Manifestations

at Cosmogenesis

The Three Awo Before Time

the Descent of r and Asuwa and the Splitting of Oyigiyigi

Universal Implications of Three Yoruba Cosmogonic Narratives

Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju

Compcros
Comparative Cognitive Processes and Systems
Exploring Every Corner of the Cosmos in Search of Knowledge"

Summary
In this essay I explore three cosmogonic accounts, stories about the
creation of the earth or the cosmos, from Yoruba thought, and their
philosophical explications in relation to visual art I choose to
correlate with the creation stories, engaging with the imaginative
beauty, power and cognitive force of the narratives, thereby
developing an architectonic of foundational conceptions in Yoruba
philosophy in terms of their universal significance.

Contents

1. Overview: Exploring "The Descent of Oro", "Ayajo Asuwada"

and "The Splitting of Oyigiyigi" through Ratiocinative,

Imaginative,
Contemplative
and
Ritual
Strategies
10
A. "The Descent of r" and the Three Awo Before Time 14
a. The Concept of Awo

15

b. Awo, Cosmogonic Conditions and Sonic Lyricism 19

2. "Ayajo Asuwada" and the Descent of Asuwa 22
A. Comparing Mythic Structuration in "Ayajo Asuwada"
and the Hindu Image of Vishnu 33
B. Paradoxical Conjunctions of Tenderness and Power,
the Surreptitious and the Epic in "Ayajo Asuwada 36
3.

Odumare and "The Descent of Oro 37

A. The Emergence of Ogbon (Wisdom), Imo (Knowledge)
and Oye ( Understanding) 37
B. Correlating Verbal Music and Metaphysical
Concepts in " The Descent of Oro" 41
C. The Mysterious Eleye in "The Descent of Oro" 48
D. Communicative Dynamism and Transcendence in "The
Descent of Oro" 56

4. "The Descent of Oro" and "Ayajo Asuwada: Correlations in

Difference 60
5. The Splitting of Oyigiyigi and the 256 Odu Ifa 63
A. Odu Ifa as Organizational Forms and Active Agents 65

6. Amplifying Yoruba Theory of Discourse through Comparison

With Ibn Arabi's Futt al-Makkya, The Meccan Revelations
67
7. Contemplative and Ritual Possibilities 72
A. Emphasising the Imaginative Character of Forms
Embodying Ideas 72
a. Sonic 74
b. Visual 75
b. 1.Visualising Cosmogonic Processes through
the Beauty of Anthropomorphic Forms 77
b.2. Visualising Cosmogonic Processes
through Non- Anthropomorphic Forms 78
b.3. The Symbolism of Intersecting Vertical and
Horizontal Lines in Opon Ifa Iconography 80
8. Myth and Meaning 82
9. Constructing and Transcending Windows of Interpretation 85

Images and Accompanying Verbal Texts

1. Figure 1: Our Journey by Obiora Udechukwu

6-10

2. Figure 2: 'Numinous Beast' by Bruce Arnott

13

3. Figure 3: Collage of Victor Ekpuk's Good Morning, Sunrise and an

Ife head 16

4. Figure 4: Batabwa ancestor figure 21

5. Figure 5: Shesha, Vishnu, Brahma and Lakshmi
24
6. Figure 6: Vishnu/Brahma/Shesha cosmogonic image in gold
27
7. Figure 7: Sleeping Vishnu 29
8. Figure 8: Lagana figures 30-31
9. Figure 9 : Mysterious tableau by Eze Chimalio 35
10. Figure 10: Igba Iwa 38
11. Figure 11: Aerodynamic Lagana figure 41
12. Figure 12: Yoruba/Nago statue 45-47
13. Figure 13: Esu on horseback 50-51
14. Figure 14: Mumuye female figure 54-55
15. Figure 15: Opon Ifa, Oju Odu Ifa and Cosmic Structure 58
16. Figure 16: Owusu-Ankomahs Microcron 61
17. Figure 17 : Ogbon (Wisdom) 64
18. Figure 18 : Imo (Knowledge) 68
19. Figure 19 : ye ( Understanding ) 70

20. Figure 20: Cosmogonic and Cognitive Foundations in Yoruba

Philosophy and Orisa Cosmology
73
21. Figure 21: The Presence by Akudinobi Tony George Chidi 76
22. Figure 22: Opon ifa, inscribed with vertical lines, as the face of
Esu looks on at top centre 79
23. Figure 23: Opon ifa evoking primal power in its minimalist and
yet elaborate construction 83
24. Figure 24: A supreme example of opon ifa art amplified by
Voodoo veve 86

 Image on Previous Page

Figure 1

Our Journey

by


Obiora Udechukwu


A masterly evocation of what may be seen as cosmological
progression.

The painting adapts the evocative powers of the Nigerian Igbo Uli
and Cross River Nsibidi motif of the spiral, depicting it journeying
through a landscape peopled by abstract forms defining
a zone unidentifiable by conventional markers of time and space,
possibilities beyond the borders of emergence.
Within the Uli context, the spiral and the concentric circle, the latter
also evident in the painting, evoke unity, the circle of life and the
coiled bodies of reptiles such as the python, as described by Robin
Sanders in The Legendary Uli Women of Nigeria. Within the
framework of the Igbo belief in the mutual identification between
animals and those who revere them, the python symbolism encodes
"knowledge of the sacred feminine-Ala- whose grace (represented by
the majestic body and sinuous movements of the Royal Python-Eke- )
emphasizes the role of ...the sacred feminine...in Igbo cosmology as
the foundation without which all the components of cultural life
become impossible" as summed up by Sylvester Okwunodu Ogbechie
on another artist working within the same symbolic field, in Ndidi
Dike
:
New
Beginnings."

Also prominent in the painting is the Cross River Nsibidi symbolism
of the spiral, described at the website of the Inscribing Meaning :
Writing and Graphic Systems in African Art exhibition as suggesting
the sun, journey and eternity. The visual and associative unity
of spiral and snake symbolism in Uli and Nsibidi, of coiling and
uncoiling motion perceived in terms of creative rhythms, may be
amplified through correlation with the image of Iyandezulu, the

cosmic snake whose movements are in thousands, suggestive of

cosmic motion, as depicted of Zulu cosmology in Mazisi
Kunene's Anthem of the Decades.
Udechukwu's sonorous visualization actualizes spatial breadth
through its projection of the unfolding spiral traversing and unifying
space, space constituted by various zones conjoined through the
motion of the unfolding form as well as its structural similarity to the
circular structurations it leaves behind as it moves across evocations
of configurations neither terrestrial nor celestial, existing at the
intersection of imagination and concreteness, resonating, within the
expansive kaleidoscope of colour and abstract figuration, with solar
systems and galaxies, with the efforts of the mind to construct islands
of order, of understanding, within the tantalising infinity of the
unknown, the compelling power of these receding cognitive vistas
evoked by the sheer beauty of the composition, awash with sublime
colour contrasts, luminous disjunctive complementarities defining
the undulations of strangely beautiful shapes.
This magnificent painting evokes for me two other great depictions
of the circle of human perception and the zone beyond
perception, accessible only through imagination. These are the
Dutch-French artist Vincent van Gogh's painting Starry Night and the
German philosopher Immanuel Kant's meditation on temporality and
infinity, spatial minisculity and spatial immensity, in the penultimate
section of his Critique of Practical Reason. van Gogh depicts a
landscape alive with a force sweeping across the celestial and
terrestrial worlds in a spiralling motion of which Udechukwu's
adaptation of Nsibidi and Uli spiral symbolism testifies to its
universal hold on the imagination. Starry Night portrays the stars,
trees and houses unified in a cosmic loom, a symphony
composed of the positioning of humanity between celestial and
terrestrial nature. Kant, on the other hand, portrays himself
navigating between the vast possibilities of his internal universe and
the grand temporal and spatial configurations of the celestial world,
evoking the mystery of the origin of the life animating his reflective
form, a mystery magnified by the conjunction between the
foreshortening of human powers by the finitude of life within the
relative minisculity of the planet he inhabits, "a mere speck in the
cosmos". As the spiral does in Udechukwu's Our Journey, Kant
traverses various monuments, in his case, across spaces of thought,
to issue in a depiction of this journeying as an unfolding, incidentally

evoked by Udechukwu's spiral, of a cosmographic tapestry

culminating in the space of infinity.

1. Overview
Exploring "The Descent of Oro", "Ayajo Asuwada" and "The
Splitting of Oyigiyigi" through Ratiocinative, Imaginative,
Contemplative and Ritual Strategies
This essay explores three cosmogonic accounts, stories about the
creation of the cosmos, from Yoruba thought, "The Descent of r" ,
"Ayajo Asuwada" and "The Splitting of Oyigiyigi" and their
philosophical explications by Rowland Abiodun, Akinsola Akiwowo
and Awo Falokun Fatunmbi in relation to visual art I choose to align
with the creation stories. These cosmogonic narratives are
imaginative depictions of ideas about the fundamental constituents
of existence. The foundationality of the ideas they express is
projected through their being presented in the form of depictions of
the emergence of being.
I engage with the imaginative beauty, power and cognitive force of
these stories in the context of Abiodun's, Akiwowo's and Fatunmbi's
analyses of them, studying what these qualities consist in, how they
have been achieved and developing an understanding of their
significance. I also integrate the ideas unfolded in the three stories,
thereby constructing a systematisation of foundational conceptions
in Yoruba philosophy in terms of their global and timeless value in
the exploration of the cognitive, social and metaphysical foundations
of existence.
The poem I name "The Descent of r" since no title is given for it,
comes from D. Adeniji and is presented and discussed by Rowland
Abiodun in his Yoruba Art and Language :Seeking the African in
African Art. The other poem, "Ayajo Asuwada", is translated by
Akinsola Akiwowo in "Towards a Sociology of Knowledge from an
African Oral Poetry", in International Sociology 1986; 1; 343-358. I
expand the poem in order to clarify its concepts by integrating within
it selections from its accompanying glossary of terms and
Akiwowo's commentary on the poetry. In the name of greater
clarity, I also replace a part of Akiwowo's translation of the poem
with Babatunde Lawal's translation of the same section of the poem
in The Gelede Spectacle: Art, Gender and Social Harmony in an African

10

Culture. Both "The Descent of r" and "Ayajo Asuwada" are

examples of ese ifa, literature of Ifa, the central Yoruba cognitive
system, a variant of a network of correlative African
disciplines which bear underlying philosophical and organizational
similarities with each other and with the Chinese I Ching divinatory
and philosophical discipline. "The Splitting of Oyigiyigi" is a very brief
prose account from Awo Falokun Fatunmbi's Esu-Elegba : Ifa and
the Spirit of the DivineMessenger". This essay also draws upon and
complements Awo Fategbe Fatunmbi's comparison of "The Descent
of Oro" and a selection from "Ayajo Asuwada" in "The Yoruba
Metaphysical Concept of Ori" in terms of a closer attention to how the
larger body of the poetry coheres to generate meaning shaped
by aesthetic force, presenting this analysis within a multidisciplinary
context enriched by multicultural correlations.
My exploration of these creation stories and of their explication by
Abiodun, Akiwowo and Fatunmbi is conjoined with art from various
cultural contexts, accompanied by commentary on the art by myself
and others, used in the essay in amplifying the themes of the
imaginative narratives and their explications by the scholars. These
critical analyses and visual complementarities are then subsumed in
terms of a contemplative and ritual engagement. The essay thus
demonstrates an approach to using critical analysis and visual
conjunctions as a platform for developing understanding that may
then be enhanced through contemplation and ritual. Ratiocination,
aesthetic appreciation, contemplation and ritual are thereby
demonstrated as complementary in the text. This correlation of
different epistemic strategies is an effort to adapt to other contexts
aspects of the range of cognitive frameworks through which ese ifa
and the Orisa cosmology to which it belongs are traditionally
actualized.
My goal is to create a verbal and visual space that is analytically
precise and imaginatively expansive in its study of meaning, as well
as inspiring in its explication and creation of beauty. I hope this will
contribute to projecting the potential of African cultural forms as
inspirational matrices people can integrate into the course of their
lives because I see the creation stories and Abiodun's, Akiwowo's
and Fatunmbi's commentaries on them as powerfully inspirational
creations speaking to the depths of the human engagement with
meaning, texts that are uplifting for the imagination and galvanizing
for the intellect.

11

The essay is organized in terms of three major units. The first is

represented by the commentary addressing the cosmogonic accounts
and Abioduns, Akiwowo's and Fatunmbi's expositions of them. The
second consists in the contemplative and ritual segment. The third is
the complementary sequence, presented within breaks in the main
text, represented by indentations, of images of works of art,
accompanied by italicised commentary on the art used in amplifying
the referents and themes of the cosmological stories and
their explications. One could read the main text first or begin with
the images and their accompanying commentary so as not to break
the continuity of exposition.
This essay continues my exploration of Yoruba philosophy of
discourse and language represented by "Orality and the Metaphysics
of Language in Yoruba Thought", "Orality and the Metaphysics of
Language in Yoruba Thought 2 : From Ife to Bamako, Delhi, Athens,
Jerusalem, Berlin : Questions Arise", and the forthcoming
provisionally titled "Remembering AbdulRasheed Yesufu: Yoruba
Philosophy of Discourse and Language in a Comparative Context
4", among others in this unfolding project on Yoruba philosophy of
discourse and language, along with my work on ese ifa, itself part of
my explorations of Ifa and other African and non-African cognitive
systems and processes, building a body of knowledge, scholarly,
artistic and practical in its contributions to the quest for ultimate
meaning.

12

 Figure 2

"That-which-was-suspended/But-did-not-descend/ Was the [ awo ] in [

orun ] [ the Place of Primal Origins]" here evoked by 'Numinous Beast' by
Bruce Arnott. South Africa. Its bulging form and arcane head shape, framed
by the multicolored depths of the expanse of the sky may suggest potential
that could burst forth at a time unanticipated, like the mysterious identity
suspended between primal origination and material manifestation in "The
Descent of Oro". Image source : Bruce Arnott's Numinous Beast in the
Company gardens. Wikimedia. Accessed 27/10/2016

13

A. "The Descent of r" and the Three Awo Before Time

O da kese, kese

Awo ile aye,

O ro dede-dede-dede

Ko ba le,

Awo ode-orun

O-ri-fanranyan-fanranyan

Agbadagudu

Nna ani ni Awo Afonifoji

There-were-no-living things

Was the [awo] on earth

That-which-was-suspended

But-did-not-descend

Was the [ awo] in [orun]

All-was-just-empty-space

With-no-substance

Was the [ awo] of Mid- Air.

