Creating a New Deity or Amplifying an Old One? : Reworking the Theology and Ritual of the Orisa Spirituality Goddess Osun through Intercultural Synthesis

[Oluwatoyin Adepoju]

Creating a New Deity or Amplifying an Old 

                              One? 

Reworking the Theology and Ritual of the Orisa Spirituality Goddess Osun through Intercultural Synthesis

My Osun shrine, composed of the sculptures of Osogbo artists Afolabi Esuleke and Olujide Adesina.

Image by myself. 

          Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju 

                          Compcros

                          Abstract 

A description of the process and logic of reworking and  expanding the theology and ritual of the Yoruba origin Orisa spirituality deity Osun by borrowing ideas from other aspects of Orisa thought, from Hinduism. and as well as from the Christian and Chinese thought, a process and logic demonstrating the creativity of the religious imagination and it's philosophical implications. 

The ultimate foundations of this vision is in the poetic cycle Labyrinths by Christopher Okigbo, in which he depicts Idoto, the spirit of his village river, in Nigeria's Igboland,  in which he bathed as a child,  as " the water spirit that nature's all creation " whom he travels to meet in a journey beginning from the banks of the river to the sources of existence, to union with her in her cavern under the sea.

Okigbo thus develops an animistic mysticism, an image of a non-human and non-animal  form, such as a river,  as possessing life and consciousness, and aspiring to or describing oneself as merging with or perceiving the source of existence through this form.

This interpretation of Okigbo is reinforced for me by the Indian Upanishads,which describes each element of existence, including water, as an expression of the ultimate creator.

Vision

I am developing an amplified image of the  Yoruba origin Orisa spirituality Goddess Osun through an intercultural synthesis.

I am expanding my understanding of the theology, philosophy and ritual practice of Osun through adaptations from  theological and ritual orientations from other schools of thought. 

My exposure to Osun ritual is limited to once  watching devotees praying to the Goddess at the edge of the Osun river in Osogbo, throwing food items into the river.

Method

My own approach is also inspired by the physical presence of the river, approaching it through pilgrimage to that aquatic zone, admiring it's combination of wild and disciplined force within the primeval density of forest,  the Osun forest,  an ecosystemic conglomeration inspiring for me a sense of being enfolded within the bowels of cosmos, of the diverse forces generating the ordered dynamism of the universe.

Visiting the river and standing on the bridge straddling it, I witnessed at close range its tumultuous flow yet confined within the boundaries of the path it cut through earth.

Returning from the visit,  I visualise this creative turbulence, imagining it engulfing me in a flood both overwhelming and comforting, piercing every corner to the core of my being as it penetrates every crevice of cosmos, "crying to all beings to drink their fill, for it is night", adapting the Christian mystic St. John of the Cross' use of the universal symbolism of water in terms of nourishment both physical and spiritual and Sarah Allan's account of the pervasive symbolism of water in classical Chinese thought.

Immersed in this rushing flow, I become  one with the river of being and becoming,  adapting Orisa theologian Susanne Wenger, my primary human inspiration in Osun devotion, one with all possibilities of existence, a coordination between self and cosmos emerging in alignment between my self and creative opportunities, known and unknown.

Within this configurative impulse the glorious beauty of Osun embodies the possibilities of the universe, the woman whose waist is so large two arms cannot encompass it; the hair rising from her navel like the stream of sky flowing into the blue of the river Yamuna; buttocks as hillocks; a side glance from whom enchants a man, decrepit,  otherwise unattractive, unskilled in the arts of love, so that women race after him, their clothes bursting; owner of the five flower arrows of pleasure piercing from the joy of the senses to the ultimate reality birthing the universe.

She is the two hundred and fifty six permutations  of existence embodying all possibilities of being and becoming,  the odu ifa  in words, numbers and spatial patterns; the teacher of Orunmila, embodiment of ultimate wisdom, Osun being the foundation of that knowledge represented by Orunmila,  the bottomless depth from which Orunmila draws in creating Ifa, a depth symbolized by the empty centre of the Ifa divination platfirm and cosmological symbol, the opon ifa, where the divination instuments map intersections of being and becoming, of actuality and potentiality, a creative structuring galvanising fecund waters.

That description incorporates both depictions of the Hindu Goddess Tripurasundari and the Orisa feminine divine personality Odu, unifying these conjunctions in terms of a picture of Osun as the dynamism of the universe, a creativity imaged by the flow of the Osun river, in its nourishing capacities and reconfiguration power as it restructure earth, cutting a path through forest.

The image thus constructed elevates Osun from being another,  though strategic deity, to being an ultimate deity,  replacing the image reserved for Olodumare in Orisa thought.

Logic 

This approach adapts the Hindu strategy in which devotees of various deities visualise their own deity as supreme, a complexity yer resulting in integration with the totality of belief systems in the tradition, each of them influencing each other to various degrees,  without conflict between their devotees. 

I understand deity conceptions and religious cosmologies to be ultimately human created tools responding to something inadequately understood, perhaps not even open to full understanding,  the universes as a whole or aspects of it,  which the human being is compelled to respond to imaginatively and intellectually.

Therefore,  I feel free to construct various theologies, some even seemingly contradicting each other, in the understanding that I am a person,  who, like many other theologians,  is groping within a dimly perceived space through the use of ideas and images.

Questions

The majesty of the Osun forest is unmistakable.  The dazzling force of its mysteriously charged groves is evident to the attentive visitor who approaches those spaces in silence and possibly in solitude,  letting their potent atmospheres  work on one.

How was a relationship developed between the river flowing through that forest and the Osun figure of Orisa cosmology?

Is the inspirational character of the forest and its river different from those which inspired other animist conceptions of bodies of water and vegetative space in different parts of the world?

Is the Osun figure simply the Yoruba expression of a universal phenomenon?

Why conjoin ideas about various deities, thereby restructuring the theologies of anciently established religious systems?

In order to make these systems better serve my needs. 

Visiting the Osun river and Osun forest within which the river flows, as well as encountering in Osogbo where the forest is,  Olujide Adesina' s striking art of Osun and Afolabi  Esuleke's powerful sculptural visualizations of figures in the Orisa universe has provoked my imagination to rework the Goddess as a unifying identity, integrating all possibilities I may choose.

Does Osun exist as an identity predating human belief in the Goddess?

Is the Goddess a human creation, a purely imaginative character?

Beyond ideas about Osun is the majesty of the Osun forest and river, which can be experienced without belief in the religion associated with it and which may motivate diverse responses in the human quest to make meaning of the universe through a synthesis of ideas,  images and ritual action, efforts I hereby contribute to by articulating an approach to the religious imagination centred in Osun in the intersection of her image with that of other figures.