C. Points of Convergence between the Hermeneutic Processes Involved in Ifa Divination and the Interpretation of Self and Individual History Constituted by Autobiography and the Self Portrait
a. Consciousness, Temporality and Textual Formations
The hermeneutic process constituted by Ifa divination demonstrates significant correlations with the interpretation of meaning manifest in the creation of autobiographies and self-portraits.
These points of convergence consist in the interpretation, in terms of textual forms, of the flow of experience in relation to the past and the future from a vantage point in the present. These textual forms constitute interpretive centres in relation to either specific situations, or in relation to the development of a broader span in the development of the subject’s life.
The deployment of textual forms as interpretive centres emerges from the fact that the process of Ifa divination consists in a procedure, in which, in response to the client’s query, the diviner casts his divinatory instruments and interprets for the client the significance of the configuration realised by the instruments. This significance is depicted in terms of poetic or prose narratives, and, at times, through lyric poetry, from one or more of the Odu, the organisational categories of the Ifa corpus, which are represented by the patterns formed by the configuration the divinatory instruments assume as they are cast. The literary expressions that emerge in response to the casting of the divinatory instruments are supposed to embody a response, in symbolic terms, to the client’s query. The symbolic character of this relationship has to be interpreted by both the diviner and the client. This interpretation of the significance of situations in terms of symbolic narratives and imagistic patterns demonstrates a similarity to Nabokov’s conception of autobiography as best understood as created and read as an effort to crystallize, in the form of images, convergences of meaning, in which the thematic significance that emerges from the contemplation of the flow of experience is crystallized in terms of points of illumination.
The narratives that emerge in response to the query of the client of Ifa as well as the narratives constructed by the autobiographer can both be understood as narratological devices, stories with a pattern, that are being interpreted by those to whom those patterns have an intimate value. In the case of the divinatory process the interpreting agents are the client and the diviner, in the creation of autobiography, the writer.
The divinatory process as well as the process of autobiographical creation consist in a process in which the significance of the aspects of the subject’s life which are being explored are examined in terms of their relationship to their roots in the subject’s past and the development of these into the future, as understood from the vantage point of the present. Wordsworth’s evocative image representing the perception of self through the refractive mirror of memory emblematizes this convergence between past, present and future in relation to the shifting perspectives of the self that experiences them. Wordsworth depicts the self that interprets its own history at a point in the present as a person who perceives their reflection in a river as they sit in a boat. The image perceived in the river is both like and unlike the exact features of the physical form from within which it is perceived on account of the refractive properties of the water within which this image is reflected. As the boat moves on, the challenge of discerning the specificity of resemblance between images, the reflection and the reflected, is problematised by the challenge of perceiving the specificities of the reflection while the individual is in motion. We may liken the water in which the reflection appears to the flow of memory, in which experience is necessarily refracted through the dynamic matrix of individual consciousness, and the reflection in the river to the self’s memory of itself and its history. The movement of the boat and the challenge of identifying specificities of resemblance between the reflection and the reflected relates to the consistently shifting points of vantage assumed by the mind at each point as it tries to interpret its experience as it moves forward in the flow of time16.
Gusdorf again sums up the implications of this tension between memory, time and the self:
Recapitulation of a life reveals only a ghostly image of that life, already far distant and doubtless incomplete, distorted furthermore by the fact that the [person]who remembers [their] past has not been for a long time the same being…who lived that past….narrative[therefore]confers a meaning on the event which, when it actually occurred, had several meanings, or perhaps none. This postulating of meaning dictates the choice of the facts to be retained and the details to bring out or dismiss….An autobiography cannot be a pure and simple record of existence, an account in a logbook…Every [person] is the first witness of [themselves ]yet the testimony that [they] thus produce constitutes no ultimate, conclusive authority…17
The relationship between the self and the creation of textual forms in exploring the significance of the flow of experience in relation to the past and the future from a vantage point in the present, emerges in Ifa from the role, in the divinatory process, of the ontological category of the human self, represented by the cardinal term of traditional Yoruba thought known as Ori18. The oracle’s response to the client’s 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. The Ori is understood as the subconscious identity of the individual, which predates their birth, will outlive their physical incarnation at death and embodies the totality of a person’s possibilities. It can therefore be described as the existential drive that animates each individual’s existence. The term Ori literally means the “head”, but, through what could be understood as a metonymic process, it symbolises, through the cognitive nucleus of the human form in the head, the supra-physical cognitive centre that guides the individual’s existence.
