[Expanded and Further Edited] Seeker of Mysteries:A Journey of Twenty Years from Benin-City to Ijebu Ode in Search of Sacred Space
Oluwatoyin Adepoju
Arboreal sonorities, music of trees, in Itoro sacred grounds, Ijebu-Ode
Picture of tree hollow by myself
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.
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.
The Journey Outward and the Journey Inward
The Anglo-US writer T. S. Eliot states in ''Little Gidding'' "We shall not cease from exploration and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time''.
Where did I start?
Nigeria.
Where did I go to?
England.
What happened when I returned to Nigeria?
I realized the precarious state of the jewels I had left behind in my search for knowledge among those whose own gems are well cared for while mine are in danger.
The Outward Journey: England
I had visited Avebury and Glastonbury, sites of pre-Christian spirituality in England, and experienced the magic of those places, locations that have become global tourist attractions, about which books upon books are continually being written, inspiring consistently expanding systems of knowledge.
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Picture by James Dobeson evoking the spatial atmospherics of the Avebury complex of standing stones, its original uses more speculated upon than definitively known, but generally understood to be monuments of pre-Christian spirituality. Image source: ''Avebury'', The National Trust.
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Picture dramatizing the magnificent spatial dynamics of Glastonbury, the remains of a church tower at its apex indicating a Christian function but the artificial mound on which the tower rests suggesting an even older and perhaps spiritual significance, perhaps from an Earth venerating spirituality, the evocative value of the landscape making Glastonbury a centre of developments in modern Western nature spirituality.
Picture by blue sky in my pocket.
Image sources: Getty Images; Clive Anset, ''Glastonbury, Somerset: The place where the Holy Grail came to Britain'', and more.
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The profoundly suggestive mists of the Glastonbury landscape, subsuming its glorious expanse in evocations of silence and mystery, a catalyst for Marion Zimmer Bradley's novel The Mists of Avalon, uniquely unifying centuries of imaginative creativity and reflection on the significance of Glastonbury and its relationship with a central legend of kingship and magic in Europe, the Arthurian literary cycle. In Bradley's novel those mists conceal the entrance to the magical realm of Avalon.
Picture by David Clapp.
Image sources: Getty Images, Clive Anset, ''Glastonbury, Somerset: The place where the Holy Grail came to Britain'', and more.
I had prayed and worshipped in churches centuries old, and others less aged, immersed myself in the numinous, the sense of the ineffable and mysteriously uplifting, at places like St. Benet's church Cambridge, where daily prayer has been ongoing for centuries, and engaged with the glorious ancient churches of various Cambridge colleges.
Places of succor in challenging times, playing for me the role Benin's sacred natural spaces had played for me, testimonies to the enduring power of human creativity attested by magnificent architecture even in the face of the dwindling of worshippers within the move of many in the West away from traditional Christian spirituality.
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Illustrated map of Cambridge by Tom Wooley indicating Cambridge as an environment dedicated to learning, represented by Kings College, and to leisure, suggested by its various places for eating, drinking and listening to music, amidst streets in the city centre demonstrating a uniquely memorable character, such as the richly multicultural Mill Road, also a haven of excellent second hand bookshops, an ensemble of possibilities unified by the image of a gaily coloured cyclist, using a means of transport central to Cambridge, a mode of movement both practical and facilitating visual and auditory connection with the surrounding space, the harmony in variety of bright colours suggesting a sense of delight in navigating enchanting city space.
Image source:Pinterest.
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Collage by myself of the Faulks gate at the entrance to the Cambridge Centre of Mathematical Sciences, top left; bike park at the Betty and Gordon Moore Library inside the Centre, bottom left; and, interior of the library, right.
My accidental discovery of this library, complemented by my exposure to scientific and other knowledge cultures at the University of Cambridge as a resident of the city, opened my eyes to the possibilities of correlating classical African and particularly Yoruba origin Orisa cosmology with science in working towards a comprehensive grasp of the cosmos, as suggested by Abiola Irele of the figure of the orisha, the deity Eshu in ''The African Scholar'', an achievement that would be correlative with what Fritjof Capra does with the figure of the Hindu deity Shiva in relation to Asian cosmologies in The Tao of Physics, as I narrate and discuss in ''A Salute to the Elephant : Abiola Irele at the Intersection of Disciplines'' and ''Abiola Irele and Negritude Aesthetics:Rhythm as a Metaphysical Principle:Transcultural and Scientific Implications''.
