CONTRASTIVE AND CONTRADICTORY VALUATIONS OF EPISTEMES IN WESTERN CULTURE

These questions, however, could be understood as more complex than has just been described above. The mainstream tradition of Western philosophy from the Pre-Socratics to Derrida and after, enjoys prestige that ensures it is the system in terms of which the educational system is organised-agreeably a very loose statement. But I wonder how commonplace is the experience of people being expected to, being trained to, or actually reading Kant, Descartes, Aristotle or even Plato for inspiration, relaxation or for using their ideas as a means of exploring questions in or for directing their lives? And yet, these philosophers are discussing issues that touch on the very tissue of daily human existence but they have not been instutionalised in that way.

One major Western thinker who seems to be an exception is Freud on account of the massive impact he has had on how people conceive of the mind and of relationships. On the other hand, people in Europe and North America who are disposed to go great thinkers forideas relative to the business of living , it seems to me, are more likely to go to Asian and esoteric Western thought.

We have heard of Madonna's fascination with the Jewish mysticism of the Kabala, The Beatles' fascination with a particular school of Indian mediation, but I wonder if we shall ever hear of people's fascination with Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Hegel, Descartes, Wittgenstein etc, even though the Asian thinkers and the Kabala are much more counter intuitive, less close to conventional common sense than the Western philosophers?

NETWORKS OF EPISTEMES WITHIN AND BETWEEN WESTERN,AFRICAN AND ASIAN THOUGHT

Along these lines, therefore, all divinatory systems are marginalised systems, whether Ifa or astrology which is to a significant degree Middle Eastern and European in origin and in current application.

The Hermetic tradition, which is a tradition of knowledge that has existed as an undercurrent of Western thought since the Renaissance, and which integrates astrology, alchemy, magic and the more modern Neo-Pagan and Wiccan traditions which emerged in Europe in the 19th and twentieth centuries are marginalised traditions. I expect Indian philosophy enjoys a lot of prestige in India and in the West, but I wonder to what degree, if any, Indian and any other educational systems are organised in terms of the fundamental goals that run through that philosophy, goals, which as far as I can see from my limited understanding, are fundamentally different from that of Western thought and Western education. If I am correct in my scepticism, Indian philosophy in its Classical and perhaps most distinctive form, is a marginalised system within India.

The study and practice of Indian systems such as Buddhism, Vedanta and Yoga is
very strong in the West, both within academia and outside it, where they are vigorously practiced. To what degree, however, are Western educational systems influenced by the fundamental postulates of these Indian systems, particularly about the nature of mind and its relationship with the universe? When they are adapted for use in Western institutions to what degree, are , what is ,in my view, their fundamentally transformative and transcendental motivations incorporated, and to what degree are they modified to accommodate more limited conceptions of reality which are dominant in mainstream Western thought?

DYNAMIC HIERACHIES OF EPISTEMES

The question of what constitutes a marginalised as different from a dominant from of knowledge is understood here in term of its relationship to the dominant episteme in global terms as represented by Western high culture. The manner in which this culture interprets the character of the world and how it is best understood, and the implicit or explicit evaluation of the relative significance of various ways of arriving at knowledge in relation to this dominant
paradigm is the dominant means of studying reality in the world today.

As far as I know, the official approaches to the universe, those that are dominant in educational systems and those publicly acknowledged in public communication, in all continents, are structured by this culture which has its origins in Europe, specifically Europe as it emerged after the Scientific Revolution of the seventeenth century. Every other conception of the world and of epistemological procedures, whether in the West, Africa or Asia, regardless of the status it
enjoys outside mainstream education within or outside its country of origin is a marginalised system since it will not be held up as standard of evaluation.

EXPLORING WENGER'S AND MALTWOOD'S COSMOGEOGRAPHIC CREATIONS THROUGH DIALOGUE BETWEEN CONTRASTIVE BUT COMPLEMENTARY EPISTEMES

Wenger's and Maltwod's conceptions of the landscape they interpret depict these spaces as embodying cosmographic forms. They both try to lead the audience to a participation in the mysteries the landscapes may reveal, Wenger through her sculptures and Maltwood, through her maps of the landscape.

