Toyin: In the Yoruba traditional thought fom Nigeria which I am studying menstrual fluid is also described as dangerous to the consecrated sacred space used in religious activity.
Letisa: So similar to Judeo-Christian constructions. The art of Baldung, the a pintereblematises these deadly prejudices by depicting women in forms that ground the medieval conception of the witch in terms of menstruating women.
Toyin: Wait. Please go over that again. Are you stating that images of witches were characterised in terms drawn from female menstruation?
Letisa: Yes.
Toyin: How?
Letisa:
Toyin: What strikes me here is the possibilities in cultural interpretation suggested by the development of the demonizing image of the female in Judaeo-Christian thought. We could correlate that theory of yours about consciousness in relation to sexual choice as arising in relation to female biology to the Biblical story of Eve initiating human knowledge of good and evil, of the recognition of difference between the human and nature that emerged when they realised they were naked after eating the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.
Letisa: Go on
Toyin: In relation to your theory that story takes on overtones of a courageous but difficult and painful emergence into knowledge of sexual difference and the choices associated with it, of the fact that the human and nature are not identical and the challenges that imposes and perhaps of the snake as being a benefactor who introduces the possibility of this momentous shift in consciousness and God as representative of the desire to remain in the bliss of ignorance embodied by pre-reflexive nature –human identification. Perhaps that story could actually be seen as indicating in a symbolic drama our development as a race in terms of our constriction of nature and culture in relation to gender relations and the balance between the human and the natural worlds.
Letisa: Certainly interesting but you can make this correlation because you are speaking from the perspective of the twenty-first century where a variety of styles of textual and of Biblical interpretation have developed over the centuries. Judaeo-Christian thought, prior to the development of such developments in theology as the demythologising of Rudolf Bultmann, interpreted the Biblical narrative as divinely inspired literal account of the Fall as it was called. Also if anyone would prefer to remain in the semi-somnambulist bliss represented by the Garden of Eden rather than the creative conflicts embodied by human life as we know it.
Toyin: Judaeo-Christian thought has often constructed the Edenic state as the ideal state to which we hope to return at the end of life, and perhaps, various Utopian conceptions have been influenced by that. They seem to be marked by the notion of ideal being as the absence of conflict, of the clash of mental and emotional gears represented by the often difficult necessity of choice foregrounded by the presence of contrastive choices as the ground for the development of creative complexity in the human relationship to what is given by our biology and the development of the response to this givenness in terms of social and individual culture.
Letisa: Interestingly, the snake has had very interesting career in myth. In some mythic forms it is associated with the feminine and some even correlate its sinuous movements with the spiral motif which is correlative with symbolic characterisations of creative change but in terms of the shape assumed by natural forms and the processes through which they undergo change.
Toyin: Perhaps the Hebrews appropriated the snake image from neighbouring cultures whose ideas they despised and rebaptised the snake as an agent of destructive temptation. But they story they constructed suggests possibly, an ambivalence of thought in their characterisation since God is depicted from one perceive as a tyrant who desires to withhold knowledge from his creations, forbidding them to eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and when the snake persuades them to do so, becomes jealous of their knowledge, despairing that “they have become as us knowing good and evil”. Does the narrative suggest that God dreads the acquisition of such fundamental knowledge by his creations? It is this ambivalence, if I can call it that, that enriches and complexifies the narrative transposing it from the realm of a purely transgressive act on the part of a human and suggests a reaching out beyond a limited but blissful state and the snake as a catalytic agent in this rupture in consciousness that ensues. The woman is characterised as the initiator of the human race the temptation the snake holds out.
Letisa: Thanks. Intriguing. Again, is this possibility of interpretation not possible only from the perspective of twentieth century Western hermeneutics? Could the Biblical writers have been responsive to such complexities or they insinuated themselves into the text without the conscious assent of the writers?
Toyin: It would seem that conceptions of the feminine demonstrate degrees of ambivalence in various cultures, even when the ambivalence emerges in disguised from as we may argue it does in the Biblical narrative. What else is to be expected of negative responses to members of the race who could be demonized but remains the privileged bearer of children? Look at Yoruba traditional thought, for example.
Letisa: Does it evoke a similar ambivalence?
