The Need for Readily Accessible Inspirational Texts in Classical African Philosophies and Spiritualities 2: Short Descriptions of a Few Great Examples of Ese Ifa, Literature of the Ifa Knowledge and Divinatory System
Oluwatoyin Adepoju
Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
Comparative Cognitive Processes and Systems
''Exploring Every Corner of the Cosmos in Search of Knowledge''
Abstract
This is a response to the need for better access to texts that lead readers into the inspirational power of classical African philosophies and spiritualities, texts of sublime ideational power expressed in mesmerising verbal art.
A few examples are described from the Ifa system of knowledge best known as part of the Yoruba origin Orisha tradition.
Part 1 of this series is ''The Need for Readily Accessible Inspirational Sacred Texts in Classical African Spiritualities:Inspiring Short Overviews of Yoruba Origin Orisa Spirituality''.
Categories
Poetry or Prose, Short, Long or Intermediate
Cosmological/Cosmogonic/Non-Cosmogonic and the Non-Cosmological
The Lyrical and the Lengthy
Sophisticated speech is perhaps humanity's first demonstration of movement from the purely animal to the human level. After speech, came literature, a form of verbal expression that creates meaning beyond the immediate point being made.
Verbal music, verbal pictures and stories of actions and thoughts are the major means by which this kind of expression works, a form of communication later recorded through writing.
One of the great ways of developing and spreading philosophical and spiritual ideas and their traditions is through texts, particularly written texts, a culture in which classical African philosophies and spiritualities are still far behind knowledge systems that emerged from those cultures which cultivated widespread writing.
A lot of published texts exist from the Yoruba origin Orisha tradition, one of the better textualized of classical African spiritualities. Yet, even this tradition suggests the problems involved in this subject.
If I want inspiration during a difficult time, which of these texts should I go to?
Can I use any of them for reflection and inspiration the way one would use the Bible?
One of the best known texts in the Orisha tradition, is ese ifa, literature of the Ifa system of knowledge, of the world's greatest examples of literature, vast, intricate and deeply varied in its content.
It demonstrates the literary, the spiritual and the philosophical as constituting the same complex, a unity of verbal imagination and meaning through which one may explore life's deepest possibilities.
Ese ifa, however, demonstrate broad variety in content and literary power, in both poetry and prose, and length. I present here very short descriptions of some of the greatest ese ifa known to me from my exposure in English to this multi-lingual literary tradition.
Cosmological/Cosmogonic/Non-Cosmogonic and the Non-Cosmological
The ese ifa I shall be referencing can be organized in terms of two major categories, the cosmological and the non-cosmological. The cosmological can again be divided into the cosmogonic and the non-cosmogonic. The non-cosmological may include the metaphysical.
The Lyrical and the Lengthy
The non-cosmological and the cosmological may be further organised in terms of other categories, such as the lyrical and the lengthy.
The Classical and the Post-Classical
Another category may also be recognised in the classical as different from the post-classical. The classical consists in ese ifa from the oral tradition, their composers unknown. The belief some hold that they were all composed by Orunmila, the orisha or deity whose wisdom is seen as underlying Ifa, is unsustainable, on account of the broad range of Yoruba history the ese ifa reference.
The post-classical consists of ese ifa composed outside the classical, oral tradition, created by known composers, likely composed as written as opposed to oral text, unlike the oral tradition in which orality preceded writing. Such ese ifa is represented by my own work, comprising hybrid ese ifa, derived from reworking and at times expanding existing ese ifa, and completely original ese ifa, composed largely or wholly without building on antecedent ese ifa.
These compositions represent an understanding of ese ifa as a body of texts demonstrating a range of literary structures which anyone may study and adapt. Within this context, the unique use of a particular literary structure in some ese ifa may be seen as constituting those ese ifa into a literary genre of their own. As representing a range of literary forms, a range of literary structures, universes of reference and styles of handling those references, ese ifa may be studied and adapted to the creation of new ese ifa,even expanding the traditional universe of reference of ese ifa in the process, and adapted even to contexts outside both the Ifa universe, however broadly understood, and the Yoruba language.
