IFA AND GENERATIVE SPACE

The relationship between form and space realized by the symbolic realizations of the vaginal entrance, serves, therefore, to coordinate ideas emerging from associations between physical penetration and cognitive penetration in relation to relationships between the psychological space embodied by the navigator of the forest and the psychical space realized by the forest.

Wenger’s development symbolic values through evoking relationships between female biological space, cosmographic space and their relationships with the space constituted by human consciousness resonates in the symbolism associated with the divinatory process ion Ifa. The Ifa oracle originated with the Yoruba and represents the central endogenous knowledge system of the people. The oracular process represents a hermeneutic procedure that proceeds through the interpretation of the patterns assumed by the divinatory instruments of the Ikin or opele when they are cast by the diviner.

The significance of these patterns is interpreted in relation to the texts the patterns symbolize. The patterns operate, therefore, as mnemonic devices for the recollection of a vast corpus of texts associated with each of them. The distinctive construction of this hermeneutic process emerges in the interpretation within the system of this process not simply as a hermeneutic activity performed by the priest upon the geomantic patterns and their associated texts, but as a dialogue between conscious entities in which the priest’s interpretation of the significance of the geomantic patterns resents the last stage in a process of communication which operates at several levels, and of which the interpretation of the geomantic patterns is the last and visible level of interaction between forms, the other levels being invisible. It is at the level of the interpretation of the divinatory process in terms of conscious at all levels, of dialogue between the various forms at play that the divinatory process involves ideas related to female biological space and its associations with the genitive process, at both microcosmic and macrocosmic levels.

The oracle’s response to the clients query is understood to emerge through a dialogue between the geomantic patterns that are configured by the divinatory instruments when they are cast by the diviner and the client’s Ori, their subconscious identity which predates their birth, will outlive their physical incarnation at death and embodies the totality of their possibilities. This recognition of the range of the client’s possibilities is what makes the dialogue with the Ori fundamental since only through the Ori can an understanding be gained into the significance of the client’s query as one expression of the structure of potentiality/of possibility represented by their life. The oracle, therefore, could be understood as a means through which the client becomes aware of the repose of their own deeper self, the Ori to the issues that emerge in their life.

Within the relationship thereby constituted in Ifa between ontological characterisation of the human being and the geomantic patterns, the patterns are understood to exist at various, interrelated levels of being. At one level they represent patterns assumed by thew divinatory instruments when they are cast by the diviner. At that level, they are random responses to physical action. At another level, they represent a means of organising the texts through which the system is expressed since each of these patterns,256 in all, represents a vast series of texts one or a sequence of of which will have relevance to the query posed by the client on whose behalf the divinatory instruments have been cast to form that pattern. At that level, they could be understood to function like book chapters in a text.
At another level, they act as a nexus through which the various orisha are integrated within the textual universe represented by the corpus, thereby enabling the Orisha to communicate with the believer through the Odu.

At another level they are also understood to be conscious entities in their won right, each of whom embodies its own Ori or centre if ultimate direction and potentiality as the human being does. As conscious entities, the descriptions of their mode of operation suggests that the emergence of particular patterns in response to the client’s query emerges not at random as might seem to the observer of the visible and last level of communication represented by the divinatory process but through a dialogue between these geomantic forms and the Ori of the client. The pattern that emerges as the instruments are thrown is therefore a an expression of the outcome of this dialogue.

The understanding of the Odu,as these patterns are called, as conscious forms emerges becomes even more significant in the understanding of the Odu not simply, at one level, as geomantic patterns, as organising categories of the textual corpus of the system at another level, through which poems and stories/literary texts related to the Orisha are organised and as a framework through which the orisha communicate with their believers, or even as sentient forms at yet another level, but as a means of developing and organising systemic construction of the scope of existence, in terms of its extant forms and its possibilities of realisation, as these are realized at various levels, from the most abstract to the most concrete.. As the Bini Ifa priest, Joseph Ohomina describes the Odu

The Odu are the names of spirits whose origin we do not know. We understand only a small fraction of their significance. They are the brains behind the efficacy of whatever we prepare. They are the spiritual names of all phenomena, whether abstract or concrete: plants, animals, human beings, the element, and all kinds of situations. Abstractions such as love, hate, truth and falsehood; concrete forms such as rain, water, land, air and the stars; and situations such as celebrations, conflict and ceremonies, are represented in spiritual terms by the various Odu


This conception implies that the Odu represent a means of mapping the cosmos in terms of semiotic categories. The notion of the Odu as spiritual names could relate to the idea of names not as arbitrary verbal symbols as conventionally understood in linguistics but within a continuum that stretches from the endogenous Nigeria approach to naming human beings in ways that reflect values, ideas and events associated with the person, to the idea of names as evocative of the ontological identity of the phenomenon so named.(see hampate ba on the living tradition).

