Reworking Ogboni and Gelede
Transposing Yoruba Female Centred Spiritualities in an Individualistic Context
Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
Compcros
Comparative Cognitive Processes and Systems
"Exploring Every Corner of the Cosmos in Search of Knowledge"
A remarkable example of the confluence of the surreal and the representational in Ogboni art depicted here by the female half of an edan ogboni, a central symbolic form and spiritual agent of the Yoruba origin Ogboni esoteric order. The female edan holds her breasts, highlighting the unique nurturing capacities of the feminine, both the human feminine and Ile, Earth, the latter being the entity to which Ogboni is dedicated.
Abstract
An introduction to my vision in reworking the Yoruba female centred spiritualities Ogboni and Gelede and a preliminary demonstration of method in
this reworking.
The essay is structured as a description of purpose juxtaposed with an exemplification of method. The method is represented by images
culled from various online sources
and accompanying text written by myself. The pictures and their complementary text adapt Ogboni and Gelede art in terms of relationships between aesthetic appreciation and symbolic values that build on but go beyond the traditional interpretive framework of the creative works.
My vision in relation to Ogboni
is that of developing Ogboni's Earth veneration in its dialogue with the feminine principle and the masculine/feminine dialectic, correlating these with similar orientations in other Yoruba institutions, Ifa and Gelede. I am building a philosophical and spiritual system in which these three constitute interrelated nexus of a unified matrix also including other centralizations of the feminine in Yoruba spirituality. These other centralizations are goddesses such as Oshun as well as the archetypal/pervasive characterization of ambiguous female power in Yoruba thought, Awon Iya Wa Osoronga, which may be translated as Our Mothers Arcane, or adapting Pierre Verger, Our Mothers Sorcerous. I am also building upon the explicit and implicit confluence
in Yoruba thought between goddesses, the arcane feminine represented by
Awon Iya Wa
and women in general.
Proving most helpful in this effort is the work of Babatunde Lawal, as represented by such works as "À Yà Gbó, À Yà Tó : New Perspectives in Edan Ogboni'', "Ejiwapo : The Dialectics of Twoness in Yoruba Art and Culture" and The Gelede Spectacle, Henry and Margaret Dewal's magnificent "Art and the Perception of Women in Yorùbá Culture" and Gelede: Art and Female Power Among the Yoruba and the work of Susanne Wenger and her Osogbo collective,
amongst other developments in relation to the feminine in classical Yoruba culture.
I aspire to contribute to the cultivation of Yoruba origin female centred spirituality, with a focus on the central Ogboni veneratrix (my neologism for a venerated female figure), Ile, Earth, as primal mother and enabler of all aspects of terrestrial development, a primary catalyst in spiritual growth through the stimulating energies concentrated within her and encountered through sensitivity to nature, a presence summative, as Lawal concludes in The Gelede Spectacle, of all female spiritual personalities in Yoruba cosmology.
Homage, my mother, the Osoronga
Mother with the beautiful eyes,
Who has a bunch of hair in her private part
…………………………………………………………………
The famous bird of the night who flies gracefully.
By Sule Akinbami in Lawal,
The Gelede Spectacle
.
"Here I am, one with the water; I
think and feel like the river, my blood flows like the river, to the rhythm of
its waves, otherwise the trees and the animals wouldn't be such allies. I am here in the trees, in the
river, in my creative phase, not only when I am here physically, but
forever-even when I happen to be travelling-hidden beyond time and suffering,
in the Spiritual Entities, which, because they are Real in many ways, present
ever new features. I feel sheltered with them-in them-because I am so very fond of trees
and running water-and all the gods of the world are trees and animals long,
long before they entrust their sacrosanct magnificence to a human figure."
Susanne Wenger in Adunni: A Portrait of Susanne Wenger by
Rolf Bruckman and Gerd Hotter.
Lines from Yoruba lore on arcane feminine powers demonstrated by the ability to fly through unconventional means, juxtaposed with Yoruba spirituality adept Susanne Wenger's lines on spiritual flight enabled by her intimacy with the sacred Oshun forest in Oshogbo, Yorubaland. Both verbal sequences are anchored by a majestic Gelede mask of remarkable design and exquisite artistry, its streamlined construction evoking the aerodynamism suggested by the spiritual flight of Iya Wa Osoronga, Our Mothers Mysterious, and the mystical flight of Susanne Wenger inspired by animistic identification with nature.
From within these integrations, one can reach out to establish links with other female centred spiritual figures and systems, such as the dakini, "the traveller in space", of Tibetan Buddhism who share characteristics with Iya Wa in their characterization as spiritually mobile entities, and the latter's relation to the history of Western witchcraft conceptions, both denigrative and valoristic, to the Buddhist Prajnamparita, an ultimate female wisdom, mother of all spiritually enlightened figures, correlative with the Yoruba Yewajobi, mother of all and Iyan Nla, the Yoruba Great Mother.
A central motivation for these integrations is my trance encounter with a personage
associated with the Ogba river in Benin, that personage being perhaps the Goddess of the river. That experience was the climax of my practical explorations
of the numinous qualities of Benin nature spirituality through engagement with
what I have later come to understand as superbly represented by the
Yoruba concept oju inu, inward perception beyond the immediacies of phenomena to their inner constituents, and the Igbo ideas of
ose naabo and ose ora, perception of the
material and spiritual worlds.
This investigation of nature spirituality was carried out
under the inspiration of the work of the English occultist Dion Fortune. My entry into female centred spiritualities was catalyzed by my reading of Marion Zimmer Bradley's classic of Western Paganism in the
context of Arthurian narrative, The Mists of Avalon. My exploration of Gelede and Ogboni, female centred forms of spirituality, and their conjunction with Ifa, are part of my navigation of the feminine integrating the aesthetic, the erotic, the philosophical, spiritual and arcane. I aspire to synergise my studies in nature spirituality with these examinations of the feminine.
The Efe Gelede mother mask is ensconced in darkness where her powers brood out of reach of the profane. She comes forth in darkness, concealed to all outside her devotees. Cultivate that within you palpitating in the living darkness, unknown to the eyes that see only in the light of day.
Ogboni, and to some degree Gelede, are esoteric systems that, in their classical formulations, may be described as setting great store by concentrating ase- a pervasive energy intimately related to consciousness, enabling agency and change- within physical instruments, and in the case of Ogboni, within the human self, a task central to all Yoruba spirituality but distinctive in these systems in terms of the characterization of the spiritual personalities in terms of which this power is understood.
This goal can also be pursued using my preferred method of imagination. It can also be enhanced by relationship with nature, particularly natural zones that concentrate this power and stimulate its accession by human beings.
The initiative I am describing is enriched by and contributes to contemporary reassessments of animism and various developments in female centred spiritualities, in Paganism and nature spirituality.
The beautiful complexity of the contemplative mind. Tranquility incubating dynamism. The serene face of the Gelede mask bearing the dynamic superstructure. Placid without, potent within.The alert calm gestating hidden but numinous powers. Adapting classical Yoruba conceptions of the feminine to the human mind in general.
Great thanks to the initiators and editors of the Palgrave Handbook of African Women's Studies, participation in which project has catalysed my pursuit of a journey I began years ago, the greater implications of which I have slowly grown to understand , a realization my work on the
Palgrave
project has greatly contributed to.
Great thanks, too, to all who support and encourage my work.
I thank the Presence, perhaps the Goddess, of the Ogba river and forest. I thank Olodumare the creator of the universe. I celebrate my Ori, my inner self. I salute my personal Esu, integrator of possibilities of existence.