I thus see ese ifa as similar, in this sense, to oriki, ofo and other forms of Yoruba literature and the English poetic forms the lyric and the sonnet, the Indian verbal form the sutra and the Japanese haiku which demonstrate structures and orientations anyone may study and adapt to various contexts both within and beyond the traditional references employed by these forms. Wande Abimbola's An Exposition of Ifa Literary Corpus and Ifa Divination Poetry analyses these structures in some kinds of Ifa poetry using universally valid principles of Western literary analysis. Other kinds of ese ifa exist, however, such as the prose narratives in Cromwell Ibie's multi-volume Ifism.
How would such a practice of composing new ese ifa relate to the sacred character of ese ifa? Are ese ifa sacred on account of their content or because of how they may be used in particular contexts?
Ese ifa are often playful, at times depicting anti-social behaviour on the part of Orunmila. Ese ifa often use animal personifications indicating their imaginative character.
Within all ese ifa, one could also categorise styles of opening ese ifa poetry and narrative, this being an art form of its own.
Cosmological ese ifa dramatize approaches to the meaning, structure and dynamism of existence.
Cosmogonic ese ifa are imaginative accounts of the creation of the cosmos or the Earth or both. They can be understood as mythological forms exploring, in terms of imagery and narrative, perennial human questions, questions resonating across time and space, an effort that may be appreciated and could even prove inspiring whatever one's position on the issues addressed and the perspectives projected.
Dew descends from orun, the space of originating creativity, suggesting the shaping existence on Earth through the descent of ''asuwa'', enabling the coming together of the various components that constitute the world and the human being, from the hair on the human head to the grass of the savannah to fish in the ocean.
The seamless unity in variety of this complex of imaginatively vivid ideations makes this a globally powerful rendition of humanity's loftiest aspirations, rooted in the majesty of the physical world as it resonates with human social order.
2. The Poetry and Literary and Artistic Analysis in the First Chapter of Rowland Abiodun's Yoruba Art and Language: Seeking the African in African Art, a magnificent combination of mythic thinking and of elucidation of the mythic narratives. Lucid, luminous, philosophically elevated and conceptually profound in an endlessly evocative network of ideas.
One of these poems may be titled ''The Journey of Ọ̀rọ̀'', an entry into the core of Yoruba origin ideas about the power of language and of its literary expression, examining the roots of literary power in the relationship between literature and other forms of imaginative expression, ideas dramatized in the story of the journey to Earth of ọ̀rọ̀ from the mind and actions of Odumare, the creator of the universe.
Ọ̀rọ̀, as described in Pius Adesanmi's "Oju L'Oro Wa" means a subject of reference and the process of addressing this subject.This conventional understanding is developed by the unnamed oral poet in terms of a dramatization of ideas about the origins and ultimate significance of human reflective and expressive capacity demonstrated by ọ̀rọ̀, discourse,in its varied forms.
In this poetic narrative, ọ̀rọ̀ is personified as the complex of divine knowledge and wisdom expressed through the power of human thought and expression. Ọ̀rọ̀ roams the world naked but is dangerous to gaze at with naked eyes on account of its incandescent power. Hence ọ̀rọ̀ is approached through òwe , imaginative creations expressed in visual and verbal art.
This creativity demonstrates the character of oriki, a mapping of the nature of an entity through its history. This imaginative creativity enables an indirect engagement with the mysterious majesty of ọ̀rọ̀, dangerous in it’s naked potency but the source of all human thought and expression, as this celebration of imaginative power through images and verbal rhythms may be summed up.
An expanded version of this pillar in Yoruba verbal and visual aesthetics, Yoruba Art and Language: Seeking the African in African Art, is due out in June 2023.
3. Iya Agba Series
Building on this centre, I integrate lines from other classical ese ifa and a broad range of texts from various disciplines and cultures, from the sciences to religion, in constructing a unified narrative reaching from cosmogonic origins to cosmic integration in Earth, a unity subsumed in the calabash image.
The original text is not powerful in a literary sense, though comprising images of great interpretive potential particularly in their resonance within the Orisa tradition, conjuncting Ifa, Ogboni esotericism and Orisa spirituality generally. The interpretive possibilities of these images became clearer to me from Judith Gleason's analysis in A Recitation of Ifa, Oracle of the Yoruba, perspectives igniting conjunction with other texts in Yoruba Studies, and beyond.