In the opening lines above from "The Descent of r", we are
faced with a powerful cosmogonic conceptualization, correlating the
constellation of the central power active at the beginning of time
with the conditions upon which this power acted, that which acts and

14

what it acts upon, with the metaphysical principle known in Yoruba

as "awo", a principle embodied particularly in the Ifa adepts, who are
thus known as "babalawo".
a. The Concept of Awo
"Babalawo" is a term composed of two major expressions. These are
"baba" and "awo". "Baba" means "venerable father" and may be
transposed to mean "elder". The concept of elderhood may be further
transferred from the biological focus of reference represented by
fatherhood and the sense of authority implied by elderhood to the
more abstract idea of mastery. "Baba", in this context, therefore, does
not connote fatherhood in any sense, talk less a biological sense. It
designates elderhood, in terms of authority as well as the expression
of authority manifest in mastery of a discipline, the discipline
epitomised by the term "awo", which may be translated in very brief
terms as the sacred and esoteric, thus "lawo" in "babalawo" could be
translated as "arcane mastery." Babalawo could therefore be
rendered as adept or master in an arcane or esoteric discipline or
knowledge.
The poetic sequence of this ese ifa represents an opening strategy of
this literary genre, which may begin with a statement characterizing
the "awo", a contraction from "babalawo", described as associated
with the story the poem or prose narrative dramatises, the babalawo
being the dialogical nexus in Ifa divination, mediating between forms
of being and modes of knowledge, the human conductor in a process
understood as involving traffic between human and non-human
realms, between matter, mind and spirit.
In quoting Abiodun's translation, I have retained the term
"awo instead of using his equivalent "priest" and also retained
"orun" in place of his translation "otherworld" in order to emphasize
the distinctiveness of these terms in Yoruba philosophy and Orisa
cosmology in comparison with their uses in other
cosmologies. "Orun" may be understood as the world of primal or
ultimate origins, because, in this context, it refers to the zone of
ultimate possibility from which all existence derives, and, which, like
some conceptions of an otherworld, is not restricted to a world
inhabited
by
non-terrestrial or non-material beings
which is nevertheless not a zone of such ultimacy as orun is depicted
as being in this poem.

15


Figure 3

"All-was-just-empty-space

With-no-substance

Was the [ awo] of Mid- Air"

evoked by a collage of Victor Ekpuk's "Good Morning, Sunrise" and an Ife head,
Nigeria, depicting an exalted, contemplative expression, in alignment with the
spiral of eternity, the latter represented by Ekuk's depiction of the Nsibidi spiral,
the eternal being the space within which the cognitive journey progresses, within
the physical vitality of existence represented by the sun and the light of
illumination made possible by life within the material universe. Image sources: Ife
head from Basil Davidson, Africa: History of a Continent. Photography by Werner
Forman. London: Macmillan, 1972. Detail of "Good Morning, Sunrise" and
information on its symbolism from "Nsibidi" in Inscribing Meaning: Ways of
Knowing : Writing and Graphic Systems in African Arts. National Museum of
African Art. Accessed 30/10/2016

16

 The concept of priesthood in all spiritualities, like the Yoruba

concept of awo, includes profound ideas about relationships between
the human and the divine, the sacred and the profane.
These conceptions are related to the range of human capacity in
projecting itself into a world, which, as understood in Orisa
cosmology in the concept of "ori", is inhabited by the immortal and
invisible essence of individual being derived from the creator of the
cosmos, Bolaji Idowus Olodumare : God in Yoruba Belief and Olabiyi
Babalola Yais review of Henry John Drewal et als Yoruba : Nine
Centuries of African Art and Thought in African Arts, Vol.25.No1, 1992,
representing my best encounters with summations of the concept
and Adegboyega Oranguns Destiny : The Unmanifested Being the
richest exploration I know of the complexity of the idea.
This is a mysterious aspect of the self and its world which is often
strange and may be frightening to the other aspect of the self, the
aspect that directly navigates the material world. The
secularization of those societies from where the English word
"priest" emerged means that many, if not , most people, are not likely
to be adequately aware of the scope of the meaning of priesthood in
Christian theologies, the central religion of these English originating
regions, the priest perhaps becoming to them little more than a
person doing a job like anyone else, rather than a representative of
the human aspiration to broach and embody the numinous, the
sacred as an arena of both captivation and dreadful awe in some of
its most intense manifestations, which may be seen as the true
character of priesthood, in most, if not all religions.

Awo is a particularly rich concept in Yoruba literature, a central
metaphysical principle in Yoruba philosophy and Orisa cosmology,
an evocation of numinous power employed to designate experts in
particular spiritual disciplines, particularly Ifa. Awo Falokun
Fatunmbi and Aina Olomo provide mesmerizing interpretations of
this concept which I sum up in "Esoteric Knowledge and the Orisa
Tradition : Perspectives on Awo". Fatunmbi in "Obatala : Ifa and the
Chief of the Spirit of the White Cloth", states, "awo refers to the
hidden principles that explain the Mystery of Creation and Evolution.
Awo is the esoteric understanding of the invisible forces that sustain
dynamics and form within Nature. The essence of those forces are
not considered secret beceause they are devious, they are secret
beceause they remain elusive, awesome in their power to transform
and not readily apparent. As such they can only be grasped through

17

direct interaction and participation. Anything which can be known by

the
intellect
alone
ceases
to
be
awo".

Olomo describes awo as the "inexplicable power of transformation...
a realm of phenomena...unavailable for total absorption by the
human mind...the space in the universe where the [elusive] answer
to how dwells...inexhaustible because of its closeness to the ultimate
and Supreme Being, the Infinite Mystery". Interpreting my own
experiences with Ifa, at the intersection of practice and
scholarship, in terms of the concept of awo, I describe awo in "On the
Path of Initiation : Encounter with Awo" as "the concentration of
intelligence and power that becomes a part of you when you and that
nucleus, a sentient force beyond space and time, are ready. It is the
invisible presence of the tradition, the teacher who is as intimate to
you as your own mind but who enables understanding that your
mind alone cannot create.The unseen but palpable presence by your
side as you dialogue with this ancient field of knowledge".

I first came across the term in the Yoruba oral narrative I name
"Abababalona", which I learnt from my mother, Jhalobia Ojemu, in
which a man in search of the animal who killed his father positions
himself on a tree overlooking a river where all animals come to
drink, challenging each of them as it approaches the body of
water in order to slake its thirst, "Ma mu! ma mu! [ Dont drink! Dont
drink! ] Awo okatakpiri awo! Se wo lo kpi ba mi? [ Are you the one
who killed my father?! ] Awo okatakpiri awo!" The refrain "awo
okatakpiri awo!" is described by my interpreter Sonya Olatayo as
more of an evocation of the spiritual and magical power of the hunter
than an expression with a clear lexical meaning, "awo", referring, in
this context, to numinous, magical power, while "okatakpiri" has no
translation in terms of any concepts but is chosen for its sonic quality
in evoking a sense of tremendous and dangerous potency through its
rhythm, characterized by forceful plosives, thereby reinforcing the
evocation of numinous power in "awo".
The concept of awo may be understood in terms of a sense of
inscrutable power encountered at the intersection of matter and the
conglomeration of energy and sentience or capacity to affect
sentience represented by the Yoruba concept of "ase", a pervasive
cosmic expression enabling creative potential to all forms of being, as
summed up, among other sources, by Henry John Drewal et als
Yoruba : Nine Centuries of African Art and Thought, an expression of

18

an idea John Mbiti in African Religions and Philosophy describes as

unifying classical African cosmologies.
The progression of "awo", a contraction of "babalawo" in this
context, who are named at each subsection of the opening sequence
of the poem, demonstrates the convention that may be deployed
in ese ifa of opening the poem by invocation of the concept of the
babalawo understood as a dialogical intersection in Ifa divination, the
point of transposition of discourse between various realms of being,
between entities from various ontological domains and between
various forms of knowledge. This convention is realized through the
use of such delightfully witty characterizations of babalawo as "The
twisted wooden stump which crosses the road in a crooked way", or
in terms of imagistically evocative observations of commonplaces
as "The two soles of the feet struggle persistently for possession of
the narrow path", "Sudden as the snap of leather string, leather string
snaps", or the elevation of such commonplaces into proverbs
encapsulating ideas of far ranging philosophical significance within
imagistic concentration the evocative force of which is amplified by
structural brevity, as in "No man, no matter how wise, can tie water
into a knot in his pocket", these being examples from the ese ifa of
the babalawo Oyedele Isola in Wande Abimbola's Ifa Divination
Poetry.
b. Awo, Cosmogonic Conditions and Sonic Lyricism

In this poem, the awo represent the conditions that prevailed at the
beginning of creation and the existent through which this primordial
state was transformed. These conditions are the absence of living
things and the substancelessness, the emptiness of space, while "that
which was suspended but did not descend" depicts the form of being
through which this inert state was vitalized. As will be evident from
the rest of the poem, this vitalizing force is demonstrated by the
powers within the ultimate creator, Odumare, these powers being
Ogbon, Wisdom, Imo, Knowledge and Oye, Understanding, that were
projected to create the cognitive potential of being. The three
cosmogonic conditions of the absence of life, the empty space
without substance in which this lifeless condition prevailed and
the existent through which this stasis will be transformed are
embodied by the three awo, one for each of these conditions, the awo
on earth, the awo in orun, and the awo in mid-air.

19

 A
magnificent
conflation
is
thereby
realized,
of
cosmogonic state, cosmogonic process, the metaphysical concept
"awo" and the human being understood as embodying this
metaphysical conception. This convergence of cosmogonic
possibilities is depicted through a sequence that begins with the
state of the earth, the final or central sphere in the impact of the
cosmogonic process the poem eventually describes, moves to orun,
the zone of primal origins associated with Odumare, the creator of
the cosmos, the point from which will be initiated the actions that
transform the state represented by the emptiness of life
demonstrated by the earth, and concludes in the absence of
substance represented by primordial empty space.
The beauty and power of these lines consists in projecting ideas
similar to those that recur in many mythic cosmogonies, but
conflating these ideas, represented by the conditions that preceded
creation, with a conceptualization of human being, along with
identifying that human personage with a metaphysical principle,
"awo", achieving this dexterous weaving of concepts in terms of a few
lines of magnificent brevity.
This beauty further emerges in terms of a sweetly beautiful musical
rhythm, a lyricism generated by repetition within the same line or
expressive sequence-"O-ri-fanranyan-fanranyan"-and a variant of
parallelism, exemplified by repeating a sentence structure, but in
terms of a different sonic sequence- "O da kese, kese....O ro dede-
dede-dede", the entire ensemble marshalled in terms of a sonorous
architecture of interweaving vowels and consonants, generating
a sense of rolling sound, like dams concentrating sonic force by
holding back its flow, my summation here trying to provide a
depiction of what one may appreciate of the rhythm of those lines in
the original, even if one does not understand the primary language of
expression, demonstrating how the music represented by poetic
rhythm amplifies and transcends lexical meaning, delivering some of
its force even when its associated lexical significance is not grasped
or is inadequately understood.

20

Figure 4
"There-were-no-livingthings
Was the [awo] on earth"
evoked here by a Batabwa figure from
African Sculpure by William Fagg and
Margaret Plass who describe it in terms
of the sense of both familiarity and
gravitas that is represented in some
African ancestor figures. This image is
used here in suggesting a primordial
ancestor from before the emergence of
time, human, but predating humanity as
it is conventionally known. The sculpture
could also be related to the idea of what
the Irish writer James Joyce, in another
context, called the "jocoserious", the
combination of the serious and the
jocular,
an
attitude,
which,
incidentally,
is
central
to
the
communicative ethos of Ifa. Olodumare,
the author of existence, is also depicted in
Yoruba literature as a kindly grandfather
figure, covering his head with white
chalk to give an appearance of great
age, and yet is understood as the ground
of being, so distant from human
perception that he cannot be directly
approached, as described in Bolaji
Idowu's Olodumare : God in Yoruba
Belief. Along similar lines, Orunmila,
recognised as the divine source of the Ifa
system, who gave counsel to Olodumare
at the creation of the universe, is
described, in the same spirit of geniality,
as the "small man with a head full of
wisdom".

21


2. "Ayajo Asuwada" and the Descent of Asuwa
"That-which-was-suspended/ But-did-not-descend" can be related
to non-Yoruba creation stories which indicate a zone of being that is
prior to and transcendent of creation. So what is that in orun, the
World of Primal Origins that was suspended and might have the
capacity to descend but did not?
Abiodun has a lot to say about that which is suspended and which
may descend and is the core of his thesis on relationships between
expressive forms and creativity in Yoruba philosophy , but before we
go into that, we could try to correlate the powerfully evocative story
he has given us with another account of the creation of the world
from another ese ifa, "Ayajo Asuwada", a selection from which is
recreated here, so as to construct a richer network of ideas that will
amplify the understanding of both cosmogonic accounts.
This selection is composed through a combination of Akinsola
Akiwowo's translation of the poem in "Towards a Sociology of
Knowledge from an African Oral Poetry", his commentary on it and
the accompanying glossary of terms, the analytical and imaginative
quality of the secondary text complementing the poem's verbal
stream, Babatunde Lawal's translation of part of the poem in The
Gelede Spectacle Art : Gender and Social Harmony in an African Culture
and O.B. Lawuyi and Olufemi Taiwo's "Towards an African
Sociological Tradition: A Rejoinder to Akiwowo and Makinde". I also
add a line, line 68, on ants in relation to the cosmos, composed by
myself to concretise what I see as the cosmological resonance of the
poem. I begin with Lawuyi and Taiwo's rendition in Yoruba of a
section of the poem so as to suggests its rhythm and phonic texture in
the original and continue with Akiwowo and Lawal's translations:

Agiriyan ni Morere eerun.

Asuwa ni Morere eniyan.

Asuwa da aye.

Asuwa da orun.

Asuwa daa sile.

Asekun - suwada nigba Iwa se.
Asuwa la fi da Ori tii se Baba won nigba Iwa se.
Origun, Asekun-suwada nigba Iwa gun.
Asuwada nigba ti Iwa ro.

22

Asuwa ni t'oyin.

Asuwa ni t'ado.
Asuwa leeran n hu ninu oko.
Asuwa ni ti Elegiri.

Teeming heads congregate at the grove of Ogun.
The anthill is the morere, a place where two or more individuals
congregate to deliberate or worship, of the eeran, the brown ant.

Asuwa, the one who brings existence together to form a new entity,
the process of coming together for a purpose, is the morere
of humankind.

It was with the principle of asuwa that the Heavens were
established.
It was with the principle of asuwa that the Earth was created.
In asuwa forms all things descended upon the Earth activated by
purpose.
Asuwa, the principle of cohesion, is the expression of iwa, being in
general, as well as individual expressions of being.
Complete and actuated for a purpose was iwa at its first
emanations.
For a set purpose was iwa when it poured down upon Earth.
When iwa first emanated, when iwa, was complete and perfect
iwa poured down on Earth like rain.
It was by asuwa that Ori-Orun, the Ultimate Head,
of the Zone of Ultimate Origins,
the Directional Essence,
the One and Only Metaphysical Archetype of Mind,
was formed in order to be the Father of All.

23

Figure 5
A glorious depiction of the relationship between Shesha, Vishnu, Brahma
and Lakshmi, wife of Vishnu, dramatizing the character of existence
at the creation of the cosmos.
I can't find a source for this image but identical versions, though not as
clear as this one, are readily found online. The painting is both delicate
and powerful, unifying its complex structure through careful distinction
between the constituent elements while indicating their interrelationships,
the use of colour both radiant and tranquil, all elements, from the
gloriously unfurled lotus to the majestic figure it emanates from, to the
magical presence of the many headed serpent to the elegant tenderness of
Lakshmi, coming together to create a demonstration of the efforts of the
human mind to project itself to the beginning of time in terms of images
drawn from its own elemental, animal, anthropomorphic, social and
spatial universe and its casual laws.

