Seeker of Mysteries: A Journey of Twenty Years from Benin-City to Ijebu Ode in Search of Sacred Space: Part 4
Oluwatoyin Adepoju
Abstract
An exploration of sacred spaces, within an autobiographical context, in Ijebu-Ode, particularly those of the classical African spirituality of the Yoruba, in relation to Islam and Christianity in Ijebu-Ode and pre-Christian nature spirituality in England.
Image Above
Selfie of myself under the sacred tree at Ikpebi near the Oba of Ijebu Ode's palace.
What seems to be the interference of light with the camera lens creates a shimmering, almost visionary effect, taking my mind back to my original goals in cultivating a fascination with the spirituality of trees in Benin-City, trying, through admiring their beauty, to reach into their ''roots'' in the source of being, the ultimate foundation that enables the existence of the universe and all it contains.
Asking to see testimonies to Orisha spirituality, the indigenous spirituality of Yorubaland, I was directed to Olorisha [owner or devotee of orisha/deities] junction, I was directed to Olorisha junction [ junction of owners or devotee of orisha/deities]. Why is it so called, and where is the evidence demonstrating the imprint of Orisa veneration that seems to have given the place its name? I did not ask those questions, which will wait for another day, but on requesting locations of orisha devotion, I was directed to a street some distance away, ironically marked by the loftily placed cross at the top of a church.
Arriving there, the man who directed me on the site told me he would simply point out the shrine to me and be on his way, giving the impression he prefered to have nothing more to do with my mission, which he had carefully but politely questioned me about before agreeing to show me the place.
We entered a rustic alleway, the ground red with untarred earth, crossing a gutter flowing with dirty water, entering an enclave removed in tone from the more open character of the street, an enclave projecting the sense of an insular space, where all eyes are on a new face.
Approaching the shrine, I was vigorously questioned as to my mission, making me compose myself to answer carefully in my limited Yoruba, invoking my reading of Wole Soyinka as inspiring me to the treasures of Yoruba spirituality, that illustrious name seeming to strike a bell, upon which my explanation as to my mission having been at last assimilated, I was more politely responded to and asked to come another day to see the shrine priest.
Why should access to a shrine of my ancestral religion be so challenging?
Why have we been forced into alleyways, into insular spaces, while those who came after rule the major thoroughfares of the communities we sustained before they came?
On requesting to see sacred trees and groves, I was directed to the location of two trees in a space ringed by screens of palm fronds used to mark sacred space. The place had an air of the uncanny, a mark of sacred natural space, but a force which had suffered some impact leading to its partial deconcentration at that space, a dissipation not helped by the presence of the cows tethered at its perimeters.
The carcass of a dead animal hung from what looked like a lightning blasted tree in its centre, an iroko, I was later told, famed for spiritual power. Next to it was another tree referred to in Benin-City as ikhinmwin, understood as the first tree on Earth, a primary sacred tree of Benin.
Standing still at the perimeter of that space, directing my attention away from the shops, houses and people near it on the road it adjoins, I got the impression I could sense the waves or echoes of a once mighty force emanating from the place.
How may we make our centres of power more attractive, clarifying to others and to ourselves what they mean, inspiring people to engage with these spaces?
Enquiring from the priest I met there about being informed about the nature of the place and its associated shrine which I was told is within the priest's house adjoining the grove, requesting to also take pictures of these locations, I was told to return with a certain amount of money to compensate the priest and his attendants, along with a bottle of gin for ritual. I intend to do those things.
Money is needed to sustain most endeavours. What may we learn, however, from the Christians and the Muslims who built their religion on the back of free or highly subsidised sharing of knowledge, driven by the belief that they have access to ultimate truth, a gateway to the eternal destiny of creation, which it is their divinely ordained duty to share with their fellow humans?