The venerable female, Iya Agba, having grown old, wishes to retire from the world to the peace and silence under the Earth.
She asks her children, the deities, the orisa, to bring her a calabash each, containing something of great value to them, to keep her company.
Obatala, Ogun, Soponna and Oduduwa between them bring a calabash of chalk, of mud, of charcoal and of camwood dust from a tree's bark, as offerings to their mother.
Building on this simple but deeply evocative story, I articulate the possibilities inherent in these images constructed but not explained or expanded upon by the original verbal artist.
I develop the originating inspiration in mobilizing commonplace items to shape far reaching evocations of human existence. These consist in the journey from animal to human life represented by charcoal, suggesting the discovery and use of fire in cooking, enabling the movement from eating food raw to cooking it.
Red camwood dust is understood as standing for the vitality of life enabled by blood. Mud is taken as emblematic of the union of earth and water without which Earth and its life forms would not exist. White chalk is seen as evoking the luminous yet mysterious sources of existence, enabling the convergence of possibilities imaged by the other symbols. This complex of symbolic forms is further subsumed in the personas of the deities they are associated with.
I expand the inspirational nucleus of the original text to actualize its possibilities in constructing an imagistic and narrative universe that is pivotal to the totality of Yoruba origin Orisa cosmology and its reverberations in the institutions of the central Yoruba institutions Ifa and Ogboni.
This image complex at the heart of these institutions is central to Yoruba thinkers' contributions to the perennial struggle to make meaning of human life by examining the implications of the material realities of existence.
These realities are represented in this context by charcoal and its association with cooking, camwood dust in relation to blood, mud referencing earth and water and white chalk dust evoking originating beauty both radiant and mysterious.
I take further the implications of these symbols in ''Developing Universal Ogboni Philosophy and Spirituality : My Journey''.
The Facebook thread of the post of the poem contains a rich debate on the validity of creating ese ifa after the ancient, canonical achievements of the classical tradition and particularly by a person, like myself, who doesn't have a traditional initiation, if any, into Ifa.
B. Original Poem with Extensive Commentary
Correlating various presentations of the calabash as metaphysical and epistemological symbol and ritual form in Yoruba thought, relating these with the calabashes of Iya Agba.
All cosmological ese ifa are metaphysical in that they address issues relating to the foundations of existence. Metaphysical ese ifa, however, might not be cosmological, in that they might not engage ideas relating to the origins, structure and progression of the universe, but address issues about fundamental and ultimate meanings and values.
The richest ese ifa known to me along such lines is ''The Importance of Ori''.
A sublime demonstration of English writer James Joyce's insightful concept of the ''jocoserious,'' the serious and the jocular unified. Incidentally, this is a central expressive strategy in ese ifa, in which the most significant metaphysical conceptions, ideas about the foundations of existence, are dramatized through playfully imaginative forms, in this instance, an exploration of what constitutes the essence, the ultimate identity, of a human being, in the context of relationship with the orisha, spiritual powers understood to underlie the universe.
The poem is an exploration of the Ifa version of the globally pervasive idea that at the core of the self is an immortal identity, embodying the self's ultimate potential. This subject is dramatized through the image of a group of deities gathered to discuss which of them can follow their devotee on a distant journey.
Memorable imagistic gymnastics, superb word play, musical similarity in variety of sentence structures, are all woven together to deliver a uniquely powerful expression of a universal idea, magnificently actualized by the Ifa oral poet.
The poem is anthologized in Wande Abimbola's Sixteen Great Poems of Ifa and is accessible online through the African Oral poetry site linked above in the title of the poem.''The twisted wooden stump which crosses the road in a crooked way.
Ifa divination was performed for the Lion,
''There is no one so wise he can tie water into a knot in his pocket.''
