The Tree, the Bird and Her Sixteen Bird Companions : Foundations of Opa Ọsanyin Philosophy and Mysticism 2 : Summative Invocation, Interpretation and Prayer
Abstract
This essay is an inspirational foundation in Opa Ọsanyin Philosophy and Mysticism, my development of ideas about cosmology and nature, in general, and human nature, in particular, through the symbolism of opa ọsanyin, a staff constituted by birds organized in relation to a central bird, representing Ọsanyin, the Yoruba origin Òrìsà cosmology deity of the biological and spiritual power of plants, and the orientation of these ideas towards the theory and practice of the quest for intimate knowledge of ultimate reality.
In developing these conceptions I correlate the associative values of opa ọsanyin with similar imagery of birds on a staff in Yoruba visual symbolism, specifically, the osùn babaláwo, the staff of the babalawo, adept in the esoteric knowledge of the Ifá system of knowledge, and opa erinlẹ, the staff representing Erinlẹ, the deity of the forest and the powers of nature in general.
The composition of this piece was inspired by the collage below, made by myself through combining images from various online sources. The juxtaposition of the pictures multiplied the evocative force of each one in a synergistic unity, stimulating the emergence of an idea smoldering in my mind for some time but reaching its first articulation in the paragraphs below.
These paragraphs are an unanticipated outcome of an ongoing series of essays I am writing and publishing on the symbolism of opa ọsanyin. With this essay, these writings go beyond interpretations of visual symbolism to constitute a system of philosophical and spiritual theory and practice, leading me to constructing a blog for publishing the essays as a self contained sequence.
This essay represents the application in contemplation, prayer and invocation, of the cosmological implications of opa ọsanyin I am developing in those other essays. The present work also includes the interpretation of the elements of spiritual practice presented here, an interpretation that demonstrates the value of these ideas beyond spiritual practice, penetrating into the broader realm of aesthetic and other philosophical ideas that enlarge appreciation of humanity's interpretive potential even when does not not commit oneself to practices associated with those ideas.
The broader body of essays on opa ọsanyin are themselves an incidental growth from another series of essays, an exploration of classical Yoruba aesthetics as developed by Rowland Abiodun and Babatunde Lawal, in which I use the graceful and dynamic clustering of birds around a central bird in opa ọsanyin as metaphoric for the integration of individuality of research orientation in relation to a unifying ethos in what I name the Ife School of Yoruba Studies, scholars and learning practices active in the then University of Ife, now Obafemi Awolowo University, formative for the scholarly careers of Abiodun and Lawal.
The first paragraph below reads like an incantation, with only one full stop at the end of a long sequence of expressions, deliberately so in order to suggest the inspirational stream through which the ideas were constructed as well as enhancing the sense of calling on powers both beyond and within the self the paragraphs represent.
The second paragraph is an explanation of the first paragraph.
The third paragraph is a poetic stanza that distills the ideas of the first two paragraphs in terms of a unity of bird and mystical imagery drawn from various sources.
The other paragraphs continue the explanation. Like the second paragraph, they are composed in a conventional expository manner, for greater ease of understanding.
Invocation
Projecting as the universe its sixteen powers of manifestation, withdrawing these into itself and projecting them again in a continuous cycle, the cosmos is continually created by the Self as cosmic core and the self as one perambulating through space and time, the totality and the individual experience of that totality, the chattering of birds on the tree of life indistinguishable and unintelligible but clarified and luminously meaningful in their individuality and unity the further I climb the pole of Ọsanyin, where sixteen birds congregate around the central bird, my brethren of the avian universe, the mothers dreaded and yet venerated, the wombs of totality where time and space converge with infinity, the convergence I seek in the flame like undulation in which all the birds are fused as one, Àwọn Ìyá Wa, Àwọn Odù Ifá, I bend the knee in veneration and supplication, as I seek entrance into your sacred grove, the conclave of insight and transformation.
