Individualism in Rastafari

Rastafari is a way of life, and since it promotes individual thought and self-recognition, it is not designed to be universally identifiable. However, through many of its ritualistic practice including singing and “chanting down Babylon” and ritualistic smoking of ganja in groups forces a diffusion of these individualistic ideas to many different people. This is an interesting quality of the religion and because of these two practices, individualism and group reasoning, it may cause many other people to recognize but not necessarily understand the Rastafari completely, especially with a western lens. How does this style of information work on a long scale timeline?

Over years and years you have a group of Rastafari who have been meeting in a group to smoke ganja and formalize their understanding. The informal leadership of the group may change over several years as other members begin to gain favor with other rastas. This individual might informally begin leading this group during discussion. Therefore, if someone joined the group before or after this specific rasta became an informal leader, their experiences might be quite different. Although each person is anchored in their own specific realm of individual thought, the disjunction between personal thought and “speechifying” is an epistemological one.

On a large scale, these groups may someday decide to become a mansion and move to a secluded space with their own means of survival and provision. They will begin dedicating a large amount of time going out and doing public works as a group, preaching and many other large group activities. This individualistic sermon is preached to anyone who will hear them and strangely enough, this is all from the result of individualistic thought originally. One observing these events from the outside has no idea where the individual begins and the mansion of rastas ends, and therefore misunderstands their message possibly until he begins wondering about it in its original, individualistic nature.

Children of Africa

The Bobo shanti appear to be a spiritually developed group of Rastafari, especially the many spiritual precepts they observe as such. They appear to have firmly established themselves as “Children of Africa”, and the way they have organized a system of ideology around that concept is what I thought was the most striking aspect of their way of life. The stress our textbook puts on the individualist characteristics of each Rasta as being their major concern is still at work here, but we see it in terms of a community of spiritually dedicated themselves and each other.

The men of the group earn the right to live with each other, spending the days focusing on spiritual development without the stresses and troubles of non-spiritual life. They wrap their dreadlocks in turbans, which they claim is Ethiopian, as “children of Africa” they make several specific mentions to the crown of Ethiopia. They are also waiting for the time to sail across the Atlantic from Jamaica. The Boboshanti organized themselves in a loosely based individualistic standpoint yet work as a group through these individual practices to create a symbolic group, the “children of Africa” who wish to return and escape injustice.

The loose organization of the Bobo shanti as a mansion is precisely the symbol that confers the title “children of Africa” and the practices which they celebrate in their way of life in order to return to Africa once again and be freed from spiritual enslavement. This is not shocking, as our textbook make it clear that the most important facet of Rastafari faith is self-acknowledgement. I and I and the importance of the individual play into this organization and the main focus of each Boboshanti is his introspection and desire to understand himself. However, together, they create a symbolic idea like the kind they are introspecting about, and a mutual end to their spiritual journey as “children of Africa”.

A Bobo shanti Rasta

                The Kebra Negast makes several references to Solomon and Sheba describing them as good and wise rulers who are blessed by God and rule justly during long standing surpluses of unimaginable wealth. This is an archetypal characterization of the wise ruler that finds itself in many religious texts as well as stories dating back before Christ’s life. The wise ruler derives their power to rule directly from God, a governmental system set up on the divine rite of power passed from heaven down to the ruler. This creates an interesting understanding of both God and the ruler as characters in the story itself.

                The wise ruler often has immense wisdom which they dole out as much they can. Their presence is something of comfort and people often seek to be by their leader. No matter where the ruler leads them, the governed feel secure and do not fear anything except their ruler. The fear they have for him is out of respect and admiration to be like the ruler. Solomon and Sheba exemplify these qualities in the Kebra Negast in the way their manner and actions are described.

                Through the description of the ruler, we then get an idea for how God is like a spiritual ruler. People pray to him for understanding and wisdom to complete challenges in their lives. They rely on him for comfort during difficult times of suffering and seek his guidance when they feel spiritually lost. Yet aspects of him are more powerful than the wise king, including the amount of fear God garners out of worship and respectful prayer. In a way, anthropomorphizing a wise ruler is a way of writing about God, a concept of a perfect and worthy of ruling king.