Oluwatoyin Adepoju
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Cornelius Hamelberg
Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju:
I’m finally beginning to get a little interested in your hobbyhorse IFA but would prefer to take a more direct approach by becoming an apprentice to an IFA priest and learning directly from him, instead of reading philosophical treatises about it. ( Here’s a short discourse on “ Those worthy of Spiritual Knowledge” and another that I have entitled “Wiping out the ego”)
This is my immediate reaction to reading your profound submission and what it’s all about :
Mankind’s search for beginnings, mankind's perennial quest for the ultimate, the finite reaching for the sky, for for the infinite, to give meaning to our eternal transit from dust to dust, from dawn to dusk, from grave and rust to resurrection, from resurrection to another life in da Olam Ha-Ba
You who are so cosmological in your search, please permit me to ask, so where is God, and where is God’s Kingdom? I know that my Nigerian Pastor is either going to tell me that God is everywhere, or that God is sitting on His throne in Heaven. Or he is going to tell me that “The Kingdom of Heaven is within”
Within where? In the meantime, back in AD 70 , His Omnipotence could not protect His own Temple, His personal residence down here on earth.
Fast forward. There was the Holocaust. Another question arising: Where was God?
Right now: Just look at what Israel ( “God’s Chosen People”) is doing on this 14th Day of Ramadan which happens to coincide with Erev Pesach
That’s why I can well understand the opening lines from Marcus Garvey’s Poem “ The Tragedy of White Injustice”
“Lying and stealing is the white man's game;
For rights of God nor man he has no shame”
Not that e.g. Netanyahu is White and the Palestinian Resistance / HAMAS is Black.
Also, that’s why I can well understand this line from Amiri Baraka’s poem Somebody blew up America :
“Who you know ever Seen God?
But everybody seen The Devil”
And, by the way in The Last White Man - Anders turns from white to brown as Moshin Hamid explains here
Now to the questions which I want you to answer.
These Inspirational Texts in Classical African Philosophies and Spiritualities - are they inspired - in the sense in which Christianity has defined scripture as inspired by God
Can Ifa be said to be part of some kind of Gnosticism?
I ask after listening to “What is Gnosticism ?”
RSVP
Celestine Ukwu & His Philosophers National: Onwu Ama Eze
Cornelius Hamelberg
Cornelius Hamelberg
A very important correction as appeared in the original, it was a rhetorical question , not a statement.
Should read : In the meantime, back in AD 70 , His Omnipotence could not protect His own Temple, His personal residence down here on earth?
For your consideration : Quran: 2:114
The gravity of the Israeli military police intrusion in the Al-Aqsa Mosque - guns blazing, with impunity, their dirty boots and automatic weapons drawn, deliberately disturbing the peace and tranquillity of the faithful worshipers at prayer - twice, on the same day, 14th of Ramadan is a uniquely evil and unforgivable atrocity itself, no less an atrocity than the atrocity committed by one Baruch Goldstein, on February 25, 1994 and known as the Cave of the Patriarchs massacre in Hebron.
La hawla wala quwwata illa billahil aliyyil azim !
The Arab League has reacted to the latest atrocities
Pope Benedict “disdaining to remove his shoes” when he entered a mosque in Jordan was bad enough.
How would the Israeli authorities and their apologists feel or react if guns blazing, some unauthorised Palestinian Military Police were to enter The Jerusalem Great Synagogue on Yom Kippur or Tisha B'Av on the pretext of arresting some 350 militant or not so militant / terrorist Israeli Settlers who were in the middle of saying their Teshuva prayers?
I suppose that with a tear or two, the embattled Benjamin Netanyahu would like to remind us all about the Yom Kippur War , also known as The Ramadan War - as if unaware that two rights don't make a wrong
BTW, the embattled Trump reminds me of the embattled Netanyahu, the only real difference is that the embattled Netanyahu who doesn’t want to face the corruption charges in an Israeli Court of Law would like to change the judiciary , among other things strip that judiciary of the power to bring him to justice and enhance his own personal powers of stealing more land from the Palestinians , in defiance of the eighth commandment which says, Do Not Steal
But Netanyahu & CO have their own respected supporters such as some of what can be found here at Machon Shilo, the last seven days, such as
Rabbi David Bar-Hayim Predicted Initial Capitulation on Judicial Reform
Cornelius Hamelberg
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Cornelius Hamelberg
It would seem that things are getting out of hand with Israel bombing Damascus etc ( even the Russians are probably not too happy about that) no matter what Ted says, not to mention even more sanctimonious twattle from the Israeli media
Re - “In the meantime, back in AD 70 , His Omnipotence could not protect His own Temple, His personal residence down HERE on earth?”
