Self Initiation into the Universal Ògbóni Philosophy and Spirituality 5: Ògbóni/Adinka Stanzas

 

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

Here are parts 1, 2, 3 and 4.

What follows are meditations complementing the previous parts.

This part, “The Adinkra/Ògbóni Stanzas,” combines the visual power of Akan and Gyaman Adinkra, from Ghana and Cote d’Ivoire, respectively, and the evocative force of the Ògbóni cosmogram presented in earlier sections.

The Ògbóni cosmogram is a symbol structure evoking human existence in its terrestrial and cosmic contexts, buried under the earth of the ilédi, the Ògbóni sacred meeting house, to represent the presence of Ilè, Earth.

The cosmogram employs the symbols of chalk, for Olorun, the ultimate creator; mud, for Ilè, Earth; charcoal for human beings; and camwood dust for blood.

The cosmogram is depicted in Dennis Williams’ “The Iconology of the Yorùbá 'Edan Ògbóni’ " (Africa: Journal of the International African Institute, Vol. 34, No. 2, 1964. 139-166;142) and elaborated on by myself in “Ògbóni: From Myth to Physics: Yorùbá Esotericism at the Matrix of Disciplines ”, accessible through the compilation of my essays on Ògbóni, “My Journey in Developing Universal Ogboni Philosophy and Spirituality, a New School of the Ogboni Esoteric Order.”

The name of each Adinkra symbol is placed in italics at the conclusion of each stanza where it features.

Adinkra could be understood as evoking the intelligence and message which each kra, as the eternal essence of the human being is understood in Akan thought, takes with it from the Supreme Being when it obtains leave to depart to earth.

Adinkra may also be perceived as imaging the distillation of understanding that emerges from the experience of living on Earth, consummated and carried over into the Beyond through the transmutation of death.

Situated between mud and chalk, charcoal and camwood

I reflect on the immensity of the cosmos.

Kuntunkantan

In my mind’s eye

I see charcoal to my right , red camwood dust to my left

mud behind, chalk in front.

I embody all that humanity has ever been

and will be.

The red of blood : life’s vitality

the mud of earth : the material universe in which we live

charcoal : human creativity transforming matter to energy

all subsumed by the ultimate immensity

its symbol the radiance of white chalk.

Agyindawuru

Positioned between earth and humanity, blood and fire

I rest in the expanse of the infinite.

Dame Dame

Unraveling the knot mystic

at the intersection of science and metaphysics

myth and consciousness

Ògbóni wisdoms unfolding through space and time.

Nyansapon (1)

Seeking to penetrate to the unity of energy and intelligence

of palpitating life within terrestrial spaces

in the bowels of eternity.

Adinkrahene ( 2 )

Transformations of being and becoming

in flight to the Ògbóni mountain (3)

where earth and humanity, fire and life

unite as a cosmic flame. (4)

Akokonan

Maintain silence

Visualize

the sequence of Adinkra symbols to consolidate them in your memory, facilitating your calling them up at anytime, recalling their symbolic values in relation to the Ògbóni cosmogram.

You may position them in five directions of space around your body to reinforce the remaking of your identity, making them easier to recollect.

Kuntunkantan in front of you

Agyindawuru at your back

Nyansapon on your right

Dame Dame on your left

Adinkrahene in your chest

Akokonan at the top of your head

Maintain silence

Notes

1. Nyansapon is known as the “wisdom knot.” It a stylised representation of a knot used in evoking the creativity and skill demonstrated in unravelling knots.

I use it in this context to suggest the creativity and transformative use of knowledge required to construct the cognitive implications of Ògbóni thought, symbolism and art, from myth and spirituality to ideas of metaphysics, consciousness and science, exemplified by my essay sequence “Ògbóni: From Myth to Physics: Yorùbá Esotericism at the Intersection of Disciplines” accessible through the compilation of my essays on Ògbóni, “My Journey in Developing Universal Ogboni Philosophy and Spirituality, a New School of the Ogboni Esoteric Order.”

2. The concentric circles of Adinkrahene are used here in evoking cognitive integration in the quest to understand cosmic harmony.

In such a context, the circles would suggest either cosmic structure or cognitive progression, growth in understanding cosmic structure. They can suggest both at the same time.

This approach is adapted from the theory of mandalas in Buddhism and yantras in Hinduism.

Within these frameworks, the two major orientations are represented by the womb and the diamond mandalas.

In the womb mandala, the centre of the circle indicates the point of cosmic emergence while the circles emanating from it suggest cosmic expansion from an originating point.

In the diamond mandala, the external circles signify the contraction of the cosmos towards its originating core at the conclusion of a cosmic cycle.

Along similar lines, the person contemplating these rhythms may begin from a point of integration of the totality within a central point and move out from that to an expansion into the cosmic totality.

The contemplative may also begin from the material universe, represented by the outermost circle and move inwards to the integration of the various constituents of existence into an originative and summative centre.

