African Liberation Day – variously referred to as African Freedom Day… African Unity Day… Africa Day – is the term that came into use on May 25th, 1963 to commemorate the founding of the Organization of African Unity (OAU). Read More
“SOUTH” is the entry point (Genesis) on The Medicine Wheel… the first of four cardinal directions and steps one takes to obtain wisdom and power in order to become the equivalent of a sangoma (shaman) who brings harmony and well-being to the community & humanity. Honoring the circular pattern of our cosmos, The Medicine Wheel has been used in indigenous cultures for eons to represent the organic cycles of life/nature within the womb of time – thus honoring Divine Feminine Mysteries and their potential. Following the four cardinal directions, the would-be sangoma proceeds clockwise on 
The Medicine Wheel to the “WEST” (land of sunsets & introspection); followed by the “NORTH” (where knowledge & wisdom have flowered in relation to “SOUTH”); & finally “EAST” – land of the rising sun where, through the successive challenges and phases of her journey, she has now obtained her own sovereign terms of enlightenment (Revelation). Read More
“For a seed to achieve its greatest expression, it must come completely undone. The shell cracks, its insides come out and everything changes. To someone who doesn’t understand growth, it would look like complete destruction…” While butterflies symbolize… Read More
“I Am, Because We Are… Since We Are, Therefore I Am” ~ UbuNtu ❤ ❤ ❤
I often think of African space-time as a dancefloor because I resonate with the motherland’s oral traditions in a particular way when I’m exploring and navigating Her southern hemisphere frequencies within the global arena. I’m most grateful to those cultural custodians who’ve carried me on wings of song, connecting me and the human family at large to our soul level, unity-conscious energies of UbuNtu. It has been life-affirming to experience Ascension to timelines where I’ve been met by my guides through the Alkhemy of our ancestral call-response energies in the Drum Circle I innerstand as the BaNtu Waltz. Without losing a beat or step, we’ve even managed to transform heavier energies which pulled up with ill-begotten agendas to turn our ballroom into their bullring – a plaza de toros where two or more got to Tango… ‘nthen some!
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SKIPPER’S LOG ENTRY DATE: January 13, 2023 [Gregorian] <=> January 5, 2015 [Ancestral] STARPORTAL MISSION: Restoring humanity’s navigational settings to their organic space-time co-ordinates @ Earth’s Ma’atrix… Temple of the World… The Womb of Time… Hwt~Hr… in accordance with the following data:
The pieces of Ausar’s body were scattered in the “wilderness” [aka the colonized African Continent & its Diaspora], the 14th of which is symbolized in the ancient Tkhn and remains key to humanity’s unresolved Mystery that widow Auset must reconcile in Her Shero’s Journey & role as Divine Seeker. Auset’s posthumous conception of their son Heru/Hero (who grew up to avenge his father & reclaim Kmt’s throne in this archetypal narrative) was translated in biblical text as the immaculate conception of Christ.
Mother Tree to restore sight to Heru after one of his bruising battles against antagonist Set (usurper of Ausar’s Heaven-on-Earth throne). “His eyes are as the eyes of doves by the rivers of waters, washed with milk & fitly set.” [SoS 5:12 KJV]. A spell in the Book of the Dead names the Seven Hathors – AKA 7 Sisters or Pleiades star system – of the Taurus Celestial Herd/constellation. The 7 Hathors are said to question & assist the soul’s Circle of Life journey, which is accompanied in death by the sky-bull [Ausar/Taurus] who’s joined the Hathors in their cow form. Hathor “Lady of the West” appears on sarcophagi as Portal & Protector in the great beyond.
Referred to as The Womb Of Time, Hathor’s temple at Dendera on the west bank of the sacred Nile River is where the Goddess is worshipped as the personification of feminine love, joy, & sensuality in Her conjoined roles as spouse, lover, divine womb, life portal, & nurturing mother. Facing the direction of the Nile-Star & Spiritual Sun Sopdet’s rising, Dendera Temple itself was a nourishing space for healing, learning, & birthing. It housed a sanatorium with magic bathing waters & a sacred well; labs where ceremonial perfumes were concocted; a papyrus library; a birthing place; & chapels devoted to the mythologies of Auset~Ausar~Heru…
Dendera Zodiac [right] – is master-musician to Hathor, each Divine co-creator highly attuned to the other’s freequency [UbuNtu] & subsequent resurrection modalities of their celebrated Re-Entry…
Similar to the annual Feast of Opet that was staged between the southern and northern sanctuaries on the Nile’s east bank of God/dess consorts Amun-Re/Mut was the ‘Beautiful Feast of the Reunion’ (Hab Nefer en Sekhen) between God/dess consorts Heru/Hathor. The name Hwt-Hr (‘mansion of Heru’) became fully illumined through the fertility rituals surrounding their annual conjugal visit & Reunion Feast which entailed Hathor being sailed upstream on the Nile River from Dendera to Heru’s Temple at Edfu, also on the west bank, accompanied by a mix of musicians & other creatives who were priests of the goddess.
