Manifestations at Cosmosgenesis
The Three Awo Before Time, the Descent of Ọrọ and Asuwa and the Splitting of Oyigiyigi
Universal Implications of Three Yoruba Cosmogonic Narratives
Summary
In this essay, inspired by the first section of the first chapter of Rowland Abiodun's Yoruba Art and Language: Seeking the African in African Art, 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
A. "The Descent of Ọrọ" and the Three Awo Before Time
a. The Concept of Awo
b. Awo, Cosmogonic Conditions and Sonic Lyricism
2. "Ayajo Asuwada" and the Descent of Asuwa
A. Comparing Mythic Structuration in "Ayajo Asuwada"
and the Hindu Image of Vishnu
B. Paradoxical Conjunctions of Tenderness and Power,
the Surreptitious and the Epic in "Ayajo Asuwada”
3. Odumare and "The Descent of Oro”
A. The Emergence of Ogbon (Wisdom), Imo (Knowledge)
and Oye ( Understanding)
B. Correlating Verbal Music and Metaphysical
Concepts in " The Descent of Oro"
C. The Mysterious Eleye in "The Descent of Oro"
D. Communicative Dynamism and Transcendence in "The
Descent of Oro"
4. "The Descent of Oro" and "Ayajo Asuwada”: Correlations in
Difference
5. The Splitting of Oyigiyigi and the 256 Odu Ifa
A. Odu Ifa as Organizational Forms and Active Agents
6. Amplifying Yoruba Theory of Discourse through Comparison
With Ibn Arabi's Futūḥāt al-Makkīya, The Meccan Revelations
7. Contemplative and Ritual Possibilities
A. Emphasising the Imaginative Character of Forms
Embodying Ideas
a. Sonic
b. Visual
b. 1. Visualising Cosmogonic Processes through
the Beauty of Anthropomorphic Forms
b.2. Visualising Cosmogonic Processes
through Non- Anthropomorphic Forms
b.3. The Symbolism of Intersecting Vertical and
Horizontal Lines in Opon Ifa Iconography
8. Myth and Meaning
9. Constructing and Transcending Windows of Interpretation
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 10 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 Ọrọ" , "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 Ọrọ" 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 Culture.
Both "The Descent of Ọrọ" 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 Divine Messenger".
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.
To Be Continued
