From Home to Infinity: Cosmology, Ifá, and the Architecture of Human Understanding in Toyin Falola's Ifá Priestcraft: Ifáyemí Elébuìbon and Yorùbá Ancestral Knowledge Systems: Ifá Priestcraft Review No.3

[Oluwatoyin Adepoju]

                                                                                          

                                                                        

                                                          From Home to Infinity

                        Cosmology, Ifá, and the Architecture of Human Understanding

                                                                            in

             Toyin Falola's Ifá Priestcraft: Ifáyemí Elébuìbon and Yorùbá Ancestral Knowledge Systems

                                                          Ifá Priestcraft  Review No.3

                                                                     Abstract

This essay argues that the introduction, "Cosmologies in Global Historical Context," to Toyin Falola's Ifá Priestcraft: Ifáyemí Elébuìbon and Yorùbá Ancestral Knowledge Systems deserves recognition as an important contribution to contemporary philosophical reflections on cosmology. Rather than merely introducing a study of Ifá, Falola develops a broad account of cosmology as one of humanity's oldest and most enduring intellectual enterprises, situating Yorùbá thought within a global history of attempts to understand the origin, structure, meaning, and development of the universe.

Particular attention is given to Falola's striking metaphor of the universe as humanity's home. This domestic image transforms cosmology from an abstract intellectual discipline into a practical and existential necessity, suggesting that understanding the cosmos is as fundamental to human flourishing as understanding one's dwelling place. Yet Falola's own qualification—that a home is not always a place of peace—opens unexpected philosophical possibilities. It invites reflection on contrasting visions of the cosmos as nurturing or hostile, hopeful or terrifying, finite or cyclically renewed.

Drawing Falola into conversation with Roger Penrose, Hindu cosmology, Dante Alighieri, Maurice Bucke, Mazisi Kunene, H. P. Lovecraft, and David Benatar, the essay explores competing forms of cosmological consciousness, ranging from mystical affirmation to cosmic pessimism. It concludes that Falola's introduction marks an important stage in his intellectual trajectory from political history through Yoruba metaphysics toward an increasingly comprehensive philosophy of cosmology, positioning Ifá as a participant in one of humanity's greatest conversations: the quest to understand the universe and humanity's place within it.
(Chat)

 

                                                                                     Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju

                                                                                                    Compcros

                                                                      Comparative Cognitive Processes and Systems

Contents

Abstract

A Synoptic Grasp of the Logic and Kinds of Cosmology

The Cosmological Imperative

Cosmological Questions

Cosmos as Home

The Paradoxical Home

             Reverse Mysticism

From Terrestrial Formations to Cosmology

Previous Essays in this Series of Engagements with Falola's Ifa Priestcraft

 

A Synoptic Grasp of the Logic and Kinds of Cosmology

If you want to gain a synoptic grasp of the study of cosmology as a foundational human endeavour, read the introduction, titled "Cosmologies in Global Historical Context", to Toyin Falola's Ifá Priestcraft: Ifáyemí Elébuìbon and Yorùbá Ancestral Knowledge Systems.

Absolutely thrilling.

It's a rich examination of the value and varieties of cosmology generally and a pioneering discussion of global cosmology in relation to Ifa, the indigenous Yoruba knowledge system.

The Cosmological Imperative

Two of my favourite passages. The subheadings are mine:

Cosmological Questions

Since time immemorial, humans have tried to understand where the world came from, fostering many philosophical schools and trends. Cosmology...attempts to answer such questions: Where did the world come from? Who created it, if there is a Creator at all? In what order of events did the birth of the universe take place?

Fundamentally, cosmology is determined by the nature of its queries, among them questions that touch on the structure of the universe and why it looks the way it does, as well as who and what the many beings are that dwell on the planet [Earth].[3]

       Cosmos as Home

To better understand the implications and importance of answering such questions, it may be of great benefit to liken the Earth to a home. A person's home is generally considered to be the safest place for them (although this is not always the case) [ see Toyin Falola, " Life Challenges No. 9: A Home Without Peace"] .

To maintain safety and prevent events that may damage it, one must understand all the facets and the nature of that home. This analogy applies to the world, home to more than 8 billion people and thousands of groups with millions of cities and systems.

The human race has always sought to understand the makeup of the world that houses it and the interactions in it to gain a deeper understanding of its existence. Different discoveries have brought about disparate reactions, explanations, and activities [ provoked by the understanding that]  the existence of the universe remains critical to the existence of the human race.

Unless alternative cosmological or metaphysical explanations arise in the future, it is understood scientifically and otherwise that when the universe ceases to exist, the existence of humans will end.

Although some debate the execution of this reality with varying scientific and religious convictions, as galaxies, solar systems, planets, and life-sustaining forces cease to exist, there will be detrimental effects for the planet and humans. [7]

I love the explanatory strategy of using a domestic metaphor in describing the rationale of the cosmological drive of the human race. It is brilliant in focusing the grand scope of cosmology, the broadest cognitive endeavour of the human being, in terms of the familiar and comforting contexts of a home.