Celebrations surrounding Hathor’s arrival included offerings of myrrh, aromatics, & sistrums (her sacred instrument) as well as hymns encouraging her to unite with “He of Dappled Plumage.” Harvest-related elements included offerings to the Divine Ancestors; the ritual harpooning of a red hippopotamus [representing enemies of the state – Set]; & the release of 4 geese (Hathor’s sacred bird) on the 2nd day of the feast to bear the news that Heru had received the Double Crown.
which the ankh also conveys as the Key of Life. As Divine God/dess Counterparts, each represents complementary co-creational forces that explain & necessitate each other and – from their higher vibration – inform & uphold the structure & harmonious workings of the universe. Indeed, following the close of the Edfu festivities, Hathor traveled back to Dendera, gave birth to Heru’s fully formed seed, their child who was portrayed as a naked sistrum player & celebrated as God Ihy or alternatively as Heru-Sema-Tawy.
Sema-Tawy symbol of a human trachea/windpipe rising from the heart chakra entwined with the lotus (South) & papyrus (North). The Double Crown represented a leader’s consciousness of & promise to uphold the constitutionality of that arrangement during their rule. Narmer‘s was the first of 30 successive dynasties which ruled & maintained civil order through a centralized government from the unified capital of Men-nefer or Memphis.
As ‘Lady of the West’ it’s of no small significance that both Hathor & Heru’s temples are on the west bank of the sacred river where royal burial sites [pyramids, Valley of the Kings, Necropolis of Thebes…] are strategically located. The sun’s eastern rising & western setting was seen in relation to the sacred Nile River Ma’atrix as the world’s Womb of Time/Prime Meridian within whose grand design Humanity’s Axis Mundi, Mysteries, Navigational Settings, True Compass [N-S-E-W], Divine Order, & Constitutional Balance are encoded… ‘As Above, So Below.’ 
Djehuti went on to lament a time when this Temple of the World – the Nile Valley Ma’atrix – would be forced out of its sacred alignment with the Heavens, becoming “filled with strangers [&] widowed of the Gods…: To thee I cry, O most sacred River, to thee I announce the coming doom!… [Kmt]/Egypt, once the holy land beloved of the Gods and full of devotion for their worship, will become the instrument of perversion, the school of impiety…” 
Set (antagonist… God of the desert, foreign oppression, storms, chaos, disorder, perversion, & violence), came at the Temple of the World as prophesied, with comprehensive & devastating European agendas of slavery, colonialism, apartheid… all racist & misogynistic enterprises that plundered & scattered Africa’s human, natural, cultural, & spiritual resources, and misaligned humanity’s organic space-time settings around a Europatriarchal axis & false matrix.
Gregorian/Catholic version of May 5th, 2015 on the ancestral calendar of the Orthodox Tewahedo Church of Ethiopia – the one African country that the European powers gathered at the racist 1884 Berlin Conference [aka Europe’s ‘Scramble for Africa’] failed to colonize as an add-on to slavery.
According to expert scholars, the critical difference between the two religious calendars has to do with their divergent calculations & narrative regarding ‘THE ANNUNCIATION’ – originally recorded in the throat area of Ipet-Resyt [click picture for video link @1:17:20] – God/dess Amun/Mut’s “Southern Sanctuary” in humanity’s Temple of the World. Following their interpretation & appropriation of this ancient Mystery, the Roman Catholic annunciation became a visitation between ‘Angel Gabriel’ & ‘Mary,’ & the official Gregorian calendar reset of global space-time around her ‘virgin birth’ to ‘Jesus’ – calculated to make “all roads lead to Rome.” Ironic then that Italy was unable to colonize Ethiopia, making her Africa’s oldest independent country.
