Sri Yantra and Astrological Correlations







Yantra is basically a diagram representing the astronomical position of the planets over a given date and time. It is considered auspicious in Hindu mythology. These yantras are made up on various objects i.e. Paper, Precious stones, Metal Plates and alloys. It is believed that if we, as humans, follow the basic principal of constantly concentrating on the representation, it helps you build Fortunes, as planets above have their peculiar Gravity which governs basic emotions and karma, derived to attain satisfaction. These yantras are basically made on a particular date and time depending on the prescribed procedures defined under vedas.



Sri Yantra at

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:SriYantra_construct.svg

From

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yantra

Yantra Theory and Practice

The Sri Yantra and the the Creative Dance between Male and Female Principles in the Emanation of Being from a Central Point

The Sri Yantra, or Yantra of Creation, originated in our pre-history. It has been known in the Hindu and Buddhist traditions and since the Vedic times as the most powerful and mystically beautiful of all yantras (geometric mandalas known as power diagrams).

It represents the timeless creative principle of the universe, the continuous unfoldment of all realms of creation from the central source, and with that mindfulness, it is used as an object of meditation.

The central point, called bindu, represents transcendental unity and the source of creation. The opposing sets of triangles represent the male and female principles which form creation, themselves being recognized as expressions of the polarity inherent in the creative force of the bindu. The surrounding geometries represent the realms of creation, entirely supported by the creative process, and which would have no reality whatsoever without the omnipresence of the transcendental source.

We meditate upon that Divine Sun,the true Light of the Shining Ones.May it illuminate our minds.
The Gayatri Verse of the Vedas(from a time long before the historical records)

http://www.cosmiclight.com/sriyantra.htm

Stephen Michael Nanninga

TEMI ESAN ON SRI YANTRA AS DESCRIBED AT http://www.cosmiclight.com/sriyantra.htm

20-10-07

the unending creativity. The never ending creative process. The existence of endless possibilities, permutations and combination, infinite renewal and convergence, no beginning, no end and all this from Infinite Love. the whole concept of Infinity. Unity of purpose to achieve infinite ends. one creative process supporting the other. No one stands alone.

Ontological and Epistemological Questions Evoked by Wenger's and Maltwood's Cosmogeographies

Astrological Mandala
Cancer mandala by Tad Atmann

In addition to exploring the cosmographic and psychological or psychosocial implications of the artists’ recreation of landscapes, I am also exploring the implications of their conceptions beyond the compass of their work. Their work invites a consideration of questions about the nature of being that go beyond the dominant forms in Western high culture, the world’s dominant culture. Western high culture is the world’s dominant culture on account of the dominance of the West in all aspects of life, from the political, to the economic, to the scientific and technological, to the military and cultural. Globally, this culture is the official standard of evaluation of competing world views, of social and economic systems.

[For development of similar conceptions about the West see Francis Fukuyama The End of History and responses to that work.See also Huntindgdon's Clash of Cultures.Also see also works and ideas on Globalisation.But these works will also need to be examined in relation to earlier works that examine the West within different perspectives such as Oswald Spengler's Decline of the West and Arnold Toynbee's Civilisation.On the role of physics in this culture see Pythagoras Trousers by Margaret Wertheim]

The ontological questions evoked by the conceptions of both artists and which I explore include:

To what degree could these ambitious efforts to reinterpret spatial forms in terms of more than physical conceptions throw light on the modes of sentience thereby demonstrated by these artists, and by implication, the modes of awareness demonstrated by similar responses to space in other cultures, places and periods?

Could such efforts at correlation across spatial and cultural boundaries assist us in understanding the manner in which people are fitted to space and time?

Or to put it differently, the interactions between space, time and mind and between various forms of being? What credence could be given to Wenger's and Maltwood's claims of modes of agency expressed in or through landscape that are different from those forms of agency privileged in Western high culture?

In the perspectives advanced by Wenger and influenced by the Classical Yoruba philosophy of nature,landscapes are understood to embody sentient beings,beings who are neither plainly and completely human or animal.