To read more of the Kebra Negast which is facinating, go to: http://www.sacred-texts.com/chr/kn/

The Steps to Wisdom

Many religions have a step system that helps illustrate purification rituals. For Catholics, there is confession and reconciliation, for Buddhists there is the Eightfold Path; but I found the most interesting example of their purifications was Augustine's seven steps to Wisdom. In these set of steps written in book II, Augustine gives us seven steps towards purification of the mind and preparing mentally and emotionally in order to better understand the scriptures. However he also believes this will focus the energies and faculties of our individual humanity towards important things like the scriptures.



This is a relatively interesting concept, the idea that one must be pure of heart and mind to understand the scripture live our temporal lives well. Especially since this writing is not canonical to the Roman Catholic faith. The time spent contemplating these ideas is very thorough as well. Almost like the inevitable stages of grief, Augustine’s steps illustrate unavoidable challenges of the mind towards wisdom. He describes several steps in the system may cause the individual to feel “sorrowful” for the true nature of knowledge is not boastful. The individual must then pray to God for strength to continue despite these challenges.



Augustine’s dedication towards the faith and his own mind are inspirational to me as a thinker. He takes painstaking time to clearly express what he needs to, yet he is a fan of brevity on these subjects which have troubled others for centuries. He has developed a discernible method for overcoming philosophical strains on the mind from grappling with theological questions he muses on in his writing. In a way this method also helps us read Augustine as well since it prepares us to focus our minds on his philosophic texts which contain a lot of information which requires time spent unpacking his ideas.

Solar Deities

The Aten as the sun disc

Throughout a large portion of recorded history, humans have religiously worshiped aspects or embodiments of our sun. There are even recorded events when two radically different cultures who come into contact are simultaneously worshipping different solar deities, such as the Roman Empire and Egypt. Aleister Crowley, an influential occultist in the early 20^th century, was raised in an astrological cult known as the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. This “cult of the sun” can be traced back through spheres of influence to the Psalms as well, which Alter brings attention to and mentions The Great Hymn to The Aten. Why has the sun so thoroughly imprinted itself in the religious philosophy of humans?

Astrology, or a belief system based on the correlation between observable phenomena in space to events in our human lives, has played a major role in our conceptualization of man and the cosmos. Humans and their preoccupation with their orientation within the universe have produced some of the most pervasive ideas in all magistrates of thought. The modern model of our universe was preceded by those which religious astrology influenced. Placement of the sun is all important in these ideas. We measure of time in relation to the suns movement, we depend on it as an energy source and therefore our thoughts about the sun seem to concern everything we ever think about.

Certainly the importance we place on the sun primes us to idealize it, personify it and represent it symbolically. This accounts for its preservation as a theme throughout history. It may seem deductive but I wonder if the sun will continue to play an ideological role in our culture 100 years from now in the future based on our past.





Symbolic Binary of Light and Dark

We see several parallels between “The Hymn to the Aten” and Psalm 104 including natural imagery and extended nature metaphor, attributing life to God and physical blazon of his characteristics. There is direct connection between the physical realm we inhabit here on earth that spiritual beings like YHWH and Aten intervene in according to these texts. The two spiritual entities are explained as solar beings bathed in light who control day and night. In the hymn, Aten’s body is like “rays embrace the lands as far as everything you have made” (W.K.S 1:2). YHWH is described as being “wrapped in light like a cloak stretching out heavens like a tent cloth” (Alter 104:2) The concept of God controlling the cosmos, day and night imagery is something I find very interesting as a focal point of similarity between the two.

Light and darkness have many connotations beyond their standard dictionary definitions. Light in Plato’s writings symbolically represented truth or the illuminating effects of truth while darkness was confusion and seclusion. In modern American literature, light symbolized purity and death while darkness stood for fecundity and life. If I were to effectively describe the relationship between Psalm 104 and “The Hymn to the Aten” it would be the general framework of a binary system of symbols of light and dark. These types of binary systems have been used in our understanding of the world throughout history and work particularly well in these songs to praise, acknowledge the good works of and admire and fear god like figures YHWH and Aten.

By recognizing the balance of forces in YHWH and Aten’s power (i.e. Light and darkness) the speakers attribute the order of the universe to the god figures power. They nourish the earth and all living things there and allow life to take its course. This is a good example of the Geertz definition of religion in action. By creating this binary symbolic system, these psalms make sense of life with an air of factuality by linking observable knowledge about the earth with spiritual explanation for the delicate balance of life giving forces.