The Starry Cave

A life lived in nature is ruled by different laws than what we find in the monuments of stone, concrete and steel of modern urban civilization. I believe the concrete makes it difficult to resonate with the natural law and consequently our dharma or destiny turns clouded and confused. Our actions or karma seems blocked and bewildered at all times. For a dweller in the countryside re-entering the city it is a meeting of a cacophonic world of noise and disturbance. The omens that help us understand speaks clearly through birds and beasts that walk the land as its extension and messengers. In the city all this is altered, the peace of pigeons has turned into gluttony and confusion and they can no longer speak as they should. Nature loses its language when it is forged into stone and order of modern civilization and its inhabitants engages in dysfunctional interaction that was imposed by modern lifeless culture. The hunt for spirit and connection hides itself in ambition so the longing

Oramfe, Sangó, Jakuta, Hevioso are all spirits associated with thunder. They are all red in colour and they all have relationships to politics, water and women. The form of thunderous manifestation varies slightly. Oramfe seem to be more serene and Januslike, while both Jakuta and Hevioso seem to be less boastful than the Oyo representation of the thunder spirit, Sangó. In Ilé Ife, Oramfe is important in the Odun Ose festival dedicated to Omitoto , or the deified spirit of cool water. Central in the rituals is the apparition of Orisa Ito, which manifests as the mudfish. This fish who lives in two kingdoms at the same time, in water and on land replicates a deed secret on Sangós complex nature. The same bi-morphic element is found in the birds used to represents the spirit of thunder, the nightjar and the okin, or flycatcher. Both avian species suggest the importance of both anomaly and change in the animal world as a reference to ritual and political primacy. And here we encoun

Man is a small cosmos and the cosmos is a great man, in this is reflected the truth that man reflects the image above – and in the same way as the ideas and divine forms take shape in the physical world by intelligible dictate in the same way can man as a small cosmos and divine image create with the aid of the celestial fire. The sages following the path of Hermes Trismegistus will see that the harmonious order follow the circuits of the stars that all that is emanates from the divine and immutable ideas. By linking our reason with the silent fire of the divine mind an avenue is opened that can bring life to matter. When the cosmic fire is tempted to descend by prayers, enchantments, odors, music or the starts of the earth (the plants) a bond is forged for a given daemonic force or celestial virtue to animate matter. This can take form in possession of the human body, a talisman or a statue. The world of matter is essentially moved by the same celestial order. This opens for marve

Trapped in the duality of modern reality, most people instantly engage in an ordering of the same and the other. It is the very spirit of modernity at work, where we define who we are in relation to what we are not in bonds of accepted opposition. This reality came with the acceptance of the Cartesian world view, formed by doubt. Now, this was not the project Descartes had in mind, but this became his legacy. And so it followed that the world, that had since Antiquity been understood by induction or deduction as a dual way to approach truth saw this as barred by a wall of opposition. We, as modern people, have a taste for what is new, but there is little new actually. History repeats it self and so does thinking, not in the exact same way (which is demonstrated by the mathematical principal of infinitesimal portions), but in similar patterns. The time (history), the people (society) and the temperament of the land alters slightly this repetition and generates a certain difference. In

Our world is a strange place. Ifá calls our world , Aye Akamara , the world of mystery, hinting towards the enigmatic rays of wisdom that veils our world and create confusion. These veils are layers born from the opposing poles on the axis mundi that sustains creation. It is the blending of night and day, the darkness and the light. It is why daybreak and twilight hypnotize us, because at these hypnotic moments we see unity. Since unity is so alien from the perspective of fragmented man we see these points of union as something outside ordinary perception – and alas, these unusual moments speak of the original state, about perfection. Modern man experience and exercise the illusion of duality daily. It is our way of making sense of things, if what we experience is not in a category of sameness it belong sot the other – and modern man do not like the other, because we have been condition to see in the other an enemy. The other threatens our ideas of belongingness, and it is here we

Light is the building block of being and creation. The interaction between light and darkness constitutes the cosmic pulse and is replicated in man by breath. When we are inhaling and exhaling we are interaction between life and its absence. In a cosmic scale this takes the form of light and darkness and just as breath needs extreme contrast to maintain life, so it is with cosmos and creation. It is the extreme that generates the stability of the earth and the world and it is these contrasts that make our world a mystery. The source of light manifests in several ways and is a source for abundance, blessings, wealth and what the Yoruba people call Ori rere, a calm conscience. The objective is that our being in the world should be soothing and comforting, as the caresses from the rays of the sun. When light is exalted it burns and makes all things barren. It does this while it remains in the glory of its own being. These cosmic and mystical phenomena can replicate in people as well