Another major glitch of the matrix space-timeline is in Europe’s recalibration of “point-zero longitude” to Greenwich [GMT] in England, over 30 degrees west of humanity’s organic Prime Meridian & equatorial source. The point at which zero degrees latitude & longitide should intersect is not over the Atlantic slave trade route, but over the body of water misnamed for the Grandmother of Europe who presided over her country’s continued craven ‘Scramble for Africa.’ Victoria – whose length of reign as Britain’s monarch [1837-1901] was surpassed only by great-great granddaughter Elizabeth II [1952-2022] – is ancestor to Charles III whose scheduled coronation is on May 6, 2023 [Gregorian] & William who inherits his narcissistic colonial sense of entitlement to Africa as Britain’s future monarch. Meanwhile, KC3 & company will keep the fancy costume show going with its bedazzling collection of “official” family wealth (pillaged & other) as he presides over GMT & a shrinking Commonwealth – vestiges of a gluttonous & deceptive Eurocentric space-time matrix.
Lake “George” (originally Lake Katunguru) lies in a National Park that remains named for Elizabeth II [queen since 1952] over 60 years after Uganda’s independence from Britain in 1962, the last 36+ years presided over by the 9th & current post-colonial President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni [1986-].
And in the Bunyoro kingdom directly north of Toro where Lake “Albert” is located, the hereditary Royal title, Omukama, literally means ‘supreme milk-bringer’ or alternatively ‘King of kings.’ This primordial wisdom is encoded in African folklore, geography, & astronomical bonds… cultural DNA that humanity can no longer afford to remain colonized at Her equatorial wellspring.
– a coded astronomical reference which directed enslaved Africans towards freedom on America’s Underground Railroad – the cultural practice of water drumming came into being in this complex river basin. 
The church was troubled by the probability of the Dendera Zodiac being thousands of years older than the biblical “creation” date, a concern compounded by the original ‘ANNUNCIATION’ recorded in the throat area of Ipet-Resyt [now Luxor Temple] – “the southern sanctuary” to Ipet-Isut [now Karnak Temple] – God/dess Amun/Mut‘s northern sanctuary whose name means “the most select of places.” 
“Only the black woman can say ‘when and where I enter, in the quiet, undisputed dignity of my womanhood, without violence and without suing or special patronage, then and there the whole …race enters with me.” [Dr. Anna Julia Cooper, 1892]
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever – the long-awaited and highly anticipated sequel to 2018’s Black Panther, which starred the late great Chadwick Boseman in the titular role, finally premiered on 11/11/22… Nakumbuka Day. Nakumbuka is a Swahili word meaning “I Re-member.” The Pan-African Associations of America set aside November 11th as a remembrance date when in 1994 they first observed Nakumbuka Day at San Diego State University in California. Alongside Veteran’s Day observances in America, 11/11 is an annual day to collectively remember the African victims of European enslavers, colonizers & agents of apartheid & genocide whose horrendous and racist acts created a bloody trail of devastation and left families throughout the world unable to lay their grief to rest after several hundred years.
Writer-Director Ryan Coogler seemed to tap into that same cultural vein by scripting Black Panther: Wakanda Forever as a cathartic vehicle through which to process the real-life loss of Chadwick Boseman, who’d played several roles of significance in Black history & mythology – Djehuti/Thoth… Thurgood Marshall… James Brown… Jackie Robinson… amongst others. And, during the final credits as movie-goers proprietarily gather up their used tissues, Coogler adds an emotional nod to another significant ancestral figure in real-life Black history… Haiti’s Toussaint Louverture, to whom the following quotes are attributed: “They have in me struck down but the trunk of the tree; the roots are many and deep – they will shoot up again!” … “For too long we have borne your chains without thinking of shaking them off, but any authority which is not founded on virtue and humanity, and which only tends to subject one’s fellow man to slavery, must come to an end, and that end is yours.”
reimagined in the scene of T’Challa’s visit to the ancestral plane in BP1. Each ancestral figure (Tut’Ankh’Amun, Ausar & Amun himself) for me is invoked in the unscripted/5D metaverse of Coogler‘s BP2 silver screen treatment – a presentation some found lacking in Wakanda‘s unfortunate dearth of strong Black male representation (shout-outs to M’Baku!) & its dodgy coziness with the CIA! With actual history as prelude, there are unavoidable 3D implications from all of Wakanda‘s symbolism as an Africa-centered super-power, now stripped through script of its key leadership figures, chain-of-command structure, & exclusivity to the vibranium resource…
Nakumbuka… I remember feeling some kind of way as an African watching “The Pharaoh’s Golden Parade” that took place in Egypt on April 3rd, 2021. Television viewers were provided alternative Easter-weekend programming through a made-for-TV-&-tourism spectacle of the unearthed remains of 22 ancient Egyptian royals being relocated from the Egyptian Museum in Tahrir Square to the National Museum of Egyptian Civilization in Fustat. Mummies that were transported during this event in order of their reign were: King Seqenenre Tao; Queen Ahmose-Nefertari; King Amenhotep I; Queen Meritamun; King Thutmose I; King Thutmose II; Queen Hatshepsut; King Thutmose III; King Amenhotep II; King Thutmose IV; King Amenhotep III; Queen Tiye; King Seti I; King Ramesses II; King Merenptah; King Seti II; King Siptah; King Ramesses III; King Ramesses IV; King Ramesses V; King Ramesses VI; King Ramesses IX.