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 a understanding be gained into the significance of the client’s query as one expression of the structure of possibilities represented by the client’s life. Ifa, therefore, could be understood as a means through which the client becomes aware of the response of their own deeper self, the Ori, to the issues that emerge in their life..
The client’s Ori is described as determining the Odu patterns assumed by the divinatory instruments when they are cast during a divinatory session, and therefore, as influencing which texts emerge in relation to the issue in question in the client’s life,since the Odu act as symbols for texts that constitute the oracle’s response to the client’s query.
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 represents 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. The divinatory process is interpreted in terms of consciousness at all levels, of dialogue between the various forms at play. It is a process in which the instruments of knowledge, the Odu, are also understand as cognitive agents, capable of cognition. In Ifa divination, therefore, the cognitive subject, the human being, is described as engaged in a literal dialogue with the Odu, forms which constitute both instruments of knowledge as well as cognitive agents. The concept of dialogue with texts, in terms of the various levels of possibility of the text,a process described metaphorically in the cognitive traditions in which cognitive instruments are not understood as agentive, unlike the Odu, here changes into a more complex interrelationship between conception of the sentient, agentive character of the Odu and the necessary effort of interpreting their symbolic expressed as in textual terms.
Within the relationship thereby constituted in Ifa between the 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 the 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 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 Orisa or deities are integrated within the textual universe represented by the corpus, thereby enabling the Orisa to communicate with the believer through the Odu.
At another level they are also understood to be conscious entities in their own right, each of whom embodies its own Ori or centre of 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 an expression of the outcome of this dialogue.
The understanding of the Odu,as these patterns are called, as conscious forms becomes even more significant in the understanding of the Odu not simply, at one level, as geomantic patterns,or at another level, as organising categories of the textual corpus of the system, or even as sentient forms, at yet another level, but as a means of developing and organising a 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 Western linguistics but within a continuum that stretches from the endogenous Nigerian 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[1].
The concept of the Odu, in embodying geomantic and textual characteristics, could be seen as cognizable within the province of the symbolic signs represented by language, as conventionally understood. The complete range of its characterisation, however, goes beyond the ontological categories normally assigned to linguistic entities in the Western tradition but bears greater affinity with conceptions of sacred language in Indian philosophy, in which the sacred syllable om is understood both as a graphic symbol, representing a referent, as in Western linguistics, but also as the creative word through which the universe has been created and is sustained. The syllable thereby embodies both linguistic and metaphysical categories of being19.
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 base of ontological values is galvanised in relation to particular situations which would necessarily be interpreted in relation to their corresponding ontological identification in the various Odu.
This integration between a cosmological framework and the concrete particulars of human experince emerges in the the conjunction between the Opon Ifa,the divination tray,and the ikin,the sacred plam nuts used in divining.This conjunction facilitates an appreciation of Ifa hermeneutics as a framework for exploring the univrse constituted by the individual life,in relation tpo its spatio-temporal coordinates as these develop across time.
The Opon Ifa is one of the central iconographic forms of Ifa beceause its use and design constitute both a practical and symbolic template or the divinatory process.The central purpose of the tray is that of a consecrated space at the center of which the diviner casts the divinatory instruments.The images carved on the tray could also suggest aspects of the world view that underlies the divinatory system.
