Self Initiation into the Universal Ògbóni Philosophy and Spirituality 6 : Invocation of Edan Ògbóni

 

                                                                                            

This is the sixth part of a ritual for relating oneself to the foundational spiritual powers and ethical vision of the Earth and humanity centred Yorùbá origin Ògbóni esoteric order.

The initiation into the Universal Ògbóni Philosophy and Spirituality was completed in part 4 of this series.

What follows after part 4 are invocations and meditations complementing the previous parts.

Here are parts 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5.

The ritual is based on an understanding of Ògbóni developed from scholarly research on the esoteric school.

This foundation is developed in terms of the grounding of Ògbóni within classical Yorùbá philosophy and spirituality. These conjunctions are further correlated with philosophical, religious and artistic expressions from Africa, Asia and the West.

This is the first initiatory text of a new school of Ògbóni I am developing, the Universal Ògbóni Philosophy and Spirituality.

The goal of this new school of thought and action is that of publicly demonstrating how to take advantage of the contemporary and timeless significance of Ògbóni thought and culture.

These values are evident to me even as a non-member of conventional Ògbóni who prefers to work out an individualistic approach to Ògbóni thought and culture rather than join an Ògbóni group.

The logic of the ritual, the sources and reasons for the choices of elements included and why they are used the way they are, is presented in the footnotes. Full references to the texts referenced in the footnotes are provided in the other parts of the text beginning from part 1. All texts will be further refined later to take care of any omissions.

The images come from various sources online. I will provide the credits later. Great thanks to the creators of the images and those who uploaded them.

Invocation of Edan Ògbóni

Contemplate the image of the male figure of an edan ògbóni[1] below and make the affirmations inspired by it[2]

Serene, dignified, contemplative

the composure and self-discipline

expected

of an

Ògbóni.[3]

Elevated features and dynamic stillness

inwardly collected, yet outwardly alert.

The pregnant calm of the face

contemplatively concentrated

the distillation of experience in reflection.

Embodiment of insight into the dynamic creativity of existence

an ideal of personality

grounded in a cosmological vision.

The essence and timelessness of being[4]

embodied in human form

human but going beyond the ordinarily human.

Eyes looking both without and within

their bulge suggesting rare insight into reality.

Crescents of life rhythms

symbolizing lunar phases and their

alignment with life

represented by female menstrual cycles.[5]

Whirlpool circles

increase and dynamism

expansive power of Olokun

goddess of the sea and abundance.[6]

Rhythm of life and increase

transformative power of Èsù,

divine messenger

mediating

between the orisa, deities, and Ilè, Earth[7]

unifying existence.[8]

Dynamism and balance

alignment of the temporal and the eternal

progressions of being

and their ultimate focus

within a summative unity.

Harmony and equilibrium of male and female synergy

in holding male and female edan ògbóni

dynamic power, physical and metaphysical.[9]

Accord of men and women

children of Earth

universal mother

the union of orun, the zone of ultimate origins,

and Ile, Earth.[10]

Two Ògbóni, they are three.[11]

I call upon

the harmony of two

the dynamism of three

the physical and metaphysical forces to make things happen

empowered at creation by Olodumare to link cause with effect

the physical with the metaphysical

the visible with the invisible

the human with the superhuman.[12]

I call upon the intimacy and equilibrium of two

and the mystical union of three.[13]

I call upon the dynamic force uniting two elements

towards a common purpose.[14]

I call upon that which powers the span of life

ultimately enabling entry into the post-terrestrial[15]

the cycle of transition between Earth and the beyond

the completeness and transcendence of time.

I call upon those whose voices are often heard

whose touches are often felt

whose wisdoms come suddenly to the mind

when the wisest have shaken their heads and murmured:

it cannot be done. [16]

I call upon bygone voyagers awaiting the seeker in pools of silence.[17]

I call upon that which leads into the infinity still and dynamic

I call upon that which empowers the contemplative and active.[18]

I enter into aiku pari iwa, the deathlessness that consummates existence.[19]

Maintain silence

Dedication[20]

May I be as the accomplished Ògbóni

whose mind and breath are immersed

in the dynamic between orun and Ile

between the zone of ultimate origins and Earth

between Origination and Manifestation.

May I be one

absorbed in the true and deepest nature

of both the inner Self and the outer world

at the intersection of ori lasan and ori inu

the head external and the head within

the self-grounded in biology and shaped by time, space and society and the self that predates and outlives its temporal twin

embodiment of ultimate potential

the undying flame grounded in eternity.[21]

May I be as that Ògbóni

perceiving the odu calabash in Olodumare

the repository of possibility and circumstance

from which each moment is born

the constellation of possibilities

containing all events past, present and future[22]

the intrinsic and unchanging source

from which the kaleidoscopic drama

of the dynamic, swirling, and abundant variety

of the world

continuously emerges and manifests.

May I be such an Ògbóni

abiding with a silenced though open vision

the pupils of the eyes unmoving.

May I be a person

gazing on the outer world

my vision resting not only on its apparent outwardness

but also on its inner reality.[23]

May I be an Ògbóni

my sight falling on the surface play of existence

penetrating its pulsating layers

continuously discovering, uncovering, and recognizing

its ultimate, unitary, and silent source in supreme consciousness.

