COSMIC CONTROL: The Igbo Metaphysical Process of Conjuring Rainfall - Onyeji Nnaji

Because the process of conjuring rainfall is particularly African, people condemned it as being fetish. But one big surprise anybody that undergoes this process will certainly come out with, is that, the whole process does not have any form of  Vudu. It is purely African natural science, and the origin is Igbo. The image above is a stone picked from Ochini rive in Nkalaha. It is called "Mkpume mi" because it is key to the conjuring  process. Analysis of the whole process is contained in the book, Cosmic Chain by Onyeji Nnaji 

African mythology played a great role in the 

formation of African metaphysical foundations. The tenets drawn from oral tradition, enforced by the people's myth are usually the underlying ideas that formed the fundamental parts of the african viewpoints. We do not borrow an idea from elsewhere to form our metaphysical values. All we had around us comprised the metaphysical ideas we share as our views about life and essences, particularly among the Igbo. 

The essence of "odinala" to an Igbo metaphysics is that, it does not only defines the materials in the world of the Igbo, instead it does as well serve as the kite's tail pertinent enough in the proper structuring of the Igbo metaphysical viewpoints. By implication, to understand the various aspects of the Igbo metaphysical values an onlooker must never look away from the background of the Igbo world. In the same way, to understand the ancient Africa metaphysics, one must learn to associate the ancestors with both their arts and acts. This is because, as their arts initiated thir acts, their acts also informed their arts. They are both individually inexplicable.

The ancestors had their own unique ways of proffering solutions to the problems of their time. Rainfall was one of these numerous problems. Seeing that their world of old was devastated by rainfall, one of the foremost resolution was to see to how this phenomenon could be controlled and possibly manipulated in their own favour to save their surviving world. This situation created a duo problem bothering on how to control the cosmos against unlimited rainfall and how to also make rain fall whenever it appeared difficult for nature to do so. 

Beside, farming was the only means of survival in those days. The crops needed water to grow. To achieve this, there had to be a concerned thought for a process of cosmic control that allowed the metaphysics to ascend to the cosmos using natural tools as instruments to conjure water from the sky. This process was considered highly metaphysical. To achieve this, the ancestors had to undertake a thorough study of the making of an epic in the African viewpoints. There are situations in the life of an epic where the cloud had to change it's course for the task of an epic to be actualized. This is because, the epic is, though a complete human, but, vested with certain supernatural powers through which he is connected to nature. So, to them, attracting certain aural that connected the epic to nature would be essential in the attempt to act on the cosmos.

It is of evidence that the cosmos formed a great part of the African mythology. This, perhaps, maybe because of the role of the cosmos in the creation story which formed a greater part of the myth of every community. There is a connection between the earth and the cosmos which informed the cyclic wave that gave rise to what we have as the universe as a whole. The essence of the cyclic wave is to express, beyond pamutation, that the relationship is bilateral. The cosmos as well as the land both depends, each to the other for nature functions. One of the nature functions, according to science, is rainfall. This saves the explanation better as it explains the conceptual wave that holds the cosmos and the land together.

According to scences, rainfall is the product of the wave which defines the rotary direction of water. Water wave is caught up to the sky through evaporation. The vapour goes up and clouds up itself among the water wave caged up in the firmament. Science also made us to believe that this vapour returns cyclically through rainfall. With rainfall, the cycle is completed. 

Now, nature science insists that the force (wave) that brings the water up to the sky in the form of vapour cannot be controlled becauebtl the process is naturally fundamental. For our knowledge of creation myth holds that water first settled here before it was caught up to the firmament. By this view, man cannot control the wave up. What man has control over is the release of the cloud into rainfall. In doing this, human being acts on the wave, using nature tools to locate the position of water in the cloud, adjust it to a locative point and possibly control rainfall.

THE RAINMAKER AND COSMIC CONTROL

The content of this chapter are the process of rainmaking; the geometry (compas) for identifying the place/position of water in the sky; the role of river current in rainmaking; how and when to connect to the sky for rain to fall.

The nature tools required for this are: 

* Mkpume mi

* Udor

* Abuba eluigwe and

* Nature leaves.

Details on how to use these tools to conjure rainfall are explained in the book, Cosmic Chain by Onyeji Nnaji.