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Origun, the Complete Head, the One Perfect Mind,

the one and only Origun in Orun, in the Ultimate Generative Space,
from whom each earthly Ori,
the essence of individual being, branches,
each Ori improving affecting two hundred others,
Origun, the source of Oluiwaaye, Lord of Earthbound Existences.
Baba asemuegun sunwon, Father Who Selects and Makes All Things
Perfect and Balanced, the emanate of Oluiwaaye.
Olofin Otete, Ruler of the Palace, Infinite Spaciousness, the
emanate of Baba asemuegun sunwon.
Olofin Otete, who used a basketful measure of dust particles to
create and created ile ife, the Earth.
Dew pour lightly, pour lightly,
Dew pour heavily, pour heavily
Dew pour heavily
So that you may pour lightly.
Thus Ifa was consulted for Olofin Otete
Who would pour myriads of existence down upon the Earth.
On the day, the point of emergence of time, a moment in the
infinitude of the dawn of creation, when he was to receive the ado
of existence
From the hands of Olodumare, the Omnipotent and Omniscient
On the day he was to release
Existences on the Earth.

One particle of dust became
A basketful measure of dust
A basketful measure of soil became the earth crust.

Dew pouring lightly, pouring lightly
Was used in moulding our earthly home;
Dew pouring heavily, pouring heavily
refreshing humanity and the environment
helping plants and animals regain lost energy
sometimes more beneficial to plants than the heavy downpour of
rain
very gentle and without any harsh effects whatsoever
iri-aimo which falls almost without anyone knowing that it is falling

25

until one sees particles of water on leaves and other objects

exposed toit.
symbolic of life, continuity, fertility and regeneration
in contrast to other harsh and opposing objects of nature,
evocative of an indispensable element of life
without which the opposing forces of nature would have destroyed
themselves
leaving the Earth in utter chaos and confusion
a principle of generation and harmony
was used to mould the Earth.

So that ire, goodness,
ire-gbogbo, the sum total of goodness,
all existing good collectively viewed,
and gbogbo ire, all good individually viewed,
may multiply upon Earth in relation to iwa-susu,
a collectivity of beings.
Ire-gbogbo took the shape of asuwa.
All goodness together formed an asuwa
the principle according to which everything was created alone but
by which nothing continues in being alone.

Myriads of goodness took the shape of togetherness.
Strands of hair came together to occupy the head.
The clumping of trees became the forest.
The clumping of eruwa grasses became the savannah.
Bees always cluster together
Eeran leaves grow in a
bunch.

The broom exists as a bundle.

All things continue-in-being as communities, throughout the realms
of nature, from ants to elephants,
from algae to whales,
from plants to giant forest trees;
from dyads to congregations,
from families to nations.

The anthill the cosmos, the ants its inhabitants, co-creators with
nature

26

Figure 6
The majesty of the Vishnu/Brahma/Shesha cosmogonic image concretised
in gold in this image of a statue in the Padamnabha Swamy Temple,
Kerala. Vishnu rests on Shesha, the many headed serpent of time, as
Brahma sits on a lotus rising from Vishnu's navel. The delicately sculpted
gold suggests the majesty of the cosmogonic process as dramatised by the
figures constituting this tableau. Image source : "Padamnabha Swamy
Temple, Kerala" in Dogras by Bharatbhushan Dogra. Accessed
27/10/2016.

27

 Otete, you are Alasuwada, the Author of all things,

the Great Being Who Creates All Existences in Groups for a Purpose
The creator of togetherness, I invoke you
Let myriads of togetherness come to me.

All things continue-in-being as communities, throughout the realms
of nature, from ants to elephants,
from algae to whales,
from plants to giant forest trees;
from dyads to congregations,
from families to nations.

The anthill the cosmos, the ants its inhabitants, co-creators with
nature

Otete, you are Alasuwada, the Author of all things,
the Great Being Who Creates All Existences in Groups for a Purpose
The creator of togetherness, I invoke you
Let myriads of togetherness come to me.

A great poem. It begins with a magnificent correlation of contraries,
one of the strengths of ese ifa, particularly in its opening strategies.
The human, the divine, the biologically minuscule non-human and
the abstract are correlated through reference, in different contexts, to
the same principle.
This principle is imaged through people gathering to worship at the
grove of the deity Ogun and ants building and living in an anthill. The
sequence of human and non-human purposive gatherings reaches a
climax in the introduction of asuwa, the general principle that
subsumes this range of congregations across various species, thereby
thematically framing the poem in its subsequent unfolding as a
depiction of the principle of cohesion in nature and humanity thereby
depicted as a central quality of existence, a broad range of
agglomerations of natural forms and human actions woven together
to illustrate this theme.

28

Figure 7
"It is not dead which doth eternal lie and with long eons even death may die",
US writer Howard Philip Lovecraft's evocation of the pre-human entity
Nyalarthotep from his self created Cthulhu Mythos, comes to my mind in
relation to this magnificent image of Vishnu at rest on the serpent Shesha on
the primordial sea. Lovecraft's sonorous evocation of numinous accents
resonates with the sense of mystery created by the picture of the figure resting
within the coiled dynamism of the serpent's undulations submerged within the
dark translucence of still waters. The venerational flowers that bedeck the
figure and the very fact of its existence testify to the profound human need to
engage with something transcendent of the circumscriptions of material
existence, no matter how broadly conceived in terms of cosmic expanse the
material world may be. Image source : Alamy : "Vishnu Narayana asleep on the
Primordial Waters at the beginning of time, while the Worlds of the event were
still in the making. Budhanilkantha Temple, Kathmandu valley, Shivapuri Hill,
Nepal". Accessed 27/10/2016.

29


This introductory thematic framing is further developed in terms of
the description of the same principle as a manifestation of iwa, being
in general, and being in its distinctive expression in various forms of
existence. These conceptual projections are further incarnated
through a sequence of entities dramatizing conceptions of ultimate
creative direction. This creative focus is shown as having its roots in
the concept of ori, the head as both physical and cognitive centre and
symbol of the immortal essence of individual being, this essence
embodying the ultimate potential and direction of the self as derived
from the creator of the cosmos.
This understanding of the essence of individual identity is depicted
as grounded in an overarching divine identity, variously described
as "Origun, the Complete Head, the One Perfect Mind, the only and
one Origun in Orun, in the Ultimate Generative Space, from whom
each earthly Ori branches" and "Ori-Orun, the Ultimate Head, of the
Zone of Ultimate Origins, the Directional Essence, the One and Only
Metaphysical Archetype of Mind...the Father of All".
Central conceptions in Yoruba philosophy and Orisa cosmology, iwa,
asuwa and ori are thereby subsumed in terms of a constellation of
perfection shaping the earth, the rhythm of the fall of dew
incidentally evoking John Mbiti's description in African Religions and
Philosophy, of rain, and, in this context, dew, as dramatizing the
eternal rhythm of divine sustenance, a recurrent image in classical
African thought. Evocative range within concision of expression,
syntactic rhythm, parallelism, syntactic repetition aligned with
variety of diction and dynamism in choice of imagery converge in
this poem to create a condensation of fundamental conceptions of
Yoruba philosophy and Orisa cosmology.

30

31

 Image on Previous Page

Figure 8

The Cognitive Triad of Ogbon, Wisdom, Imo, knowledge and Oye, Understanding
evoked here by Lagana symbolic and sculptural figures, a central artistic form of the
Mumuye people of northeast Nigeria. The figures evoke a sense of the hieratic and the
dynamic, harmonious with
Abiodun's description of
Oro
as
a
divine
personality, grounded in orun, the World of Primal Origins, but active and mobile within
aye, the terrestrial world.
These sculptures are shaped in terms of relationships between empty space and concrete
space. Elongation of forms. Sweeping movement of arms amplified by
the aerodynamic patterning created by the spaces between the arms and the body's trunk.
The forward looking gaze is amplified by the helmet like, downward sloping forms on
heads rising above sturdy necks, design patterns realised in different ways in each work,
projecting the combination of poise and power that is the hallmark of this art.
The National Museum of African Art describes a similar figure as the central sculpture in a
manner that indicates the evocative force of this design within the variation
achieved within the design template: "Full of angles and edges, this very staccato Mumuye
figure is alert and ready to act on behalf of its owner. Indeed, the notched legs may echo
the jagged edges of lightning bolts, and may encapsulate the potential of the spirits
inhabiting it to act at lightning speed. The zigzag imagery may also echo that of Mumuye
iron rainmaking wands".
A description of another of these figures at African Plural Art indicates
the spatial dynamism the forms demonstrate: "The sculptural ingenuity of this
Mumuye figure, its stylistic interpretation of the human form, must be viewed from every
vantage point to appreciate its angular essence, movement, geometry, and volume.". Rand
African Art specifies the character of this design structure and its possible relationship to
the function of the sculpture, "Mumuye figures are highly abstracted, perhaps in part
because they invoke forms of human and supernatural authority". They incarnate
spiritual personalities enabling protection and cognitive guidance in accessing
supernatural knowledge and power in divination and healing as well as indicating status.
The sculpture is not large but further on in the description it is depicted as "monumental",
monumentality, in this instance, not an outcome of size, but of the impression, the force,
generated through the relationships between the constituting units of the
structure, generic characteristics are realised in a distinctive way in each of the numerous
example of this art .
Image source: mo Dra. Accessed 27 July 2016. Image composition sources: Left
Image: Native Auctions 06 Africa and Oceanic Art, 25 January 2014. Middle
Image: Sothebys In Pursuit of Beauty: The Myron Kunin Collection of African Art New
York Auction, 11 November 2014. Right Image: Sothebys Arts dAfrique et dOcanie Paris
Auction, 24 June 2015

32

A. Comparing Mythic Structuration in "Ayajo Asuwada" and the

Hindu Image of Vishnu
A particularly magnificent poem is thus developed in which the
cosmic and the terrestrial, the unobtrusive and the cosmogonic,
converge, in terms of the picture of dew as evocative of the primary
creative potential through which the Earth came into being at the
hands of an entity, Olofin Otete, who is the most proximate to the
Earth of a succession of manifestations of primal figures
demonstrative of archetypal qualities of mind and creativity, from "
Ori-Orun, the Ultimate Head, of the Zone of Ultimate Origins, the
Directional Essence, the One and Only Metaphysical Archetype of
Mind [formed] in order to be the Father of All" to "Olofin Otete,
Ruler of the Palace, Infinite Spaciousness" who "who used a basketful
measure of dust particles to create" the Earth.
This is an example of a strategy in cosmology building in which the
complexity of ideas and processes and their interrelationships
associated with the foundations of the cosmos is depicted in terms of
entities linked in a sequence of structural priority derived from their
correlative identities, a particularly graphic example of this
imaginative strategy being the Hindu depiction of Shesha, Vishnu,
Brahma and Lakshmi at the creation of the cosmos.
Within this Hindu visualization, the foundations of cosmos is
depicted as a sea, thus evoking vast potentiality, within which is
submerged, Shesha, the many headed serpent of time, "one of the
primal beings of creation", as described by the Wikipedia essay on
Shesha, on whose hoods rests the planets of the universe whose
coiling enables the creation of existence and the forward motion of
time and whose uncoiling brings about the extinguishing of the
cosmos, this conjoining of animal imagery and cosmic processes
suggesting, in terms readily apprehensible to human beings, the
emergence of the temporal structuration that enables being
and becoming.
On the body of Shesha rests Vishnu, "the formless Supreme God", as
Wikipedia describes him, who, within the conjunction of mythic
concretisation and abstraction that shapes the ordered luxuriance of
Hinduism, is however visualized in order to aid the form centred
character of the human mind better grasp the qualities associated
with him. The essence of existence represented by Vishnu is
symbolised as transcendent of activity as humans understand it, his

33

remoteness from being and becoming in the conventional sense

suggested by his depiction as reclining in a passive, restful state as he
holds in his hands, their multiplicity indicating his multifarious
significations, various objects symbolizing the variety and unified
complexity of his significance, his reclining and seemingly passive
state incidentally correlative with Odumare's paradoxical
somnolence depicted in the middle section of the "Descent of Oro"
discussed later on in this essay.
This pose of Vishnu's, according to Sandhya Jain in "Sri Anantha
Padmanabha Swamy Has Been Roused" , is known as "ananta
sayanam (divine sleep or yog-nidra on the divine serpent Anantha
Seshanaga)". Ramani in "Nine Sleeping Poses of Lord Vishnu" , states
that the image of Vishnu sleeping is allegorical because Vishnu does
not sleep, another name for his seemingly somnolent state being "Ari
Thuyil, sleeping while being aware of everything", Ramani
incidentally using the same language, in English, in which Odumare's
paradoxical sleep is depicted in "The Descent of Oro".
From Vishnus navel emerges a lotus, the lotus' glorious unfurling
within dark waters making the plant evocative, in Hinduism, of the
unfolding of the cosmos from a primordial matrix and of the
blossoming of the essence of the human being within the obscuring
complexities of material embodiment. Within the lotus rising from
Vishnus navel is seated Brahma, the creator of the universe, a form
of the ultimacy of deity closest to the dynamism of the cosmos
experienced by humans, correlative with Olofin Otete in "Ayajo
Alasuwada" "who used a basketful measure of dust particles to create
the Earth".
Brahma is shown as poised in the lotus yogic posture, a stance
combining dynamic attention with integration of energy, his balance
suggestive of the dynamism of the created cosmos organised in
relation to a divine centre, a depiction that, incidentally, may be
summed up by the Christian depiction of God as "ever active but ever
at rest". Vishnu's feet are massaged by the Goddess Lakshmi,
connoting a relationship between the transcendental plenitude he
embodies and the material and spiritual wealth she represents, the
transcendental being manifest in the material, adapting an
interpretation by Shravan Mishra at Quora , conceptions depicted in
figures 5-7 .

34

Figure 9

Mysterious painting by Eze Chimalio, incidentally conjoining the various motifs
evoked by the picture of "eleye" swishing their wings against the face of the narrator
in "The Descent of Oro". This painting depicts a bird in fight over the head of a person
who seems preoccupied with something else, like the individual taken by surprise by
the action of "eleye" in the poem. Amplifying the bird motif, an aerodynamic shape
near or on top of the figure's head demonstrates structural similarity to the form of
the bird in flight. A mature feminine figure who recalls the mysterious mothers
representing "eleye", "owners of bird-like-space-traversing-powers", as they may be
called, looks on. The entire tableau suggests either a visionary or dream sequence,
something outside the structuring of reality by conventional parameters, a state in
which various dimensions bleed into each other to create a composite image
suggestive of mythic realities emerging at the beginning of time to structure the
unfolding of being. Image source: Eze Chimalio's Facebook account. Accessed
27/10/2016.