The blog explores these conceptions of landscape in terms of adialogue between marginalised and dominant hermeneutic forms within and between Africa, the West and Asia. The major hermeneutic forms are the Ifa divinatory system which has its origins with the Yoruba, Western mainstream and esoteric philosophies and Asian philosophy.

Maltwood's Glastonbury Cosmogeography as Crystallising Experiences and Perceptions of Self and Cultural Transformation

Centripetal and Centrifugal Mandala:Opon Ifa Cosmogram and Maltwood's Glastonbury Cosmogeography

Maltwood interprets the Glastonbury landscape in terms of astrological and Arthurian imagery. Her work represents the landscape as delineating images that derive from these cultural forms.

Her interpretation of the Glastonbury landscape could be understood as correlating a number of elements in Western thought. It integrates conceptions of terrestrial and celestial correlation with ideas of the transformation of the self within the framework constituted by such a unified understanding of the universe. Her focus is on astrology whose adherents could be understood as relating the spatial and temporal limitations and coordinates of their terrestrial existence with the expansiveness represented by the celestial locations and cosmic motions of the celestial bodies, and, thereby, to a degree, at least, overcoming or transforming the finitude to which they are confined within the limitations of space and time.

Her ideas also integrate notions of transformation of self depicted in the Grail motif from Arthurian legend, where pre-Christian motifs such as the chalice of the Irish goddess Ceridwen are fused with the Christian motif of the chalice from which Christ drank at the Last Supper to create the image of the Grail, a transformative object which is capable of transforming a person who perceives or holds it into a more than human state of being.

Intra and Intercultural Transformations Dramatised by Katherine Maltwood's Glastonbury Mandala

Katherine Maltwood's Glastonbury Mandala

This drive towards new forms of meaning by increasingly larger groups of people has led to the development of new methods of discovering and relating with the sacred, of conceiving the world and of navigating within what has been described as a “re-enchanted” universe . Some of these efforts are efforts to re-discover or recreate endogenous pre-Christian world views and technologies of fundamental meaning, of which the sacred is an inclusive category.

It is in the latter effort of develop these conceptions of meaning in terms of pre-Christian conceptions of nature and the human and their interrelationship that the convergences between the ideas developed by Wenger and Maltwood, in Nigeria and in England, respectively, converge. These correlations also demonstrate their distinctive achievements as aspects of larger cultural movements which have been catalyzed by changes in European society which have impacted on Africa.

Wenger’s history, therefore, could be said to dramatise the confluence of Europe and Africa in a particularly visceral form as a European whose vocation in Africa not only represents par excellence the efforts of many Africans to rediscover and recreate in relation to the changing Weltanschaaung in African emerging from the encounter of African world views with other world views, but also the efforts of Europeans to develop newer forms of meaning that bypass or are not limited to Christianity, reclaim the realm of the subjective and the magical in nature from both Christianity and modern science and technology.

With time, these movements, in both Europe and Africa,developed into efforts to achieve these goals through the development, rediscovery or recreation of ways of conceiving the human being, the cosmos and their interrelationship that are pre-Christian and are often materially embodied while emphasizing on the material as representing only one pole of being.

With time, these movements, in both Europe and Africa,developed into efforts to achieve these goals through the development, rediscovery or recreation of ways of conceiving the human being, the cosmos and their interrelationship through methods that are pre-Christian and are often materially embodied while emphasizing the material as representing only one pole of being.

This trans-materiality is often expressed in terms of human embodiment and the capacity for consciousness; agency and the embodiment of modes of being that go beyond the material in nature. It is also demonstrated in the capacity of the human being to relate with and shape their individual universe, and even participate, to a degree, in the shaping of the larger cosmos through such action.

In the development of these categories of being and of human agency in relation to them, the movements to which Wenger and Katherine Maltwood belong to could be understood as belonging to could be said to demonstrate significant points of convergence, and their divergences could be understood to highlight their similarities.