Toyin: Certainly. In this scheme, women are the primary agents of witchcraft. Their biological prerogatives enable them to wield fearsome powers, but these powers could be wielded for good or evil. At the same time as these constructions are developed and deployed in ways that privilege areas of male supremacy in the bulk of the social space, the creative/destructive power of the female is foregrounded.
Letisa: This reminds me of the point you made earlier about contrastive possibilities in cultural constructions and interpretation. Are these ideas developed in relation to mythic constructions?
Toyin: Yes. In the Ifa tradition, the central embodiment of traditional Yoruba thought, the witches are often characterised as bloodthirsty creatures and in the rest of the informal constructions in the culture, witches are often understood to be primarily female. The capacities or identity represented by witchcraft are also understood to inhere in their biology. But interestingly enough, aspects of this cultural construction not only conflate destructive and beneficent possibilities of these biologically grounded powers but can also be understood to relate them to terrestrial and cosmic processes of creative growth.
Letisa: Explain.
Toyin: Convergences emerge between conceptions of the feminine and the constitution of meaning, in cosmic and human terms. The semiotic categories of the Ifa divinatory system, known as the Odu of Ifa, are understood collectively as female and their constitution of forms of meaning as represented by the symbolic patterns of the divinatory system through which the Ifa oracle responds to the queries of its clients is constructed in terms of the procreative capacity of a woman, with the secondary patterns of the divinatory system being understood in terms of the younger children of Odu, their mother.
Letisa: Interesting. Does this correlation of the hermeneutic forms of the system go beyond these basic symbolic correlations?
Toyin: Certainly. The imagery associated with witchcraft becomes central to Ifa as expressive of the capacity of the oracle to develop a comprehensive grasp of the issues it is asked to deal with. This emerges in the use of the imagery of the bird in Ifa iconography. Birds are associated with witchcraft in the sense that witches are supposed to travel as birds, particularly on missions of deadly intent but the bird becomes evocative of Ifa’s comprehensive vision, a vision that derives from the world of vision from which the witches may also be understood to draw their own powers. And, in relation to Osanyin, the Orisa or deity of the occult powers of plants, they are also expressive of those powers. Herbalogy being an aspect of Ifa.
Letisa: You did mention that you are developing some ideas of your own in relation to this convergence between symbolism associated with female procreative capacities and cognitive processes as this emerges in the semiotics of Ifa.
Toyin: Yes. I am developing the notion of what I describe as an exchange theory of being which I derive from my study of such correspondences in Ifa hermeneutics in relation to my interests in what I describe as inter-ontological dialogue.. A mode of dialogue between various modes of being.
Letisa: How does that operate?
Toyin: I develop my ideas in relation to the central iconographic form of Ifa hermeneutics-the Ifa divination tray. The centre of the tray, which, in its emptiness and circular form, could be correlated with ideas of generative space, is the spatial arena where the divinatory instruments represented by the palm nuts or divining beads are thrown in response to the client’s query and the configurations assumed by the divinatory instruments as they are thrown constitutes the oracle’s response to the clients query.
Letisa: In what sense would you correlate the empty space with ideas of generation apart from the fact that that is the space where the answers to the clients query in terms of the configurations assumed by the divinatory instruments emerges?
Toyin: The conception of the empty space in terms of generative space is amplified by the fact not only is the point at which the oracles response to the specific query of the client emerges, emerging as it does in relation to specific question in relation to a particular issue at a particular point in time and space emerges, but this process of configuring a response to the client’s question operates not simply in terms of the patterns that emerge in relation to this query and the interpretation of the symbolic significance of the pattern that follows but the fact that the entire process which is manifest as what we could described as the level of physical visibility in terms of the geomantic patterns assumed by the divinatory instruments and in terms of verbal expressiveness in terms of the correlation of these patterns with particular verbal expressions through which their symbolic meanings are realised but the fact that these visible operations are understood as representative of the visible level of an invisible process, the second order expression of a first order process which is unseen but is nevertheless determinative of what is subsequently perceived, an expression at ther level of surface structure of a constitution of meaning that takes place at the level of deep structure. This underlying semantic constitution is understood to emerge through the dialogue between the Odu and the Ori or inward spirit of the client. The Odu constitute possibilities of meaning but their meaning value is actuated through dialogue with the clients Ori since the Ori is the repository of the potential of the client and the possibilities implied in/through the manifestation/expression of that potential in the progression of the client’s life.