35

B. Paradoxical Conjunctions of Tenderness and Power, the

Surreptitious and the Epic in "Ayajo Asuwada"
The evocative quality of the gentle fall of dew, magnified in being
described in terms of the descent of generative powers to enable life
on earth, is amplified by the rhythm of "Ayajo Asuwada", its use of
repetition in evoking the pattern created by the downward
progression of the aquatic form. The alternation of the description of
this earthward descent in terms of light and heavy levels of
precipitation, in harmony with the depiction of the serene aquatic
flow in terms of "myriads of existence" building "our earthly
home correlates this tranquil fall in its lightness and heaviness with
the delicate image of dust, visualized as massing in terms of volume
that magnifies its force, force represented by the fecundative and
tensile qualities of earth, qualities that both enable plants to take root
and grow and humanity and other animate forms to traverse the
earth. These conjunctions enable the poet build what is an unlikely
image for the scope of values attributed to it, into an evocation of
something recalling cosmic force, generative power at the most
potent levels as represented by the forces that enable the existence
of the material character of the earth and its capacity for bearing life
in its multifarious plenteousness.
"Ayajo Asuwada" is particularly beautiful for its evocation of the
associative values of a tender quality of nature, something very
different from the power of the more obvious and much more readily
acknowledged natural forces such as the sun, fire, mountains, and the
sea which dominate visual and verbal art across various periods in
world history. The depiction of dew in relation to its its symbolic
significance in Yoruba culture in contrast to those more obviously
powerful forces of nature is correlative with the Biblical motif of "the
still, small voice" of the quiet presence of the divine in the midst of
the roaring powers of nature , the latter failing, in the Biblical
context, to communicate the divine imperative and guidance in spite
of their overwhelming force.
"Ayajo Asuwada inspires recognition of the nourishing and
evocative characteristics of a phenomenon that emerges at a point in
the day when most people are asleep and disappears under the
effects of sunlight that breaks out when the day begins in earnest.
These qualities constitute its appearance as surreptitious and
nocturnal, taking an alert person to pay it attention, an expression of
nature that would not be evident in urban regions where spatial

36

development might have made it less likely that people are able to
observe such phenomena. This quality of nature is made more
precious by its subtlety, making more urgent the need for the
sensitivity represented by the appreciation of this natural
phenomenon at the level of biology and the philosophy it represents
in this ese ifa. These values are amplified by the current dominant
world picture of increasing urbanization, of economic and social
struggles, and the magnification of the power of technology in
shaping human life outside the context of nature.
3. Odumare and "The Descent of Oro"
A. The Emergence of Ogbon (Wisdom),
(Knowledge) and Oye ( Understanding)

Imo

"The Descent of Oro", as expressed in its own stanzas and Abiodun's

prose paraphrase of its progression, complemented here by the
opening of another ese ifa provided by Awo Fategbe Fatunmbi in
"The Yoruba Metaphysical Concept of Ori", continues in terms of the
standard formula for the second stage of unfolding of many ese ifa,
by presenting the divinatory context the outcome of which enquiry
will unfurl in the rest of the poem. The cosmogonic character of the
poetry may be seen as providing a divinatory framework which may
be understood as paradigmatic for Ifa divination in general as
an effort to recreate a primordial emergence of
meaning
or
possibility in terms of passage between the Earth and the World of
Primal or Ultimate Origins, between Aye and Orun. The enquirers on
whose behalf Ifa is consulted are Earth and Orun, thereby suggesting
the metaphorical nature of characters in ese ifa:
It was divined for Earth and [ orun]
When they both existed
With no inhabitants
In the two empty shells
There were neither birds nor spirits
Living in them

37

 Figure 10

An evocation of the concept of Igba Iwa, the Calabash of Existence as described

by Babatunde Lawal in "Ejiwapo: The Dialects of Twoness in Yoruba Art and
Culture". The concavity of the calabash may suggest the womb, the matrixial
creative centre resonating with all generative spaces that enable being and
becoming. Intertwined spirals and interlocked triangles, evoking pervasive,
complex systemic interrelations, are engraved on this example of a Yoruba
cosmological image. They are complemented by a gracefully poised bird,
possibly evoking transformative power enabling transcendence of
conventionally understood laws of nature, actualized through the use of ase,
the creative cosmic force pervading existence.

38

 dmr then created him/herself.

Being the Primal cause
This is the reason we call dmr
The only wise one on earth
The only cause in creation
The only wise one in [ orun]

Who created humans.
Without a companion
dmr applied wisdom to the situation

The only wise one

The one-knowing mind

dmr sat back and thought about how to create more
things in his universe. For this purpose, he realized he needed
an intermediary force, since it was too charged with energy to
come into contact with any living thing and have it survive.
Therefore dmr created gbn (wisdom), held it in his palm
and thought where it could live.
After a while, dmr released Ogbon to fly away and look
for a suitable place to lodge. When Ogbon could not find a
suitable abode, it flew back, humming like a bee, to dmr
who took Ogbon and swallowed it. Similarly Imo (knowledge)
and Oye (understanding), which were also created, returned
for lack of suitable abodes, and were swallowed for the same
reason. dmr then slept, but not in the human sense of the
word:
Sisun bi aisun

Sisun bi aisun

Eleye fi iye ju un loju

Mo ni kini mo se?

dmr kii sun.


Seemingly asleep but awake,

Seemingly dormant but alive

Eleye swished their wings against my face

I asked what my offence was,

dmr neverslumbers.

39

Disturbed for several "thousand" years by the incessant

humming of gbn, Im, and ye, dmr disturbed decided
to get rid of them in order to have some peace.
So dmr ordered gbn, Im, and ye to descend (r)
making the sound h. Thus the three otherworldly bodies,
bundled together, now known as H-r or r, were made
to descend to earth. Since they were life forces heavily
charged from the otherworld, their descent was accompanied
by lightning and thunder. All solid matter in rs
path melted and became jelly-like. For a while, r was
suspended in mid-air like an egg and did not melt, but then it
dropped to the earth and split (l).
In rs new state it is identified as la, la the deity that
functions in the Ifa divination complex as its explication
component. la[of whom the orisa of wisdom, runmila
is regarded as an aspect according according to Oludamini
Ogunnaike in Sufism and Ifa: Ways of Knowing in Two West
African Intellectual Traditions] is also regarded by the Yoruba as
the embodiment of gbn (Wisdom), Im (Knowledge) and ye
(Understanding) in all their verbal and visual forms -their oriki. [
oriki being described by Abiodun as the salutation or celebration
of the essence of a referent, a concept primarily understood as
referring to a genre of Yoruba poetry, but described by Abiodun
as denoting all forms of celebration of an existent, from the
verbal to the visual arts and beyond]. Ela ( a noun formed from
the verb, la which means "to split") became the first recognized
authoritative source of communication and explanation of the
nature of Odumare and all his/her creation.
The following magnificent lines, first presented, according to my
research, by Rowland Abiodun, quoting D. Adeniji, in "Verbal and Visual
Metaphors: Mythical Allusions in Yoruba Ritualistic Art of Ori" and
later quoted, with the addition of the line on Ela, by Awo Fategbe
Fatunmbi "The Yoruba Metaphysical Concept of Ori", sum up this
manifestation of cognitive and communicative agents :
Oro gbe nu agba gbin kin Oro ku
Oro ke
Oro gi
Oro la
Oro to ja ninu agba o tobi bi agbe

40

A dia fun Oro-oro oro Nigba un o ri enikan ba soro

Mo gba ngbin
Ase.
Oro, the cause of great concern for the wise and experienced elders
It sounds, Ku (making the heart miss a beat)
Ke (as a ponderous object hitting the ground)
Gi (making the last sound before silence)
and La, with a loud cracking sound is transformed into a
new state called Ela.

The oro that drops from the elderly is stupendous.
It was divined for Oro-oro oro
Who did not have anyone to communicate with and he started
groaning.

B. Correlating Verbal Music and Metaphysical Concepts in
The Descent of Oro"

"Sisun bi aisun/Sisun by aisun". These lines are beautiful in their
creation of music and amplification of meaning through repetition.
The gliding vowels and consonants are mellifluous, in their
evocation, through sonic pattern and lexical meaning, of the
mysterious somnolence that characterizes the sentient yet
inactive state before the emergence of the cosmos. Jhalobia Ojemu's
translation "Sleeping but not quite not sleeping reinforces
Abioduns rendition of this paradoxical condition. Abiodun's
translation, "Seemingly asleep but awake/Seemingly dormant but
alive" is magnificent in its choice of words for rendering the
relationship between life in its various possibilities that is the core
of this evocation of a subliminal dynamism embodied by the
sleeping figure and the potencies the figure created and which they
have swallowed, only for these potent entities to throb within the
creator figure in dramatizing dynamic activity within contained
force.

These cognitive essences complement, by contrast, the state of the
creator figure who is withdrawn from activity of the kind the
cosmos represents. The activity realized by the cosmos is
the outcome of a power that is very different from its own character
as a created form, even as the cosmos demonstrates aspects of the.

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 Image on Previous Page

Figure 11

Lagana figure, the human form stripped to its most basic essentials in evoking an
idea, that idea being perhaps the dynamism of the force or spirit embodied by the
metallic structure. The upward aerodynamic thrust of the sculpture is used here
in evoking the drive towards divine comprehension represented by Abiodun's
description of the significance of Ela as a bridge between ultimate wisdom
and humans. This interpretation is reinforced by Susanne Wenger's depiction of
cognitive flight in relation to Ela, an idea incidentally emblematised by the
aerodynamic momentum evoked by the Lagana statue. "Like the arrow in the
instant of being placed between the drawn string and the bow-timeless and
beyond individual intent-the transcendent actuality of Ela is reminiscent of the
ritual archery of Zen, holistically at once arrow, bow, marksman, flight and
target on the unsurpassably sensitive balance of being", as stated in Susanne
Wenger and Gert Chesi. A Life With the Gods in their Yoruba Homeland. Perlinger
Verlag : Worgl, 1983. She continues, Ela is "...Ifa's most sacred inner
life...vulnerable and yet ready to hit ferociously the high-and-fast flying target in
the unimaginably complex, intertwined swarm of possible constellations of
destiny..." configurations of possibility primarily manifest as the ese ifa, "the
word-cathedrals of Odu", the literary forms of Ifa. Image source : "Mumuye
Statue" at Kathy van der Pas en Steven van de Raadt African Art. Accessed
27/10/2016.

43

nature of that creator, being constituted from the being of the

creator.

This cosmological formation is enabled by contents of the creator's
self, throbbing potencies the creator brought into being and then
swallowed and whose ceaseless dynamism, their "incessant
humming", "throbbing like a bee", compelled their being dispatched
to Earth to enable the cognitive possibilities of the Earth's life
forms. The cosmos is thus depicted as grounded in the ultimate
possibilities of cognition represented by gbn (wisdom), im
(knowledge)
and
oye
(understanding).

The summative lines that begin with "Oro gbe nu agba gbin kin Oro
ku"," Oro, the cause of great concern for the wise and experienced
elders", run through a gamut of the potencies of sound, as a primary
means through which oro, discourse, is expressed in speech. The
lines evoke the intimate interactions of sound with the human body,
sound as activating the acoustic properties of space, sound as
constitutive of the contrastive complementarities represented by
sound and silence and sound as dramatizing the divine source of
cognition through the expressive capacities of human beings, a
mediation between the ultimate and the contingent embodied by
Ela.

This succinct but comprehensive picture is used in framing a
depiction of the gravitas of oro, of the weight and power of cognition
as a manifestation of the divine, communicated through speech
activated by wisdom, demonstrated in the expressions of elders.
This encyclopedic thumbnail survey of speech as a demonstration of
cognition is communicated, in the original language, through a
combination of repetition and structural brevity. A sonic rhythm is
thus generated, the cumulative force of which accentuates
the emphasis on two central words in the phonic configuration,
underlining their semantic value, "oro" and "agba", elder, thereby
evoking through memorable verbal melody the idea of the
transmission of the divine essence of discourse through wisdom.
"Agba" is further accentuated through the use of words that echo its
phonetic structure, "gbin", "agbe", "Nigba", "ba" and "gba gbin",
building a delightful melody. The sonorous dramatization concludes
in an image both amusing and telling, of oro groaning becease she
had no one to communicate with, "Nigba un o ri enikan ba soro", no

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 Image on Previous Page

Figure 12
This is a Yoruba shrine sculpture, described by John Pemberton III as
"extraordinary in [ its] artistry and rarity...the work of not only a highly skilled
craftsman, but a person with marvellous artistic imagination". It is used here
in adaptation of Rowland Abiodun's deployment of sculpture depicting
mounted Ifa babalawo, adepts in the esoteric knowledge of Ifa, in advancing
his thesis in Yoruba Art and Language on the mutually illuminating
character of Yoruba visual and verbal art.
He argues that these equestrian sculptures are less significatory of the actual
practice of babalawo riding horses than they are suggestive of the physical
and cognitive mobility of babalawo in their journeys in search of knowledge
as well as their intense investment in the hermeneutic strategies through
which knowledge is encoded and decoded in Ifa. The hermeneutic techniques
of Ifa referenced by Abiodun, as well as his own interpretation of the
sculptural forms in question as symbolic of cognitive rather than physical
mobility, exemplifies, par excellence, the Yoruba expression about the
primacy of owe, imaginative forms of communication, in relation to the never
ending quest to penetrate deeper into oro. Oro may be understood as
cognitive capacity, rooted in the metaphysical source of existence, but
actualised in the terrestrial world.
The expression states, "Owe lesin oro, t'oro ba sonu, owe lafin wa", "Owe are
the steeds or horses of oro, if oro goes missing, owe is used in seeking it
out'", suggesting the character of owe, imaginative forms, as privileged
carriers of cognitive possibility and explicatory potential. Their distance from
linear and plain expression enabling perhaps the embodiment of possibilities
of integration of zones of meaning that would otherwise be inaccessible. The
penetration into cognitive value in the face of difficulties of understanding,
"seeking out oro when it gets lost", is thus pursued, not through linearity and
plainness of expression, but through imaginative evocation, for only within
such evocative complexity or associative matrix can the range of possibilities
represented by a subject be adequately framed or foregrounded.
"Bi owe niifan soro", "In imaginative forms does Ifa speak", another
Yoruba expression employed by Abiodun, also complements a Yoruba
observation referenced by Abiodun in arguing that the concept of "owe"
covers the entire gamut of imaginative forms, including and exceeding the
verbal. "Bi owe, bi owe, lan lulu agidigbo'", Abiodun quotes, translated by one
source as "Like a proverb, like a proverb, is the war drum beaten" suggesting
the configuration of sonic rhythms through non-verbal patterns that
nevertheless resonate in terms of semantic value for those who can
interpret the complex, non-verbal "vocalisations" created by those patterns.

