H.I.H. Princess Aster Sellassie

H.I.H. Princess Esther Sellassie Antohin On Rastafarianism: Part II

"I-Tal; Dreadlocks; Ganja"
H.I.H. Princess Esther Sellassie Antohin,
The Imperial House of Sellassie of
The Solomonic Dynasty in
The African Diaspora
[Editor's Note: In the following series of articles by H.I.H.
Princess Esther Sellassie Antohin, of the Imperial House of
Sellassie, great granddaughter of H.I.M. Haile Sellassie I, we
continue to present her responses to some of the most frequently
asked questions on the Haile Sellassie Family Web:
www.sellassie@angelfire.com

On our family web-site we receive over one hundred communications a
day, most of them asking the same repetitive questions regarding our
views on Rastafarianism. The purpose of the following series of
essays is to provide the interested reader adequate response to some
of these questions.
1. What is our view of the I-Tal Diet?
The Rasta diet, called "I-Tal," may be described as stringently no-
sodium, no-preservative, organic vegan. Many supermarkets in Jamaica
now carry food items labelled "I-Tal."
Humankind first was vegetarian: "And God said, `Behold, I have given
you every herb bearing seed which is upon the face of the earth, and
every tree in which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it
shall be for meat.'" (Gen 1: 29) It was not until Noah that meat was
permitted in the diet: "Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat
for you; even as the green herb have I given you all things. But
flesh, with the life thereof, which is the blood thereof, shall ye
not eat." (Gen 9: 3-4) In the tradition of our Ethiopian Orthodox
Tawahedo Church, we are very careful to restrict our diet to those
mammals, birds and fish authorized for consumption by the Word of God
(Lev 11) as it is summed up: "For I am the Lord your God. Ye shall
therefore sanctify yourselves, and ye shall be holy, for I am holy;
neither shall ye defile yourselves with any manner of creeping thing
that creepeth upon the earth, for I am the Lord your God. Ye shall
therefore be holy, for I am holy. This is the law of the beasts, and
of the fowl, and of every living creature that moveth in the waters,
and of every creature that creepeth upon the earth to make a
difference between the unclean and the clean, and between the beast
that may be eaten and the beast that may not be eaten" (Lev 11: 44-
47.)
But the I-Tal diet can accomplish the same objective if followed with
the right frame of mind, for its underlying objective is both the
separation from what is unholy and the cultivation of a healthy life-
style for the greater service of God. Equal, therefore, to the
principle of the healthy way of life of an I-Tal diet must stand the
other guidelines in chapters 12, 15, 18, and 20 of the book of
Leviticus, as well as all those in the book of Deuteronomy, the "Ways
of the Lord."
2. What is our view of dreadlocks?
Dreadlocks, though not mentioned in the Bible, can also be understood
to symbolize the separation from what is unholy, but I would stress
the teaching of Ecclesiastes 9: 8: "Let thy garments be always white,
and let thy head lack no ointment." The meaning is clear. We also
show sanctification from what is unholy in the high standard of our
personal hygiene and care of our physical appearance. When we make
the ethical choice to represent the option of holiness in life, our
appearance as well as our daily conduct reflects.
3. What is our view of ganja, "cannabis sativa?"