This Easter weekend spectacle was followed later that same year during America’s official Thanksgiving day [11/25/21] by another globally televised Egyptian event, celebrating the reopening of “The Path of God,” a 2-mile sphinx-lined stretch between Ipet-Resyt (“The Southern Sanctuary” – now Luxor Temple) & Ipet-Sut (“The Most Select of Places” – now Karnak Temple) – both temples of the Amun~Mut Divinity. In America, the historical Thanksgiving narrative for some is one of peace & shared prosperity between Native Americans & alien ‘Pilgrims.’ Among Native people however, this is a day of mourning the darkness of their genocide, reaffirming their resilience as a people who’ve had to custodian and honor their sacred ancestral relationship to Mother Earth amidst invasion, plunder & subsequent whitewashing/mythmaking. Also known as the Avenue of Sphinxes, the 2-mile Path of God was Kmt’s site of the Opet Festival during which the annual flooding of the Nile (upon which present-day Egypt remains dependent) was celebrated. Earth’s heavenly river (Maziwa Mkuu meaning “Great Milk”/Milky Way) flows from 2 main sources in Africa’s heart & the womb of humanity… sacred font of Kmt’s seminal Mystery system. 
“Changing of the Gods” – a 10-part docuseries that began airing on 2/22/22 – examines how the relationship-drama between the Eurocentrically-designated planets Pluto & Uranus disrupts human affairs during their transits. Amongst the consequential evidence of Pluto-Uranus conjunctions upon Mother Earth, early episodes present footage of Abolitionist, women’s suffrage, Civil Rights, anti-colonial/apartheid, #BLM, #MeToo, George Floyd [etc.] uprisings around the world. Viewed through a Black &/or Indigenous lens, this footage creates its own subversive narrative, suggesting to me that Pluto & Uranus (stars/gods of the docuseries) act like a Trojan Horse pre-programmed to catalyze karmic cycles of trauma-bonding into Mama Earth-as-a-perpetual-Europatriarchal-colony/industrial prison-camp. As a conscious co-creator encamped in the Africa-centered Temple of the World, I’m guided to beware of Greeks [& others] bearing gifts that detract souls from their sovereign narrative & the true Path of God…
What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? Frederick Douglass had asked during his speech in New York on July 5th 1852 to the Rochester Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society. Douglass, an Abolitionist and champion of women’s equality, was pointing out the incompatibility of the continuing existence of slavery with the fundamental claim in America’s Declaration of Independence that “all men are created equal.” In the initial draft of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson, now credited with its authorship and himself an owner of 600 enslaved Africans on his Monticello plantation in Virginia, had condemned “the warfare of the Christian king of Great Britain,” King George III, for forcing slavery’s “assemblage of horrors” and evils onto its American colonies: “He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life & liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation hither.”
Queen Elizabeth II – great-great granddaughter to Grandmother of Europe Queen Victoria who rubberstamped Europe’s barbaric invasion & colonization of Africa at the racist 1884 Berlin Conference [aka Europe’s ‘Scramble for Africa’] – herself acceded to Britain’s throne during her stay in the ‘jungle’ treetops of a colonial Kenya forest when her father, King George VI, passed away on Feb. 6, 1952, at Sandringham. Citing the British monarchy as his proof, John Oliver delivers an instructive take in his signature comedic style on how “truly ridiculous in nature” this entitled, racist, & unworthy mindset remains in 2022, the 70th anniversary of QE2’s reign. Her Platinum Jubilee was marked and celebrated in England from February 6th – June 5th, 2022.
Britain’s longest reigning monarch died later this year on 9/8/22, during her annual stay at Baalmoral Castle in Scotland. The lengthy observances that followed included a centuries-old “breaking The Wand Of Office” tradition, symbolizing the end of a monarch’s sovereign status. At QE2’s funeral on 9/19, the pieces of The Wand which was broken by her Lord Chamberlain, Andrew Parker, were placed atop the coffin as it was lowered into the ground. The controversial Crown Jewels – including the Star of Africa – which had been on the queen’s coffin since 9/9 were then moved into the Royal Vault for the next-in-line.