These developments are represented in the West by such movements, among others, as Paganism, magic and Wicca. These possibilities of thought are crystallised in Maltwood’s correlation of astrology, Arthurian literature and the esoteric undertones of the Grail Legend, in interpreting the Glastonbury landscape in terms of conceptions of meaning and purpose that transcend the limitations of Western high culture as it has emerged since the circumscription of the character of reality and, correspondingly, the development of a scale of valuation in the assessment of human pursuits that emerged after the seventeenth century Scientific Revolution.

Transformations of Self and Landscape as Elements in Inter and Intracultural Transformations across Cultures

Wenger's Transformations of Self and Landscape as Elements in Inter and Intracultural Transformations across Cultures in Africa and the West

She could be understood as participating, not only in the birth of a new self through her experiences and her responses to them,but as participating in larger cultural transformations in the development of new forms in modern African and post-World War 2 European culture.

These forms are expressed in Africa in the search for new cultural forms in the aftermath of the havoc wreaked on endogenous African cultures by colonialism and their subjugation through their interpretation in terms of the evaluative criteria of Western high culture.

In Europe and North America these novel cultural forms are expressed in terms of new ways of conceiving relationships to metaphysical and ultimate meaning in contrast to the dominant paradigms that emerged after the Scientific Revolution in the seventeenth century and the later Industrial Age.These cultural and economic developments cemented the progressive loss of social prestige and power to shape human minds suffered by Christianity,the previously dominant religion of the West, since the schism represented by the Reformation.

Oshun Forest Cosmogeography as Transformative Nexus in Wenger's Biographical Itinerary

SUSANNE WENGER,ULLI AND GEORGINIA BEIER:CO-TRAVELLERS AT A NEXUS OF CULTURAL TRANSFORMATION

Oshun Forest Cosmogeography as a Transformative Nexus in Wenger's Biographical Itinerary:The Emergence of an Integrative Vocation as a Consummation of Professional and Personal Growth

She understands herself as mediating between both the material form represented by the forest, the cultural forms in relation to which she encounters the forest as a hermeneutic space, and the non-human, non-material forms embodied in nature, which, at various points, she describes as spirits, transcendent energy fields, gods, and by the name they are characterised in the tradition originated by the Yoruba, and in terms of which it is named, the Orisha, of the Orisha religious tradition.

Wenger's chance encounters with the Orisha priests as well as with the natural spaces and cultural forms that inspired her in Yorubaland emerged from an unanticipated trip to Nigeria initiated by her then boyfriend and eventually,husband, the German Ulli Beier,who was to become in Nigeria a catalytic force in the development of the early stages of modern African literary,visual and intellectual culture through his activities as a cultural connector and educational entrepreneur and scholar.

This chance trip by two carefree people,as Beier described the experience, proved providential for Wenger in relation to her own sensitivity to what she describes as archaic modes of interpreting the world.Her encounter with endogenous Yoruba culture constitutes a shaping of experience into hermenutic forms that have led to her development of a new self within the crucible of her encounter with the cultural and spatial forms that characterise those areas of Yorubaland where she has lived.

This self constitutes a sense of vocation centred in her sense of mediation between cultural forms, between natural forms represented by the forest and between these and the non-human forms which are embodied by the forest but can not be characterised purely in terms of a description of its material constitution.

Images:


Susanne Wenger in advanced old age,having lived in Yorubaland since 1950.Osogbo,where she has lived almost all that time,celebrated her 90th birthday in 2005.For birthday honours see http://www.rootsandrooted.org/susanne.htm

Image from couragefilms.at/pages/documentary/wenger/wenger-info

Susanne Wenger in meditation at the Oshun river.

1. From The Adunni Olorisha Trust at http://www.geocities.com/adunni1/sw.html
2. and A Life with the Gods in their Yoruba Homeland by Susanne Wenger and Gert Chesi

3. Ulli Beier and his second wife Georginia Beier,who also played a fundamental role in his cultural efforts in Nigeria. Ulli is in Nigerian attire.