Falola thereby dramatizes cosmology as a fundamental human need and suggests its significance as strategic for even the construction of the mind, since a cosmological orientation, however inadequately acknowledged, is vital for even the most basic and certainly for healthy human functioning, since it governs all the orientations of space, time and other coordinates that enable navigation of the world, even on a minute by minute basis.

Chat expands this evocative picture:

The home may also be understood as  functioning simultaneously on three levels:

·        Epistemological: just as one must know a house to inhabit it safely, one must know the cosmos to live wisely.

·        Existential: the metaphor expresses humanity's need to belong within reality rather than merely occupy it.

·        Ethical: caring for one's cosmic home implies responsibilities toward nature, society, and future generations.

This triadic interpretation elevates the metaphor beyond illustration into a philosophical model.

 

The Paradoxical Home

Ironically, the author introduces a sociological observation that complicates his use of the metaphor of a home- ''A person's home is generally considered to be the safest place for them (although this is not always the case).'' This irony is further galvanized by his having written, this month, August 2026, a moving poem/essay that explores that very caveat (" Life Challenges No. 9: A Home Without Peace") .

This irony ramifies even in cosmological terms, going beyond the sociological  and psychological implications of his observation about kinds of homes. This implication emerges in the observation about the questions-will the universe or the section of it where humans live ever come to an end? If it does, what would be the fate of humanity? The fate of a school of fish when their habitat, the river in which they live, dries up?

Scientific ideas about the death of the sun and scientific and mythic conceptions of  cosmic death and rebirth, from physicist Roger Penrose conclusion that the universe goes through cycles of re-emergence ( Cycles of Time ) to similar Hindu conceptions, exemplified in the image of the God Shiva, depicted,  in his identity as Nataraja, as dancing the cosmos into  and out of existence in a continuous cycle, his dance of creation and destruction, the Tandava,  being a classical form of Indian dance.

             Reverse Mysticism

Beyond such optimistic views of cosmic cycles, there is another cosmological image Falola's ironic picture of the unwholesome home evokes. That is the idea of the universe as disturbing, unsettling, even at times hostile and unwelcome to the fragile creature, the human being, who finds himself awake to life within it, with no idea of how he got there and where he is going to after exiting the bewildering immensity.

A consummate evocator of this style of thought is the US writer Howard Phillips Lovecraft, as in the opening of his story ''The Call of Cthulhu'':

                  The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. 

                  We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we

                  should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some

                   day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful 

                   position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and

                   safety of a new dark age.

This is a magnificent example of a form of reverse mysticism. This is a variant of cosmic consciousness, in which an ultimate cognitive synthesis, of relationships between the most extensive of universals and particulars, of the specificities of the cosmos and its overarching coordinates, does not lead to the elevating yet humbling experience of the conclusion of Dante's Divine Comedy, where things, their qualities and the relationships between them are ''perceived as one simple flame''.

Dante's image is resonant with Maurice Bucke's description of the experience of cosmic consciousness, the progression from self consciousness into awareness of the unity of being.

It is also correlative with the empowering grasp of the calabash of being, its depths in an unfathomable ultimacy and its unity in infinity, as Mazisi Kunene's image of Zulu epistemology in Anthem of the Decades may be interpreted.

Lovecraftian mysticism, however, also references such cognitive penetration and synthesis but the insights gained inspire horror, fear and perhaps regret at having gained such knowledge, which cannot be cast away after it has been acquired.

David Benatar argues, ''better never to have been born'', in a book of that title, arguing that coming into existence is not a positive experience but one that is better not undergone, given all the negativities and uncertainties of having come into the world.

From Terrestrial Formations to Cosmology

Falola's introduction to Ifa Priestcraft is one of his more striking pieces of writing. Demonstrating his entry into cosmology after metaphysics (Yoruba Metaphysics), a progression into ever more encompassing regions of Yoruba thought after explorations of Yoruba social and cognitive history ( Global Yoruba: Regional and Diasporic Networks) a research and  publishing journey that has, in its beginnings,  his native city Ibadan (  The Political Economy of a Pre-Colonial African State: Ibadan, 1830-1900, 1984)   and continues to reverberate with his further studies of that  city (Ibadan in History: Issues in Tradition and Modernity, 2025).

Chat sumps this up:

Falola's intellectual career exhibits a progressive enlargement of scale. His scholarship begins with the history of Ibadan, expands to Yorùbá history and the African diaspora, develops into Yorùbá metaphysics, and now culminates in cosmology, where Ifá is presented as participating in humanity's universal effort to understand the origin, structure, and destiny of reality itself. Seen in this light, the introduction to Ifá Priestcraft is not merely a preface to a single volume but a landmark in Falola's broader philosophical project of situating Yorùbá thought within the global history of cosmological consciousness.

Previous Essays in this Series of Engagements with Falola's Ifa Priestcraft

1.Biography as Cosmology: The Significance of Toyin Falola's Ifá Priestcraft: Ifáyemí Elébuìbon and Yorùbá Ancestral Knowledge Systems: An Anticipatory Review  

2. Biography as Cosmology: The Significance of Toyin Falola's Ifá Priestcraft: Ifáyemí Elébuìbon and Yorùbá Ancestral Knowledge Systems: An Anticipatory Review Within a Visual Quest for Cultural and Metaphysical Roots