The picture of a man walking, top left, and behind whom is a knot image depicting an achievement in the mathematical field of knots is used here in evoking physical and cognitive mobility, of the body in walking, and of the mind, in creating, synergies strategic for me in my discovery of and reflections on inspiring spaces.
The men and their bicycles in the bicycle park in the bottom left image suggest for me the rear door of the library, near the bicycle park, from where I first entered the library, the nondescript leading to the wonderful, as well as mobilities of body and of mind implicated in my discovery of that library.
The centre right image indicates the inspiring ambience of the library.
Image sources: ''Mathematical Gates (Faulkes Gatehouse)'', Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences. Men at bike park from library Instagram account. Image of library interior, from library Twitter/X account.
My explorations in Cambridge and Benin-City are partly captured in the sections on both cities under the subheading ''Space'' in my ''Linked List of Publications of Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju by Subject. In Progress''.
The Inward Journey: Nigeria/Benin-City
What was the state of the Ogba forest in Benin-City when I returned after almost twenty years, a place where an angel seemed to dwell, given the exalted and profoundly uplifting atmosphere of that location?
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A map by Akugbe Collins Oviasogie incidentally evoking for me my walks across a good part of Benin and its outskirts, as well as engagements with its libraries, bookshops and the University of Benin, with Christian, Western esoteric, Asian and classical African sacred cultures, with sacred trees, sacred groves and the Ogba forest, human and non-human culture bearers represented by spiritual masters and inspiring natural sacred spaces and humanly created shrines, transformative experiences taking me deeper into a sophisticated, globally ranging, multidisciplinary world of knowledge.
Image source: Oviasogie A.C. (2018). ''Assessing Noise Levels, Land Use Diversity and Wellbeing in Selected Neighbourhoods of Benin City, Nigeria''. Master of Philosophy Thesis. Submitted to Department of Architecture, Federal University of Technology Akure, Nigeria, used in Akugbe Collins Oviasogie, ''Neighbourhood Spatial Pattern and Noise Disturbance in Benin City, Nigeria'', Journal of Engineering Research and Reports12(4): 37-46, 2020.
The Ogba forest had ceased to exist, having become a housing estate, the river rising gloriously to the surface in the forest depths after a long underground journey had become a dirty rivulet.
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Picture from Okomu National Park, Ovia South-West Local Government Area of Edo State in Nigeria by Liesel81 at Tripadvisor. One of the natural environments I intend to explore in Nigeria.
Comparative Reflection
Can all the knowledge possible from all the learning opportunities enabled by Cambridge's wonderful network of world class libraries, bookshops, seminars, talks and conferences replace the inspirational force of that awesome space, the Ogba forest, embodying ''an invisible but majestic presence that inspires both dread and fascination and constitutes the non-rational essence of vital religion'', as described by Rodolph Otto in The Idea of the Holy, and defined by Webster's dictionary, a wonder of existence destroyed to make way for the two legged creature who dominates the earth?
But without the knowledge gained from exposure to the civilization represented by Cambridge in the scope of that civilization's cultural sensitivity and breadth of development of knowledge, how much would I understand of the value of those wonders back home and how to protect and project them?
Creative Restlessness
By daybreak on the 27th of April 2024, I had spent hours from the previous night studying the nomad philosophy of European thinker Rossi Braidotti in her Nomadic Theory and her Nomadic Subjects.
Her emphasis on the potential mobility of thinking, of reflection as better appreciated as a never ending process rather than as a quest for immutable knowledge, a sense of motion within perpetual epistemic homelessness in tension with a sense of stability giving strength to that ceaseless motion, was helping me understand my life as a perpetual wayfarer in the world of learning, an orientation mirrored by my love of walking, walking highlighted by Braidotti as a major stimulant to thinking, walking being the primary means through which I discovered the tree glories of Benin, wonders now largely much less visible than they were twenty years ago or decimated.