The Odu, then are centres of meaning, through which the ontological identity of the phenomena that constitute the physical universe and the activities of the human universe are realized. The divinatory process, therefore, could be understood as a process through which this adapt base of ontological values are galvanised in relation to particular situations which would necessarily be interpreted in relation to their corresponding ontological identification in the various Odu.

How does this relate to ideas of female biology? The correlation between this understanding of the Odu and ideas about female biology emerges in the verbal characterisation of the Odu and the sculptural realisation of the divinatory space within/on which the Odu configurate in order to realize their meanings in relation to the query represented by each divinatory session.

The Odu are collectively understood as female and, in this collective identity, as being the wife of Ifa. The divinatory process, therefore could be understood as being characterized as relationships between a female and male personality. A generative process that emerges on the empty space where the Odu patterns are formed, graphically resented by the empty centre of the divination tray. Within this empty space, therefore, the macrocosmic values represented by the Odu in their fundamental characterisation as cosmic forms converge with the microcosmic patterns represented by the clients query in the emergence of the meanings of/significance represented by the clients particular situation that ahs brought them to the client. The empty space, therefore, becomes a generative space,a womb of transformation, akin to the vaginal space where new life emerges after its transformation within the womb space where its has firmed through the convergence of the distinctive material from that emerges from the distinctive genetic encoding of both parents and the power of life which is universal but manifests anew in each life form.

This understanding of the generative symbolism realised by the empty space where the Odu patterns emerge/are manifest is given credence by example of Ifa divination trays that respreent images of transformative motion in relation to this empty space. The divination tray is the standard space where the divinatory process takes place, even though the functional and symbolic values it realises can be actuated in relation to any empty space where the divinatory activity takes place, whether it is a patch of sand or a piece pf paper.Around the examples of divination trays are images of spirals and of partly spiral and partly humanoid forms, and of forms that re partly humanoid and partly aquatic.

As described by Babatunde Lawal in "Aya Gbo Aya To:New Perspectives in Edan Ogboni" :

"The spiral or concentric circles motif appears prominently on many edan. Informants offered two different but related interpretations for it. According to some, it represents the spin (ranyinranyin) of the cone-shaped bottom of the small snail shell (okoto), a children's toy associated with increase, dynamic motion,and, by extension, with the transformatory power of Esu, the divine messenger who mediates between the orisa and Ile. Others identify the motif with the motion of a whirlpool, signifying the expansive power of Olokun, the goddess of the sea and abundance. Since Oduduwa reportedly created habitable land out of the primordial sea at Ile-Ife, it is apparent that Earth and Water are, in essence, two aspects of the same phenomenon venerated by the Gelede society as Iya Nla (Mother Nature), alias Olokun ajaro okoto ("The sea goddess, who whirls like okoto"). Indeed, the snail shell motif occurs on Ogboni doors Moreover, black mud from a river or lake is a vital part of the ingredients used in consecrating an altar to Ile, and a fish-legged figure often dominates the relief decoration on Ogboni doors and drums thus linking the terrestrial realm with the aquatic. In any case, as a metaphor for the rhythm of life, and increase (iresi), the spiral or concentric circles motif reinforces the ritual power of edan Ogboni".

Witte, on the other hand, describes the interlace pattern motif as expressive of “Osumare, the ever moving rainbow serpent, symbol of continuity and permanence…who encircles the world to hold it together…the principle of movement, the integrating force that bids the primordial elements together” Taken together, these interpretations could be understood as correlating images of cosmic continuity, linkage between differing ontological forms, macrocosmic and microcosmic elements and the process of mediating between them as these mediations suggest change and transformation from one state of being to another. All these associations relate ultimately to the transformative potential associated with the special relationship between the female and biological life and between the earth and life and the sea by extension of the earth.