Within the world's dominant culture, Western high culture,however,unlike in Classical Yoruba thought,trees are simply vegetative forms that demonstrate the characteristics understood of such forms. They are not sentient nor act as homes for sentient beings. The attestations of non- human and non-animal sentience in nature also emerges in the popular but ontologically marginal neo-pagan movement in the West.The Classical Yoruba/Wenger conception of forms of sentience in nature and those of Western neo-Paganism,which has some significance for Maltwood's work, can be seen,therefore,to demonstrate significant degrees of correlation.

With reference to Maltwood's work,central questions that emerge about its wider ramifications include "Can landscapes be understood in terms of large scale configurations of cultural forms in such a manner that the development of both natural forms and human made forms coalesce over the centuries ?" "Can the various interventions on landscape by the human community coalesce with natural forms to create such expressions as the gigantic representation of the convergence between two different forms of human culture, the astrological and the Arthurian,which Maltwood argues for the Glastonbury landscape?

We shall be moving outward from the centre of the artistic structure, whether cosmographic map or cosmographically structured forest space. In terms of radiation in terms of in relation terms its ideational significance and secondly, the of these correlative physical and ideational correlations to radiations of the artistic creations of the artists from its sources in their mental worlds and the possibility of interpreting these mental worlds in terms of the creations they have enabled to bring into being, as well as a challenge to the dichotomy thus established.

May we not speak of the works shaping as well as being shaped by the artist's minds/and may mind not be understood as thought, feeling, as well as physical activity in as much as it expresses ideational and at times cognitive value that is not registered in mental consciousness, whether emotional or ratiocinative or even intuitive?

Image:Cancer mandala by Tad Atmann at http://www.atmann.net/artdesign.htm

EPISTEMO-BIOGRAPHICAL CORRELATIONS

MANDALA OF THE TWO REALMS:WOMB AND DIAMOND MANDALAS

What am I doing here?

What has led the researcher here?

Can the lens of critical exploration be turned on the researcher himself, so that, just as the artists' psychosocial worlds are explored, those of the researcher are also examined?

The artists are creating cognitive worlds through the development of metaphysical conceptions in imaginative terms.

These creations demonstrate particular ontological,epistemological and social implications.Along similar lines, the researcher is creating a universe of cognitive possibilities through his work on the artists.

Can both cognitive universes illuminate each other?Can the efforts of the artists and that of the reseacher studying their work throw light on each other?Is such mutual illumination not the very purpose of research,in the first place?

Not necessarily.

Research is more often understood as a one way illumination with the researcher's efforts throwing light on the subject studied. It is less often perceived as capable of facilitating understanding of the research project as an aspect of the life of the researcher themselves.

Less often studied is the potential of the research project for facilitating an understanding of the life of the researcher as a primary hermeneutic project within which the academic research project is a secondary phenomenon.The academic project is a secondary phenomenon demonstrating the directions taken by particular imperatives and orientations within the larger project.

Why has the researcher chosen this project?What combination of choice and circumstance has contributed to their entry into this effort? Could the answers to these questions throw light on the manner in which they frame and investigate their subject? The manner in which the subject is framed and examined is of course crucial to whatever understanding emerges from the investigation.That being the case,could a study of the factors external to the explicit boundaries constituted by the public face of the research project but which shape the project contribute to a better understading og the immediate goals of the project?


My use of the metaphor of light in this context also evokes questions that help clarify the issues at stake. In terms of relationships between the extra-academic context of research and the academic structures in relation to or in terms of which research takes place.

In speaking of the extra academic and the academic contexts in relation to mutual or one sided "illumination" what are the implications of this metaphor evocative of casting light from a source onto another? It suggests a projection outward from a source onto an recipient of what has been cast from the source. In other words an effect moving outward from a source to a target. How accurate is this metaphor here? To what degree ism it helpful in suggesting what could actually take place oin relation to these two existential universes?