The Inward Journey: Ijebu-Ode
I needed a break from work and chose to visit Ijebu-Ode, a short drive from Lagos. I wanted to explore a magnificent grove on the way between Lagos and Ijebu-Ode which I saw on my way back to Lagos through the city on a previous trip.
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Notice atop the car I used to Ijebu-Ode at Ojota motor park.
Picture by myself.
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With my guides at Olorisha junction, Ijebu-Ode. They directed me to some of the first sites I explored in that city. ''Why are you taking pictures of the tree at the junction?'' they had asked me, a tree that was not understood to have any special significance.
I pointed out the unique aesthetics of the tree as my attraction to it, inviting them to reflect on the time it would have taken that natural form to reach its current level of complex growth.
''This tree is commonplace to you because you see it everyday'', I told them,''but to others it could be a unique wonder'', I concluded.
They appreciated my perspective, relating to it as a new window into their world, their response leading me to reflect on the relationship between opportunity and human development, a confluence at times enabled by unanticipated circumstance.
Eventually, I did not see the grove until my return to Lagos in the evening, having spent the day in Ijebu-Ode. I took note of the landmarks that will enable me locate the place again when I return.
What did I gain from Ijebu-Ode, though I did not see the grove I travelled to explore, until after I had left the city?
I observed the defeat of the faith of my ancestors and was provoked to reflect on how to reverse this defeat.
Mosques everywhere. Churches everywhere. Large mosques. Medium sized mosques. Even a mosque composed of an uncompleted, unroofed , unfurnished and unplastered building. Islamic academies. Quranic texts in Arabic and English, along with various Islamic prayer paraphernalia, for sale in front of the huge central mosque.
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Pictures by myself of the grandeur of the central mosque in Ijebu Ode. The bottom picture shows a banner from the Chief Imam of Ijebu-Ode and the Ijebu-Ode Muslim community congratulating Oba Sikiru Kayode Adetona, the king of Ijebu Ode, on the 64th anniversary of his coronation and his 90th birthday.
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Woman selling copies of the Quran, on the right, and other Islamic items in front of the Ijebu-Ode central mosque.
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St. Peter's cathedral of the First African Church Mission, Ijebu-Ode.
Picture by myself.
What of the places of worship of that faith that sustained Yoruba land, to which Ijebu-Ode belongs, for centuries before the coming of Islam and Christianity, the faith constituting Yorubaland's primary contribution to world civilization, reaching as far as the Americas, sources of texts unique to Yoruba civilization, in a way that the Koran and the Bible are not?
Ikpebi
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Attendant opening the gate to a compound housing a sacred tree located a little distance before the Oba's palace at Ijebu-Ode. The attendant describes herself as a Muslim who is not informed about the significance of the sacred tree.
She, however, demonstrated selfless commitment in insisting that she would open the gate for me too see and photograph the tree if I paid for a new padlock for the gate, rather than asking for anything for herself, unlike requests for personal reward from some other culture bearers I have encountered in my quests in classical African spiritualities.
How did she become custodian of that gate? Why is she so committed to the task though she does not identify with its spiritual significance? Her attitude demonstrates the culture of inter-religious harmony that defines almost all Yorubland, of which Ijebu Ode is a part.
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The sacred tree in the gated compound of Ikpebi near the Oba of Ijebu-Ode's palace.
Picture by myself.
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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.
Olorisha Junction
Asking to see testimonies to Orisha spirituality, the spirituality created by the Yoruba, I was directed to Olorisha junction [ junction of owners or devotees 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 veneration, 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 Wlole 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?
Idiroko
On requesting to see sacred trees and groves, I was directed to Idiroko, 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 inhimwin, understood as the first tree on Earth, a primary sacred tree of Benin.
Standing still at the perimeter of this space, ignoring the shops and houses 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 what they mean, inspiring them 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?
Itoro
The last and perhaps most consequential location of classical Yoruba spirituality, particularly in its relationship with nature, which I visited in that eventful day at Ijebu-Ode was Itoro, an embodiment of Ijebu history as well as a dramatization of the inspirationally generative potential of landscape, a zone rich with eloquently beautiful trees in a landscape suggestive, to me, of harbouring great happenings, historical depths and creative possibilities, resonating within the mind contemplating the scenic space regardless of the gazer's knowledge of the significance of the space, a generative capacity inhering in the relationship between the landscape and the human mind.