Letisa: Interesting. Yes….
Toyin: The construction of meaning is therefore constellated through relationships between various ontological forms represented by the Odu who are understood as conscious entities and the Ori. This cross-ontological constitution ramifies even further in terms of ideas of ontological correlation in relation to the fact that the Odu are understood as semiotic forms that operate as means of describing the spiritual nature as well as of organising the totality of being and its possibilities in terms of semiotic forms represented by the Odu.
Letisa:So you perceive in the constellation of meaning in the divinatory process a process whereby a cosmological system represented by the Odu operates in a dynamic manner to respond to specific questions in relation to particular issues arising from particular points in space and time from within a repertoire of meaning which operates in relation to cosmographic framework so that the cosmography is brought to play in relation to specific situations
Toyin: Yes. The divinatory process, what Cornelius in reference to astrology, called “the moment of divination” could be understood, therefore, as a constitution in relation to particular space time conditions of the process through which modes of being come into being and the processes they go through as the transmission from one state to another or within one state in relation to various possibilities that come to embody
Letisa: You are suggesting, then, that the moment of divination, as you call it, is a microcosmic expression of generative processes, understood in terms of a correlation between macrocosmic-as represented by the full range of the cosmographic structure represented by the Odu- and microcosmic processes-as embodied by the focus of this cosmographic structure on /in relation to a particular situation in a specific point in space and time.
Toyin: Exactly. The empty space of the divination tray becomes then a womb of becoming, where macrocosmic process are correlated with the macrocosmic, in relation to particular questions as they emerge in particular points in space and time.
Letisa: Intriguing construction. Beyond your description of this interpretive possibility, do you intend to use this conception in any way in your work, as an active tool of knowledge?
Toyin: Certainly. I am developing what I describe as cross-ontological thinking. It relates to the notion of developing strategies of thought to explore questions of dialogue, whether understood metaphorically or literarily, between different modes of being. The conception of the Odu as mediating between various modes of being through a semiotically realized cosmography is proving inspiring to my thinking in this regard.
Letisa: Is that so?
Toyin: Yes. I’m still trying to work this thing out. You did say when we talked the other day that you also trying work out an epistemic strategy in relation to your ideas about feminine biology and consciousness. Tell me about it.
Letisa: So similar to Judeo-Christian constructions. The art of Baldung, the a pintereblematises these deadly prejudices by depicting women in forms that ground the medieval conception of the witch in terms of menstruating women.
Toyin: Wait. Please go over that again. Are you stating that images of witches were characterised in terms drawn from female menstruation?
Letisa: Yes.
Toyin: How?
Letisa:
Toyin: What strikes me here is the possibilities in cultural interpretation suggested by the development of the demonizing image of the female in Judaeo-Christian thought. We could correlate that theory of yours about consciousness in relation to sexual choice as arising in relation to female biology to the Biblical story of Eve initiating human knowledge of good and evil, of the recognition of difference between the human and nature that emerged when they realised they were naked after eating the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.
Letisa: Go on
Toyin: In relation to your theory that story takes on overtones of a courageous but difficult and painful emergence into knowledge of sexual difference and the choices associated with it, of the fact that the human and nature are not identical and the challenges that imposes and perhaps of the snake as being a benefactor who introduces the possibility of this momentous shift in consciousness and God as representative of the desire to remain in the bliss of ignorance embodied by pre-reflexive nature –human identification. Perhaps that story could actually be seen as indicating in a symbolic drama our development as a race in terms of our constriction of nature and culture in relation to gender relations and the balance between the human and the natural worlds.
Letisa: Certainly interesting but you can make this correlation because you are speaking from the perspective of the twenty-first century where a variety of styles of textual and of Biblical interpretation have developed over the centuries. Judaeo-Christian thought, prior to the development of such developments in theology as the demythologising of Rudolf Bultmann, interpreted the Biblical narrative as divinely inspired literal account of the Fall as it was called. Also if anyone would prefer to remain in the semi-somnambulist bliss represented by the Garden of Eden rather than the creative conflicts embodied by human life as we know it.
Toyin: Judaeo-Christian thought has often constructed the Edenic state as the ideal state to which we hope to return at the end of life, and perhaps, various Utopian conceptions have been influenced by that. They seem to be marked by the notion of ideal being as the absence of conflict, of the clash of mental and emotional gears represented by the often difficult necessity of choice foregrounded by the presence of contrastive choices as the ground for the development of creative complexity in the human relationship to what is given by our biology and the development of the response to this givenness in terms of social and individual culture.