Perhaps a more helpful metaphor could be one that evokes, not so much the movement of something from a source to a target, even if such movement occurs mutually, from target to a source and from the erstwhile target to the source that had earlier impacted it, but a metaphor that suggests something more of the simultaneously temporal and atemporal, linear and nonlinear conjunctions and correlations that emerge in the relationship between the academic structures of research and their informing extra academic contexts. A dynamism evoked, perhaps, by a geometric form that suggests such a complex interplay, possibly the diagram of interlaced triangles that emerges in both Hindu and Hermetic thought.

In both traditions, it stands for the interpenetration of different modes of being. In Hermeticism, as a pentagram,it resents the interpenetration of spirit and matter. In Hinduism, as a Yantra,it evokes the interpenetration of masculine and feminine forces in the constitution of being. The central idea is that of interpenetration, where one aspect of being does not demonstrate a fundamental separation from the other without being identical with it.

In this context, the metaphor of illumination remains helpful, but with a recognition of its limitations as suggesting a linearity that might not be sufficiently accurate in its evocation of the relationships between the academic structure of research and the larger extra academic context that informs research.








Above:Images of Mandala of the Two Realms:Womb and Diamond Mandalas from http://www.onmarkproductions.com/html/mandala1.shtml

More on womb and diamond mandalas

http://www.brh.co.jp/en/experience/journal/48/research_3.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandala_of_the_Two_Realms

MANDALA THEORY AND PRACTICE AS HERMENEUTIC STRATEGY IN EXPLORING THE COSMOGEOGRAPHIES OF WENGER AND MALTWOOD:THE DIAMOND MANDALA AND DEDUCTIVE THOUGHT

MANDALA FORMS IN AFRICAN AND ASIAN ART AND THOUGHT

The second approach to navigating the space delineated by a mandala is to explore it in terms of centrifugal movement, a movement inwards from the margins to the centre. Such centrifugal motion is meant to enable the meditator on the mandala relate themselves to the integration of multiplicity to unity that the mandala depicts.

This unity is often cosmographic.It could also include,or be exclusively psychological.It could also be a social unity.The mandala could focus on the universe of which the individual is a part but to which the individual belongs as an entity who is distinct in some ways from that univese.

The mandala could depict the internal universe of the individual.This would be a representation of the universe that constitutes the mind of the invidual.

In depicting the universe to which the individual belongs,it often does so in cosmographic tems,representing the metaphysical structure of the cosmos.That possibility of representing the universe external to the individual could be adapted to the depiction of the univese from any perpective,whether metaphysical,physical,social, or psychological.

The essential point is to depict the universe to which the individual belongs.
This depiction could be done in relation to greater degees of inclusiveness,beginning from the social world of the invidual to increasingly larger configurations, till they encompass the world.

The Classical development of mandalas as epistemological tools,constructed according to particular aesthetic criteria,emerged in India,in Hinduism and later,in Buddhism,particularly in the developments of Buddhism in other Asian countries,particularly Tibet.Iconographic forms similar to the mandala in construction and sometimes in interpretation and purpose have been develped in other cultures,but it seems that the literature currently available suggests that it was in Hinduism and Buddhism that they achieved their most precise and elaborate charaterisation as cogntive tools.

Within these religious cultures,the mandala was most often understood as a cosmographic representation which would asisst the contemplative achieve a cognitive identification with the metaphysical structure and dynamism of the cosmos.The possiblity of such identification implies a detree of conjunction between cosmic structure and the structure of human consciousness.Without such a conjunction,would apprehension of cosmic form be possible by a conscousness that was a part of that form?

The notions of microcosm and macrocosm are central to Classical mandala hermeneutics.

Whether the mandala is meant to be contemplated in terms of a centripetal or a centrifugal configuration,its interpretation consists in the intergretion of the multifarious aspects of the phenomenon being contemplated into a unity. This unity could be constiutted by the origin of the phenomenon,or by a later stage of the development of that phenomenon.