Interpretative Survey of Invocation
From Tree to Cosmos
So may run an invocation in the school of Ọsanyin mysticism I am in the process of developing. This system of thought and practice is a process of identification of self with cosmos in terms of the symbolism of Ọsanyin, the Yoruba origin Òrìsà cosmology deity of the biological and spiritual power of plants in their association with the mystery and glory of the forest, the forest understood as microcosm of cosmos, as indicated of the forest as perceived in classical Yoruba thought by Abiola Irele's "Tradition and the Yoruba Writer" in The African Experience in Literature and Ideology and which I discuss in ''Forest as Cosmos: Abiola Irele on Classical Yoruba Philosophy of Nature,'' and ''Hermeneutics of Space: Soyinka, Irele, Armah,''
My central inspiration is opa ọsanyin, Ọsanyin, represented by a staff in which a gathering of birds are organized in relation to a central bird, evoking trees in which birds congregate as well as the unity of being of the deity through the structural singularity of the staff and its evocation of avian motion and song.
These images suggest transformative powers projected within the voice of nature, powers engaged with and called upon by the Ọsanyin devotee.
I interpret this symbolism in terms of a tree of life, the cosmos as a tree. In this context, the central bird is suggestive of the unity of self and cosmic core. The surrounding avian forms are akin to the expressions of that cosmic centre and the centre of self, totalistic universe and individual cosmos.
These ideas are correlated with the symbolism of the number sixteen in relation to opa Ọsanyin emerging from the associative values of the number of birds surrounding the central bird as at times being sixteen in number, the number of cosmic matrices and information cores known as Odù Ifá in the Yoruba origin Ifá system of knowledge.
Odù Ifá are themselves also associable with Àwọn Ìyá Wa, Our Mothers Arcane, the feminine principle understood as a fundamental matrix of creativity and destruction in Yoruba thought.
This complex of ideas is evoked for me by the collage above of Ọsanyin staffs, of birds surrounding a central bird and of what might be either an opa Ọsanyin or an osùn babaláwo, left, staff of the babaláwo, adept in the esoteric knowledge of Ifá.
This staff is here constituted by a single bird on a pole, the bird reduced to a flame like undulation evoking avian dynamism.The birds conventionally depicted in opa ọsanyin design as surrounding the central bird may thus be seen as fused with the central avian form through the amalgamative powers of fire, bringing to my mind ideas of the unity of self and spirit, of self and cosmos,in terms of flame.
Imagistic Depiction
I dreamt I saw an eagle in mid air,
plumed all in gold, hovering on wings outspread
poised to swoop
wheeling, he came down like lightning, terrible and fast
and caught me up into the sphere of flame
where he and I burned in one furnace blast.
The visionary fire seared me through
constituents of knowledge
reconfigured in the mind fire
fusing the particular and the universal through its horrific power
distillations of consciousness
like the circularity of a calabash
its circumference evocative of the unity of all possibilities
its depth suggestive of the ground of existence
things, their qualities and relationships
the leaves strewn throughout the universe
all this I beheld as one simple flame.
Detailed Interpretation of Invocation and Poem
Centrifugal and Centripetal Motion
The central sequence of ideas centred in the opening phrase, ''Projecting as the universe its sixteen powers of manifestation, withdrawing these into itself and projecting them again in a continuous cycle'' is inspired by the central image in the collage, of an opa ọsanyin, in which the artist realizes individuality of expression in relation to the fixed forms of opa ọsanyin structure, birds arranged in relation to a central bird.
This artistic individuality is actualized in the depiction of the surrounding birds as poised in flight away from the majestically elevated central avian personage. The elegant streamlining of their forms harmonizes with the structurally greater prominence of the aerodynamic construction of the central bird to suggest a sense of balance between poise and flight, between stasis and motion, energies subsumed and yet ready for explosion into action, as the artist exquisitely actualizes the capacity of a still image to suggest both motion and the powers that enable and are realized in motion, values amplified by the stillness and singularity of the pole, in contrast to the multiplicity of birds, on which the constellation of birds is perched, a total structure simple in design yet demonstrating imaginative depth in its construction.
