THE CONVERGENCE OF KUNTUNKANTAN AND ODU IFA IN TERMS OF THE WOMB OF BEING AND BECOMING

The womb of Iya Nla, the chthonic power which resonates in the cosmic force of the Odu, is the emptiness at the centre of the tray which is the physical template of Ifa divination and which represents the dialogue between various forms of being in Ifa. An Emptiness both physical and NonPhysical, seemingly void yet alive with intense fecundative power. This LivingVoid is the space at the centre of Kuntunkantan where the convergence of the dance of circles constitutes the play of the possibilities of being, where the movement of the sea, the rhythms of earth, sky, rain, sun and moon, the oscillation between Life and Death, the patterns shaped by the transformations of all beings, within and beyond life, human and animal, plants and spirits, and those enigmatic beings who are neither human, animal, plant, nor spirit, but who, at times, are related to them, resonate in tune with the drumming, dancing, and feasting going on in the rambling palace of Iya Nla.

Gbogbo ilu ni mbe l’okun, Olokun Seniade Ajifilupe,Oba Omi All kinds of drumming occur beneath the sea, Olokun Seniade, The one who wakes up to the rhythm of drums, lord of the waters”.

As the Mother of All, she receives and entertains visitors, all day, all night-the orisa, spirits of the newly dead, spirits of plants and animals, souls of thousands of children waiting to be born onto the earth, and souls of [the coming-and-going] Abiku[ceaseless navigators between death and life]all flock around her as she dances through her huge reception hall dressed in immaculate white cloth and decked in white coral beads, welcoming one group after another. Iya Nla likes music and dance so much that she can celebrate for weeks without caring for food[1].

Her dance is the dance of life and death, of the convergence of paradox and the mundane, of taboo and ordinary existence

Womb–of-all, home-of-all, hearse–of-all night[2]

Ile,Ogere,Af’okoyeri

Alapo ika.

Ari ikun gbe eniyan mi

…………………………

A je Orangun ma bi

Odu yi gbiri gbiri ma fo o…

Earth, Ogere, who combs her hair with a hoe,

The owner of a bag full of evil

She has a stomach big enough to swallow human beings

………………………………………………………………

She swallowed the Oragun without vomiting

The big pot that rolls on and on without breaking……

Iya oloyon oruba

Oni’run abe osiki

A b’obo fun ni l’orun bi egbe isu

The pot-breasted mother

With much hair on her private parts;

The owner of a vagina that suffocates like dry yam in the throat

Olokun Ajetiaye,Alagbalugbu omi

Ajawo okoto

Afailorogun pariwo

See see ni gbede

The inexhaustible sea, immense water

Roaring eddy of sea shells

Vibrations from the deep[3]

Her dance is the dance through which the shapes and combinations of being are realised, the transformative dynamism that makes possible the creative development of forms, whether organic or inorganic, whether perceptions or situations, the grasp of possibilities of existence through flights of the self and the mind, the powers through which life and death exist as aspects of the world. The Dance of Something, which, from one perspective, can be approached as Mother, but which, seen from another angle, from the view achieved through the overworld of reality where the body is not, where the traveller exists only as a thought making sense of the Nothingness of the universe, in the emptiness between stars where the self views reality through its essential form as a lacework of living force within the Emptiness, The face sketches itself on the mind, a face indescribable in any human words, beautiful beyond imagining, terrible past all conception, not evil as men in this life know it, but UnEarthly, outside the boundaries of human thought, a face damnable to the creature, who, inhabiting a speck in the universe, having been imbued with life through mysterious means, at the end of its sojourn must give back to the earth the matter of which it was formed, the insect who crawls the earth and calls itself man, who fears the power of the Sight of that Face to strip the self to its core of original Nakedness.[1]


[1] Adaptation from Sharra’s Exile by Marion Zimmer Bradley, Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Practical Reason and Wole Soyinka’s A Dance of the Forests.


[1] From The Gelede Spectacle by Babatunde Lawal

[2] From “Spelt from Sibyl’s Leaves” by Gerald Manley Hopkins

[3] From The Gelede Spectacle by Babatunde Lawal

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