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Collage by myself integrating pictures I took at Itoro. The collage suggests the location's synergy of natural grandeur generated by stately trees and that created by humanly created monuments.
Various monuments in that space gesture towards its historical significance as an axial point, a generative centre in Ijebu history, but these markers are in different states of care.
The most significant of these has its roof caving in even as its interior is unkept. It is a medium sized white building described as the site of the centuries old epochal sacrifice of a diviner, Enisemu, who consulted an oracle to determine what should be done to stem the expansion of a lagoon at that point which threatened Ijebu land.
The oracle revealed that the diviner would have to give up his life for the lagoon to contract, in response to which directive he positioned himself upon the water and it took him away to a zone unknown, upon which the lagoon dried up.
This is a turning point in Ijebu history commemorated by the shrine being the point of commencement of the installation rites of the Awujale, the monarch of Ijebu land, which includes other Ijebu sub-groups beyond Ijebu-Ode.
The descendants of Enisemu, the diviner who sacrificed himself on behalf of Ijebu land have been exempt from tax from the time of that great sacrifice. The family converge on the site of the sacrifice to commemorate that incident towards the end of every year, a historical narrative told to me by Mr. Sunday Joseph Adesanya, Secretary to the Ijebu-Ode local government, whom I met at Itoro.
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Picture by myself of Obanta shrine at Itoro and of the plaque on the shrine wall describing its significance. I understood this shrine to represent Enisemu, from what I was told. I am therefore puzzled that the plaque describes it as representing Obanta, an early king at Ijebu Ode. I will need to clarify this through further enquiries.
A Google search reveals that the full name of this self sacrificing figure is Enisemu or Onisemu Leguru and that he was a babalawo, an adept in the esoteric knowledge of Ifa, the central Yoruba divination system, as stated at the Ijebu RewaFacebook page, which presents a story identical to the one I was told. A yearly festival is celebrated in his name, as described in ''Ijebu Festivals'' at the Egbe Bobakeye site and of which there are videos on YouTube.
There is also a street and a chieftaincy title named after him. A holder of that title, H.S.M Adegbemiro Tajudeen Bello, is shown in this video by Ambassador TV presenting another version of the story, emphasizing it as a duel between Enisemu and the spirit of the river that constituted much of what is now known as Ijebu land, Enisemu's victory over that river spirit enabling the emergence of dry land on which the larger community was eventually built, embedding the story within a rich construction of Yoruba culture in terms of its ethics, actualized in interpersonal relations and semantics, the rationale for the names of various communities, describing Leguru as the historical root of Ijebu leadership and of a spiritual force forever active in relation to the Ijebu.
Rather than erect a building at the site, why were the clearly once large trees the stumps of which are all that remains, having been cut down, not sustained?
Even if they fall, should they not have been replaced, therefore preserving the sense of natural power the environment may have possessed as a location in a forest, suggested by the large tree still beside the shrine?
The current disrepair of the site raises questions as to the level of identification with the historical/political/ religious matrix represented by that shrine.
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Collage by myself correlating the pictures I took of the interior of the Obanta shrine.
Animistic Essences in Classical African Spiritualities
Nature is strategic to the animistic philosophies of classical African spiritualities, habitats in which the beauty and power of existence are experienced in their primal form, environments which human beings can only try to emulate but never fully succeed in evoking the sublimity of the sacred.
Animism may have its roots in experiences with nature testifying to the idea so eloquently expressed by French poet Charles Baudelaire in ''Correspondences'', of ''nature as a temple of living pillars, emitting words little understood, a forest of symbols through which the human being passes, as strange, familiar eyes observe him from the leaves above, echoes that emerge from afar in a mysterious and profound unity, vast as night and bright as day, scents, colors, and sounds correspond, expanding into infinity''.