I wonder how the Elizabethan playwright Shakespeare [-1616], who famously wrote the speech that began, “All the world’s a stage…” would have critiqued the royal cosplay and its reruns that reinforce a stale version of British identity from the vaunted Buckingham Palace balcony, amongst other televised stages in the long-suffering lands of the so-called British Commonwealth? Envious outsiders such as America’s #45, likely view the centuries-old play/grift on the various publics as evidence of an “extremely stable genius” art-of-the-deal. After announcing his bid to retake the Presidency in 2024, America’s now would-be #47 upped his own game on 12/15 with a “major announcement,” hawking trading cards of himself cosplaying fetishized ideals of American manhood… in part hoping that these visual assaults would help obscure humanity’s awakening (on both sides of the pond) to reality… ~ :“The.Emperor.Has.No.Clothes!”
Jealous, greedy & ego-driven, Set was the usurper of Kmt’s Heaven-on-Earth throne who dismembered King Ausar & scattered his pieces into the “wilderness” [Africa’s Diaspora & colonial reconstruction], hoping that Ausar‘s emasculated 14th piece would prevent his return as a resurrected god. This piece is literally symbolized as the tkhn symbol – called ‘Cleopatra’s Needle’ in Britain’s stolen version & ‘Washington Monument’ in America’s replica – both 17th-century installations amongst other stolen tkhns around the world, mostly in Rome. Ideologically branded & globally marketed as the White Man’s Burden… Manifest Destiny… American Exceptionalism… Monarchism… Trumpism… Christian Nationalism… in these still-active mythological teachings from days-of-yore, it’s not a huge stretch to recognize Set‘s false matrix & its predatory, parasitic, chaos-making ways…
If the master teaches what is error, the disciple’s submission is slavery. If he teaches truth, this submission is ennoblement … If you search for the laws of harmony, you will find knowledge …Knowledge is consciousness of reality. Reality is the sum of the laws that govern nature/Ntr and of the causes from which they flow…” Sema Tawy
“The Middle Passage” ~ Tom Feelings
‘Nakumbuka‘ means ‘I remember’ in Kiswahili. November 11th has been recognized as ‘Nakumbuka Day’ by the Pan-African Associations of America since 1994 when the first ceremony was held at San Diego State University in California. It was set aside as a day to remember the African victims of European enslavers, colonizers & agents of apartheid & genocide whose horrendous acts created a bloody trail of devastation and left families on the continent unable to lay their grief to rest after several hundred years. It has been estimated that the Middle Passage claimed upwards of 60 million African lives, not counting the huge losses on plantations in Europe, the Caribbean, North-, Central-, and South-America. In seeking free labor to build its empires, European and American Capitalism’s emergence crippled a continent and its descendants socially, culturally and economically during the timelines of African slavery, colonialism, and now neo-colonialism.
Historically, 11/11 marks the end of 20th-century hostilities during World War 1 between two main Western blocks: the Central Powers [Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, Turkey…] vs. the Allied Powers [Britain, France, Russia, Italy, the United States…]. Their truce, an Armistice with Germany, formally went into effect on 11/11/11: the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918 [100+ years ago]. In 1954, Armistice Day was renamed Veterans Day in the US, 
although 11/11 is observed in Commonwealth of Nations member states as Remembrance Day – aka Poppy Day – honoring veterans who died [8 million+] in this so-called War to End All Wars. WW2 followed in 1939 after “Germany, angry over war reparations imposed by rivals and eager for revenge, eventually turned to Adolf Hitler.”