These ideas are evoked here in order to suggest how Ògbóni symbolism in general and the Ògbóni cosmogram in particular may symbolise a similar cosmological and contemplative rhythm, from humanity to Earth to Olodumare, the ultimate creator, or from Olodumare to Earth to humanity, in cycles of expansion and integration.

[ 3] “the Ògbóni mountain” is used here in evoking the summit of achievement represented by Ògbóni ideals.

This image is adapted from the challenges and fulfillment of mountain climbing. The metaphor suggests the idea of climbing a mountain as symbolizing human development towards a crowning point.

This crowning point could also be interpreted in terms of cosmological unity, a centre around which the universe is constellated in metaphysical terms, a centre of ultimate cosmic meaning and direction, a centre to which the aspirant attains in the course of their journey of understanding.

The immediate inspiration for the use of this idea here is the following magnificent evocation of the image of a mountain as a summation of human achievement as well as a cosmological centre in the Adeptus Minor Ritual of the Western esoteric order, the Golden Dawn:

“This is the symbolic Mountain of God in the Centre of the Universe, the sacred Rosicrucian mountain of Initiation, the Mystic Mountain of Abiegnus.

Below and around it are darkness and silence, and it is crowned with the Light ineffable. At its base is the Wall of Enclosure and Secrecy, whose sole Gateway, invisible to the profane, is formed of the Two Pillars of Hermes[ Greek deity who is patron of the Hermetic esoteric tradition to which the Golden Dawn belongs].

The ascent of the Mountain is by the Spiral path of the Serpent of Wisdom. Stumbling on between the Pillars is a blindfolded figure, representing the Neophyte, whose ignorance and worthlessness while only in that Grade is shown by the [ symbol for the entry point in the initiatory journey], and whose sole future claim to notice and recognition by the Order is the fact of his having entered the Pathway to the other Grades, until at length he attains to the summit (The Golden Dawn: The Original Account of the Teachings, Rites & Ceremonies of the Hermetic Order, ed. Israel Regardie. Minnesota: Llewellyn,2002. 242).”

Another image along similar lines which inspires the conception of the Ògbóni mountain is that of Mount Meru in Buddhism.

Mount Meru represents both a cosmic centre as well as the constitution of the human being. It indicates a person’s points of intersection with the cosmos.

In this scheme, the cosmos corresponds to the shape of the human body, culminating in the top of the head, understood as the top of the metaphysical mountain as it is expressed in the human form, and the nexus of intersection between self and cosmos, a centre to which the individual aspires to identify themselves through their spiritual quest ( Tibet’s Great Yogi Milarepa. Trans. Kazi Dawa-Samdop. Ed. W.Y. Evans-Wentz. London: Oxford UP, 1969, 211-12. Note 3.)

(4) The image of fire evoking the blending of human being and cosmic centre is one of the richest in mysticism, the theory and practice of union with or intimate perception of ultimate reality.

It ranges from the idea of fire as a guide, inflaming the self and illuminating the journey, as in Christian mystic St. John of the Cross’ lines in “Dark Night of the Soul”, “On a dark and secret night/starving for love and deep in flame/I went forth guided by nothing but the fire, the fire inside.”

He interprets this fire as a guide. He also depicts it in terms of the purification undergone by the mystic on their journey to sharing in the purity of the Ultimate. The journey is consummated by the Ultimate absorbing the self to itself, akin to the manner in which wood is consumed by fire.

Particularly memorable in this line of imagery is the butterfly in Farid ud-Din Attar’s Islamic mystical story, The Conference of the Birds, in which a moth , inflamed with desire to grasp the essential nature of the candle flame, penetrates it with his proboscis and keeps going, until his whole being is consumed by the flame.

“He now knows the nature of the flame because he has become one with it,” a watching moth concludes, “but, alas, he cannot share that knowledge with us, the assembly of moths, because where he has gone, he cannot return from to enlighten us.”

That is an evocation of the idea of the absolute distance between ultimate reality and human expressive powers ( The Conference of the Birds. Trans. Afkham and Dick Davis. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1984, 206).

The image is also used in a primarily cognitive sense, in the spirit of Mazisi Kunene on Zulu epistemology, theory of knowledge.

He describes the process of uniting specific details of knowledge and universal concepts in terms of the cooking of food by fire.

This combustive transformation culminates in the perception of the unity of the general and the particular across all categories of existence, a unitive vision imaged by the symbol of the circularity and depth of the calabash( Anthem of the Decades. London: Heinemann, 1981. xxiii-xxiv).

The Hindu Upanishads uses a similar motif of fire in an epistemic sense, enjoining the aspirant to employ the fires of reflection, contemplation and action in the effort to understand the unity of self and cosmos, upon arriving at the unity of self and universal Self, the aspirant is consumed by fire and mounts to heaven( The Ten Principal Upanishads. Trans. Shree Purohit Swāmi and W.B. Yeats. London: Faber and Faber, 1970, 27).

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