The palpitating life of that natural dynamism may demonstrate what English poet William Wordsworth describes in ''Tintern Abbey'' as ''a presence that disturbs me with the joy of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime of something far more deeply interfused, whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, and the round ocean and the living air, and the blue sky, and in the mind of man: a motion and a spirit, that impels all thinking things, all objects of all thought, and rolls through all things'', borrowings from Western Symbolist and Romantic poetry convergent with the voices of African thinkers on what John Mibiti in African Religions and Philosophy describes as a unifying motif of classical African thought, expressed by Chinua Achebe, in ''The Igbo World and its Art'', on Igbo thought as recognizing ''ike, energy, as the essence of all things, human, spiritual, animate and inanimate'', generating ''a dynamic world of movement and of flux'', ''an arena for the interplay of forces''.
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Tree near Olorisha junction in Ijebu Ode. Wole Soyinka's summations on the unity of humanity and Earth in relation to Orisa cosmology are relevant to the dynamism suggested by the tree's roots and the shelter they give to the sleeping person in these pictures I was fortunate to take on my trip-
''Honour to the Ancestors. If blood flows in you, tears run, bile courses, if the soft planet of brain pulses with thought and sensing, and earth consumes you in the end, then you, with your ancestors, are one with the fluid elements.
If the beast knows what herbs of the forest are his friends, what plea shall man make that boasts superior knowledge, yet knows no empathy with moisture of the air he breathes, the juice of leaves, the sap in his roots to earth, or the waters that nourish his being? Man may speak Oya, Osun, Orisa-Oko [orisa or deities of nature]…yet mind and spirit encompass more than a mere litany of names. Knowledge is Orisa.''
The Ijebu Ode constellation of mosques and churches in their ubiquity, their pervasive presence, in relation to the centrality and yet inadequate positioning of classical African spiritualities in Ijebu Ode suggests to me an urgent need for the sustenance of existing spaces and the creation of new ones dramatizing the value to humanity of the primal spiritualities of African peoples.
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Football game in play at the open space next to the Obanta shrine. Picture by myself.
The integration of play and gravitas represented by youth playing football, watched over by the sage presence of an ancient tree in open space in front of the Obanta shrine as I observed on my visit, the location of a library further inward within the place, the positioning of eloquently beautiful trees mapping the grounds, suggest to me the kinds of spaces that need to be built to project the nature centred, intergenerational, cognitively directed values of classical African spiritualities.
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Alhaja Salamotu Kuku Memorial Library at Itoro, Ijebu-Ode.
Upper pictures show its current look. Lower picture depicts its apperarance when it was new.
Image Sources
Upper pictures by myself. Lower image on Facebook account of Ogun State Library Board.
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Football game in play at the open space next to the Obanta shrine. Picture by myself.
These should be spaces doing away with the gender restrictive character of some of expressions of classical African spiritualities, such as women not being allowed inside the Obanta shrine, as the inscription on its wall states, replacing such restrictions with such recognitions as the Yoruba origin Ogboni recognition of the unity of pluralities in generating a third factor, the Earth Mother present as the unifying force of the Ogboni, as Babatunde Lawal describes in ''New Perspectives on Edan Ogboni'' akin to the trinity actualized as the unity of the father, the mother and the child in Agbarha Ekene theology of the Urhobo, which I have learnt about through my explorations in Agbarha.
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Itoro at dusk, as seen from the road opposite the historic space. Picture by myself.
Who Am I?
I am that cognitively hungry person, driven by the yearning for knowledge, trying to understand his place, that of his fellow humans and others beings, in the universe, and of the universe in the cosmos of possibilities.
What my fellow Africans, past and present, in relation to what people everywhere have thought or think of such aspirations, is strategic to my existence, impelling me on that visit to Ijebu-Ode and the compulsive writing through which I have composed this account of my trip.
The matrix of humanity and nature I have encountered in Ijebu-Ode continually calls to me, part of a larger network of investigations of classical Nigerian sacred spaces and associated thought and arts.
''The wave cry, the wind cry, the vast waters of the petrel and the porpoise. In my end is my beginning''-T. S. Eliot.
''The spiral is an Nsibidi sign meaning journey but it also suggests the sun and eternity''- Inscribing Meaning: Writing and Graphic Systems in African Art exhibition, Smithsonian.