The Opon Ifa symbolises the cosmos,and in terms of its potentail division in terms of two lines,one horizontal,one vertical,that intersect at the centre,it sugests the complementarity of distinctive but interrelated aspects of being as defined by the mneaphysical subtrates/foundations of being and their dramatisation in terms of the specifities of existence.The divinatory process consists in the inisight into the relationships between these metaphysical foundations and their dramatisation in terms of the speficities of human experience.
Along similar lines,the autobiographer might not explore the progression of their lives,or its radiation bawards and forwards from the present in terms of a metaphysical frame or configurations/s as Augustine famously does in his Confessions,but the metaphysical nucleaus of being remains prominent,even in the background of a work,particularly an autobiographical work, in which it is not axplicty acknowledged.These metaphysical foundations are framed by the primary experinces of birth and death and the mysteries they resent of questions of the existence of the self before birth and after death.Framed ny thses primal contexts,other metaphysical questions/contexts shape the structure of human existence,syuch as questions about the nature of the self,its levels or aspects and their interrrelationship and the relationship between persisrtence/continuity and
trascience in the development of that self.
The autobiographer might not draw upon insight into the enabled by privileged access to relationships between materil and spiritual universes as the Ifa priest is ubnderstood as doing but they necessarily engage with particular semantic matrices which faclitate the interpretation of the course of their lives in terms of patterns of meaning,of ideational,moral or other forms of continuity within the flux of time,as Ifa divination relies on the semiotic marrices ereseted by the Odu to generate insight into the conmplexities of human experience.
One of these semantic values is the relationsahip between free will and chance,between order and predictablity and disorder,unpredictablity and paradox,tensions that are not only central to Ifa and reseted by one invaribale feature of the Opon Ifa,the location of the face of Esu at the top of the tray,breaking the smooth
Each Opon Ifa demonstrates both the invariable or constant as well as the variable features in the composition and carving of the Ifa tray. One unvarying feature is the face at the top of the tray facing outwards from the surface. Another is the empty space at the centre of the tray. The last is the border that encloses the empty centre. The variable aspect of the form is the circular shape of the entire structure. The Opon Ifa could be either circular or square or both,as in a square circumference enclosing circular centre.
Each of the invariable elements in the composition of the Ifa tray represents an aspect of the metaphysical structure that underlies the divinatory process. Taken together, they encapsulate the interrelationship of these metaphysical conceptions in constituting the hermeneutic process through which Ifa divination is actualised. Even when the Ifa priest does not use the tray in divining, these metaphysical elements are understood to remain constitutive of the divinatory process.
In a similar sense,the autobiographer's conception of the the charcter of their self,as it exists in the present,having emerged through a development from the past,and as it could devlop in future,is the locus around which the textual formation rpresented by an autoobiography is constructed.In relation to this centring of autobiographical writing, and, necessarily, of its interpretation, in a conception of the development of the self which is the subject of the work, emerges the artist’s efforts to mediate between an exploration of the character of the self as a composition that emerges from the factors that have influenced it and as causative of those factors that constitute the character of the individual’s life. This tension between the self as caused and as causative represents a dialectical tension between independence of the self and its grounding within a complex of influencing factors that is central to the Ifa conception of the self in relation to the cosmos.
.
The Opon Ifa is one of the central iconographic forms of Ifa beceause its use and design constitute both a practical and symbolic template or the divinatory process.The central purpose of the tray is that of a consecrated space at the center of which the diviner casts the divinatory instruments.The images carved on the tray could also suggest aspects of the world view that underlies the divinatory system.
The Opon Ifa symbolises the cosmos,and in terms of its potentail division in terms of two lines,one horizontal,one vertical,that intersect at the centre,it sugests the complementarity of distinctive but interrelated aspects of being as defined by the mneaphysical subtrates/foundations of being and their dramatisation in terms of the specifities of existence.The divinatory process consists in the inisight into the relationships between these metaphysical foundations and their dramatisation in terms of the speficities of human experience.