46

This amazing sculpture incarnates, par excellence, the multi-semantic dynamism

dramatising the capacity of imaginative expression to stretch the mind by stimulating
it through the simultaneous evocation of various realms of meaning which converge to
generate the explicit and implicit significatory universes enabled by particular
expressive forms.
The sculpture seems to exist or operate in various dimensions simultaneously,
dramatizing multiplicity synchronous with singleness, dynamism with stillness, frozen
motion with absolute focus on the destination ahead, the entire tableau animated by
the blaze of the central colour of bright red in dialogue with the sharp complementary
contrast of shining black, these contrasts evocative of the creative tension between
immediacy of meaning and evocative possibility, between contemplative immersion
and cognitive journeying provoked by art.
The unification of various possibilities, various zones of being and interpretive options
round a semantic axis is thus evoked, like the central pillar unifying the calmly
seated figure and the dynamic multiplicity of the double-headed form. The human
figures are organised in relation to the horse whose motion is suggestive of the multi-
perspectival embodiment inspiring journeyings of the mind represented by this work,
exemplifying the consciousness expanding character of imaginative expression.
The sculpture exemplifies, with unique force, the boundary traversing and ontology
mediating character of owe as imaginative expression that explores correlations
between contraries in weaving unities between the distinctive identities that
constitute existence.
This orientation generates unifying semantic fields demonstrative of the human
impulse to emulate nature's constitution of a universe that demonstrates a significant
degree of coherence, a coherence even more marked, as described by Abiola Irele in
"The African Scholar", by the possibility of understanding the apparently inexplicable
within the frame of non-linear schemes of order, embracing chaos and disruption as
aspects of an overarching system, an effort at a penetrative relationship with reality
exemplified by Esu, the central mediator, in Yoruba Orisa cosmology, between
possibilities of understanding and modes of existence, a hermeneutic imperative
summed up magnificently by Jack Mapanje and Landeg White in African Oral Poetry,
on "[Esu ] God of Fate, the uncontrollable element in human life... a trickster God,
bringing about the unexpected, the contradictory and the downright impossible", in
referring to a poem in which Esu is described as being cramped in findinmg himself in
the verandah and the room but in a groundnut shell, at last he could stretch himself.
Image :Yoruba/Nago Statue. Sotheby's. Accessed 30.10.2016.

47

 one to express her nature as oro with, no one to speak with, no one
to open herself to as the drive of the creator of the cosmos to
communicate themself to their creation.
The original text does not indicate gender for Oro, but I use the
feminine pronoun in referring to Oro beceause of the particular
association of the feminine with beauty, a correlation suggested by
the relationship between nakedness and taboo in the depiction of
Oro discussed later on in this essay. Beauty, like the tension between
accessibility and transcendence associated with Oro, may be
understood in relation to sensory immediacy as well as semiotic and
metaphysical transcendence. Semiotic, in terms of the limitations of
human descriptive or analytical capacity, as in relation to the
Sublime, particularly as described by Immanuel Kant in the Critique
of Judgement. Metaphysical, on account of the idea that beauty may
go beyond material and even humanly constructed abstract
frameworks. Beauty, like Oro, may be seen as existing in terms of a
continuum that includes the familiar at one end and the numinous
and uncanny at another, these extremes coming together in the
mystical orientation to divine beauty in terms that may be inspiring
or compelling of withdrawal on account of its strangeness.
C. The Mysterious Eleye
Oro"

in "The Descent of

Within this relatively straightforward depiction of cosmogonic

process, readily correlative with the motif of descent from a
primordial to a terrestrial state as portrayed by various
cosmogonies, the poet introduces an element, both whimsical and
mysterious, that complicates the narrative in a manner that
emphasizes its central theme. The middle of the poetic sequence is
complexified by the sudden inclusion of a voice speaking in the first
person, describing eleye, which can be translated as "Owners of
Birds", as swishing their wings against the face of the narrator,
leading the narrator to ask what the narrator's offense is, with the
poetic unit concluding in the summation"dmr never slumbers".
Who is that narrator who experienced the delicate action of birds
swishing their wings against the narrator's face? What is the
relationship between that delicate action and the narrator's
response implying that they are being challenged in relation to a
claim of wrong doing?

48

The reference to the Owners of Birds is particularly pregnant, since

birds, in Yoruba spirituality and its associated arts, are a primary
motif in evoking the conviction in the capacity of humans to move
across space without the aid of conventional physical locomotion or
mechanical instruments, using a mysterious power that makes their
motion akin to the flight of a bird or even demonstrated by
transformation into birds.
This potency may be described as expressed, par excellence, by the
channelling of the creative power expressed with unique force in
childbearing, the primary human experience of creativity realized
through participating in the creation of life, the ultimate creative
activity of existence, demonstrating sharing in the character
of Eleda, Odumare's characterization as the ultimate creator, a
process even Obatala, the orisa who shapes the child in the womb
tried to perceive but failed, as narrated in a delightful story in Bolaji
Idowu's Olodumare : God in Yoruba Belief and retold by me in the
context of questions in contemporary human biology in "Themes in
Ese Ifa, Ifa Literature: Biological Genesis : Obatala and the Dark
Room.
The feminine privileging of the capacity for bearing and bringing
forth life, a participation in cosmic creativity which may be directed
at transcending the laws of nature as conventionally understood,
may have led to a central band of the possessors of this capacity of
redirecting cosmic creativity being named Awon Iya Wa, Our
[Arcane] Mothers. The conjunction of creative and destructive
potency enabled by this force inspires both veneration and awe,
tinged with caution, in a context in which the invocation of the
spectrum of female capacity, from the social to the spiritual, is
explicit in the constitution of classical Yoruba social order, as
described, among other sources, by Rowland Abiodun in "Woman in
Yoruba Religious Images".
May this enigmatic depiction of eleye suggest something about the
creative activity of the mysterious Owners of Birds at cosmogenesis?
The aje, another name for this embodiment of spiritual power
especially associated with the feminine, recur in a number of
cosmogonic ese ifa, but, in my exposure so far, non-systematic as it
is, not in terms of the elevated meanings ascribed to the other
agents in the various cosmic dramas represented by the other
creation stories discussed in this essay, these other depictions of aje

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50

Image on Previous Page

Figure 13
The Orisa tradition orisa or deity Esu, on horseback, in concentrated pursuit across
ontological and cognitive lines, in his role as mediator between forms of being and
modes of knowledge, between humans and non-humans, between humans, nature
and spirits, and between human enquiry and oracular response in Ifa. His forward
looking gaze within the suggestion of the forward motion of the horse on which he
sits is counterbalanced by a magnificent coiffure rising from his head. Its spiralling
arc demonstrates an aerodynamic formation rising, with delicate force and
power, from a narrow base to expand into the centre of the curve of an arc and taper
down again to another narrow base, evoking, in a different context, the dynamism
represented by his forward directed stance.
A chameleon like form perched on the front of the coiffure resonates with the
concentrated energy actualised by the rider below, a chameleon being suggestive of
the identification with various zones of existence traversed by Esu, identifying with
them as the chamelon is able to change its colour to blend with its landscape, a cross-
ontological capacity evocative of the babalawo's ability to seek understanding in
journeying across realms of being in questing for answers to challenges arising
in human existence, a task, which, according to babalawo Joseph Ohomina, is
facilitated by the babalawo's relationship with Esu, as guide to the opening of "the
doors of Ifa", as Henry Louis Gates Jr expounds in The Signifying Money: A Theory
of African-American Literary Criticism.
The circular pedestal on which the sculptural ensemble stands concentrates
the dynamism of the figural tableau within a narrow space, integrating within that
spatial context and its visual implications the various dynamisms at play in the
work-the determined rider, the horse he is riding, the elegantly powerful coiffure
emanating from his head as well as the balance between dynamism and stasis
represented by the conjunction of these evocations of activity with the couple
standing at the side of the earnestly focused rider, perhaps suggesting the family of
humanity on whose behalf he makes the journeys he engages in as
he trafficks between realms of being as a central agent in interactions between
human and non-human realms. Image source : Yoruba | s Elegbara board on
Pinterest. Accessed 30/10/2016.

51

often dramatizing the paradoxical blend of destructive orientation

and creative capacity with which this concept is associated in Yoruba
lore.
Does the image of eleye in this story point to something tender and
humane, away from the negative characterisations of aje that recur in
some ese ifa? Is the picture drawn here closer to suggesting a
mysterious force at cosmogenesis, even more mysterious than the
paradox embodying Odumare who is awake yet seems to slumber?
Are we being drawn into territory suggestive of the Tibetan Buddhist
conception of another group of female forms, the dakinis, the
Travellers in Space, as the name is translated, the journeyings of the
dakinis being metaphorical for activity across the zone beyond being
and non-being that is the ground of being, its all encapsulating
transcendence suggested by the image of the sky, its spaciousness
evoking the womb of ultimate expression, the "space" the dakini
traverses, as described, among numerous sources as befitting such an
ancient and impactful image, in June Campbells Travellerin Space: In
Search of Female Identity in Tibetan Buddhism, remarkable as a
wrestling with the nexus of abstraction and personal experience
dramatized by her encounter with this conception and Judith Simmer
Browns Dakinis Warm Breath : The Feminine Principle in Tibetan
Buddhism, superb in expounding the sublimity of dakini
metaphysics?
The dakinis, like the aje, are also pictured in terms of imagery
evocative of death and life, , skulls with the dakinis, blood with the
aje. This incidental confluence may suggest similar primal evocations
of foundational human realities, elevated with time into soaring
cosmological value in the dakini conception. A similar process is
evident in contemporary re-interpretations of aje lore, moving away
from the largely negativising ese ifa I referenced earlier to newer
efforts represented by writers and activists working to develop aje
spirituality, philosophy and practice.
Particularly prominent figures in this initiative are Teresa
Washington in Our Mothers, Our Powers, Our Texts : Manifestations of
Aje in Africana Literature and The Architects of Existence: Aje in
Yoruba Cosmology, Ontology, and Orature and Iyalalaje Mercedes
Morgana Bonilla as represented by the Facebook pages she runs,
Egbe
Aje
Iyami
Temple
Worldwide
and

52

Egbe Aje Iyami Temple of America, her personal Facebook account

and her other Facebook account at Mercedes Morgana Bonilla.
These Facebook accounts run by Mercedes Bonilla are remarkable
for texts and images evoking a spectrum of conceptions through
which she constitutes her own understanding of aje at an
intercultural nexus which yet distills the enigmatic potency of the
Yoruba aje matrix. Her social media work in Iyami Aje spirituality has
inspired a sequence of essays from me posted in the Facebook group
I created motivated by her work, Rethinking Iyami : An Autonomous
Yoruba/Orisa Female Centred Spirituality.
The aje and Iyami conceptions inspire ideas and provoke questions
shot through by the sense of something compelling and yet beyond
the fringe of readily assimilable value, for some a powerfully
attractive enigma and for many a profoundly disturbing mystery.
No definite answers are forthcoming as to the rationale for the
presence in the poem of this potently mysterious conception since
the poem does not bring it up again, and yet these lines do not seem
to represent a break in the semantic flow of the poetry. An artful
blend of discontinuity that yet enhances continuity is thus actualized,
evoking something mysterious in its enigmatic references, but
delightful, in the delicate image of the swishing of wings against a
face.
This is another example of the use of seemingly random imagistic
forms that have no semantic connection with the poem and yet add a
creative twist that enriches the verbal art through their idiosyncrasy,
one of the beauties of ese ifa, as demonstrated by the earlier example
of the comedic or proverb forming opening lines in some ese ifa
represented by such expressions as "The twisted wooden stump
which crosses the road in a crooked way", and "no man, no matter
how wise, can tie water into a knot in his
pocket".

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Image on Previous Page

Figure 14

"Kolombo ni Oro nrin "Oro moves around naked" but it is forbidden to see it with the
naked eyes"- Abiodun, Yoruba Art and Language. Scholar of Jewish mysticism Eliot
Wolfsons description of his aesthetic as a painter evokes a related orientation: "Eliot
Wolfson[http://www.religion.ucsb.edu/faculty/wolfson/paintings.html ] has long been
preoccupied with the insights of Jewish mystical traditions that approach an imageless god
through the mediation of an intensely visual symbolic imaginary. His painted canvases
communicate a corresponding sense that vision hovers ever on the borders of appearing
and disappearing, disclosure and hiddenness. As the imagination seeks to give form to
what remains nonetheless formless, the quintessentially human endeavor of hermeneutics
is already caught up in the transcending eros of a divine creativity". Image source : Adam
and Andrew in "Animal Kingdom Artifacts : Protection" from Disney Hipster Blog
:"Mumuye Female Figure : The Mumuye people of Nigeria used this shrine figure to
influence the advent of rain". Accessed 27/10/2016.

55

 D. Communicative Dynamism and Transcendence in "The

Descent of Oro"

The ultimate possibilities of cognition, gbn (Wisdom),
Im (Knowledge) and Oye (Understanding), are described as being
the constituents of r, which, adapting Pius Adesanmi's translation
in his essay "Oju l'oro wa", may be rendered as "discourse", a
translation that, incidentally, does justice to the scope of meaning the
term demonstrates in the ese ifa explored by Abiodun and the
argument he develops about the theorizing of expressive forms in
Yoruba thought. These constituents, emerging from their divine
source, have experienced a "breaking open", of an original unity, thus
enabling them to be engaged with by human beings. The act of
breaking open, "la", is personified as Ela, described by Awo Fategbe
in "The Yoruba Metaphysical Concept of Ori" as "the manifestation of
the primal urge to communicate. [Ela] is the link between human and
God; human and human; and human and the universe".
As divine forms, however, interaction with the constituents of r
cannot be carried out directly on account of what may be understood
as the incandescent, otherworldly origin of these cognitive forms,
their dangerous "nakedness". They represent an ideal to which
human engagement with discourse may aspire to and yet not
always reach. They thus constitute an embodiment of ultimate
cognitive possibility which is best evoked through imaginative
expression in various forms. This imaginative mediation is suggested
by the Yoruba expression, "we lesin r, Ti r ba son, we la fi
wa" which may be translated as "Imaginative expression is the steed
of discourse. Where cognition and its projections are lost,
imaginative forms become our means of search". "we" are
proverbs, gnomic expressions that require imaginative projection
and critical thinking to understand and apply. Imaginative
expression is thus privileged as an expanded engagement with reality
through which realitys significance, as expressed through discourse,
may be more readily grasped.
What follows from the divinatory context, in "The Descent of Oro",
therefore, is not the standard sequence of oracular response,
followed by a reaction by the entity divined for and the outcome of
that reaction, a formulaic structure representative of a good number
of ese ifa. What emerges is an articulation of cosmogonic process in

56

terms of the organization of cognitive responses to phenomena using

various expressive strategies.
Discourse, oro, is understood as a manifestation of sapience as
demonstrated, par excellence, in Ogbon, Wisdom, Imo, Knowledge
and Oye, Understanding. These sapiential foundations are themselves
depicted as constituents of an ultimate existent, Odumare. They
emerge from the sentient generative "sleep", "dormant but alive",
"seemingly asleep but awake" of this primal cause, a condition in
which That Beyond Being passes into being, to adapt the conception
the God Above God by the Christian theologian Paul Tillich and the
Buddhist idea of the Void, the source of existence, as being beyond
being and non-being.
Odumare, the ultimate source of discourse, may be understood as
depicted as slumbering because Odumare's mode of being is beyond
cognition by humans. The paradoxical characterization of the sleep of
Odumare, "Seemingly asleep but awake/Seemingly dormant but
alive", may suggest that what is perceived as slumber to humans is in
fact withdrawal of the divine from activity of the kind human
mentation is able to cognize. Within this context the poem
projects the mythically powerful image of the primal cognitive
possibility represented by understanding, knowledge and wisdom as
humming or vibrating, suggesting a quietly incubating intensity
within the self of the primal cause, creating a tension that compels
their being dispatched to express themselves fully on earth. The
creative primacy that is Odumare bundles together these cognitive
forms and sends them to earth where the bundle splits into the
cognitive dynamism known as Ela. Ela is depicted as embodying
the cognitive capacity of humanity to perceive and express itself in
relation to its terrestrial existence while seeking knowledge of the
transcendental reality represented by the primal cognitive potential
embodied by the ultimate.
Abiodun concludes that "With the aid of Ela, Oro is made
manifest...through Owe [ dramatic figures of speech]. As the saying
goes, Kolombo ni Oro nrin, 'Oro moves around naked but it is
forbidden to see it with the naked eyes".
A most compelling image, a divine entity embodying the essence of
the cognitive potential of the cosmos, so potent its blazing core is
unsafe for the human being to perceive directly, hence it must be

57

58

mediated through linguistic forms that reach towards its all

encompassing being but can never subsume it. Beyond this effort to
express in expository terms what is a magnificent imaginative
conception, the summation of the imaginative leap represented by
these brilliant ideas is the description of this entity as mobile and
unencumbered by the forms by which humans accustom themselves
to terrestrial existence, it "moves around naked", a nakedness it is
dangerous to perceive. This "moving around" may be understood
as an evocation of the dynamism demonstrated by the pervasive
presence of cognitive potential. The nakedness which it is forbidden
to see with the naked eyes may be interpreted as evoking
an incandescent nucleus beyond conventional human discernment
and which it is dangerous to encounter directly without the
mediation of the imaginative forms through which it may
be expressed. This is one of the richest evocations of the significance
of cognitive and expressive ability I have come
across, a combination of simplicity, beauty and sensitivity to the
mysterious that classical Ifa verbal artists have made their own in a
unique way. The entire universe of speculation on the ultimate
significance of discourse, on the ability to mobilize reflection in
expressive forms, converges in these simple but gently potent lines.

