Self Initiation into Universal Ògbóni Philosophy and Spirituality 9: Invocation of Ògbóni Forces and Women of Power
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Earth Inspirations Across Cultures and Spaces
I met you, Caitlin Mathews, left, scholar, writer, practitioner in the Western esoteric tradition, in the beginning of my intellectual and imaginative journey into the sacred feminine, your Elements of the Goddess my introduction to your work.
Sister of Celtic wisdom, arcana of Tarot, a pillar of the Caitlin and John Mathews unity, conjugal team most fruitful in the Great Work.
My sister within the space of Earth where Ògbóni brethren are assembled under various names, under the sky of English landscapes where you roam, within rock, tree and mountain you revere, all alive with the heat of Onile, imaged right, within Earth and Ògbóni iledi, sacred community of cult and all creatures visible and invisible on terrestrial sphere, her children multitudinous.
Sister, I call you to the Well of Time in the hollow at the bottom of the tree of life, guide me through this liquid mirror, telescope into the most distant past in humanity's history, where sensitivity to the power and deadliness of nature contributed to the veneration of the nurturing and yet dangerous female that is the archetype of similar paradoxical images across history, pictured in enigmatic Ògbóni feminine sculptural figures, uncanny of mien, strangely bearded of face, yet holding to their breasts a child representing the human being.
The sky her garment, the rocks her bones, the trees her mind.
Introduction
This is the ninth 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 ritual is based on an understanding of Ògbóni developed from scholarly research on the esoteric school.
This is the first initiatory text of a new school of Ògbóni I am developing, the Universal Ògbóni Philosophy and Spirituality.
The initiation into this philosophy and spirituality was completed in part 4 of this series.
Here are parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8.
What follows after part 4 are invocations and meditations complementing the previous parts.
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.
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Through this picture by Eunika Simmons, I call upon you, Gogo Nana Elana Omari, priestess of South African Sangoma spirituality, positioned in quiet action in proximity to Earth and river, your braids draping your head like a cape, darkly enveloping you contemplative within multiple harmonies of Earth, shimmer of river and green of forest, covered by an elegantly patterned shawl of fingers of red on a bed of blue, worn on a delicate green skirt, poised at a task in your work at the intersection of sky and Earth, the Beyond and Here, ancestors and the breathing, nature and humans.
Ògbóni mistresses of the arcane, of the enigmatic and mysterious, sisters of Gogo Nana Elana Omari, distant in space but united in faith, guide us.
Invocation of Ògbóni and Ilé in Relation to Ògbóni Wisdom
I call upon Ògbóni
for whom the quest for knowledge, truth and justice
is paramount
as avowed by Kolawole Ositola.[1]
I call upon Ògbóni
for whom truth and reality
as declared
by Awo Òrúnmìlà Mark Casillas
are the fundamental offering to Onile
guardian, guide and owner of Earth.[2]
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The inimitable Canadian Yvonne Owens, beautiful and cerebral, loyal friend and profound witch of the Western tradition, scholar, teacher and author, guide us, o mystic mother, in these spaces between the worlds that draw us with the love of mystery and beauty, of moon and Earth, of river and stone, you who are kin of Edan Orogbodua, Ògbóni mater familias.
Edan, manifest to establish rectitude, order and divine love.
What material items can we offer her that do not already belong to her?
Beyond rituals, rites and ceremonies
beyond atare pepper, gin, kolanut
vital but secondary
beyond hypocrisy, thievery, lies and unfaithfulness
abominations to Onile Ogboduora
the one who crushes and eats the bones of the unjust
the one who drinks the blood
of the deceptive and the dishonest.
Iwa, character, otito, truthfulness, above all.
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Non other than the majestic Ifueko Omuigui Okauru, in boardroom grandeur, seated yet monumental in poise, eyes quiet yet commanding, in control of spaces social and physical, African hairstyle harmonizing with exquisite Western business suit, scion of Great Benin, assimilator of learnings from homeland and globe, mistress of the world of money feeding public life, tax guru, international consultant, director of banks and of companies upon companies, the power of our mothers arcane is invested in you, the rock that moveth not in the buffeting of mighty waves, waters ever nurturing, vibrations from the deep, may we draw from the powers of intellect and judgement, of compassion and devotion, courage and persistence that you embody in radiation from generations from when the first women taught us to count through their measuring of monthly cycles, sustaining us in ages ahead even as their powers were suppressed...o sister of Edan, of Onile, may your energy empower us.
She who gives life, health, peace, prosperity, long-life
divine protection and holy power
to those who follow and obey her teachings and what she represents.
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The great Carolyn Hillyer and her amazing husband Nigel Shaw, embodiments of the masculine/feminine unity that is edan ogboni, the male and female couple who perpetuate the species as children of she rotating on her axis and revolving round the sun, giving us day and night and the motion through the days 365, dwelling as did ancient inhabitants in your native English Dartmoor, who represents more than yourselves the vision of our elders of Earth, venerators of the complex of stone and river, of fire and wind, of tree and forest, of ice and water, celebrators of the feminine in rock and Earth, creator of workshops of our sisters from ancientness to presentness, makers of musics illuminating glories of nature and of human, shapers of instruments from nature's bones, tellers of stories of primordial mothers and present sisters, that illumination that enflames you, may it inflame us, crossing distances as we are are bonded in spirit, your brethren Ogboni, known by different names across time and space.
Human candlelight within the wild, vitality of forest and hollow of tree, faces youthful and faces mature, these emblems drawn from your images bring us nearer to your journey we wish to make our own.
