Legend Of Oboiro Flint (Extract from monograph: OKUTAOGUN)
OKUTOGUN is a combination of the words OKUTA and OGUN in Benin Language, (spoken in Nigeria). Okuta can be translated as stone, rock, flint, and hardness. A picture that illustrates it is at the top of this page. We chose the translation as FLINT. The capability of the Oboiro, which we represent with OKUTOGUN is the capability which, if a person develops makes him able to perform the functions thatsome people reserve for their God.
A flint is defined in geology as very hard quartz that makes sparks. It produces a spark when struck with steel or another flint and was used in prehistoric times to make tools. This was over 700,000 years ago (see note below our icon above) the time that the ancestors of modern human beings dwelled in wild forests of Africa. The rest of the earth was yet to be peopled.
They relied on flint for their fire and shaped them into tools which are generally referred to as stone tools. They also made AXES with them. These are the ancestors of the LiveAxe, which we use today. The spark that it produces is analogous to a bolt.
Quartz vibrates within itself at a certain frequency, therefore it is alive. This frequency is modified and tapped to give us the periodicity that we read on the dial of a wrist watch for example. Ebo (see definition here) in whatever form bears this inherent quality of maintaining life within itself. This leads us to associate life with both quartz and Ebo. They are active and not dead, and Ebo can never die.
The idea of a flint is that it is the raw material for tools and for making fire. It shares these qualities with the meteorite that hit the earth, and the lava of volcanoes, which the earth belches forth. These are some of the attributes, which we call Ogun — Ebo’s Ogun and its OKUTA are good metaphors for the capabilities, which separate the Spiritual Sovereigns from the rest who are the victims and properties of ebor or idols. Ebo is of a fiery and perpetual nature once activated, and sustains us with its fire (the hhuabolt) through our tools and weapons. This fire is the hhuabolt.
There is a legend, which dates back to the time that the ancestors of humanity dwelled in the forests of Africa. The world was not as largely populated as it is today. The people lived then by hunting and gathering. They yet had neither started to cultivate the land nor to husband animals. The only sources of light were the sun by day and the moon and starts by night with intermittent flashes of lightening. They later discovered fire, which was started by lightening from the sky or heavens or volcanic eruptions when the earth belched forth fire.
They found some flint, which we know today to have included pieces of meteorites that hit the earth. They also found similar rock or flint in the lava from the volcanoes. This suggests that this rock, stone, or flint must be present throughout the universe.
The dwellers of the earth had not yet invented scientific thinking and taxonomy. They called everything that was not coming from man, to have come from non-human entities ebor or “gods”. Naming them ebor gave them the aura of deserving reverence and worship. They wove myths about these events and these later became the raw materials for religion and idolatry.
An individual in every society has the mentality or attitudes, which reflect one of the different stages through which humanity as such has evolved. Some have the mentality of the pre-Stone Age, some of the Stone Age, and others of the Bronze Age, and so forth up to the present scientific and technological age. There is an age still older and higher than everyone of this is, and that is the age of Ebo. The age of Ebo permeates every age even when the people had not yet named it and defined it. Ebo as we know predates human existence on earth. The founders of the world handed the administration and perpetuation of the creative process on earth directly to Ebo-universal. Our essence, yours, and mine are of Ebo. In addition, we have the potential capability to infuse this essence into what we create. The OKUTOGUN transmute the potentiality into actual available pepetual power. This power to create is what distinguishes the superior man/woman from the rest. The Spiritual Sovereign being a possessor of the OKUTOGUN is at the apex of the pyramid of those who are cooperating in the process of creating destinies on earth. Creation generally never stops.
We have always known that some non-human beings were sharing the forest with our ancestors; they still share the cities and our homes with us to day. People attract one or the other of these according to their routine ways of thinking and habitual behaviours. You get to be linked up with the ones who feel and think like you and hence fit into you life, habitat or dwelling. You could expel them from your life by changing those habits and charms or religious relics, which either attract them or make your dwelling comfortable for them.
Our ancestors, who lived in the forests before the discovery of fire, interacted with some of these as it is recorded in some of our legends. One legend says that one category of these taught men how to make fire. Others taught man how to make medicines, and others how to make charms or Ebo-artefacts. The legend that applies in our case is about those who taught our ancestors how to make charms and Ebo-artefacts. Idolaters refer to this as the “all-father” called EZIZA in Benin Language. People deified this and many ignorant people worship it in Africa. The legend of EZIZA suggests a cross between physical being and a spirit or ghost. It moved on one hand like a ghost or ethereal being which glided through the forest, including through the trees and other solid objects. Those who came across it did not normally see what he had for legs. Folk wisdom says that it is the heart of whirlwinds — it travels with whirlwind when it is present to the public. It was on the other hand physical enough as for some people to be able to regard it and to communicate with it. This is the archetypal Oboiro, who taught the wisdom and skills to the first persons how to manufacture Ebo. The Oboiro of today is a direct descendant of the lineage of those who learned from EZIZA.
Legend is one thing, and experience is another. I can testify that ancestors of Eboiro (plural of Oboiro) as beings of the class of EZIZA do exist. It would be immodest of me to claim that I did not benefit from the benevolence of entities such as those they call EZIZA. We are here in this story at the crossroads of superstition and science with my averment that the Oboiro is capable of communicating with beings like EZIZA. Not only can I communicate with such beings, I communicate with plants, rocks, and winds as well. You too could with training. Our people theorize that EZIZA manifests as whirlwinds. One could buy its hair in the market! The message of the legend is that anyone who possesses the Oboiro Flint (EZIZA Flint) has the same powers and capabilities as EZIZA has.
I want you to be mindful of what is called hylozoism and reification in philosophy. Hylozoism is the belief that physical objects have life, while to reify is to think of or treat something abstract as if it existed as a real and tangible object. The quartz, flint, whirlwind, or Ebo-artefact are cases in point. That Ebo, whirlwind, quartz, plants are alive does NOT mean that they are gods or idols requiring or deserving of worship. We worship nothing.
Hylozoism and reification are the twin concepts that underlay all idols in/of every religion around us today. For so much is false around us in this world. They are the building blocks of idolatry or religion. They constitute barriers in minds against acquiring the Oboiro Flint.
The pitfall of idolatry that goes with hylozoism and reification arises from the fact that Ebo-artefact is alive. Is its attribute of being alive as Ebo the same thing as saying that one should worship them? Of course NOT. What is the essence of Ebo? What is its nature? These questions can lead to the twin of the idol of hylozoism, and reification. Avoid them like the plague. (Read further in eLecture: OKUTOGUN)