Hallmark Illuminations

Hallmark Illuminations

She is the symbol of a people who live in the south west part of Nigeria. 'Oronshen' it is not really her name but it is the name she is identified with it. A festival in her honor has been celebrated since the 15th century in Owo kingdom and faithfully every year, for a period of three weeks, the people of Owo remember a love affair, jealousy, betrayal and worship. It is a universal theme you will find in any history, Western or otherwise. It is deification that underlines the finest emotion of sacrifice and fidelity. Who was this lady?

In the true manner of legends and myth, she was half human, half spiritual being who was discovered by a hunter late at night while on his hunting trip. The hunter took the lady home and she lived with him not as a wife but as a guest. However a neighboring powerful king, the king of Owo, saw her and fell in love with her. He married her and thus started off a train of jealousy and rage from the other queens in the palace. 'Oronshen was stunningly beautiful, brought riches and good counseling to the king. He was immersed in her. The queens unable to tolerate being so totally upstaged decided to find out what was her secret. Every god or goddess has an Achilles heel, and the other queens soon discovered it through seduction and trickery.

Her taboos broken, Oronshen disappeared into the forest never to be seen again. There is no grave of this goddess lending immortality, mystery, and excitement to her. There is however archeological proof of the existence of worship of a festival that was instituted by the grieving king and his chiefs that the entire kingdom joined in.

In commemoration of the love and service she rendered to the kingdom. A festival is enacted every year. The king is decked out in coral beads made into a stunning beautiful blouse, he has a white wrap as skirt round him, his hair is in braids like a woman, he has heavy coral beads on his wrists and with his golden sword, he dances to the grove of the goddess, requesting her to continue to protect the kingdom. His dance is the climax of weeks of preparation. You see in every man, woman and child of Owo, the pride of community in the pristine worship they give.

Owo kingdom has a distinct culture; religion and a class system that will make some Western cultures ask themselves why they ever tried to call Africans savages! If you look closely you will find it is the same thing all over the world.

Ignorance breeds fear and creates superstitions; it is the hallmark of the seeking man. Experience lends him knowledge and clarity and makes him progress. No one is so perfect that does need to look for areas of improvement. Maybe if we factor this information into our psyche we might earn respect for each other's culture and be tolerant of what makes us different. You do not call a collection of weeds a garden. However plants of different hues and colors make up the garden that is creation. We are all guest of creation, atheists, agnostics, believers and fundamentalists. The creator teaches us a lesson by the opportunity he provides for us to learn from our differences

What is the lesson of Oronshen?

That love is universal, in its dark shades, and light illuminations. When we hate, we deny ourselves the opportunity to experience the greatest emotion of all!

Love is the axis on which creation swings. It helps us to grow. So each year, the people of Owo are given the opportunity to reflect on the consequences of a lack of love, they renew a commitment to a symbol of Love that unifies them. They remember Oronshen, their own Venus.

There is a Venus in every culture that reminds us of the essential redeeming quality of man. When we find our Venus, we may find the rationale to be better than yesterday and move more confidently into tomorrow.

Biola Olatunde

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The Illuminations $15.6 First published in 1886, Arthur Rimbaud s Illuminations the work of a poet who had abandoned poetry before the age of twentyone changed the language of poetry. Hallucinatory and feverishly hermetic, it is an acknowledged masterpiece of world literature, still unrivaled for its haunting blend of sensuous detail and otherworldly astonishment. In Ashberys translation of this notoriously elusive text, the acclaimed poet and translator lends his inimitable voice to a venerated classic. W. H. Auden recognized the strong affinities between Ashberys poetry and Rimbauds Illuminations in his 1956 introduction to Ashberys first book, Some Trees, noting that the imaginative life of the human individual stubbornly continues to live by the old magical notions. And it is here, in the crystalline jumble and disordered collection of magic lantern slides of Illuminations, as Ashbery writes in the Preface, that we can rediscover this essential lineage. Absolute modernity was for Rimbaud acknowledging the simultaneity of all of life, the condition that nourishes poetry at every second. ...] If we are absolutely modern and we are its because Rimbaud commanded us to be. Ashberys idiomatic and lyrical translations of these fortyfour texts convey the originality of Rimbauds vision to Englishspeaking readers of a new century.This slipcased edition of the new translation is limited to 100 copies, signed and numbered by Ashbery; it includes a 5 x 7 Giclee print, based on Ashbery s collage Promontory, also signed and numbered. Author: Rimbaud, Arthur/ Miller, Keith Binding Type: Paperback Number of Pages: 114 Publication Date: 2009/07/01 Language: English Dimensions: 7.99 x 5.24 x 0.27 inches

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Hallmark $47 Sir Oliver Popplewell became, in his own words, officially 'judicially senile' after a distinguished career at the Bar, as a High court judge specialising in defamation, arbitration and sports law - an appropriate niche for a Cambridge cricket Blue. And in public life he achieved prominence as chairman of important public enquiries such as the Bradford Stadium disaster. "Hallmark: A Judge's Life at Oxford", the sequel to his acclaimed autobiography, "Benchmark: Life, Laughter and the Law", tells how he went to Oxford University to read Philosophy, Politics and Economics as the oldest undergraduate ever to be admitted - with considerable press and media coverage and good-natured amusement among family and friends.Here is a sharply observed, sympathetic yet critical picture of modern Oxford seen from the perspective of a leading judge and public figure who could contrast this experience with his Cambridge days from the late 1940s. But this is much more than the story of an older student. It is hugely entertaining account of a life lived to the full.Sir Oliver takes his readers into his confidence, shares his experience and presents a unique facet of a fascinating life which can serve as a warm but sharply observed social and cultural history of modern Britain.