This design conjuncts various forms of order. Symmetry generated through the imagery of birds in flight away from a central bird, majestic in its structure and poise. This symmetry suggests centrifugal motion, movement away from a centre. It also evokes centripetal motion, movement towards a centre, in this case, through association of the birds in flight with the central bird they are flying away from.
Singularity and Multiplicity
These values are amplified by the balance between the singularity of the staff and the energetic yet symmetrically configured constellation of birds that crown the staff.
The unmodified verticality of the staff, its straightness rising upwards to the constellation of birds poised at its crown, evokes a balance of the one-the staff - and the multiple - the birds, of stillness, represented by the central bird, and motion, evoked by the surrounding birds.
These visual realizations demonstrate fundamental structural qualities of nature and of human material and ideational creativity. These values are also ultimately central to cosmological explorations of relationships between cosmic multiplicity and cosmic unity.
Essence and Expression
The opa ọsanyin may thus suggest central metaphysical and theological motifs centred in the relationship between the cosmos and its originating core, between cosmos and ultimate meaning, and the conjunction, in some schools of thought, between these cosmological values and the human being.
In this context, the central bird may be visualized as the originating core of the cosmos and the surrounding birds as the cosmos as an expression of its originating centre.
The flight of the birds from that central bird is associated, in the invocatory paragraphs, with the emergence of the cosmos from a matrix. The motion of the birds away from the central bird is referenced in terms of the projection of the cosmos from its creative centre. The constellation of birds become the cosmos seen as an expression of that centre, like the birds in flight may be seen as radiations from the central bird.
Thus, this artist's individualistic reworking of the standard motif of opa ọsanyin structure is interpreted in terms of ideas of cosmic emergence. This understanding of cosmic emergence may be understood in terms of scientific, spiritual and philosophical cosmologies.
These cosmologies are represented by the description of the cosmos as emerging from an explosion of matter and energy, the Big Bang theory of scientific cosmology. They are also demonstrated by the philosophical and religious idea of the cosmos as radiating from a centre unfolding its own potential in terms of the structure and dynamism of existence. They are further expressed in the idea of the cosmos as organized in terms of a centre of ultimate meaning, which may or may not be identified with an ultimate agent.
In some cosmologies, as in Hinduism and Buddhism, the projection of the cosmos from a centre is correlative with the absorption of the cosmos back into that centre and back again in another projection in a continuous cycle. This process, taking place through vast cycles of cosmic time, is described in some schools in Western esotericism, as in Dion Fortune's The Cosmic Doctrine, as enabling the working out of cosmic potential and its possibilities and the harvesting into an originating core, of the capacities and knowledge gained through cycles of emanation and reabsorption, a core which is thereby enriched through the working out of its own hitherto latent possibilities.
Reflecting these ideas, the invocation above reads, ''Projecting as the universe its sixteen powers of manifestation, withdrawing these into itself and projecting them again in a continuous cycle.''
Physicist Roger Penrose develops a scientific analogue of similar ideas in Cycles of Time, focusing purely on the physical qualities of the cosmos, although it could be correlated with Penrose' work at the intersection of physics and consciousness evident in the Penrose books shown at that Amazon link.
Unifying these perspectives are questions of relationships between cosmic unity and cosmic multiplicity, between the knowable cosmos and its yet unknown ultimate origins, between its physical qualities and its spiritual and philosophical possibilities.
Opa Ọsanyin as Cosmic Tree
All these values are subsumed for me by the opa ọsanyin image of birds on a pole organised in relation to a central bird, an evocation of avian clustering in trees that takes my mind to the universal motif of the cosmos as a tree, most powerfully realized in imagistic terms by the Norse image of Yggdrasil, the tree the roots of which are the source of the universe in the pool of Mimer, waters of ultimate wisdom around which are to be found the three Norns, feminine personages weaving time past, present and future in terms of threads they spin and cut at the termination of a life.