The starting point of a process often contains the potential later realised in subsequent developments of that process,but that does not make the starting point equatable with a later,more comprehensive stage of its development.The latter stage could embody previously latent or even unanticpated aspects that would represent,at times,even a new form entirely.

Along those lines,Dion Fortune's conception of cosmic development,similar to Hegel's conception of the develpment of ideas,of history, and of being,in general,posits an emergence from a centre and a reabsorption into that centre at the end of a cycle of experience.The cosmos that is reintegrated into that centre,however, is not identical with that which went out.It is identical in its fundamental metaphysical grounding but is not identical in the possiblities of being that have been actualised through the progression it has undergone. This can be related to the Hindu conception of cosmic time known as the Yugas.It would be valuable to explore the level of sophistication of the Hindu conception.A similar conception might also have been developed in Helena Blavatsky's Secret Doctrine.In a similar stream of ideas and contexts,it could be relevant to see Dr.Douglas Baker's books.

This progression is made possible by the act of manifestation from the primal centre where the potentialities that are actualised through this progression are latent.

It is possible to utilise Fortune's conception of cosmic progression without necessarily identifying with its larger postulations about the cosmos.Such a caefully qualified appropriation wcould involve a focus on its epistemological implications rather than its metaphysical focus/directon.

An imaginative exploration of such conceptions of the emergence of the manifest cosmos from a primal centre can,in my view,facilitate an understanding of how the individual's psychogical and social universe is manifest from a psychological and social centre.

Our interest when reflecting on the mandala in relation to the work of Wenger and Maltwood is in terms of cosmographic conceptions and psychological processes.In terms of cosmograpohic conceptions,my interest is in the radiation of meaning from a central point within the cosmogeographic creations of the artists as well as the convergence of meaning towards a central point in those cosmogeographic forms.

In relation to the psychological processes of both artists I am exploring the manner in which their cosmogeographic creations represent the development of meaning through the interplay between the self,the landscapes they interpret and the interptetive communities in relation to which the artists interpret the landscape and the specfic interpretive techniques or technologies which they employ in carrying out and concretising their interpretations

More specifically,I am interested in the radiation of meaning from a central point-the self-into the cosmographic formation of landscape.I am also interested the configuration of meaning in relation to the self from forms external to the self,specifically,landscapes and interpretive forms.Interpretive forms include both bodies of ideation and iconography and the communities in relation to which they have emerged.

In relation to the cosmogeographic constructions of Wenger and Maltwood,therefore, I am exploring the cosmographic and psychological implications of their constructions of lanscapoe through an interpretive strategy represented by outward and inward motion.Outward motion-from the self to the landscapes.Inward motion-from the landscapes to the self.

We are examining,therefore,their development of physical space in terms of explicit cosmological correlations.We are also interested in the implicit psychological correlations that their works evoke.

MANDALA THEORY AND PRACTICE AS HERMENEUTIC STRATEGY IN EXPLORING THE COSMOGEOGRAPHIES OF WENGER AND MALTWOOD: THE WOMB MANDALA AND INDUCTIVE THOUGHT

MANDALA FORMS IN ASIAN AND AFRICAN ART AND THOUGHT

Let us begin our navigation of the landscapes which the artists have transformed into cosmographic spaces. We begin from the centre of the patterns they have created. Beginning from this spatial and ideational nexus will enable us gain orientation as we move ahead into the larger space.

We are thereby navigating the landscapes in terms of the mental navigation of a mandala.A mandala can be navigated in one of two ways,each of them corresponding to the conception of either the womb mandala or the diamond mandala.The womb mandala represents the emergence of the universe from a primal centre,and,one could say,suggets the emergence of the multiciplicity of the human mind or even of the complex structure of a human life,or of any phenomenon,from a unifying centre.The emergence of the many from the one.It corresponds to a centripetal movement,where one navigates the mandala outward from its centre to its outer edges.It can also correspond to an inductive process of thinking,where one moves from the general or the universal to the particular.Deducing particular examples from a general point or rule.

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.