May I be one

abiding in the space encompassing inwardness and outwardness

in one overarching and paradoxical consciousness.

Ògbóni may I be

seeing the world reveal its deeper layers of being

laying bare its ultimate and secret source

in the resplendent domain

at the intersection of orun and ilè

the silent pulsating core

of the essence of the supreme consciousness.

May I thus embody the seal of Ògbóni

the Ògbóni stance of awareness.

May I be one abiding with eyes opened and alert

and yet with a mind that is motionless and serene,

a gaze focused on the secret portals that opens to one’s subtle perception.

The sun and moon, the ‘sun’ as the means of knowledge and the ‘moon’ as the known objective universe, dissolving into the great interiority of awareness that pulsates naturally with the triple vibration, the vibration of the energies of will, knowledge, and action, the vibration of the supreme àse that constantly tends towards the manifestation of the visible reality, the pulsations of consciousness…

Àse.

Maintain silence

[1] Edan ògbóni, sculpture evoking the human being as embodiment of Earth, symbolizes central Ògbóni values.

[2] The first set of affirmations from “serene, dignified, contemplative” to “dynamic power, physical and metaphysical” are adaptations of Lawal’s description of the symbolism of Ogboni art in “Ayagbo Ayato.” The second set, from “I call upon the harmony of two” to “the completeness and transcendence of time” is an adaptation of his explanation of Ògbóni symbolism of threes from the same essay. Other adaptations come from Wole Soyinka and Rowland Abíọ́dún. All sources are referenced.

[3] As above

[4] As above

[5] As above

[6] As above

[7] As above

[8] Falokun, Idowu and Falola.

[9] As above

[10] Adapted from Dennis Williams (1964) on edan ògbóni.

[11] Morton-Williams and Lawal.

[12] As above

[13] As above

[14] As above

[15] As above

[16] Adapting and quoting Wole Soyinka’s Death and the King’s Horseman.

[17] Adapting and quoting Wole Soyinka’s “O Roots” from his A Shuttle in the Crypt.

[18] An adaptation from Christian spirituality but which applies to spirituality and philosophy generally. A particular Christian formulation takes this idea into metaphysical realms by describing God as “ever active and ever at rest.” Rest could be understood in this context in terms of the comparatively relaxed state of mental activity and activity in terms of the outwardly dynamic expression represented by physical action.

[19] Adapting a Yorùbá expression from Rowland Abíọ́dún’s “The Future of African Art Studies: An African Perspective,” and my translation of this expression.

[20] The affirmations in “Dedication” are adapted from a poem depicting the mystical vision of the Hindu sage, Abhinavagupta on account of similarities between the Kashmiri thinker’s thought and the appearance of the edan ògbóni above. I find this edan particularly inspiring as an evocation of Ògbóni ideals as described by Babatunde Lawal in “Ayagbo Ayato.”

The poem is the “Anubhava-nivedana-stotra,” translated and complemented by commentary by Paul Muller-Ortega in “On the Śeal of Sambhu: A Poem by Abhinavagupta” in Tantra in Practice. Ed. David Gordon White. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2000, 572-586.

I quote the poem but amplify it by integrating Muller-Ortega’s interpretive lines with those of the poem they explain.

I slightly modify the ideational universe of these sources by interjecting ideas from Yorùbá cosmology to which Ògbóni belongs. I reference the Yorùbá àse concept of pervasive cosmic force as well as Shloma Rosenberg’s description of the odu calabash of Olodumare, the Yorùbá idea of ultimate reality, in his account of this idea in Lukumi, a diaspora version of the Yorùbá Orisa tradition, from his essay “Olorun” one of the names of Olodumare at his site Mystic Curio.

[21] Ori is the human head understood as metaphorical for the invisible and immortal embodiment of the individual’s ultimate potential, the centre of ultimate direction of the self, a primary concept of the Orisa cosmology to which Ògbóni belongs.

All influences constellate in relation to the ori, an understanding exemplified, among numerous sources, by the ese ifa, Ifa literary work, titled in translation “The Importance of Ori,” available free online, and Adegboyega Orangun’s Destiny: The Unmanifested Being, these being the two most important texts on the subject known to me, complemented by Olabyi Babalola Yai’s summation of ori as “essence, attribute and quintessence… the uniqueness of persons, animals, and things, their inner eye and ear, their sharpest point and their most alert guide as they navigate through this world and the one beyond” ( Review of Henry John Drewal et al, Yoruba: Nine Centuries of African Art and Thought in African Arts in African Arts, Vol. 25, No. 1, 1992, 20+22+24+26+29, 22).

[22] Shloma Rosenberg, Mystic Curio.

[23] This and succeeding depictions of perceptual penetration by Abhinavagupta may be aligned with classical Yorùbá epistemology, particularly as described by Lawal in “ Aworan: Representing the Self and its Metaphysical Other in Yorùbá Art” and elaborated upon in relation to African art by Mary Nooter Roberts and its implications examined in some depth and correlated with African, Western and Asian contexts by myself in “The Significance of Yorùbá Theory of Knowledge for Philosophy of Education,” (Yorùbá Studies Review).

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