The Hanging God and the Chameleon
The branches of this tree constitute the various interlocking universes and their denizens that make up the cosmos, on which branches the deity Odin, having sacrificed one of his eyes by pulling it out and dropping it into Mimer, hung himself in self immolation in order to gain the cosmic wisdom the tree and pool represent.
This relationship between tree of knowledge and seeker is incidentally echoed in the Barakat Gallery description of the image of the Ọsanyin priest as chameleon, climbing the opa ọsanyin, representing the tree of intersecting physical and spiritual universes in the forest of existence.
Image Above
Chameleons in progress towards the top of a staff where a bird sits in splendour
Ascending the staff, the chameleonic climber adapts to various ontological environments and the entities that characterize them, as embodied by the forest, representing vegetative nature, its denizens and the variously integrative dimensions constituting nature as a physical and spiritual conglomerate.
Suggesting these ideas, the invocation above reads, ''the chattering of birds on the tree of life indistinguishable and unintelligible but clarified and luminously meaningful in their individuality and unity the further I climb the pole of Ọsanyin.''
The voices of the birds become increasingly intelligible as the meanings projected by the various elements of existence. These values are understood in their individuality and collectivity, a symphony majestic, as the ascent of knowledge penetrates into realms of individual identity and collective meaning.
Image Above
Chameleons follow different paths towards the summit of a staff where a bird is poised
Sixteen Birds as Matrices of Feminine Power and Knowledge
The birds surrounding the central bird in opa ọsanyin structure are described as being sometimes sixteen in number, thereby suggesting associations with the most significant expression of the symbolism of the number sixteen in Yoruba thought.
These are the sixteen Odù Ifá, cosmological structures, spiritual agents and information matrices in the Ifá system of knowledge, a system which may be described as a method of mapping and navigating the intersection of spirit and matter at the nexus constituted by the human self, directing these explorations towards beneficial outcomes to human challenges.
Thus, the invocation above references
“the pole of Ọsanyin, where sixteen birds congregate around the central bird, my brethren of the avian universe, ... the wombs of totality where time and space converge with infinity.... Àwọn Odù Ifá...”
Opa Ọsanyin as Cosmogram Similar to Buddhist and Hindu Mandalas
In correlating opa ọsanyin with these ideas, I am interpreting the Ọsanyin staff as a cosmogram, a visual image symbolizing the cosmos, and specifically, as a mandala, a Buddhist term for a diagram evoking cosmic structure through a balance of geometric and figurative forms, of which, according to one perspective, the womb mandala evokes the emergence of the cosmos from a centre and the diamond mandala the reintegration of the cosmos into its centre.
Mandalas and a form of mandala, the yantra, a Hindu form that is fully geometric while the mandala is both geometric and figurative, are used as instruments of contemplation and ritual.
They facilitate processes in which the aspirant tries to integrate the cosmos as they understand and experience it. This is done through mental exercises and symbolic actions in which the contemplative or ritual actor identifies themselves with aspects of the mandala.
In this context, the core of cosmos may be understood as identical with the core of the self and the expressions of cosmos the constituents of the mind as it engages with the cosmos.
In the fully geometric mandala known as a yantra, the dot at the centre of the yantra symbolizes the generative core of existence. It also suggests the individual self, in unity with the source of being.
Opa Ọsanyin, Sri Yantra and the Sri Devi Khadgamala Stotram
The Sri Yantra, a particular kind of yantra, and the Sri Devi Khadgamala Stotram ritual based on it, which share incidental but rich similarities with opa osanyin design, are particularly rich examples of these Hindu contemplative forms and their associated rituals.
The explicit relationship between Sri Yantra, the Khadgamala and opa ọsanyin structure and symbolism consists in incidental similarities between their uses of the number sixteen in the context of centrifugal and centripetal motion, in correlation with explicit cosmological ideas, as understood in the Hindu context, and implicit cosmological values in the Òrìsà cosmology framework of opa ọsanyin.