The image of Oro moving around naked, a nakedness it is forbidden
to cognise with the naked eyes, and which can only be mediated
through owe, imaginative forms that project its character without
revealing its essence, its nakedness, is particularly remarkable. This
picture is a magnificent encapsulation of the paradoxical
combination of compelling attraction and dangerous remoteness that
is the essence of much of humanity's engagement with the
superlative, particularly in its expression outside what is created by
humans, summed up with particular vividness in Rudolph Otto's
depiction of the numinous in The Idea of the Holy as an " an invisible
but majestic presence that inspires both dread and fascination and
constitutes the non-rational essence of vital religion" as described by
Webster's Third New International Dictionary of the English language.
The image of the terrestrial mobility of the divine
identity represented by Oro concretizes the idea of life on earth as lit
up by creative potential that is fleeting and yet accessible, requiring
alertness to grasp it in its passage. This picture of nakedness suggests
a compelling presence, but in its forbiddingness to naked vision, an
aesthetic configuration and power of a sort far removed from the

59

qualities humanity is accustomed to, thereby possibly evoking both

awe and yet desire to transgress boundaries by perceiving the
forbidden. Like the moth in the Islamic mystic Fard ad-Dn 'Attr's
"The Parable of the Moth and the Flame" from his Maniq a-Tair,
The Conference of the Birds, the moth who is consumed by the candle
flame as he penetrates it in order to experience its nature, the
nakedness of Oro forbidden to direct perception, may, by its
conjoining of power and taboo, of allure and danger, motivate the
desire to experience what transformative and even destructive
encounter may be enabled by trying to observe it directly.
The person fired by the evocation, in the description of Oro, of re-
creative possibilities beyond the compass of human experience
across history, could aspire, under the impact of this force, to
become more than human for a time, even if to expire prematurely
within the consuming blaze of the encounter. The balance of
ontological remoteness and compelling power in the portrayal of
Oro suggests the classic aspirations of mysticism, the desire to
directly perceive or experience ultimate reality, to cognise it
directly or immerse oneself in its transcendent essence and the
transformative
experience
this
encounter
generates.
The constellation of concepts Abiodun draws from Yoruba
philosophy and builds around this vision in the later chapters of
Yoruba Art and Language indicates the magnetic potential of this
vision, the use of imaginative forms as oriki, as means of exploring
and invoking the essence of phenomena. This essence is suggested
by the Yoruba expression "iwa le wa", "being or essential character
is beauty", the essence of being understood as an aesthetic
configuration. This understanding of being reaches a
consummation in another Yoruba expression : "aiku pari iwa",
"immortality is the consummation of being". The aesthetic
configuration constituting the essence of beings is thus understood
as ultimately timeless and transcendent of the mutability of
terrestrial forms, an intersection of the terrestrial and the
transcendent complementary to the image of Oro.
4."The Descent of Oro"
Correlations in Difference

and

"Ayajo

Asuwada"

"The Descent of Oro" and "Ayajo Asuwada" are two cosmogonic

accounts from the same culture, referencing differently named
entities as agents in the cosmogonic process, but ultimately

60

Figure 16
The constellation of possibilities, cognitive and integrative, from
ogbon, wisdom to asuwa, the integrative principle, within the generative
matrix of being, Odumare or Alasuwada, emanating to shape the cosmos, as
dramatized by "The Descent of Oro" and "Ayajo Asuwada". These ideas
are visualized here through Ghanaain/German artist Owusu-
Ankomah's depiction of his Microcron conception, a circle evoking the
infinite in sub-circles connoting dimensions of possibility.

61

correlative in terms of the cognitive missions they dramatize and

the concepts underlying them. The poems are efforts at exploring
the foundational character of existence. The concepts of iwa and
ori in "Ayajo Asuwada", concepts underlying various expressions of
Yoruba philosophy and its Orisa cosmology, are relevant for "The
Descent of Oro", even though the latter poem does not refer to
those concepts.
These concepts facilitate appreciation of the unity in difference
between both poems particularly in the context of the larger
ideational framework, the broader conceptual map, of Yoruba
philosophy. "Ayajo Asuwada" depicts iwa, being, as the primary
outpouring from a primal source at the time of creation and
describes the foundational expression of being as asuwa, the
principle of cohesion in nature and society.
"The Descent of Oro", in contrast, describes oro, the expression of
ye ( Understanding), Im (Knowledge) and gbn (Wisdom), as
the underlying quality of existence. Both poems' distinctive
conceptual orientations may be correlated in terms of the principle
of cohesion dramatized by "Ayajo Asuwada". This principle may be
seen as demonstrated in the quest for cognitive unity suggested by
the concept of oro as subsuming all discourse. The effort to
understand how the various possibilities of cognition cohere, to
provide a unified comprehension of how existence is cognised, as
represented by the oro concept, may be understood as dramatized
in the relationships between the cognitive triad of understanding,
knowledge and wisdom depicted in "The Descent of Oro".
Human cognition may be perceived as progressing from
understanding to the emergence of knowledge through
understanding and culminating in a distillation from knowledge
perceivable as wisdom. This perception of wisdom may be further
described in terms of the summative account of the cognitive
spectrum evident in Yoruba philosophy expounded by Babatunde
Lawal in "wrn: Representing the Self and its Metaphysical
Other in Yoruba Art". Such wisdom involves a movement from the
superficial comprehension of phenomena to a grasp of their
essentials, a progression from oju ode to oju inu, outward vision to
inward vision. This quest for cognitive unity may be further
summed up in the Yoruba concept of ifogbontaayese, which may
be understood, with Moses Makinde in "Asuwada Principle : An
Analysis of Akiwowo's Contributions to the Sociology of Knowledge
from an African Perspective", as indicating the unity of knowledge.

62

This unity may be further defined in terms of Babatunde Lawal's

presentation in The Gelede Spectacle, of relationships between
individual and universal being demonstrated in Yoruba
philosophy. He describes this unity in terms of the individuality of
each existent, its distinct character and ultimate orientation, its
ori, as this fundamental identity is depicted in Yoruba philosophy,
in relation to its unique participation in iwa, being, as the ground
of existence.
This convergence of individual and universal being may be seen
as summed up in a Yoruba expression "mo iwa fun oniwa", which
may be translated in literal terms as "I grant existence to the
owner of existence", or in more expansive terms as "I grant to each
existent its unique mode of being", part of a constellation of ideas
constituting understanding of iwa, being, in Yoruba philosophy, as
discussed by Abiodun in Yoruba Art and Language. Lawuyi and
Taiwo present a related perspective in asserting that "... The sum
total of those attributes which define each thing, which make it
what it is, and in the absence of which it will not be what it is but
something else, is what generally we refer to as the essence of the
thing. ...Each iwa (being) has an essence which differentiates it
from other beings ". The quest for cognitive synthesis within the
context of the unity of knowledge represented by ifogbontaayese is
further described by Glenn Odom in Yoruba Performance,
Theatre and Politics : Staging Resistance as demonstrated in
terms of structural similarities expressed in different ways in
different forms of knowledge .
6. The Splitting of Oyigiyigi and the 256 Odu Ifa
Awo Falokun Fatunmbi in "Esu-Elegba and the Spirit of the Divine
Messenger" depicts a symbolic pattern that facilitates the
development of such a cognitive unity through the intersection of
specific constituents of existence. This possibility emerges through
his presentation of another Yoruba cosmogonic narrative, in which
"the Eternal Rock of Creation... Oyigiyigi...separated into four
Calabashes of Creation [which] interacted with one another to
form sixteen sacred principles called Olu Odu or the primal
principles of Creation" [which, in turn, generated] the two hundred
and forty Odu [ of Ifa, thus actualising] the primal event that [
created] Being [in its] diversity within the Universe". The
characterisation of Odumare as Oyigiyigi Ota Aiku, the Mighty
Immovable Rock that Never Dies, an evocation of ultimate stability
and power, as depicted in Bolaji Idowu's Olodumare : God in

63

gbn (Wisdom)

The awo in orun

the Place of Primal Origination

the Zone of Ultimate Origins

the Ultimate Generative Space

Ori-Orun

Origun

the Ultimate Head


the Complete Head

the Directional Essence

the One and Only Metaphysical Archetype of Mind


the One and Only Origun in Orun


from whom each earthly Ori branches

It was with the principle of asuwa that the Heavens were established

Complete and actuated for a purpose was iwa at its first emanations
Image source : "12th15th century terracotta.
Posted by Rnt Zwdzk to Ife board on Pinterest. Accessed 27/10/2016
Figure 17

64

Yoruba Belief, its associative possibilities expanded by myself with a

contribution by Noyo Edem at The Orisa Universe, is thus conjoined
with the motif of the calabash, a primary cosmological form in
Yoruba thought.
The story evokes the image of Igba Iwa, figure 10, the Calabash of
Existence, suggesting the integration of aye, earth, and orun, the
world of primal origins, through the image of a half calabash
resting on another half calabash. As a recurrent form in African
iconography that gathers associative momentum through its
multiplicity of occurrences, it may be correlated with Mazisi
Kunene's description, in Anthem of the Decades, of the calabash in
classical Zulu thought as symbolising the unity of being as well as
the cognitive scope required to cognise this unity.
Within this context, the concavity of the calabash may be
understood as evoking depth and scope of being. Its circularity
may connote the infinity of the existent within which being is
contained or even the infinity of being. Being, existence as a whole,
is held within this concavity and may be represented by the Odu
Ifa, the organisational forms and active agents of Ifa understood
as fundamental principles of existence. The generative fecundity,
dynamism and structure represented by existence may thus be
perceived as evoked by the account of " the primal event that
generated Being " in terms of the emergence of the totality of
being from Oyigiyigi, the Eternal Rock of Creation, splitting into
"four Calabashes of Creation" that eventuated in the dynamic
principles that constitute existence, the 256 Odu Ifa .
A. Odu Ifa as Organizational Forms and
Active Agents
Babalawo Joseph Ohomina, in a personal communication I discuss
in "Cosmological Permutations: Joseph Ohominas Ifa Philosophy
and the Quest for the Unity of Being", sums up very memorably his
perspective on the understanding of the Odu Ifa as cosmological
principles and active agents, a perspective complementing their
more explicit character as organizational forms of the Ifa system:
The odu are the names of spirits whose origin we do not
know. We understand only a small fraction of their
significance. They are the brains behind the efficacy of
whatever we prepare. They are the spiritual names of all
possibilities of existence, abstract and concrete, actual

65

and potential. Concrete forms such as plants, animals

and human beings; the elements as demonstrated by
rain, water, land, air and the stars; abstractions such as
love and hate, truth and falsehood; situations such as
celebrations, war and ceremonies, are all represented in
spiritual terms by the various odu.
This depiction of the odu ifa is an interpretation, in more specific
terms, of the framework of thought represented by Wande
Abimbolas description, in Ifa Divination Poetry and An
Exposition of Ifa Literary Corpus, of the odu ifa as divinities who
descended to earth from orun, the zone of ultimate origins, sent by
Odumare to replace Orunmila, the divinity of ultimate wisdom,
after Orunmila had returned to orun from Earth.
Ohomina's interpretation thus reinforces the verbal expression of
the odu ifa. Verbal art, ese ifa, is the most explicit projection of the
odu ifa, in association with their visual portrayal as pairs of
vertical lines organised in a binary formation, as shown directly
below in an image of the primary sixteen odu ifa, abstractions
derived from the patterns assumed by the Ifa divinatory
instruments, the opele and ikin, when cast.
Ohomina's description indicates this verbal identity extends
beyond the ese ifa, Ifa literature, categorized in relation to
particular odu ifa. He describes the character of the odu ifa as
representing the essences of phenomena understood as
configurations that may be expressed in verbal terms, "spiritual
names" of all possibilities of existence. The concept of identity as
cognizable in terms of primordial names, ontological essences of
particular forms of being expressed in verbal terms is central to
Yoruba philosophy of language, as described by Abiodun in
"Understanding Yoruba Art and Aesthetics: The Concept of Ase" and
later in Yoruba Art and Language. This conception resonates with the
depiction of oro, the primordial core of discourse, as the nucleus of
cognitive possibility, in its manifestation as owe, metaphorical
expressions of which verbal forms are paradigmatic, as summed up
by Abiodun on the dramatization of Yoruba philosophy of discourse
and language by "The Descent of Oro".
Within this perceptual context, a person who is able to enter into
dialogue with the primordial and yet perennially active forms
represented by the odu ifa as they underlie the constitution and

66

dynamism of existence will reach from understanding to knowledge

and from knowledge to wisdom, the cognitive triad embodied by oro
as depicted in 'The Descent of Oro". Such a cognitive adventurer
would thus penetrate beyond the obvious characteristics of
phenomena to the ordered complexity of the underlying currents
they express, an integration of surface and depth facilitated by the
grasp of the convergence of possibilities in enabling existence
represented by the odu ifa.
This aspiration to cognitive comprehensiveness is demonstrative of
the asuwa principle of "Ayajo Asuwada", understood as expressing,
not only the drive to cohesion of material forms and non-human
species that enables terrestrial and cosmic existence, or the social
integration that generates human and animal society, but also the
propulsion towards cognitive cohesion that facilitates an
understanding of being as an ordered whole, an aspiration that
empowers humanity in making sense of existence in the face of gaps
within this quest for cosmos in place of chaos.
The mapping of cosmic totality in terms of the odu ifa as indicated by
Fatunmbi and Ohomina may, among other methods, be developed in
terms of the delineation of fundamental structures of existence that
could be associated with the primary sixteen odu ifa, as depicted in
the image directly below, structures from which the full range
of possibilities of being may be derived.
6. Amplifying Yoruba Theory of Discourse through Comparison
With Ibn Arabi's Futt al-Makkya, The Meccan Revelations
To further concretize my interpretations of the remarkable poems
"The Descent of Oro" and "Ayajo Asuwada" and of "The Splitting of
Oyigiyigi" and their luminous commentary by Abiodun, Akiwowo
and Fatunmbi, I quote an account by Ibn Arabi, a Muslim mystic,
philosopher and poet, who, in the opening chapter of his Futt al-
Makkya, rendered as The Meccan Openings, The Meccan
Illuminations or The Meccan Revelations, describes himself, as he
was circumambulating, ritually circling the Black Stone, the Kaaba,
the centre of Muslim devotion in Mecca, the geographical and
historical centre of Islam, as seeing a figure that, for me, recalls Oro
moving about naked and the cognitive unity represented by the
conception of ifogbontaayese.