From the University of Amherst archives at http://www.amherst.edu/library/archives/exhibitions/beier/ulli-georgina.html

4.Ulli Beier later on in life.
From: http://www.ralf-siedhoff.de/raiarts/chronik.html

Wenger's Oshun Forest Cosmogeography as a Nexus of Mediation between Inter-Cultural Forms,Modes of Being and Forms of Knowledge

Opon Ifa Mandala/Cosmogram and Wenger/Oshun Forest Cosmogeography

Wenger’s understanding of the forest can be understood as emerging in relation to navigation between a confluence of factors. The first of these factors is represented by the relationship between the material space of the forest and her understanding of the various aspects of significance constituted by that space.

She navigates between the material reality of the forest’s space and her understanding of that space as also embodying forms of being which are neither animal, elemental or vegetative in their totality but which participate in or are to some degree constituted by these material forms.

The other set of factors in relation to which she shapes her understanding of the forest is represented by the communities of thought whose ideas influence her conception of the metaphysical significance of the geography of the forest.

The interpretive communities whose hermeneutic paradigms she draws upon,are, principally, the Yoruba Orisha tradition,which is directly related to the forest since the forest is in Yorubaland in South-West Nigeria,and, Jungian psychology, which provides her with a means of interpreting cultural confluence across time and space. Secondarily, Taoism, which influences her understanding of the ideational possibilities of physical space, both natural and humanly constructed, and, Tibetan Buddhism, the influence of which seems to be suggested in her conjunction of expansive abstract thought which attempts to unite mind and cosmos in its terrestrial and cosmic aspects with a concrete visualisation of complex ideas evident in both her writing and her art.

In Wenger's experience in relation to the Oshun Forest the opportunities provided by the vagaries of chance are transformed into hermeneutic pathways through which the artist becomes a conduit for mediation between material and cultural forms represented by the forest and the interpretive communities whose thought worlds inspire her in her immersive relationship with the elemental space of the forest and which she draws upon to conceptualise the outcomes emerging from that encounter.

LANDSCAPE AS COSMOGRAPHIC FORM IN WENGER'S CONFIGURATION OF THE OSHUN FOREST

From time immemorial, human beings have sought pristine natural spaces as places to seek or encounter something beyond the mundane realities that shape daily life.

In the forest regions of the world, the forest is often perceived as the abode of supernatural wonder into which people go to be initiated into spiritual mysteries, awakening them to the hidden metaphysical meaning of life.

The Oshun Forest in Oshogbo, Nigeria has been interpreted by the Austrian/Nigerian artist and philosopher Susanne Wenger, for whom the forest has become a spiritual home, in terms that develop into an expansive metaphysical vision the general understanding of forests as demonstrating sacred spaces.

Living in Oshogbo since 1950, she has come to understand the forest as embodying the spiritual beings who animate the world as understood in the Orisha tradition developed by the Yoruba of South-West Nigeria, where Oshogbo is located. Within this vision, the devotee who explores this forest make contact with the spiritual beings who constitute the metaphysical dynamism and spiritual essences of the world. The spiritual forces embodied by the forest represent a microcosm of the macrocosmic structure of the universe.

Wenger’s conception of the forest as a template of the metaphysical structure and dynamism of the cosmos could be understood as a development of Classical Yoruba thought as described by Irele, in its conceiving of the forest as constituting a theatre of experience within which the adventures of the hunter are evocative of the challenges faced by the human being in navigating the symbiotic formation of spiritual and material existence that constitutes life on earth.

The complexity of the forest’s ecosystem is constituted not only by the interrelationships of the flora and fauna that compose and inhabit it but also by the reflection of that physical complexity in a network of relationships between the material and spiritual aspects of its elemental and animal life. This interrelational network makes the forest into an example of one way of interpreting Aquinas’s conception of connaturality in terms of a symbiotic conception of reality, within which the material, the psychological and the spiritual are mutually constitutive of the nature of being.