From Terrestrial to Cosmic History: The Global Cosmology Introduction and the Acknowledgement Pages of Toyin Falola's Ifá Priestcraft: Ifáyemí Elébuìbon and Yorùbá Ancestral Knowledge Systems: Ifá Priestcraft Review No.4, Part 1
Oluwatoyin Adepoju
From Terrestrial to Cosmic History
The Global Cosmology Introduction and the Acknowledgement Pages of Toyin Falola's
Ifá Priestcraft: Ifáyemí Elébuìbon and Yorùbá Ancestral Knowledge Systems
Ifá Priestcraft Review No.4
Part 1
Collage by Myself showing Ifayemi Elebuibon at Various Stages of His Life
Image sources- Left, from Elebuibon's autobiography,Osundagbonu: The Sole Journey of a Priest; centre from Inside Osogbo on Facebook; top right, from historylovers001 on Instagram
Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
Comparative Cognitive Processes and Systems
This essay describes my
sense of elevation on reading the introduction, "Cosmologies in
Global Historical Context", the preface and acknowledgements pages of Toyin Falola's Ifá Priestcraft:
Ifáyemí Elébuìbon and Yorùbá Ancestral Knowledge Systems. I examine the
introduction's pioneering effort in locating the indigenous Yoruba Ifa knowledge system and one of its adepts
within the global sweep of cosmologies, from the mythic to the scientific.
I
also explore the ramifications of this achievement for Falola's own work, in
general, as well as mine, in relation to Falola's dedicating the book to me,
complemented by a fulsome passage thanking me in the book's acknowledgements, where he also describes his own spiritual orientations as they feed his scholarship. A picture emerges
of scholarly and spiritual vocations operating in rhythm in an oscillation between personal and cosmic history and meaning.
The main essay is complemented by pictures that either visualize its references or dramatize the inspiration and challenge the book embodies for me. This inspiration and challenge are represented by the book's pioneering identity in terms of its scope of scholarship in embedding indigenous Yoruba cosmology and its Ifa system within global cosmology, integrating that expansive and yet focused exploration with the study of an Ifa adept. Ifa Priestcraft thereby contributes to the embryonic field of the study of masters in indigenous African spiritual cultures, generating for them a prominence that resonates with the globally penetrating visibility of great figures in other spiritual and philosophical traditions, such as Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity, Islam and Western esotericism.
''How could one emulate this achievement?" I ask myself.
I therefore provide images and verbal snapshots of my own work in the study of adepts in classical African spiritualities, to complement the discussion on the book on Elebuibon and to motivate myself to emulate the intrepid scholar who wrote that book. Such emulation would involve unifying the diffuse publication strategies represented by my work with the more concentrated approaches demonstrated by the Elebuibon book. I would thus be fulfilling a goal on escalated scholarly projection long advised by Falola and by Nimi Wariboko, another scholar and friend I met through Falola.
Contents
Image and Text: Collage Showing Ifayemi Elebuibon at Various Stages of His Life
Abstract
The Silence Before Dawn
Image and Text: The Flow of History
Elebuibon and Ifa Within a Global Cartography of Cosmology
Image and Text: Nimi Wariboko
Elebuìbon Amongst Great Cosmological Minds
Image and Text: Joseph Ohomina
From African History to Cosmic History
Image and Text: Bruce Onobrakpeya
The Unexpected Mirror
Image and Text: David Ebengho and his Shrine Complex
"A Cosmologist from His Mother's Womb"
Image and Text: Onome Odogu
''Know Thyself''
The Caravan to Infinity
Image and Text: "Eniyan Ni Aso Mi", ''People Are My Clothing''
Scholarship and Spiritual Identity
The Silence Before Dawn
I completed reading the introduction- "Cosmologies in Global Historical Context"- and the preface and acknowledgements pages of Toyin Falola's Ifá Priestcraft: Ifáyemí Elébuìbon and Yorùbá Ancestral Knowledge Systems at about 5 am on the 3rd of August 2026, having begun reading the book the previous day, my reading delayed by my taking a break to write a second version of my anticipatory review of the book.
On completing reading those sections of the text, I was engulfed by an inner stillness, my inward self and my environment harmonizing in the solemn silence before dawn. The throbbing but invisible vibrance of my interior and the rich darkness of the garden I was facing as I sat reading came together in a consciousness prostrate at having encountered something unprecedented in its experience.
Image and Text: The Flow of History
The View, at Daybreak, from the Living Room Where I Began My Reading of Ifa Priestcraft
The sight through the windows shows exquisite beauty, suggesting the immediacy of the present, while the windows are misted at the bottom, evoking the receding of memory with the passing of time, suggestions made to me by this image in relation to the biographical and autobiographical aspects of this essay.
Picture by myself.