Symbolically, the number 11 holds the dual vibration of Twins [Gemini], whose relationship acts as a barometer on the scales of Truth, Justice, & Balance [Libra] within this New Age we are said to have entered of Aquarius – the 11th House of the Zodiac. Helena Blavatsky and her disciple, Alice Bailey are credited with founding the so-called ‘New World Religion’ which, since its unofficial start on 11/11/11, has gained many New Age adherents. In The Externalisation of the Hierarchy [1957], Bailey prefaced her New Age spiritual advocacy with an extensive critique of the [Europatriarchal] World Wars: “Intense nationalism… [a] separative outlook… [and] selfish interests have controlled the reasons for which every nation has entered this war…” [p. 373-] 
Spiritually, 11/11 allows a sacred moment for grief over the harsh realities of war… lives lost which are formally given global remembrance from western stages. We ritually observe these post-war programs …our hearts made gentle through words, tears, bouquets, wreaths and lapel poppies, many worn in solidarity by non-European officials. Lest we forget, 40,000 African American troops of the 92nd and 93rd divisions saw battle during WW1 under French command. This distinction tends to be under-acknowledged in the self-indulgent discourse-of-power and narrative of a human community made ‘global’ through Europe’s wars, takeovers, and controlling narratives. Hopes for equal recognition in combat are marginalized alongside cries from slavery’s descendants for Reparations from the neo-colonial ‘matrix,’ as the intensely Eurocentric Poppy-Day program runs its annual sequel. Meanwhile, the spiritual free-quency of MA’AT-consciousness – Truth, Divine Order, Harmony, Balance, Justice, Reciprocity, UbuNtu… – will only be detained for so long as another casualty of war. At some point Africa’s cultural immune system has to recover from the induced state of sleep paralysis to reclaim its own narrative and sovereignty…
“MA’AT, who links universal to terrestrial, the divine with the human is incomprehensible to the cerebral intelligence… Peace is the fruit of activity, not of sleep… The key to all problems is the problem of consciousness… If you search for the laws of harmony, you will find knowledge… The best and shortest road toward knowledge of truth is nature… If the Master teaches what is error, the disciple’s submission is slavery. If he teaches truth, this submission is ennoblement… The kingdom of Heaven is already within you; if you understand yourself you will find it… The body is the house of the God/dess. That is why it is said, ‘Wo/Man know thyself’… By knowing one reaches belief. By doing one gains conviction. When you know, dare… You will free yourself when you learn to be neutral and follow the instructions of your heart without letting things perturb you. This is the way of MA’AT…” 
This selection of proverbs are from God/dess Amun/Mut’s Luxor Temple [pictured right], located on the east bank of Africa’s Nile River in Uaset. It is known as Ipet-Resyt, meaning “The Southern Sanctuary” which is connected via an Avenue of Sphinxes to the Ipet-Sut – “The Most Selected of Places” in Karnak, both dedicated to the worship of Amun-Re and His Godhood with Divine Feminine Consort, Mut. 
Per-ankh – “Houses of Life” were designated as spaces for education in such Khemetic temples because knowledge was considered sacred… a divine mystery of the balance between masculine and feminine co-creatives/Twins. Bound to nature and the cosmos for all time, these proverbial teachings are written in the stone [EWF] of Luxor Temple’s walls. “People need images. Lacking them they invent idols. Better then to found the images on realities that lead the true seeker to the source.” 
Resembling the human form in repose, the Luxor Temple’s unique design itself appears symbolically dedicated to resurrection and reparation of the sovereignty of truth, life & unity-consciousness… an architectural ‘body’ on Mother Africa’s Earth, poised as if to awaken and rise to Her Heavenly Twin.
In pop culture, this awakening is thematic to The Fifth Dimension’s 1969 ‘Age of Aquarius’ – prophetic anthem of a New Age which many believe dawned 42 years later, on November 11th, 2011 [11/11/11]. ‘42‘ is a number that is sacred to MA’AT, Goddess who serves to protect the world from chaos. [In today’s world this ‘chaos’ has occurred within the policed-state of an elite cabal’s Victorian/neo-colonial/false 3D matrix of control and mass-manipulation.] The Principles of Ma’at predate the ’10 Commandments’ as humanity’s oldest written sources of moral & spiritual instruction. Recorded in the Khemetic funerary Book of Going Forth by Day AKA Book of the Dead, these were based on 42 declarations made by Ani in the Hall of Judgment of his having lived in accordance with MA’AT’s principles, such as: “I have not done iniquity; I have not stolen; I have not made any to suffer pain; I have done no murder nor bid anyone to slay on my behalf; I have not spoken lies; I have not caused the shedding of tears; I have not dealt deceitfully; I have not lusted nor defiled the wife of any man; I have not caused terror; I have not done that which is abominable; I have not stopped my ears against the words of Right and Truth; I have not stirred up strife; I have not wronged the people; I have done no harm nor have I done evil; I have not worked treason; I have never fouled the water; I have not spoken scornfully; I have not behaved with arrogance…” [Papyrus of Ani – c.1250BCE]
MA’AT‘s consort is DJEHUTI, the Magician archetype of the Divine masculine with whom the Goddess creates the Balance & Harmony needed to prevent the universe from falling into chaos and disorder. Symbolized by her hallmark feather, the Truth MA’AT has found in her aspect as AUSET [proverbial ‘True Seeker’ and wife of Khemet’s beloved King AUSAR who was mutilated when SET – god of foreign oppression, chaos & disorder – usurped his throne] is key to humanity’s awakening and ascension to Heaven-on-Earth. During her seeking, AUSET hears the cries of the downtrodden, children, her beloved [now god of the afterlife]… and responds with compassion & wisdom as she awakens, ascends, dances, re-members… #11/11…#UbuNtu… #Auset/Ausar… #Hathor/Heru… #Ma’at/Djehuti… #Mut/Amun… #Nakumbuka…❤ ❤ ❤
The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born, Ayi Kwei Armah’s debut novel (published in 1968), owes its title to the misspelled inscription on a bus in Ghana where the story is set. It opens during the final months in 1965 of President Kwame Nkrumah’s rule as Ghana’s first post-colonial president, and closes with the coup that ousted him on February 24th, 1966. This period in Ghana’s history is filled with rampant poverty; overdependence on foreign capital and goods; corruption & bribery as the order of business; and other ills that have plagued Africa’s countries which followed Ghana into independence – all without the needed systemic changes that would mitigate the stagnation and disillusionment of Africans who’d only become inevitably ensnared in parasitic neo-colonial arrangements. Immersing his characters in putrid filth, rottenness, dirt, and scatological imagery as he airs out Ghana’s post-independence laundry through story, Armah leads the reader to the judgment on the novel’s final page – the misspelled bus inscription that becomes its title.