This interpretation of the Ifa hermeneutics lends itself to a apatain to hermeneutic/interpretive process that go beyond the conceptual structures associated with the Ifa system.

It is also the space on which emerges the results of the dialogue between the Odu, understood as sentient agents manifested as spatial patterns which symbolise particular conceptions, and the Ori, who embodies the totality of the individual’s possibilities and is their ultimate centre of direction. The dialogue between this directional centre and the semiotic forms represented by the Odu determines the particular patterns assumed by the divinatory instruments when they are cast in divination.

The empty space also realises an implicit, connotative value because it may be understood as a space of becoming in more senses than are suggested by its role as the material space where the divinatory patterns constellate; this constellation itself being the consequence of a dialogue between abstract agents, one of these agents being the embodiment of the ultimate possibilities of the human self and the other a mode of being that exists simultaneously in different ontological categories: a numerical and verbal construct, which is also a sentient and agentive form.

It can also be seen as suggesting the fecundative possibilities of the divinatory patterns, understood as emerging from the womb-space of the collective identity they represent/actualise. This identity is the feminine presence of Odu, one of the manifestations of Iyanla, the earth, understood as both the theatre of and active agent in the movement between modes of being, between life, death and rebirth. Odu is also the wife of Orunmila, the male Orisha or deity whose wisdom is represented by the divinatory system. Odu is therefore the feminine counterpoise that enables the balance of polarities dramatised by the creative activity of the Ifa system in correlating a wisdom that is understood as pre-temporal in its source with questions that emerge from the human situatedness in time and space. This correlation enables a metaphysical synthesis and an epistemological penetration that is described as able to identify all possibilities of existence, actual and potential, terrestrial and celestial, concrete and abstract .

The empty centre of the divination tray,in being used as the point on which the divinatory symbols constellate, becomes an interactive locus/a nexus of realities/a staging point for various concetions of the ground being or being or existence, understood in relation to the semiotic/hermeneutic interplay between and within agents that constitutes the divinatory process and which can be understood as symbolic of the world and the activity of beings within it in terms of a dynamic interaction/interactivity that is made possible by hermeneutic processes understood as the fundamental currency of/being/existence/ interaction, both literal-between agents, such as between human beings--and metaphorical-between agentive and forms controversially understood as agentive or conventionally perceived as either non-agentive or quasi-agentive forms such as between human beings and landscape, enabling an appreciation of the world as a theatre of hermeneutic activity and exchange, an interactivivity made possible by the constant activity of conscious beings in interpreting and navigating within/in relation to their environments; the world is thereby understood as a marketplace where various forms of being interact through various forms of hermeneutic currency, transposing the cognitive forms created by members of one mode or form of being into the cognitive forms created by other groups within that same mode of being as well as those outside it, so as to enable communication between members of the same ontological family, such as human beings, and between animals, and between members of different ontological families, such as between human and non-humans, such as animals, and the controversial notion of modes of being which not accountable for in terms of conventional ontological categories, such as abstract entities and supra-biological forms, forms which have a biological counterpart/expression but which cannot be fully understood in terms of their biological component.

Ifa divination exemplifies the conception/notion of hermeneutic interaction-interaction centred in the interpretation of semiotic structures, which can be understood to constitute any form of interaction-between aspects of the human self, an interaction mediated through the agency of the central semiotic forms of Ifa, the Odu, as interpreted by the Ifa priest. In describing the Odu, the central semiotic forms of the system as sentient agents, and the knowledge emerging from the divinatory process as emerging from a dialogue between these forms and an aspect of the human being, Ifa foregrounds questions of the relationship between humanly created cultural forms and the human mind, since the Odu are visible as spatial patterns, represented by configurations assumed by the divinatory instruments, which may be palm nuts or a chain, and written as series of vertical lines, which evoke a corpus of texts each pattern symbolises. Ifa ontology provokes questions which have also arisen in other symbol systems, such as mathematics, particularly when explored in relation to Plato’s theory of Forms, of the degree to which these/such cultural forms are the expression or the creation of the contents of human consciousness ,understood as an autonomous agent, and human consciousness explored in relation to conceptions of its being part of a network of influences, which may encompass natural and/or metaphysical realms.