A necessary additional comment, bearing in mind the growing tensions gathering around Israel’s main centre of gravity, namely The Temple Mount, for world Jewry, the holiest piece of real estate in Israel, the holy site of both the first and the second temple in Jerusalem, destroyed by some pagan Romans, under the leadership of Titus, in the year 70 of the common era.
Al-Aqsa was erected at a much later date 636-637 CE.
Fast forward: In 1967, after the Six-Day War there was this triumphant cry: The Temple Mount is now in our hands!
So that you would not remain in doubt, I asked the less-than-omniscient Baba Google the holy question:
Is the al-Aqsa mosque on the site of the holy temple?
For a very clear understanding about the importance of the temple ( posted on the net a few hours ago) : Our mission from God regarding the TEMPLE
There’s also this site: The Temple Institute
Oluwatoyin Adepoju
Great thanks, Cornelius for those contextualisations and creatively provocative questions on Ifa, the idea of God and on philosophy of religion generally, and the resonance of these issues in Jewish and Israeli religious and political history.
Apologies for the delay in responding to your careful rejoinder. I needed to allow myself to adequately assimilate your response and reply to it as well as I can, given the significance of your observations and questions, very useful for advancing the project the piece I wrote represents.
I shall preface my responses by placing yours in quotation marks. I shall post my responses in stages on account of the time its taking me to compose them.
Humanity and Cosmos
The image directly below posted by you in your comment is a powerful evocation of the spatial minisculity of homo sapiens, in contrast with the cosmic scope of his thought and technological penetration.
Resonating with such sensitivities as evoked by this image, the Biblical Psalmist in 8:4-6 asks of God, ''What is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you visitest him?''
Wole Soyinka also responds to such a cosmic image:
''...the bewildering phenomenon of the cosmic location of [ the human ] being [ inspires ] a fundamental visceral questioning...prompted by the patient, immovable immensity that surrounds him...Intuitions, sudden psychic emanations could come, logically, only from such an incomparable immensity [an] undented vastness [creating] the need to challenge, confront and at least initiate a rapport with the realm of infinity.'' Myth, Literature and the African World, 1990, 2. Sentence order slightly reworked.
Immanuel Kant superbly frames such orientations:
''Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing
admiration and reverence, the more often and more steadily one reflects on
them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.
I do not need to search for them and merely conjecture them as though they were veiled in obscurity or in the transcendent region beyond my horizon; I see them before me and connect them immediately with the consciousness of my existence.
The first begins from the place I occupy in the external world of sense and extends the connection in which I stand into an unbounded magnitude with worlds upon worlds and systems of systems, and moreover into the unbounded times of their periodic motion, their beginning and their duration.
The second begins from my invisible self, my personality, and presents me in a world which has true infinity but which can be discovered only by the understanding, and I cognize that my connection with that world (and thereby with all those visible worlds as well) is not merely contingent, as in the first case, but universal and necessary.
The first view of a countless multitude of worlds annihilates, as it were, my importance as an animal creature, which after it has been for a short time provided with vital force (one knows not how) must give back to the planet (a mere speck in the universe) the matter from which it came.
The second, on the contrary, infinitely raises my worth as an intelligence by my personality, in which the moral law reveals to me a life independent of animality and even of the whole sensible world, at least so far as this may be inferred from the purposive determination of my existence by this law, a determination not restricted to the conditions and boundaries of this life but reaching into the infinite.''
Critique of Practical Reason, trans. Mary Gregor, 2015.
Your own summation from your response superbly rounds off this sequence:
''Mankind’s search for beginnings, mankind's perennial quest for the ultimate, the finite reaching for the sky, for the infinite, to give meaning to our eternal transit from dust to dust, from dawn to dusk, from grave and rust to resurrection, from resurrection to another life.''
Ifa and Philosophy/Ifa Philosophy
Between Studying with an Ifa Priest and Studying Philosophy about Ifa
''I’m finally beginning to get a little
interested in your hobbyhorse IFA but would prefer to take a more direct
approach by becoming an apprentice to an IFA priest and learning directly from
him, instead of reading philosophical treatises about it.''