Letisa: Interestingly, the snake has had very interesting career in myth. In some mythic forms it is associated with the feminine and some even correlate its sinuous movements with the spiral motif which is correlative with symbolic characterisations of creative change but in terms of the shape assumed by natural forms and the processes through which they undergo change.
Toyin: Perhaps the Hebrews appropriated the snake image from neighbouring cultures whose ideas they despised and rebaptised the snake as an agent of destructive temptation. But they story they constructed suggests possibly, an ambivalence of thought in their characterisation since God is depicted from one perceive as a tyrant who desires to withhold knowledge from his creations, forbidding them to eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and when the snake persuades them to do so, becomes jealous of their knowledge, despairing that “they have become as us knowing good and evil”. Does the narrative suggest that God dreads the acquisition of such fundamental knowledge by his creations? It is this ambivalence, if I can call it that, that enriches and complexifies the narrative transposing it from the realm of a purely transgressive act on the part of a human and suggests a reaching out beyond a limited but blissful state and the snake as a catalytic agent in this rupture in consciousness that ensues. The woman is characterised as the initiator of the human race the temptation the snake holds out.
Letisa: Thanks. Intriguing. Again, is this possibility of interpretation not possible only from the perspective of twentieth century Western hermeneutics? Could the Biblical writers have been responsive to such complexities or they insinuated themselves into the text without the conscious assent of the writers?
Toyin: It would seem that conceptions of the feminine demonstrate degrees of ambivalence in various cultures, even when the ambivalence emerges in disguised from as we may argue it does in the Biblical narrative. What else is to be expected of negative responses to members of the race who could be demonized but remains the privileged bearer of children? Look at Yoruba traditional thought, for example.
Letisa: Does it evoke a similar ambivalence?
Toyin: Certainly. In this scheme, women are the primary agents of witchcraft. Their biological prerogatives enable them to wield fearsome powers, but these powers could be wielded for good or evil. At the same time as these constructions are developed and deployed in ways that privilege areas of male supremacy in the bulk of the social space, the creative/destructive power of the female is foregrounded.
Letisa: This reminds me of the point you made earlier about contrastive possibilities in cultural constructions and interpretation. Are these ideas developed in relation to mythic constructions?
Toyin: Yes. In the Ifa tradition, the central embodiment of traditional Yoruba thought, the witches are often characterised as bloodthirsty creatures and in the rest of the informal constructions in the culture, witches are often understood to be primarily female. The capacities or identity represented by witchcraft are also understood to inhere in their biology. But interestingly enough, aspects of this cultural construction not only conflate destructive and beneficent possibilities of these biologically grounded powers but can also be understood to relate them to terrestrial and cosmic processes of creative growth.
Letisa: Explain.
Toyin: Convergences emerge between conceptions of the feminine and the constitution of meaning, in cosmic and human terms. The semiotic categories of the Ifa divinatory system, known as the Odu of Ifa, are understood collectively as female and their constitution of forms of meaning as represented by the symbolic patterns of the divinatory system through which the Ifa oracle responds to the queries of its clients is constructed in terms of the procreative capacity of a woman, with the secondary patterns of the divinatory system being understood in terms of the younger children of Odu, their mother.
Letisa: Interesting. Does this correlation of the hermeneutic forms of the system go beyond these basic symbolic correlations?
Toyin: Certainly. The imagery associated with witchcraft becomes central to Ifa as expressive of the capacity of the oracle to develop a comprehensive grasp of the issues it is asked to deal with. This emerges in the use of the imagery of the bird in Ifa iconography. Birds are associated with witchcraft in the sense that witches are supposed to travel as birds, particularly on missions of deadly intent but the bird becomes evocative of Ifa’s comprehensive vision, a vision that derives from the world of vision from which the witches may also be understood to draw their own powers. And, in relation to Osanyin, the Orisa or deity of the occult powers of plants, they are also expressive of those powers. Herbalogy being an aspect of Ifa.
Letisa: You did mention that you are developing some ideas of your own in relation to this convergence between symbolism associated with female procreative capacities and cognitive processes as this emerges in the semiotics of Ifa.