Sri Yantra Visual Symbolism
The Sri Yantra is a geometric structure understood as embodying cosmic structure and dynamism in terms of a dot surrounded by circles, lotus petals and triangles, enclosed by a square.
Image Above
The Hindu symbol the Sri Yantra
In its harmony of simplicity and complexity, of structural economy with scope of symbolic attribution, it is one of the greatest of human cultural forms.
It is understood, as in some views of mathematical structures, of which it is one, as not so much a human creation as a human discovery of a quality of the cosmos, a value also ascribed to the cognate Yoruba mathematical and cosmological system, odu ifa.
The Sri Yantra unifies around the symbolism of the dot at its centre, representing the generative core of the cosmos, an associative synthesis of the human being and the the totality of existence understood in terms of Tripurasundari, a Goddess described as embodiment of the cosmos.
This visualization of cosmic totality is also correlated with the human being. The various aspects that constitute the human person are described as corresponding to aspects of the cosmos.
The entire synthesis of humanity and cosmos is described as the expression of the Goddess Tripurasundari, most beautiful embodiment of the cosmos, as depicted in the concluding invocations of the Sri Devi Khadgamala Stotram, from a tiny speck of dust from whose feet the cosmos was constructed, as stated in the second verse of the Soundaryalahari, the dot at the centre of the Sri Yantra symbolizing her unity with the human being within cosmic core, as the Khadgamalaaffirms in its concluding invocations.
The circles, triangles, lotus petals and the square that enfolds the entire structure are understood as the cosmos as an emanation from the cosmic core. These emanations are understood in terms of the qualities that shape the cosmos in its most general sense.
This cosmic core is also perceived as the essence of the self. In this context, the geometric forms and lotus petals enclosing the dot at the centre of the yantra may be seen as suggesting the universe in relation to the individual self. At this level, these qualities of the universe are expressed in terms of the qualities of the human being.
The universe may therefore be understood in terms of cosmic manifestation, the cosmos in its most general structuring characteristics.
It may also be perceived in terms of the constellation of the cosmos around the self constituted by the centre of human consciousness, a constellation in terms of human qualities.
These qualities are interpreted in terms of cosmic manifestation, the centrifugal motion from the centre of the yantra to its periphery and in terms of cosmic integration, the centripetal movement from the periphery of the yantra to its centre, structural progressions explicitly correlative and implicitly associable with the design of opa ọsanyin generally and particularly with the example of opa ọsanyin discussed in this essay.
The Number Sixteen in Sri Yantra and Opa Ọsanyin
These mutually integrative levels of existence, of cosmos and mind in terms of centripetal and centrifugal order, are depicted in Sri Yantra in terms of sixteen primary expressions. These are the Nityas, manifestations of the Goddess Tripurasundari. This primacy of the number sixteen is represented in Sri Yantra structure by the sixteen lotus petals encircling the inner set of eight lotus petals.
The structure of some opa ọsanyin symbolism shares with Sri Yantra the foregrounding of the number sixteen, a number of great significance in the Yoruba origin Orisa system of knowledge, but the symbolism of which, in the context of opa ọsanyin, is not explicit in the literature as known to me.
Sixteen is a primary number of Odù Ifá , expressions of Odù , a primary feminine divine identity in Ifa. Odù is also interpretable in terms of the intersection of cosmic totality and the dynamism of human life, as Tripurasundari is, embodiment of all possibilities of the cosmos, from the transcendent to the everyday.
A similar scope is realized in Odù Ifá through its integration of the details of human existence with the cosmological imperatives that configure this scope, constellated around the self, as Sri Yantra, although in a different manner, is also centred on the self in relation to cosmic core and its cosmological expressions.
Integrating feminine identity and its distinctive spiritual identity is the bird motif, associated with Odù as bestowed by the creator of the universe. The bird may suggest capacities enabling motion between dimensions. The calabash within which the bird is placed may evoke the cosmos traversed through the power emblematized by the bird, a calabash being a symbol of the cosmos in Yoruba thought, as one may interpret this image from Babatunde Lawal's presentation of it in The Gelede Spectacle.
