. 47-54+87), followed by "Kingship Succession Rituals in
Benin. 2: The Big Things" (African Arts, Vol. 17, No. 2, Feb.,
1984, pp. 41-47+90-91 ) and "Kingship
Succession Rituals in Benin. 3: The Coronation of the Oba" (African
Arts, Vol. 17, No. 3, May, 1984, pp. 48-57+91-92 ).
Nevadomsky's rich and exciting "The Benin Kingdom: Rituals of Kinship and their Social Meanings 1" (African Study Monographs, 1993, 14(2): 65-77) sums up and reinterprets those earlier essays, contextualizing the Edaiken ascension rites, the Oba's departure rituals and the coronation ceremonies, relating this sequence centred in the processes of transition involving the Obaship with other ceremonies performed by the chiefs and the Oba, discussing the meanings of these symbolic actions in terms of their understanding within the Benin hermeneutic matrix, how they are interpreted by the participants themselves, the Oba and the chiefs, and relates them to theories from the relevant globally dominant disciplinary constructions and to scholarship on Benin. Nevadomsky thus deftly telescopes a massive range of reference in this discussion, abbreviating significantly in order to project the breadth of the picture being painted.
Nevadomsky's explorations are complemented by Joseph Eboreime’s essays, also built on the 1979 coronation of Oba Erediauwa I, "Coronation as Drama: The Installation of a Benin Monarch as a Study in the Continuity of Kingship: The Transformation and the Manufacture of Ethnic Identity" (The Cambridge Journal of Anthropology,Vol. 10, No. 2, 1985, pp. 41-53) and "The Installation of a Benin Monarch: Rite De Passage in the Expression of Ethnic Identity in Nigeria" ( ICOMOS International Council of Monuments and Sites Archive), depicting the coronation ceremonies as processes directed at consolidating the power of the monarchy, processes grounded in rituals invoking ancestral and non-human spirits into companionship with humans.
Eboreime elaborates on the character of the coronation celebrations as the deliberate creation and transformation of social meaning, changing over the years in response to internal and external social pressures, acting as a point of focus for Edo people who are native to Benin, for non-Edos within Benin and for other ethnicities in contemporary Edo state. He sums up this imperative of cultural unification as particularly significant on account of the attenuation of the political authority of the Oba created by the colonial experience, the coronation being a spectacle enjoyed, and, to some degree, participated in, by all who care to do so, this universality of appeal and involvement reinforcing the continued significance of the Obaship and its related institutions.
Figure 10
Conceptual Space of Classical African Theatre
Chinyere Okafor's visualization of the conceptual space within which classical African theatre is actualized, from her "Behind the Inscrutable Wonder: The Dramaturgy of the Mask Performance in Traditional African Society".
This framework may also elucidate the web of relations galvanized by the coronation ceremonies as the Oba re-enacts historical incidents, such as Oba Ewedo's 14th century bridge crossing, Oba Ewuare's climbing of palm trees to pluck fruits for a living in his struggles before becoming Oba, Oba Eweka I, in the 12th century, as heir to the throne, playing the Akhue game, victory in which catalyzed his ability to speak , the exclamation he made on that occasion being subsequently modified to constitute his coronation name, theatrical activities conducted in full view of spectators, thereby demonstrating Okafor's description of the core of drama as consisting of "three basic elements: performers engaged in mimetic action, spectators, and place of representation (which can be either indoors or outdoors)".
Okafor uses concentric circles in suggesting the co-inherence of ontological categories subsumed within a universe in which matter and spirit intersect, a metaphysical framework dramatized in the coronation festivities by the centrality of sacred action, centred in prayers at shrines, as part of the coronation ceremonies.
New Possibilities Afforded by the 2016 Coronation
Not only is each stage in the coronation sequences Nevadomsky and Eboreime discuss rich enough to yield an essay or even a book, the outpouring of information and images on the recently concluded coronation ceremonies makes it clear that this strategic zone of Benin social existence has opened up in a manner unprecedented, enabling access to knowledge from within the cognoscenti of Benin court ritual but also disseminating that knowledge freely to the public, facilitating the presentation of the coronation in a manner that enables a very significant extension of the level of detail provided by Nevadomsky and Eboreime while drawing upon their scope of reference and their interpretations.
The image feast emerging from the 2016 coronation, courtesy of the explosion of access to photographic devices in Nigeria, from the mobile phone and computer tablet to cameras, in use by general citizens and professionals, and the ready availability of publishing platforms for the display of these images, of which such social media as Facebook are central, suggests that an unprecedented opportunity has arrived to collect and organize visual and verbal information of this great event.
Figure 11
Intersection of Mind, Matter, Space and Time
The intersection of mind, matter, space and time, visualized in relation to the conjunction of a Yoruba Orisa tradition opon ifa and a Benin Olokun igha-ede.
These categories of consciousness and terrestrial structure are the forms in terms of which the recreation of history in the coronation ceremonies take place.
They are also the contexts through which the interpretative activities of this essay are conducted.
These foundational structurations of experience and of discourse are visualized in terms of the conjunction of the symbolism of concentric circles demonstrated by the mutually visually amplifying images and symbolism of a Yoruba Orisa tradition opon ifa and a Benin Olokun igha-ede.
This symbolic enclosure is overlooked by the face of Esu on the opon ifa, embodiment in Yoruba cosmology of correlation between forms of being and modes of knowledge.
Esu’s face resonates with sculptural depictions on the opon ifa of what may be described as the snakes of dynamic motion, evoking Mazisi Kunene’s reference, on Zulu cosmology in Anthem of the Decades, to Iyandezulu, the “Bundle of Heaven”, the “cosmic snake whose movements are in thousands”, a cosmological vision that could be adapted to suggest the transformation of history through consciousness, subsuming history and its interpretation in terms of cosmic motion, pointing to the aspiration of this essay to integrate these conceptions of being in relation to the ground of existence.
Project Funding
The project is funded by Jhalobia Recreation Park and Gardens, a pioneering landscaping and garden company at 65 Murtala Muhammed Airport Road, Lagos Nigeria, whose work in landscape architecture is correlative with this project in terms of Jhalobia's commitment to transformation of space in visual and symbolic terms and whose initiatives in shaping architectural interiors through plants and fabrics is resonant with the interior structures through which sacred meaning is concretised in Benin culture.
All further funding would be welcome and publicly acknowledged. Any information or images relevant to the project would also be welcome, by any medium, email (toyin....@gmail.com), Facebook, surface mail or by phone to 080
Figure 12
Olokun Symbol of Earth by Nosa Ekpenede Idubor
Composed in terms of the colours deep red and white central to Benin visual symbolism