Are you suggesting that discussing philosophy in
relation to Ifa is necessarily different from what one may study with an Ifa
priest?
Philosophy may be described as a reflexive relationship with a subject, examining its foundations and possibilities, an activity fundamental to homo sapiens as a creature compelled to seek understanding of itself and its environment, of the logic of its own understanding.
Can Ese Ifa be Seen as Philosophical?
May the ese ifa referenced not be understood as philosophical texts?
How Relevant are Philosophical Interpretations of Ese Ifa to the Appreciation of Ese Ifa?
Are the explications Akiwowo, Abiodun and myself have provided of the ese ifa we study strategic to the adequate appreciation of those ese ifa?
Do Ifa Priests Reflect Philosophically on their Work?
My encounter with one of the richest concepts in Ifa ontology-theory of being and epistemology-theory of knowledge, the idea of the odu ifa, the organizational forms of Ifa, as names of all possibilities of existence, came from my studies with babalawo, adept in the esoteric knowledge of Ifa, Joseph Ohomina, a conception resonating with ideas from Platonic Forms to Western and Asian theories of mathematics, from
Hindu yantra theory to German mathematician Kurt Godel, an idea better appreciated through careful study of its intrinsic character
and implications and its extrinsic associations with other bodies of knowledge.
Between Different Stages in the Development of Ifa
Would my Ifa teacher and the composers and later reciters
of those ese ifa presented and studied by Akiwowo, Abiodun and myself, along with Ifa
trainees and enthusiasts generally, be advised to stick only to the inspirational texts and not engage with the analyses and comparative explanations they have inspired?
If they do that, how would their
understanding of the possibilities of Ifa grow? Whatever the philosophical
orientations of an Ifa priest, could he or she not
also expand their knowledge through the kind
of exegesis thereby provided?
Is authentic Ifa best recognized through its
being stuck in a period of its development represented by the classical
tradition as evident when the tradition began to be textualized in the 20th
century by such pioneering work as that of US scholar William Bascom?
How relevant would
the tradition be in its journeys beyond pre-modern Yorubaland into the
Americas, for example, if it did not engage with challenges of adaptation in
those new environments, challenges inspiring questions about the logic, the philosophical
justifications of Ifa practices, in cultures very different from those of
pre-modern Yorubaland where those practices were developed, but cultures within which exist people inspired by Ifa and who wish to
live by it?
Where does Ifa practice begin and where does it end? Is it stuck in
the oral tradition in the denuded form in
which it has come down to us, without access to the thoughts, motivations and creative processes of
the composers of the classical ese ifa?
The texts I referenced represent various
strata in the development of reflexivity, of reflection on the implications of
ideas, in Yoruba thought/Orisha discourse.
The examples I gave move from the creation of imaginative narratives,
imagistic and narratological depictions of
particular concepts, as in ''The Importance of Ori'', to the expansion of such concepts through narratives such as ''The Journey of
Ọ̀rọ̀'', to the expository analysis of those verbal arts by
Abiodun and Akiwowo, and eventually by myself, I engaging the entire sequence of the tradition, the verbal artists and
thinkers and their explicators, Akiwowo and
Abiodun.
Since the classical ese ifa composers were able to dramatize and later
expand foundational concepts in Yoruba thought such as ori,
ọ̀rọ̀ and asuwa, rather than leaving those
concepts at the basic level of general beliefs,
should efforts building on their work be seen
as part of the tradition they initiated or different from it?
Questions Arising from Parallels in Christian Thought
The Gospel of John and ''The Journey of Ọ̀rọ̀''
John's
development, in the Bible, for example, of the fundamental
material represented by the more basic texts of the Synoptic gospels, may be seen as correlative with the second order reflexivity of such an ese ifa as ''The Journey of
Ọ̀rọ̀'' exploring implications of ọ̀rọ̀, a fundamental concept in Yoruba discourse.
In the opening of his own Gospel, John departs from the more
quasi-historic accounts of the other Gospels to locate Jesus in terms of the
nature of God and the origins of the universe, correlating these identities and
primordial temporalities with the divine speech through which
the universe came into being, ''In the beginning was the Word, the Word was
with God and the Word was God''.