Toyin: Yes. I am developing the notion of what I describe as an exchange theory of being which I derive from my study of such correspondences in Ifa hermeneutics in relation to my interests in what I describe as inter-ontological dialogue.. A mode of dialogue between various modes of being.
Letisa: How does that operate?
Toyin: I develop my ideas in relation to the central iconographic form of Ifa hermeneutics-the Ifa divination tray. The centre of the tray, which, in its emptiness and circular form, could be correlated with ideas of generative space, is the spatial arena where the divinatory instruments represented by the palm nuts or divining beads are thrown in response to the client’s query and the configurations assumed by the divinatory instruments as they are thrown constitutes the oracle’s response to the clients query.
Letisa: In what sense would you correlate the empty space with ideas of generation apart from the fact that that is the space where the answers to the clients query in terms of the configurations assumed by the divinatory instruments emerges?
Toyin: The conception of the empty space in terms of generative space is amplified by the fact not only is the point at which the oracles response to the specific query of the client emerges, emerging as it does in relation to specific question in relation to a particular issue at a particular point in time and space emerges, but this process of configuring a response to the client’s question operates not simply in terms of the patterns that emerge in relation to this query and the interpretation of the symbolic significance of the pattern that follows but the fact that the entire process which is manifest as what we could described as the level of physical visibility in terms of the geomantic patterns assumed by the divinatory instruments and in terms of verbal expressiveness in terms of the correlation of these patterns with particular verbal expressions through which their symbolic meanings are realised but the fact that these visible operations are understood as representative of the visible level of an invisible process, the second order expression of a first order process which is unseen but is nevertheless determinative of what is subsequently perceived, an expression at ther level of surface structure of a constitution of meaning that takes place at the level of deep structure. This underlying semantic constitution is understood to emerge through the dialogue between the Odu and the Ori or inward spirit of the client. The Odu constitute possibilities of meaning but their meaning value is actuated through dialogue with the clients Ori since the Ori is the repository of the potential of the client and the possibilities implied in/through the manifestation/expression of that potential in the progression of the client’s life.
Letisa: Interesting. Yes….
Toyin: The construction of meaning is therefore constellated through relationships between various ontological forms represented by the Odu who are understood as conscious entities and the Ori. This cross-ontological constitution ramifies even further in terms of ideas of ontological correlation in relation to the fact that the Odu are understood as semiotic forms that operate as means of describing the spiritual nature as well as of organising the totality of being and its possibilities in terms of semiotic forms represented by the Odu.
Letisa:So you perceive in the constellation of meaning in the divinatory process a process whereby a cosmological system represented by the Odu operates in a dynamic manner to respond to specific questions in relation to particular issues arising from particular points in space and time from within a repertoire of meaning which operates in relation to cosmographic framework so that the cosmography is brought to play in relation to specific situations
Toyin: Yes. The divinatory process, what Cornelius in reference to astrology, called “the moment of divination” could be understood, therefore, as a constitution in relation to particular space time conditions of the process through which modes of being come into being and the processes they go through as the transmission from one state to another or within one state in relation to various possibilities that come to embody
Letisa: You are suggesting, then, that the moment of divination, as you call it, is a microcosmic expression of generative processes, understood in terms of a correlation between macrocosmic-as represented by the full range of the cosmographic structure represented by the Odu- and microcosmic processes-as embodied by the focus of this cosmographic structure on /in relation to a particular situation in a specific point in space and time.
Toyin: Exactly. The empty space of the divination tray becomes then a womb of becoming, where macrocosmic process are correlated with the macrocosmic, in relation to particular questions as they emerge in particular points in space and time.
Letisa: Intriguing construction. Beyond your description of this interpretive possibility, do you intend to use this conception in any way in your work, as an active tool of knowledge?
Toyin: Certainly. I am developing what I describe as cross-ontological thinking. It relates to the notion of developing strategies of thought to explore questions of dialogue, whether understood metaphorically or literarily, between different modes of being. The conception of the Odu as mediating between various modes of being through a semiotically realized cosmography is proving inspiring to my thinking in this regard.
Letisa: Is that so?
Toyin: Yes. I’m still trying to work this thing out. You did say when we talked the other day that you also trying work out an epistemic strategy in relation to your ideas about feminine biology and consciousness. Tell me about it.
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