I should first stress our encouragement of the medico-anthropological
research currently underway by a number of departments of
experimental medicine in some of North America's major universities
and schools of medicine. The medical establishment itself has come to
realize that the pharmaceutical industry is close to confronting
recognizable limitations in the treatment of illness and disease. At
the same time, medical researchers are beginning to study the
remarkable curative properties of natural botanical remedies
discovered over centuries of clinical observation in traditional
societies throughout the world: Africa, Central and South America,
the Pacific islands, as well as India and the Orient. The arrogance
of "advanced medicine" over the presumed "primitive medicine" of
traditional societies has been abandoned in favor of an open-minded
reappraisal of God's own natural herbs and minerals for the treatment
of humankind's physical disorders.
The Academy of Psychosomatic Medicine estimates that as high as 70 –
80% of illness in today's society is psycho-physiologic, the result
of stress. Among the natural herbs presently known, the effectiveness
of cannabis sativa, "ganja," in reducing anxiety and stress may very
well prove to be the prescription of choice for innumerable
physiologic disorders of modern society, truly "…the leaves of the
tree were for the healing of the nations."(Rev 22: 2b)
The high crime rate of the Prohibition Era in the United States was
due to one primary factor: a well-meaning, but misguided social
policy. History repeats itself and few learn from their mistakes. But
Jesus taught us, "Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are
Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's." (Mt 22: 21b) The
laws of the land are "the things which are Caesar's" and we are
commanded by our Master Teacher Jesus to obey them.
We the Imperial House of Sellassie lend our encouragement and moral
support to all efforts to bring about the decriminalization of
cannabis sativa first and foremost for its legitimate medical
applications. In equal measure we urge the authorization by the
United States Supreme Court of the sacramental use of ganja by those
using it out of sincere conviction of conscience, and we would submit
an amicus curiae brief, based on the prior ruling of the Supreme
Court under freedom of religion permitting use of peyote by the
Native American Indian Church. We feel that the taxation of the
legitimate use of cannabis sativa would produce revenue programmable
into education and other pressing social needs.
May I take this opportunity to address another issue tangentially
related to this? I made a federal government teaching film for the
training of priests working with our African-American people in jails
and prisons. So many of our young men are wasting their most
productive years in the criminal justice system and the problem seems
to be without solution and steadily growing worse. When I see a young
African-American male, I almost feel I am a bio-ecologist observing
an endangered species. With 38% of our "Spiritual Children of
Ethiopia" living below the poverty line in the United States, and an
almost equal percentage living just over that line, there can be no
amazement that out of desperation our young men are at a distinct
disadvantage. The sustained high fever of frustration cannot but
trigger negative patterns of social behavior in those desperately
without hope.
In Germany young offenders are seldom incarcerated; they are given
the option to work off their term as public service volunteers in
Spain. As long as they work together with the Spanish program, they
remain free until their sentence has been served. A number of
American colleges and universities have extension courses offered in
prisons.
I would here and now call upon our African-American leadership,
including Gen. Colin Powell, Oprah Winfrey, Bill Cosby, Dick Gregory,
the family of Dr. Martin Luther King, and others, to work together
with the Imperial House of Sellassie to establish a program patterned
after the American Peace Corps, established by President John F.
Kennedy. This program would offer courses to our young men in the
nation's prisons, with the goal of their completing their sentences
as public service volunteers in Ethiopia and throughout the rest of
Africa. Such a program would alleviate the exploding prison
population and would give our young men purpose, meaning and
direction in life. And the growing account levied against the
American taxdollar for incarceration expenses could be considerably
reduced or reprogrammed into social action legislation. It would also
lay the foundation for Marcus Garvey's vision of an eventual – and
inevitable – "Ethiopianist Zionism."
I envision that just as there was a European westward expansion
across the North American continent in the last century, so too in
Y2K there will be a demographic expansion from North America across
the relatively sparsely populated areas of the African continent, in
Garvey's words: "Africa for the Africans."
Before we undertake a mission of such stature, we must prepare our
people for it, first and foremost psychologically. The world laughed
at Theodore Herzl, father of Zionism, when he first wrote of the
Jewish people's return to the Holy Land and of their rebuilding what
is today the modern State of Israel. Today, the State of Israel has
consistently shown herself to be the only reliable friend of the
developing nations of Africa. Secondly, we must prepare our people
through education. And let it never be thought that education is our
ultimate goal. Were not the Nazis the most highly educated, the most
exquisitely cultured, with their Wagnerian opera and Viennese
waltzes? No, my brothers and sisters, rather, "The fear of the Lord
is the beginning of wisdom; a good understanding have all they that
do His commandments" (Ps 111: 10b.)
How many engineers and Ph.D.'s, however, are still driving taxis in
America's metropolitan areas for lack of adequate employment? The
utter neglect of vocational education in the public school systems of
America has seriously prejudiced our young people in the competitive
job market. They are left with no saleable skills. Yet, experimental
psychologists have demonstrated that there are eight measurably
distinct kinds of intelligence:
1) linguistic, the ability to use language to express what's on one's
mind and to understand other people;
2) logical-mathematical, the capacity to grasp the underlying
principles of some kind of a causal system and to manage numbers,
quantities, and operations;
3) spatial, the capacity to represent the spatial world internally in
one's mind;
4) musical, the skill to think in music, to be able to hear and
reproduce musical patterns, recognize them, remember them, and manage
them;
5) bodily-kinesthetic, the ability to use the whole body or parts of
the body to solve problems, fashion something, or stage some kind of
a production;
6) interpersonal, the ability to comprehend other people and work
cooperatively with them;
7) intra-personal, the perception of whom one is, what one's
limitations and strengths are, how one reacts to events and objects,
what to avoid and what to work with
8) naturalist, the capacity to distinguish among living things with
sensitivity to the surrounding world. (Gardner, Howard, "The First
Seven… and the Eighth," Educational Leadership 55, 1 (September,
1997): 8-13)
In test after test, our young people score high in all but the second
kind of intelligence, logical-mathematical. Almost without exception,
this is the only kind of intelligence valued and praised in the
American public education system – and the potentially least useful
in building a future pioneer society on the African continent in the
Third Millennium. Yet, there can be no doubt that we must emphasize
and reinforce at every step the one weakness we have - the
cultivation of the highest of academics among our young people.
To be continued
Notes:
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Sellassie Website."
http://members.linkopp.com/sellassie/doc/secretar.html
http://sellassie.ourfamily.com/academics/orthodoxy.html
http://www.angelfire.com/ak/sellassie
http://sellassie.ourfamily.com/rasta/rastafi.html
www.RestorationFoundation.org
Princess Edjigaheu Sellassie-Antohin, Registrar
The Imperial House of Sellassie
115 Kelsan Way
Fairbanks, AK 99709