That is a further development of the interpretation of Jesus from the Galilean
preacher and miracle worker of the Synoptic gospels who had been born through a divine conception. In John's Gospel, he becomes a divine personality, eternally existent, an aspect of God, active in creation since its beginning.
Is
John's innovative thinking, the seeds of which already exist in the more basic
nature of the Synoptic gospels be best understood as inauthentic, a deviation from the
tradition initiated by Jesus, the foundational inspiration, and as initially developed by Peter and the writers of the other gospels?
''The Journey of
Ọ̀rọ̀'', along similar lines of cosmological reworking as John achieved in his Gospel, locates a basic
concept of Yoruba discourse, ''ọ̀rọ̀'', a concept referring to a subject of reference
and the process of engaging that subject, in the convergence of human
reflective and expressive capacity with divine creativity from which these human
enablements emerged at the initiating stages of existence.
How is such an
effort to be understood, as inauthentic for the tradition on account of its
highly speculative, innovative rereading of a basic concept which originally
has no implicit cosmological associations?
What are the implications of the fact that many, if not most Yoruba people and perhaps even scholars of Yoruba thought might not be aware of this highly sophisticated, deeply imaginative interpretation of
ọ̀rọ̀?
At the more sophisticated levels of discourse, general understanding, as known to most people, is left behind, as the thinker enters into or creates a zone which can be penetrated only through study, not cultural osmosis.
Having built upon but gone beyond such general understanding, should ''The Journey of
Ọ̀rọ̀'' be seen as an artificial, inauthentic form of ese ifa?
How should efforts to engage with its implications be seen, efforts examining its possible interpretations, speculating on the rationale and influences shaping its creation?
Should such be seen as part of Ifa discourse, something relevant to the knowledge of an Ifa priest or irrelevant to it?
The Theology of Paul's Letters, Akiwowo and Abiodun's Readings of Yoruba Thought and
Responses to Them
Along similar lines, Paul's letters may be described as the
first expository theology of Christianity, an extensive rethinking of the Christian faith in terms of its Judaic background,
developing continuities movement from Jewish to cosmic history which have become
fundational for Christianity as a religion whose significance is grounded in the
work of a Jew speaking to other Jews in long ago Palestine but which soars beyond those ethnic contexts.
Paul's interpretive strategy may be correlated with my analysis of ese ifa, as in my study of Abiodun's work. Abodun concentrates on explicating Yoruba thought as a self contained rational universe rather than one
speaking to reality in a universally valid manner, the latter being Paul's
vision for Jesus' message.
My own work may be seen as complementing the purely
Yoruba configured analyses of Abiodun by emphasizing its significance for efforts to
understand reality generally, resonating with other efforts in other cultures
and historical periods, a stance I project in practically all my work on
Abiodun, beginning from my review on Amazon of his book Yoruba Art and Language
to later efforts of mine.
Such a continuum in Yoruba discourse, represented by the ese ifa'' The Importance of Ori'', to ''Ayajo Asuwada'' and to ''The Journey of
Ọ̀rọ̀'', to the explications of Akiwowo, Abiodun and Adepoju, myself, are correlative with the movements from the foundational texts to later theological developments
in Christian spirituality, theology and philosophy, a continuum that a
contemporary trainee in the Catholic and Protestant priesthoods could need to study, and a Christian theologian would certainly study, in order to ground themselves in
the scope of development of their tradition.
Why should such scope of study necessarily be different for
an Ifa priest?
Ese Ifa Literary and Philosophical Study as a Specialisation in Ifa Study and Ifa Priesthood
As the Ifa student Adetola Adesesan Kareem has observed on Facebook, higher levels of Ifa training ideally should be organised in terms of specialisations, with divination and herbalogy, for example, being two of such specialisations. The theories and range of exegesis of Ifa literature could be one of such specializations, given the scope of the literary dimension of Ifa.
What would make a priesthood of such a
practice? Priesthood implies a commitment to the sacred, an effort to unceasing
development of intimacy with it and of embodying the sacred.
Some theories of meaning, language and expression developed in Orisha and Ifa thought project an
understanding of expression, particularly verbal expression, as animated by sentience, facilitating
relationship with spiritual identities, moving from the human to the beyond human,
as demonstrated by relationships between Ohomina' s idas and those of Abiodun,
the latter building on Olabiyi Babalola Yai as well as on the composer of ''The Journey of Oro'', in relation to thinkers in the oral tradition.