The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born was widely praised but also criticized, most notably by Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe, who writes: Armah is clearly an alienated writer complete with all the symptoms. Unfortunately, Ghana is not a modern existentialist country. It is just a Western African state struggling to become a nation. So there is enormous distance between Armah and Ghana.… A man is never more defeated than when he is running away from himself.
In his preface to a new edition of the novel published by Per Ankh, Ayi Kwei Armah himself makes note of the criticism his novel received: “Much of it focused on [my] perceived artistry. There was a tendency …to contrast this supposed authorial virtuosity with the novel’s subject matter, rather inaccurately summed up as the pervasive negativity of the human condition in Africa. This bias didn’t surprise me, and I assumed it would take little time for some careful scholar to balance it by zooming in on the conceptual content of the title, which I think expresses the meaning of the text as accurately as any title can. It is a matter of some bafflement to me, therefore, that to date, as far as I know, no critical assessment has actually gone to that thematic core: the provenance of the concept and image of the beautyful ones. 
The phrase ‘The Beautiful One’ is ancient, at least 5,000 years old. To professional Egyptologists, it is a praise name for a central figure in Ancient Egyptian culture, the dismembered and remembered Osiris, a sorrowful reminder of our human vulnerability to division, fragmentation and degeneration, and at the same time a symbol of our equally human capacity for unity, cooperative action, and creative regeneration…
By the time I wrote the novel my impressions of Osiris, though still relatively disorganized, had evolved to the point where I was ready to recognize the image as a powerful artistic icon. Here, in mythic form, was the essence of active, innovative human intelligence acting as a prime motive force for social management. I have yet to come across an earlier, or more attractive image for the urge to positive social change.”
For conceptual context, Armah could well have used another renowned ancient Egyptian figure whose name means “the beautiful woman has come.” Queen Nefertiti, alongside her husband Pharaoh Akhenaten, established the monotheistic cult of Aten-worship – a ‘new world order’ in 14th century BCE which Akhenaten led from his worship center of Amarna. Egyptian artwork during Aten’s Amarna Period was also radically different from its predecessors. The imposed reforms of traditional culture and spirituality resulted in Aten’s legacy becoming that of Egypt’s despised ‘heretic king.’ Aten’s son and eventual successor, Tut’Ankh’Amun (formerly Tut’Ankh’Aten – meaning “the living image of Aten”) restored ancient Egypt’s cultural traditions around Amun and returned its worship center to Uaset (Gr. ‘Thebes’) during his reign. Hence his name change to Tut’Ankh’Amun.
The Nefertiti Bust – believed to have been crafted in 1345 BCE by Thutmose because it was found in his workshop in Amarna by German Ludwig Borchardt’s archaeological team in 1912 – has become one of the most copied works and iconic symbols of feminine beauty, which most associate with Egypt. Kept at various German locations since its “discovery,” the Nefertiti Bust is currently on display at the original pre-WW2 display site of Neues Museum in Berlin. Germany, like most former colonial powers which have profited greatly off their stolen African artefacts, continues to resist Egyptian demands (since 1924) for the repatriation of Egypt’s Mona Lisa, as it were – the bust of Egypt’s ‘beautiful woman…’ Nefertiti.