Along similar lines,the autobiographer might not explore the progression of their lives,or its radiation bawards and forwards from the present in terms of a metaphysical frame or configurations/s as Augustine famously does in his Confessions,but the metaphysical nucleaus of being remains prominent,even in the background of a work,particularly an autobiographical work, in which it is not axplicty acknowledged.These metaphysical foundations are framed by the primary experinces of birth and death and the mysteries they resent of questions of the existence of the self before birth and after death.Framed ny thses primal contexts,other metaphysical questions/contexts shape the structure of human existence,syuch as questions about the nature of the self,its levels or aspects and their interrrelationship and the relationship between persisrtence/continuity and
trascience in the development of that self.
The autobiographer might not draw upon insight into the enabled by privileged access to relationships between materil and spiritual universes as the Ifa priest is ubnderstood as doing but they necessarily engage with particular semantic matrices which faclitate the interpretation of the course of their lives in terms of patterns of meaning,of ideational,moral or other forms of continuity within the flux of time,as Ifa divination relies on the semiotic marrices ereseted by the Odu to generate insight into the conmplexities of human experience.
One of these semantic values is the relationsahip between free will and chance,between order and predictablity and disorder,unpredictablity and paradox,tensions that are not only central to Ifa and reseted by one invaribale feature of the Opon Ifa,the location of the face of Esu at the top of the tray,breaking the smooth
Each Opon Ifa demonstrates both the invariable or constant as well as the variable features in the composition and carving of the Ifa tray. One unvarying feature is the face at the top of the tray facing outwards from the surface. Another is the empty space at the centre of the tray. The last is the border that encloses the empty centre. The variable aspect of the form is the circular shape of the entire structure. The Opon Ifa could be either circular or square or both,as in a square circumference enclosing circular centre.
Each of the invariable elements in the composition of the Ifa tray represents an aspect of the metaphysical structure that underlies the divinatory process. Taken together, they encapsulate the interrelationship of these metaphysical conceptions in constituting the hermeneutic process through which Ifa divination is actualised. Even when the Ifa priest does not use the tray in divining, these metaphysical elements are understood to remain constitutive of the divinatory process.
In a similar sense,the autobiographer's conception of the the charcter of their self,as it exists in the present,having emerged through a development from the past,and as it could devlop in future,is the locus around which the textual formation rpresented by an autoobiography is constructed.In relation to this centring of autobiographical writing, and, necessarily, of its interpretation, in a conception of the development of the self which is the subject of the work, emerges the artist’s efforts to mediate between an exploration of the character of the self as a composition that emerges from the factors that have influenced it and as causative of those factors that constitute the character of the individual’s life. This tension between the self as caused and as causative represents a dialectical tension between independence of the self and its grounding within a complex of influencing factors that is central to the Ifa conception of the self in relation to the cosmos.
This correlation of a theory of the self with the act of interpretation makes it particularly apt in the development of the hermeneutic task that is the purpose of this essay. Furthermore, the theory’s correlation of the conception of the self, not simply with the interpretation of texts, but with the interpretation of texts relating to the symbolic significance of the subject’s life, constitutes this theory as a particularly valid framework for the interpretation of autobiographical discourses on which this essay is centred.
16 Wordsdworth develops this image in Prelude: 1799, 1805, 1850 (New York: W. W. Norton 1978)but I am indebted to M.H Abrams, Natural Supernaturalism: Tradition and Revolution in Romantic Literature (New York:Norton,1973)for its analysis in relation to autobiography.
18 Bolaji Idowu, Olodumare: God in Yoruba Belief (London : Longman, 1962) and Wande Abimbola, An Exposition of Ifa Literary Corpus (Ibadan:OxfordUP,1976) represent very lucid expositions of this concept but Adegboyega Orangun, Destiny:The Unmanifested Being (Ibadan: African Odyssey Publishers,1988) explores its complexities in detail.
[1] Achebe on names in chi in igbo cosmology (see hampate ba on “The Living Tradition”).
19 George,Feuerstein, The Yoga Tradition: Its History, Literature, Philosophy and Practice (New York
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