Abiodun:
...oríkì [ a genre of Yoruba descriptive, celebratory and historicizing literature the meaning of which is expanded by Abiodun to suggest all forms of imaginative expression, understood as a means of evoking the essence and unfolding potential of an entity ] singly or collectively raise consciousness above and beyond the
physical into the spiritual realm for the vivid realization of an abstract idea, Òṛò
[ ''discourse'' in Yoruba thought, expanded by Abiodun to indicate a primordial possibility, an archetypal identity, of divine origin, manifest in the myriad forms of human thought and expression].
In this
chapter, I have shown how òwe [ imaginative expression ] as visual and verbal oríkì
constitutes a means or ẹṣin (horse) by which Orí [ essence of an entity and embodiment of its ultimate potential ] as Òṛò ̣ can
descend to the human level, and humans make a spiritual ascent to Orí.
On the one hand, Òṛò,̣
being overly energetic and restless, yearns to be expressed in, and to communicate with something outside
of itself … and on the other hand, humans need
to communicate with their spiritual Orí, and other òrìṣà [deities] which are classifiable here as Òṛò [ perhaps as manifestations of divine wisdom and possible points of reference in understanding and expression as well as active enablers in such understanding and expression],̣
for assistance, inspiration and illumination in solving human problems.
( Yoruba Art and Language: Seeking the African in African Art, 2014, 32, 50; forthcoming expanded and edited second edition 2023, 31, 51. Sentence order slightly restructured.
The study of
ese ifa may therefore be approached as an imaginative, intellectual and spiritual
activity, through which the student may seek to explore spiritual realities
through reflecting on literature and its interpretations, possibly correlating
study with meditation, as represented, for example, by Zen Buddhist narrative and Jewish Hasidic narrative,
the latter particularly represented by the narratological theories of Nahman of Bratslav, as described in
Arnold Band's edited Nahman of Bratslav:The Tales and Yaffa Eliach's Hasidic Tales of the Holocaust.
One could also choose to remain at the level of intellectual and imaginative
exegesis. Who is to say where spirit begins and ends, if at all, within or
beyond intellect and imagination?
Yoruba ase theory, as depicted in the first chapter of Drewal et al's Yoruba: Nine Centuries of Africa Art and Thought, describes the universe as pervaded by life force from the ultimate creator Olodumare, enabling existence and potential, imbuing each existent with unique creative capacity.
In such a context, is the sacred not integral to all activity?
''Everyone and his own'' as ''power moves in many channels'', is Chinua Achebe's translation of expressions summing up the cognate Igbo concept ike in ''The Igbo World and its Art''.
''The spirit bloweth where it listeth, and none knows whence it cometh or whither it goeth, '' is Jesus' evocation of a similar idea, mobile but more discontinous, in his response to Nicodemus in the Gospel of John.
To Be Continued
Thanks
toyin adepoju
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Cornelius Hamelberg
Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju,
Many great thanks for your illuminating elucidations and comparative/cross-cultural excursions that throw so much more needed light on Ifa, for all of us the non-initiates, and for me, personally, you are a good substitute for the reading that is beyond my ken or the live and direct, soul-to-soul meeting with an Ifa adept somewhere in Osogbo, or other possibilities as in the case of Uwais al Qarni, and the Uwaisi Sufi tariqa
In the intervening time, with bated breath, I’m looking forward to your next installment on this matter.
My initial reaction to that image of the size of planet earth in proportion to the rest of the universe - the more than staggering immensity of it all, that beggars description or comprehension - my initial reaction was exactly what you quote of the psalmist, and in addition to that the thought of the Beit HaMikdash - the Almighty’s residence over here on planet earth a pointillist dot in the middle of all that vast dynamo of the star-studded heavens
And in the meantime the same place “where ignorant armies clash by night”
And all the petty Peter Obi - Adichie squabbles…
.
“And when explanations end, what remains?”
Bernard-Henri Lévy was once asked in the Swedish TV program Babel , “ Do you believe in God?” He replied, “Sometimes, at night, when I look up and see the stars!”