“Everyone in the tribe was an artist. They were born into art, and they were born of art. Art concieved them; art gave birth to them; art nourished them; art helped them grow, sustained their lives, and guided them to the mighty mysteries and to illumination. Art aged them, art devoured them, art made them old. They grew old in art, and they died of art. They were buried in art. And in art they were remembered and immortalized by its continual practice and renewal in the great rituals and initations of the tribe”

Igbo Ukwu Burial

“Art was their god and their devil; their destruction and regeneration. All things came from art and fed back into it, as far as the tribe was concerned. Art was their religion, science, temptation, seduction, recreation. Art was their hell and heaven. Every cataclysm or disaster, every crisis, came out of art or was absorbed into it. Plagues were seen as a failure of their art in some way, a failure to listen, to see, to dream, to interpret, to prophesy, to envision, to be silent at the oracles. Famines were seen as a curse from the god of art, in the tribes failure to create, to anticipate, to adapt, to work, to change, to move onto fruitful places, to be free. Diseases, illnesses, bad fortune, abominations, were all perceived as failures of art, for not being humble enough at the secret shrines of creativity, which creates balance and harmony in the universe.”

Igbo Masquerade

“Their great good fortunes, the beauty of their children, cornucopias, wonderful harvests, fruitful seasons of productivity, happiness and festivities in the tribe were seen as success in the communal practice of their art. For them, all doors between heaven and earth, between the ancestors and the present, between spirits and the living, between past and future, between nature and human beings, between dream and living, between man and woman, were open, and no bad things festered because they were unable to emerge, be seen, be freed, released, overcome, transcended.”

Igbo Mbari Shrine

“Their laws were laws of art, the obvious ones and the obscure ones, the known laws and the unkwown, the familiar laws and the arcane laws, the exoteric and the esoteric, the public laws and the secret ones, the superficial and the deep. Harmony, balance; disharmony, too was one of the laws, in the right place, in the right way; and imbalance was a secret law that played its part. Chaos was a deep law, applied judiciously. Order was its obvious counterpart. Asymmetry was a great law, if used with a sense of greater balance.”

“The tribe’s central tenet, unspoken, was that art was the bridge to the creator, and thus to all things, all mysteries on earth or in heaven. Art was their prayer, and their confession, their meditation and their rest, their work and their play, their illness, and their cure….Agriculture, warfare, athletic were all aspects of art, to the tribe. Farms and farming methods were based on firm artistic principles. Warfare was conducted on the greatest artistic principle of maximum effectiveness from minimum effort.”

The Art of War

“Another great tenet of ther tribe was that all men and all women were artists, in one way or another, but did not know it. To be alive was to be a creator, or a co-creator. At least you helped create a destiny. Therefore, with all being artists, humanity was considered to be the greatest work of art that is being created. One way or another, all are contributing to the greatest vision that ever will be, the vision of all above and below, in life and in death, on earth and in heaven.” – from Starbook by Ben Okri