She who cannot be appeased by offerings of any kind
but who will lovingly accept offerings
and who greatly blesses
if you first approach her
by thinking right, speaking right and acting right.
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Dwainia Tullis, healer, yogi, life coach, spiritual, personal and executive, Iyanifa, venerable female adept of the Ifa oracle and network of diversely integrated knowledges, creator of healing jewelry, energy healing work and guide to personal grooming.
Will you draw me into that world you inhabit, the world of glorious moon and refreshing night, of exquisite jewelry radiating the inner glow of their crafter...joys coa;lescing within you...share them with us.
I call upon Ògbóni
for whom Ogboni
is a condition of heart and mind
a clean, holy, wholesome, way of living.
Can anyone make you clean and holy through any ceremony
if in your heart you want to live a dirty and unwholesome life?
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Evelyne Huet, mistress of that world where colours and lines intersect with numerical and geometric forms, artist and mathematician, intellect penetrating various knowledges, expressed in language most memorable, critic and thinker, beautiful in all phases of the ascent of time, your support for all creative endeavours our comfort, your appreciation of all cognitive adventures our elevation, your insight into journeys of ultimate meaning our boat on the great voyage as we aspire to join you at that peak where knowledges intersect in a cloud bursting as rain fertilizing the mind.
Bearing within you our mothers who created the enigmatically beautiful art in prehistoric Lascaux, they who shaped the earliest mathematical notation that is the Kenya Ishango bone, may the spirit of these engineers of imagination and intellect, finest fruits of Onile Ogbodorua, be born in us, creating foundations to blossom in the flow of time.
May my life be in agreement with Onile
so she may share her grace, presence and power
the spiritual power of a true Ògbóni
that spiritual power that cannot be bought or sold
bestowed freely as a gift and trust by Onile
to her dedicated and trustworthy children
who have made a solemn agreement with her
a power granted in recognition of our status as her true children
who have promised to follow her noble ways.
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Mag Shurel Reynolds, dancer extraordinaire, software developer and choreographer, in dynamic display of amazing art, unifying body and mind.
Hear her:
“Brought up by my grandmother, a woman steeped in time, I became a journeyer between worlds.
The dance is prayer. My dances are based on the Caribbean ritual dance Bele in which there is the appearance, the greeting to the four corners and the living and the dead, the introduction to infinity and then the end.”
In thought and action she is daughter of Ile, Earth, in Ile’s identity as all men and all women, as Íyá Nlá, great, venerable female, in her form as Olókun Sèniade, of whom Babatunde Lawal writes:
“To the coastal Yorùbá , the movement of the sea is a reverberation of the drumming, dancing and feasting going on in the rambling palace of Íyá Nlá at the bottom. Hence, the popular saying: Gbogbo ìlù ní mbẹ l’ókun, Olókun Sèniade Àjífilùpe Ọba Omi (All kinds of drumming occur beneath the sea, Olókun Sèniade, The one who wakes up to the rhythm of drums, lord of the waters).
As the Mother of All, she receives and entertains visitors, all day, all night-the òriṣà, spirits of the newly dead, spirits of plants and animals, souls of thousands of children waiting to be born into the earth, souls of “returning” Àbíkú [ children believed to die prematurely and are reborn to continue the cycle) all flock around her as she dances through her huge reception hall dressed in immaculate white cloth and decked in white coral beads, welcoming one group after another.
As Asimi Ọlatunji-Onígèlèdé of Ìmèkọ puts it, ‘Íyá Nlá likes music and dance so much that she can celebrate for weeks without caring for food’ ( The Gelede Spectacle: Art, Gender and Social Harmony in an African Culture. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1996. 74).”
My sister Reynolds, may our spirits be supple as you, may our lives be dynamic as your poetry of movement, may we converge with you in that zone beyond space and time where we are the dance and the dance is us, that place through which sings the music of mystic mother Ogbodorua, Ile, ever old and ever new.
O mother
bringing to a conclusion my invocations
from the revered insights of Awo Òrúnmìlà Mark Casillas
quoted almost word for word in the lines above
so glorious are they.
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A magnificent picture of Olori Abiye Ogboni Agbaye in action, possibly at a location in front of her house in Ibadan, Nigeria, which she has transformed into a ritual space.
The space is energized by her sacerdotal presence. Her stance and gesture, confident and ritualistic, project an immersion in sacred action. Sky and Earth are unified by the upward gesturing figure, her aura of priestly power evident even from the eloquent muteness of this image.
Even the casual informality of the wrapper, draped over a form that seems to have just risen from rest, is transformed by the majestically quiet force of the mistress of ritual, her figure outlined in alignment with sky and Earth.
We who seeks the same divine numinosities salute you.
Include us in your rituals of invocation and appeasement, of empowerment and guidance, your admirers you do not not know but who meet you through the unity of mind and heart enabled by images of you, delicate and strong, feminine and potent, may your increase ever soar, as we soar with you, representative of they who initiated us into the veneration of terrestrial intelligence, our mistresses and lords Ògbóni.
[1] An adaptation of Ògbóni elder Kolawole Ositola’s summation of the Ògbóni ethos in Margaret Thompson Drewal’s Yorùbá Ritual: Performers, Play, Agency(Indiana: Indiana UP, Bloomington, 1992. 33-35).
[2] The rest of the invocation is an almost verbatim adaptation of the words of Awo Òrúnmìlà Mark Casillas on Ògbóni as seen on a Facebook post.
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