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 Im (Knowledge)


the awo of mid-air


Baba Asemuegun Sunwon

Father Who Selects and Makes All Things
Perfect and Balanced

Olofin Otete

Ruler of the Palace


Infinite Spaciousness
Who Used a Basketful Measure of Dust Particles
in Creating Ile Ife, the Earth

When iwa first emanated,
when iwa was complete and perfect

In asuwa forms all things descended upon the Earth
activated by purpose

Image source : "Terracotta head of a woman; 12th-
15th century." posted by by Aunt Ruth in PoC...
Royalty... Lords & Ladies... board on Pinterest.
Accessed 27/10/2016

Figure 18

68

I introduce the quotation with my introduction to another translation

of the same lines from another essay of mine "Hijab Aesthetics and
Mysticism", on the aesthetics of the Muslim headdress, the hijab, in
relation to the face, where I briefly discuss the concept of oro in
terms of the human face as expressed in the Yoruba expression "Oju
loro wa", which may be translated, adapting Pius Adesanmi's
translation and interpretation in his essay "Oju l'oro wa", as "the
face is the abode , dwelling, centre, location or focus of discourse":
The symbolic, the metaphysical, the emotive, the mysterious and the
human form converge in Ibn Arabis unforgettable narration, as
translated by Stephen Hirstentein in The Ultimate Mercifier : A Life of
Ibn Arabi : As I was standing in rapt amazement in front of the
Black Stone, I encountered the [ Youth].
I continue by using Eric Winkel's translation in "Understanding and
Translating the Futt al-Makkya :

Then I was informed about the station of that youth, and his
being untouched by Where or When [space or time]. When I
recognized his station and landing place [ a positioning within
a cosmological matrix ], and I saw with my own eyes his place
in existence and his states[perhaps alluding to states of
spiritual development and cosmological identity subsumed in
the being of the Youth], I kissed his right hand, and I wiped the
sweat [ like the Prophet Muhammad, the founder of Islam,
used to get from the experience of prophetic revelation,
indicating the exertion involved in receiving divine visitation]
off his brow, and I said to him, "Look at the one who seeks to
sit with you and desires to be intimate with you." He pointed
to me with an enigmatic gesture, [saying] that he was innately
configured such that he speaks to no one except in metaphor
and is only spoken to metaphorically. When you know him,
and verify him for yourself, and you understand him, you
know that the purest language of the pure speakers does not
perceive him, and his articulation is not attained by the
eloquence of the most eloquent.

69

ye ( Understanding)

the awo of earth

Oluiwaaye

Lord of Earthbound Existences

It was with the principle of asuwa that the Earth was created


iwa poured down on the Earth like rain

Image source: Saved by NP to African Art on Pinterest.

Accessed 27/10/2016
Figure 19

70

I said to him, "You beautiful bearer of good tidings, this is a

great good. Do teach me your vocabularies and instruct me in
the hows of turning your opening keys, because I want to be
your companion in night conversations [ perhaps alluding to
Muhammads night ascension, in which he describes himself
as taken up at night into transcendent spiritual realms] and I
love your relation"....He made a secret gesture, and I
knew. Then he shone...to me a truth of his beauty and I was
overwhelmed with passion. I was felled before him and the
moment overcame me. When I recovered again after
fainting...trembling... from fear...he knew that knowledge of
him had arrived, and he set down his walking stick and
sat....he took khashya (reverent fear) as a proof [that I had
gotten knowledge] and he deemed the reverent fear to be a
way to recognize that knowledge had arrived [to me]....I said
to him, "Show me some of your mysteries, so that I would be
one to transcribe your beauties."
He said, "Observe the sectioned segments of my cobble-stoned
whole and the ordered arrangement of my shape and you will
find what you are asking of me to be imprinted throughout
me, for I am neither a mukallim [who speaks for himself] nor
a kalm [who speaks for another; an epithet for Moses, a
primal prophet in the cognate religions, Judaism, Christianity
and Islam], and my knowledge is not anything but me, and my
Substantive (dht) is not different from my names (nouns). I
am knowledge, the known, and the one who knows. I am
the ikma (wisdom), the mukam (the fount of wisdom
secured from ambiguity), and the akm (who decides
wisely)."
[ Arabi sums up the implications of this encounter] If not for
what was deposited in me, which my truth required, and what
connected my path to him, I would not have found a chance to
drink deep with him [the Youth], nor felt attracted toward
his marifa (recognition, knowledge). Because of that
[deposit], I was returned to myself [regained consciousness]
in the end. Because of this [returning], the arm of the
[draftsmans] compass returns, during the opening of the
circle, after reaching the end of the circles being, to the
beginning point. Thus the last matter is connected to the first,
and its endlessness curves with kindliness into its

71

timelessness, and there is nothing but a wujd [ unity of being

as manifest through the semantic value of the physical
structuring of the Youth] continuous and a Vision stable,
enduring.
Mobility, embodiment, revelation through encounter, insight into
essence, wisdom embodied in anthropomorphic form-
inspiring verbalization of meaning but transcending all verbalization.
These qualities enable the confluence of "The Descent of Oro" and Ibn
Arabi's account of his meeting with the Youth.
7. Contemplative and Ritual Possibilities
A. Emphasising the Imaginative Character of Forms
Embodying Ideas
Along with ratiocinative methods as demonstrated in this essay,
contemplation and ritual are two approaches through which
knowledge may be developed and the " The Descent of Oro"
, "Ayajo Asuwada" and "The Splitting of Oyigiyigi" represent classic
examples of the kinds of conceptual and imagistic schemata in terms
of which contemplative and ritual systems have been organised in
various philosophies and religions, particularly in Asian and in
Western esoteric thought.
One approach to developing such cognitive systems is to approach
them not as statements or descriptions of literal truth but as
imaginative expressions of ideas. Along those lines, therefore, the
cosmogonic accounts represented by the ese ifa, Ifa literary forms,
may be appreciated for their imaginative dexterity and ideational
power without identifying with the unlikely idea of their being
factual statements, a central problem in engaging with the
divergence between observable reality and much religious, and, to
a lesser extent, philosophical thought. Responding to these
expressions as imaginative conceptions enables appreciating them
as strategies of projecting ideas and attitudes to the meaning of
existence, meanings that can be distilled from the imagistic forms
in terms of which they are expressed in the literary works without
interpreting the imaginative forms as identical with the ideas that
may be distilled from them.

72

73

a. Sonic
Within such a context, one could correlate in a visual form the
cosmogonic sequences depicted in the mythic stories and use this
visual form as a platform for contemplating and better
understanding and even identifying with the ideas these
literary forms embody. One could also adapt elements of these
narratives as ritual processes which could be engaged with in ways
that take one's relationship with the relevant conceptions beyond
the imaginative identification and correlative ratiocinative
exposition represented by this essay. Such a ritual structure could
be developed in concert with the visual adaptation of the narratives
or independent of this adaptation. It could involve engaging with
the emphasis in the "Descent of Oro" on the relationship between
discourse, oro, and sound, as represented by the description of the
word,"oro"as derived from the sound made by the conglomeration
of Ogbon, Wisdom, Oye, Understanding and Imo, Knowledge, as
they were dispatched to Earth by Odumare, making the sound
"H-r" in their fall.

The notion of movement from a transcendental to a terrestrial

plane, from the source of cosmos to shaping the material world, in
terms of sound as representing the essence of this creative
force, also emerges in Hindu thought. In Hinduism, the word
"OM" is described as bringing the cosmos into existence and
sustaining it in being, a word the contemplative intones in a
reverential spirit in order to relate themselves with that primordial
core. The Western esoteric thinker Harvey Spencer Lewis' essay
"Aum-Om-Amen" in Master of the Rose Cross : A Collection of
Essays By and About Harvey Spencer Lewis, comparing the
Hindu word and names for the supreme deity in ancient Egyptian
religion, concludes that a correlative quality of these words is their
use of a combination of vowel sounds represented by "o", "u" and
"e" and of consonantal sounds as realized by "m" and "n". He
concludes that such vowel and consonantal combinations,
particularly involving vowel sounds of the sonorous quality of "o"
and "u", when carefully intoned in a rising to a falling tone, are
particularly effective in inducing a contemplative state, an
observation I have confirmed for myself. This empirical
observation, though limited to experiments with my own self, I
expect would be valid for others regardless of one's views of or
even knowledge or lack of knowledge about the cosmological

74

significance of such sonic combinations as represented by the

Hindu and Egyptian words.
The Yoruba word "oro" is a similar combination of sonorous
vowels, the sonic power of which are amplified by the interjection
of the consonant "r" between them, facilitating the intoning of the
word on a rising note that culminates in the consonant and falls to
reach consummation in the concluding vowel. In intoning this
word, in a quiet space, focusing on the activity alone, it evoked in
me a sense of the sacred, a quiet blaze of anticipation, a sense of
space charged with meaning, as if calling forth into visibility the
naked incandescence of oro, ever present in her perennial mobility
but just beyond vision, gradually unfolding into degrees of
cognitive apprehension suggesting the possibility of opening a
pathway to her direct luminescence, enabling an integration of
discursive categories unifying the dynamism of terrestrial
existence and the transcendence represented by the pre-temporal
and pre-terrestrial divine origins of oro. Through this exercise, I
was able to demonstrate for myself, one aspect of Ryuichi Abe's
description of the purpose of mantra, sacred sound, in Hinduism
and Buddhism, as "a linguistic device for deepening one's
thought", as presented in The Weaving of Mantra : Kukai and the
Construction of Esoteric Buddhist Discourse.
b. Visual
"...as imagination bodies forth/ The forms of things unknown, the
poet's pen/Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing/A local
habitation and a name", Shakespeare's immortal summation of
poetic creativity in A Midsummer Night's Dream represents one
approach through which mythic and religious cosmologies and
their philosophical values are created. Adapting similar methods as
developed in Tibetan Buddhism, Hinduism and the new religion
Eckankar created by the US writer Paul Twitchell, highly
developed systems of visual symbolism I find particularly
inspiring, one may construct conjunctions of anthropomorphic
form and far reaching cosmological conceptions. These could be
entirely or largely new images created for that purpose. They
could also be existing images adapted towards this end.
In the strategy I develop here, I reinterpret existing images,
represented by exquisite heads from the Yoruba city of Ife,
remarkable for the profound, idealized humanity they project,

75

The Presence
by Akudinobi Tony George Chidi
Posted by the artist in the Cosmos of World Art and Correlative Cultural Forms
on 3rd November 2015
Figure 21

76

perfect for suggesting both elevation above the turmoil of human

existence and a synthesis of the finest possibilities of human being,
associating with them ideas from "The Descent of Oro" and
"Ayajo Asuwada" in figures 17-19. I thus give visual form to the
poems' correlations of cosmogonic states and processes with
human like figures. I add to these the cognitive parameters
presented in "The Descent of Oro". This interpretation of the
verbal imagery of the poetry in terms of visual forms makes the
ideas being projected more memorable. The ideas are thereby
made even more accessible for reflection and internalization by
creating an image/idea nexus that grows in synergistic power the
more it is contemplated.
b.1.Visualising Cosmogonic Processes through the
Beauty of Anthropomorphic Forms
These visualizations represent the embodiment of abstract
ideas in terms of human forms. These human forms are portrayed
as primal figures, ancestors of humanity, as depicted in "Ajo
Asuwada", thereby facilitating an imaginative link across time and
space. This interpretive strategy demonstrates a perennial drive in
human thought, examples of which include Paul's Biblical
interpretation of Jewish history as the seeking of "a country not
made with hands", a visionary quest he traces back to Melchizedek,
a mysterious king who appears in one of the earliest incidents of
the Bible, an incident central to inaugurating Jewish history.
Another example is Nyikang, founder of the Shilluk nation, while
yet another is Khambageu, having lived among the Sonjo as a
compassionate miracle worker and guide, both thereafter
perceived as intermediaries between their people and the creator
of the universe as understood by the Shilluk and the Sonjo,
accounts summarised in John Mbiti's African Religions and
Philosophy. Theosophist H.P. Blavatsky's Secret Doctrine
presents a quintessential picture of this style of thought in her
account
of
a
group
of prehistoric
humans
who,
receiving knowledge from divine teachers, achieved immortality
through this knowledge, becoming thereafter hidden spiritual
guides of humanity.
These conceptions do not need to be historically factual to
inspire imaginative identification. That which is unverifiable by
any conventional means, if it is verifiable at all, may inspire
a striving to reach beyond the walls that encompass the scope of
human knowledge. Such conceptions may be capable of revealing

77

aspects of existence that are not created by human beings even

though mediated through imaginative forms developed by
humans.
b.2.Visualising Cosmogonic Processes through
Non- Anthropomorphic Forms
Reflection on these ideas is further facilitated by their being
distilled in terms of a diagram employing the symbolism of opon
ifa, a central Ifa functional and symbolic form in figure 20.
These figures may also be visualized in terms of a conclave of the
kind suggested by Akudinobi Tony George Chidi's evocatively titled
sculpture The Presence, shown in figure 21, consisting of
imaginatively stimulating, elegantly designed, empty chairs
arranged in a semi circle around two simply but richly incised
tables, one of which evokes the character of a shrine, a deliberative,
ritualistic or convivial context. One may imagine oneself within
this tableau, seated along with the cosmogonic agents of "Ayajo
Asuwada" and " The Descent of Oro" , possibly evoking the
deliberation among the Anunnaki at the creation of the world in
the Mesopotamian creation story, "O Anunnaki, you great gods of
the sky, what more shall we create? What more shall we do?"
Beyond the broad ranging metaphysical and epistemological
conceptions discussed so far, the Ifa system of knowledge, to which
"The Descent of Oro", "Ayajo Asuwada" and "The Splitting of
Oyighgigiyi" come from, is best known as a divinatory system. In
that context, it may be understood as a method for addressing
human inquiry within the confluence of possibilities the complete
configuration of which is either beyond the reach of reason or the
best method of navigating within which is beyond
ratiocinatination. It thus points to the need to access a source of
knowledge beyond reason, but, to a degree, in my view, not
beyond the analysis of its validity through reason. This source
could be sought through contemplation facilitated by the
conception of the self central to Yoruba philosophy, as described
by Babatunde Lawal in Aworan: Representing the Self and Its
Metaphysical. Other in Yoruba Art, in which the self is seen as the
platform for corporeally centred cognitive faculties which are able
to reach beyond corporeality. This extra-corporeal perception is

78

 Figure 22

Opon ifa, inscribed with vertical lines, as the face of Esu looks on at top
centre
Image source: Detail from The Yoruba Artist: Nine Centuries of African
Art and Thought by Henry John Drewal, John Pemberton III and edited by
Helen Wardwell.
New York: The Centre for African Art and Harry N. Abrams, 1989. 21.