Elebuibon and Ifa Within a Global Cartography of Cosmology
Someone is at last locating indigenous Yoruba thought, its Ifa system and its adepts, within a global mapping of cosmology, from the mythic to the intellectual and the scientific, from ancient Egypt to Mesopotamia to ancient Greece, Africa, Europe and other cultural geographies, and into modern scientific cosmology.
That is the vision unfolding with the introduction of Ifa Priestcraft, as evident in the huge but succinctly presented scope of the introduction to this book on the babalawo-adept in the esoteric knowledge of Ifa- Yemi Elebuibon.
Falola juxtaposes indigenous Yoruba thought, as presented by Elebuibon, with various cosmological systems emerging across time and space, culminating in the contemporary scientific image of the universe.
Image and Text: Nimi Wariboko
Wariboko is an adept at the
intersection of classical African, particularly Kalabari spirituality and
philosophy, Christianity and European philosophy. Navigating these frameworks
in depth, he nevertheless distils the universal resonance of great spirituality
and philosophy through his investigations, his work a network of ideas both
myriad and scintillating. His writing demonstrates ideational, intellectual power, imaginative dexterity and spiritual elevation. I have done various writings about his life and work, some of which are evident at the Facebook page Exploring Nimi Wariboko
Ropes of Fire, Liquid Ecstasies: Selections from the Acknowledgements Pages of Nimi Wariboko, is my compilation of some of the acknowledgement pages of his books, among his best writings, some being resonant with the best in world literature.
Picture from Nimi Wariboko.
Elebuìbon Amongst Great Cosmological Minds
Along with large bodies of thought mapping cosmic structure and dynamism, Falola briefly discusses two ancient Egyptian cognitive masters, Imhotep and Ptahhotep, along with summing up the achievements of various philosophers and scientists whose names resonate in the long history of humanity's efforts to make sense of the universe in terms of its complexity, order and dynamism.
Falola does not take a role call of the sweep of such thinkers across the various civilizations he engages, seeking to limit himself to only a few names in relation to whom he juxtaposes Elebuibon as a representative of endogenous Yoruba thought.
We, however, could help the author in invoking a larger constellation of identities to help frame the contemporary African spiritual master discussed in Falola's book.
We could call upon Shankara and Ramanujan from the Hinduism of classical India, in the debate over whether or not the creator of the universe is involved in human affairs.
We could reference Thomas Aquinas from what is now known as medieval European Christianity on the nature of the essence of being and how far reason can go in understanding reality.
Ibn Arabi from the Islamic/European convergence of Al Andalus, on the unity of being.
Maria Sabina, Mazatec shaman, healing through plants and songs.
Augustine of Hippo, Elebuibon's African Christian brother, on the nexus of the human and the divine in which "our hearts are restless until they rest in You".
These and countless more constitute the world of seeking, finding and sharing, by the fragile yet powerful creature walking upright on the third planet from the sun in the Milky Way solar system as he roams the Earth.
Image and Text: Joseph Ohomina
Babalawo Joseph Ohomina and his Wife
Joseph Ohomina was my Ifa teacher, an example of the practice of Ifa in Benin, where he comes from and where we met. A man of large nobility, all his teaching was free, never asking me for anything and using his own money to transport himself to our various places of instruction.
I'm still trying to digest what I learnt from him, though his direct teaching of me ended more than twenty years ago when I left Nigeria to study abroad. He exemplifies for me the nobility of Ifa at its best. My essay " Cosmological Permutations: Joseph Ohomina's Ifa Philosophy and the Quest for the Unity of Being'' discusses an idea of his I find inspiring and tantalizing in its mystery and scope of meaning.
Picture from the Ohomina family.
From African History to Cosmic History
With Ifa Priestcraft, Falola the historian has transitioned from terrestrial history, particularly of African peoples and people of African descent, into cosmic history, engaging speculative thought and scientific investigation of the subject, in relation to the life and thought of one man who represents indigenous Yoruba thought as a part of this knowledge stream.
May Falola's own life and work be addressed in a similar manner? Could it be situated within a cosmological context defined by his own thought or beyond it? Could his total body of work be studied in terms of the nexus of individual and group development in relation to the tension between self and circumstance, self and society, self, society and cosmos in which the human being is implicated through coming into existence in a world he navigates but only partially constructs?
Image and Text: Bruce Onobrakpeya
Bruce Onobrakpeya is one of the greatest of artists in evoking the sacred and the numinous, the mysterious and the arcane, a distillation and concentration from his activity at the nexus of Urhobo, Edo, Yoruba, Fulani and other African cultures. I'm currently writing the first full length biography about his life and work. I am also composing the first book dedicated to a single work of his. I archive my multimedia accounts of my research explorations at the Facebook page In Search of Bruce Onobrakpeya. Bruce Onobrakpeya and the Oracle Quest is my pioneering exploration of his Oracles series of multi-media art. The photo album of my photographs related to his life and work is the largest dedicated to that subject.
Picture by myself.
To Be Continued