The Number Sixteen in the Sri Devi Khadgamala Stotram
The Sri Devi Kadgamala Stotramis a ritual of identification of self with cosmos by imaginatively navigating the Sri Yantra. It is a process in which the symbolic significance of the foundational sixteen numbered structure of the yantra is expanded in a manner recalling how the fundamental sixteen numbered structure of odu ifa, a cognate of opa osanyin symbolism, is elaborated upon to arrive at 256 permutations of cosmic structure and information order.
Evoking these ideas, the invocation above references Odù Ifá as feminine presences, ''the wombs of totality,'' emanations of Odu as the Nityas are of Triprasundari.
This conjunction is further associated with ''Àwọn Ìyá Wa,'' Our Mothers Arcane, embodiments of the avian evoking powers of the Odu calabash, forces both creative and destructive, venerated with a wary respect.
Thus, the invocation depicts
“the pole of Ọsanyin, where sixteen birds congregate around the central bird, my brethren of the avian universe, the mothers dreaded and yet venerated, the wombs of totality where time and space converge with infinity.”
The poetic stanza after the first two paragraphs integrates Dante Alighieri's visionary dream of an eagle from his Purgatorio, with Mazisi Kunene's description of classical Zulu theory of knowledge in his introduction to Anthem of the Decades in terms of the mind unifying cognitive categories in a harmony evoked by the circularity of a calabash, concluding with Dante's summative vision in Paradiso of the cosmos as composed of scattered leaves the unity of which he perceives in terms of a simple, limpid flame.
These conjunctions resonate with the invocation's depiction of ''the wombs of totality where time and space converge with infinity, the convergence I seek in the flame like undulation in which all the birds are fused as one.''
The flame like undulation of the avian form in which the staff on the left in the collage eventuates is interpreted in terms of fusion in one bird of the convention opa ọsanyin design of sixteen birds around a central bird.
This fusion of the sixteen in terms of one is further depicted in terms of the union of the one and the many, the finite and the infinite.
The creative individuality actualized through the example of opa ọsanyin that inspires this essay creates a visual complex that is an imaginative realization of motion fixed in space. It is evocative of associations the work of art stimulates in the viewer in a motion suggestive of the flight of birds.
Through the eye, the sculptural image traverses space to activate possibilities in the mind like a flock of birds is stimulated into flight. The flock lifts into space in coordinated action, akin to the viewer's expression of the ideas evoked by the sculpture.
Prayer
Visualizing the avian constellation, focusing on the majestic centrality of the bird aloft, the breaking open of day as the sun rises, illumination expanding, challenges dissolving, mind uplifting in the radiations from that centrality....
An Invitation
In the tamarisk groves of an-Naqá is a flock of qaṭá birds over whom Beauty has pitched a tent, a bird on a bán tree, a bird that has revealed to me the true story of how the loved ones bound the saddles on their air bound mounts and then gat them away at dawn, leading me to journey after them, in my heart for their sake a blazing fire, striving to outpace them in the darkness of the night, calling to them, and following their track, the darkness becoming light
I salute Muhyi'ddin Ibn Al-'Arabi from whose Tarjumán Al-Ashwáq, The Interpreter of Desires, translated by Reynold Nicholson, 1978, 110 and 125, from where the lines directly above have been adapted, with ''camels'' in the second line changed to ''air bound mounts'' otherwise the entire text being quotations from the Andalusian master.
As we journey in quest of that illumination blazing ever as one seeks the meeting point of sky and Earth where the ''great roads go down'' in the words of Western esotericist Dion Fortune, may your support lubricate the journey and empower the quest.
The essay you have just read is part of Compcros: Comparative Cognitive Processes and Systems, one of the world’s largest collections of freely accessible, sole authored works, integrating the visual and verbal arts, spirituality, philosophy and science, published on various online and print platforms.
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