79

understood as penetrating to a dimension enabled by an aspect of

the self unlimited by the corporeal and the intellectual.
b.3. The Symbolism of Intersecting Vertical and
Horizontal Lines in Opon Ifa Iconography
Such a cognitive zone might be accessible through contemplation,
perhaps using as a stimulus the symbolism of the opon ifa in its
representation of a confluence of possibilities. This depiction
occurs through the inscription of the opon ifa with two intersecting
lines, one horizontal and another vertical, as depicted in figures
20, 22 and 23 and expanded in figure 24. These are overlooked by
the eyes of the orisa or deity Esu sculpted into the rim of the opon
ifa, thus evoking his role as agent of interpretation of possibilities
within the intersections of chance as these permutations emerge
within the cosmos constituted by human life. These permutations
are symbolised by the odu ifa, the variety of patterns that may be
assumed by the Ifa divination instruments when cast on the empty
centre of the opon ifa in order to request the Ifa oracle to respond
to the client's enquiry by influencing the pattern the instruments
assume. Rather than rely only on confidence in the oracle's ability
to influence the configurations assumed by the divination
instruments, why not also use the opon ifa as a contemplative
template in order to arrive at solutions to thorny issues? Perhaps
its symbolic character could facilitate reflection in working through
the issues in question.
The potential of the opon ifa as a contemplative template is
exemplified by the images in figures 15, 20, and 22-24, depicting
various visual interpretations of opon ifa symbolism. The first and
second of these is an evocation of the primary organisational and
cosmological units represented by the intersection of a horizontal
and a vertical line. The second represents the expansion of this
double formation into a flowering of sixteen lines interconnected
by an elegant matrix. The sixteen numbered structure is a Voodoo
veve, a symbolic sacred form from the African Diaspora religion
Voodoo, which I have conjoined with the opon ifa image to suggest
the use of the number sixteen as a primary organisational and
cosmological form in Ifa, as well as the links, structural, conceptual
and historical, between Ifa and Voodoo, particularly the use of
intersecting horizontal and vertical lines to evoke the conjunction
of matter and spirit.

80

The unification of a number of Africana spiritualities through their

use of this cosmological symbol is evident through such
discussions as Leslie Gerald Desmangles' "African Interpretations
of the Christian Cross in Vodun" in which she argues that
the cross symbol in Vodun does not originate in Roman
Catholicism but in African mythology. In Dahomey, for
example,
the
universe
is
conceived
as
a
sphere transected by two mutually perpendicular and
intersecting planes, which, perceived in a cross-section,
represent the arms of a cross...The Dahomean creation
myth compares the universe to two halves of a calabash
which match perfectly
a summary that is practically identical with Babatunde Lawal's
depiction in "Ejiwapo : The Dialectics of Twoness in Yoruba Art
and Culture", of Yoruba cosmology as projected by the symbolism
of binary unity demonstrated by Igba Iwa, the Calabash of
Existence, and the opon ifa .
These correlations are amplified by Desmangles' argument that the
cross is also significant in other African world views, such as the
Bambara, for whom the sign of the cross, according to Germaine
Dieterlen's Essay on Bambara Religion and Dieterlen's
and Marcele Griaule's, "The Dogon", is "the metaphysical axis
around which the universe is constructed", holding the world in
equilibrium, providing the path for the "infinite extension of the
universe by the continual progression of matter", connecting the
four cardinal points, thereby establishing cosmic order.
Norma Rosen's "Chalk Iconography in Olokun Worship" describes
the Benin Olokun igha-ede symbol as composed of two intersecting
lines that form a cross, its quaternary structure representing the
four pillars dividing the space between earth and heaven and thus
symbolising the intersection of matter and spirit, the primary
divisions of time, the fundamental numerical structure of oracular
symbolism and the existential parameters demonstrated by
"duality in nature and the balance between negative and positive
elements in the face of constant change", these abstractions
concretised, as in Voodoo, in the image of the crossroads.
These ideas provide rich ground which could be adapted for
contemplative purposes, distilling the cosmological conceptions as
metaphorical statements, adaptable for contemplating styles of

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conceiving cosmological order. The universality of this symbol

extends as far as the Jewish/Western Hermetic Kabbalistic
cross, the Native American medicine wheel and Buddhist
mandalas, a scope indicating its character as one of the
fundamental and pervasive forms through which cosmic structure
has been visualised across cultures, most likely derived from the
quaternary spatial orientation of the human being through the four
directions of the human body.
8. Myth and Meaning
Mythic creation stories demonstrate some of the fundamental
patterns of human cognition. They reveal the engagement with
reality by human consciousness across the various permutations
actualised by existence. Many forms of knowledge, across space
and time, from the artistic to the scientific, are mirrored by myth.
These universal configurations may also be seen as suggesting that
human cognitive capacity, as demonstrated so far in history,
represents a closed loop, a spiral in which the same melodies are
being played in different keys, old styles of thought repeated in
new ways, from different vantage points, within diverse epistemic
and cultural positions, projecting the distinctive features of what it
means to be homo sapiens. These alignments may evoke the
question-can radically new styles, new patterns of cognition
emerge?
"The Descent of Oro", "Ayajo Asuwada" and 'The Splitting of
Oyigiyigi" may be further correlated in terms of a progression from
the exploration of the cognitive foundations of existence
represented by "The Descent of Oro", to the depiction of a
perspective on the principle of cohesion in nature and human
society in "Ayajo Asuwada" to the subsuming of these cognitive
and social conceptions in terms of a dynamic mathematical
structure and its verbal associations as demonstrated in "The
Splitting of Oyigiyigi". This conjunction of metaphysics-"'The
Splitting of Oyigiyigi" -epistemology-"The Descent of Oro" - and
sociology-"Ayajo Asuwada", is facilitated by the inspiration
of Jonathan Lear's structuration of the works of the ancient Greek
philosopher Aristotle in Aristotle: The Desire to Understand.
Cognitive foundations as depicted in The Descent of Oro" enable
cognitive perception, cognitive perception actualises sentient
human existence and the ensuing movement towards social order
as portrayed in "Ayajo Asuwada". The circumstances emerging

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 Figure 23
Opon ifa evoking primal power in its minimalist and yet elaborate
construction, its circular frame emblazoned by spirals of eternity
encapsulating the unity of spirit and matter,orun,the world of
primal origination and aye, the terrestrial world, as the elementary
sculpting of the face of Esu stands as a door overlooking the
landscape of intersecting lines, within the glow of colour giving a
numinous sheen to the elemental power of the opon ifa. Opon ifa
symbolism reaches greater elaboration in its post-classical
development, reading into classical forms meanings not explicitly
stated in accounts of the older hermeneutic systems, as this
interpretation does.

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from individual and social being within a cosmic context require a

means of mapping and navigating this dynamic complex, hence the
development of a symbol system directed at this end as outlined
in "The Splitting of Oyigiyigi".
Of the three Yoruba creation stories discussed in this essay I
understand "The Descent of r" to be particularly resonant in
relation to perceptions on discourse and language from other
cultures within and beyond Africa. This story and its discussion
by Abiodun present a compelling vantage point from which to
engage with the constellation of perspectives on the perennial
human quest to understand the roots of the cognitive
capacities demonstrated by sentience and the expressive forms
through which sentience is communicated. Such investigations
illuminate the movement of beings from mere existence and even
survival to enriching the cognitive matrix that shapes the earth,
humanity's participation in the work begun by nature.
In its depiction of the progression of wisdom, knowledge and
understanding from the being of the creator to structuring
possibilities in the universe, "The Descent of r" parallels the
Jewish mystical school the Kabbalah, particularly its formulation
by Isaac Luria. In depicting cognitive possibility as primary
qualities of the creator which constitute the foundations of
cognitive possibility in the universe, possibilities, which, in their
essence, are beyond the human being but which human beings
may aspire to grasp, the Yoruba account demonstrates a
relationship with a conception also developed by Aristotle on the
human being as shaped by an innate epistemophilic drive
grounded in divine reality understood as the source of being, as
expounded by Jonathan Lear , examining the implications, across
Aristotle's oeuvre, of the first line of his Metaphysics " All men by
nature desire to know". Aristotle explores this cognitive
imperative from its most immediate expression in self perception
into the possibility of cognizing the structuring principles of
existence. The Greek thinker thus develops a progression from
corporeal vision to cosmological integration that is similar to an
epistemic
continuity
that
may
be
developed
by conjoining Yoruba theory of perception as described by
Babatunde Lawal in "Aworan : Representing the Self and its
Metaphysical Other in Yoruba Art" and Igbo Afa epistemology as
depicted by John Anenechukwu Umeh in After God is Dibia : Igbo
Cosmology, Divination and Sacred Science in Nigeria.

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The Aristotelian and the Kabbalistic conceptions seem themselves

to be foreshadowed and are perhaps influenced by the ancient
Greek philosopher Plato's discussions of cognitive possibility in
terms of relationships between human awareness and the cosmos,
particularly in the context of his conception of existence, as
described in The Republic, as structured in terms of a
transcendental template, the Forms, which constitute the ultimate
character of forms of being. Other parallels also exist, as between
the Yoruba conception and Ahmadou Hampate Ba on philosophy
of language among a cluster of African civilisations from the Fulani
to the Bambara in "The Living Tradition", the Biblical book of
John on the Word as source of creation and salvation, the concept
of Vac in Hinduism and Indian philosophy as summed by Andre
Padoux in Vac: Conceptions of the Word in Selected Hindu
Tantras, ideas on relationships between text and divine meaning
in Ibn Arabi's Futt al-Makkya and English thinker Samuel
Taylor Coleridge's correlation of poetic imagination and divine
verbalization in Biographia Literaria.
9. Constructing
Interpretation

and

Transcending

Windows

of

Why have I undertaken this exercise? The proximate reason is the

inspiration by the mythic account represented by "The Descent of
Oro" and Abiodun's commentary on it, leading me to compare with
that work "Ayajo Asuwada" and Akiwowo's analysis of the latter
poem, another deeply inspiring creation story, concluding with a
further comparison with "The Splitting of Oyigiyigi", also striking
in its imagistic power and expository potential. Such accounts of
primal events, of efforts to provide perspectives on the ground of
being and the genesis of existence, move me as imaginative, nonliteral efforts to create windows, explanatory frames, as to why
existence occurs in the first place, helping to locate existence in
general and the human being in particular within a nexus of
meaning constituting humanity's position in the cosmos.
Interpretive windows are thus constructed, enabling one to look
out from the house of being into the cosmos, windows that also
frame how one sees the configurations of cosmos that one inhabits,
one's
immediate
existential
framework represented
by
the embodiment the self constitutes.
Led by the burning aspiration to understand, correlative with the
epistemophilic drive described by various schools of thought as
grounded in divine mind and as central to the human being, the

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 Figure 24
A supreme example of opon ifa art, magnificent in its unique combination of profusion of
forms and tight order, the dynamism of the coiled snakes evoking the permutations of odu
ifa. The crowned face of Esu, beautiful in its synecdochal rendition in terms of two
elegantly elevated eyes, creates an aerodynamic platform on which rests a delicately
carved nose. The evocative force of its circularity, suggestive of infinity, as summed up by
Ifalola Sanchez in "Discourse on Meaning and Symbology in the Ifa Divination System", is
amplified by the Voodoo veve placed in the centre of the opon ifa image, radiating in a
beautiful matrix of sixteen lines used in this picture in evoking the sixteen odu
ifa, organisational units and active agents dramatising cosmological permutations,
evoking all possibilities of being in terms of a numerical structure and its associated
literary forms.
Opon ifa image from Hans Witte, "Ifa Trays from the Osogbo and Ijebu Regions" in The
Yoruba Artist : New Theoretical Perspectives in African Arts. Edited by Rowland Abiodun,
Henry J. Drewal and John Pemberton III. 59-77. 73. Voodoo veve from a defunct website.
Collage by Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju.

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flame within the self that continuously impels the effort to pursue
meaning at its most fundamental level, an aspiration that
transcends particular explanatory frames, is it possible to step
beyond these interpretive windows and perceive being as it is in
itself without the mediation of explanatory constructs? Would that
not imply stepping outside the house in which those windows exist,
the house of being, to perceive being from a standpoint outside
itself, perhaps from within the transcendent ground described in
Dion Fortunes Mystical Kabbalah as the Unmanifest, correlative
with the Buddhist concept of the Void, beyond being and nonbeing, possibly suggestive of the awake and yet seeming sleeping
state of Odumare? The concept of the Unmanifest, however,
suggests the transcendence of all conceptions and even the
possibility of being imagined by humans. Is human perception
therefore locked within the circumscriptive expanse of being?
Realizing a confluence between perspectives from Yoruba
philosophy and others from other cultures, what may be
understood as distinctive in the formulations from Yoruba
thought? How do these enrich the cross-cultural creation of styles
of perceiving the ultimate significance of cognitive possibility?
Why does the human being seem compelled to locate the ultimate
source of human cognitive and expressive capacity in an ultimate
reality, and to depict human awareness as a means of reaching this
reality?
The distinctive quality of the Yoruba conception of the foundations
of existence represented by "The Descent of Oro", "Ayajo Asuwada"
and " The Splitting of Oyigiyigi" consists in their unique beauty as
demonstrated in their imaginative formulation, a formulation that
integrates simplicity, profundity and the numinous, reinforcing
these qualities through beauty of
linguistic dynamism,
particularly evident in the original Yoruba, in which the stories
are composed.
Frodo, a member of a rustic race, seemingly insignificant in their
geographical and cultural marginality in the context of the events
that shape the world in J.R.R. Tokien's novel, The Lord of the
Rings, looks into the oracular well of Galadriel and sees there, as a
mirror before which passes world history in its past, present and
potential for future actualisation, scenes most of which he does not
recognise, and of most of those he recognises he does not
understand their meaning, concluding correctly that he is
witnessing events from a great story in which he has somehow

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become involved. In a related sense, observing the insights of the

ese ifa artists in "The Descent of Oro", "Ayajo Asuwada" and "The
Splitting of Oyigiyigi", insights that encapsulate, in imagistically
concise and narratively memorable terms similar perceptions
elaborated on in different ways by thinkers from other cultural
contexts dispersed across time and space, one becomes like Frodo,
observing a great story in which one is involved to a greater or
lesser degree, listening to and perhaps taking part in a sublime
conversation that spans all time across the Earth, adapting Robert
Hutchin's characterisation of a culture of inter-generational
dialogue across time and space that encompasses the globe beyond
his focus on the West, a conversation carried on when connections
are made between the comments of different speakers in different
places, as one struggles to understand what is being said in the
various conceptual languages employed by the interlocutors, the
entire complex merging into a seamless musical flow in which
unity in difference creates a beauty representing the cognitive
identity of homo sapiens.

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