In relation to Armah’s musings on Osiris/Ausar‘s symbolic relevance to Africa-writ-large, in ancient Egypt a true Queen [Auset] was said to be “She who sees Set and Heru.” Set – god of foreign oppression, chaos, violence, perversion, illness… – who usurped Egypt’s Heaven-on-Earth throne through murdering and dismembering Ausar, and then scattering his pieces [African diaspora] is evident from the predatory Eurocentric divide-&-conquer playbook which creates the parasitic matrix systems humanity experiences as slavery, (neo)colonialism, apartheid… through misappropriation & predatory control of Africa’s sovereign resources. Heru – Ausar & Auset’s posthumously-conceived son who avenges his father by defeating Set & restoring Heaven-on-Earth – is apparent in the post-Amarna role of regeneration Tut’Ankh’Amun played out of his allegiance to Amun, not Aten… #Sankofa.
The links between Egypt and Ghana go further than a background concept in Ayi Kwei Armah’s mythologically-based authorial imaginings. Fathia Halim Ritzk – a Coptic Egyptian who’d taught French prior to taking a job at a bank in Cairo – became First Lady of a newly independent Ghana when she married Kwame Nkrumah on New Year’s Eve 1957-58. According to published reports, Nkrumah – who succeeded Queen Elizabeth II on March 7, 1957 as ruler of Ghana – had set out to find himself a Christian wife from Egypt through his friend, Alhaji Saleh Said Sinare – one of the first Ghanaians to study in Egypt. Fathia was chosen out of five finalists. 
Despite her mother’s refusal to bless their union, Fathia’s marriage to Nkrumah took place at Christianborg Castle upon her arrival in Accra, Ghana. Unmoved by Nkrumah’s pan-African vision & bona-fides, Fathia’s mother – whose son had left Egypt with an English wife – had been reluctant to see another of her five children marrying a foreigner and leaving the country. Fathia returned to Cairo with their 3 children after the military coup d’état that ousted Nkrumah on February 24, 1966. Nkrumah died in 1972 in Bucharest, Romania. Fathia died in Cairo in 2007. Both husband and wife lie buried side by side at the Kwame Nkrumah Memorial Park in Ghana.
Titled after Ayi Kwei Armah’s book, The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born is also a 1991 jazz album by Branford Marsalis (tenor and soprano sax player) who leads a trio with Jeff “Tain” Watts and Robert Hurst. The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born is the 2nd track on the album which peaked at #3 on the Top Jazz Albums chart. Wynton Marsalis, Branford’s trumpet-playing brother, makes a guest appearance on the album’s 4th track, Cain and Abel. Hailing from New Orleans Louisiana, the Marsalis brothers are world-renowned members of their multi-generational ‘First Family of Jazz.’ Wynton is often quoted as saying: “The bloodlines of all important modern American music can be traced to Congo Square.”
Congo Square in New Orleans is a cultural and spiritual intersection which, like nearby Angola… was named after countries of origin of Louisiana’s predominant enslaved African population. Custodians of BaNtu oral-aesthetic traditions navigated this foreign space in ways that generated musical conversations (jazz, rhythm-&-blues, etc.). Guided by UbuNtu – the unity-conscious cultural philosophy which says “I am, because we are…” – African oral-aesthetic traditions became one of the greatest civilizing forces in America. BaNtu aesthetic quality or beauty – called KuNtu – is judged by how well cultural expression meets its art-for-life’s-sake cultural mandate towards the collective. In contrast to Manifest Destiny &/or American Exceptionalism which were used to justify the enterprises of slavery, colonialism, apartheid, etc. – the so-called “white man’s burden” – UbuNtu has endured as a counteractive Africa-centered guiding & humanizing force.
In a scene from his 1984 movie, Purple Rain, Prince delivered an unforgettable performance of a song titled The Beautiful Ones. Apparently the artist had already settled on the same as a title for his biography which he’d begun working on with writer and lifelong fan, Dan Piepenbring. Through the telling of Prince’s story, it seems the greater vision was for the co-written project to inspire and help cultivate a society of beautiful ones… be a “handbook for the brilliant community”… a how-to guide for black -musicians, -creatives, -collective ownership, -freedom… an authentic voice against racism, elitism, etc. & for positive social reform. An ancient proverb from Ipet-Sut (the “southern sanctuary” and temple of Amun~Mut) says: “When the governing class isn’t chosen for quality it is chosen for material wealth: this always means decadence, the lowest stage a society can reach.“ A fragmented version of Prince’s The Beautiful Ones was posthumously published and released exactly 3 years ago – on October 29th, 2019. So much has evolved on the community’s global streets since then…
Perhaps, as Ayi Kwei Armah suggests, a resurrected Ausar is rising out of the Babylonian ashes of a false ‘elite’ matrix through the collective ascension of a fragmented/degenerated human consciousness – and, like the proverbial phoenix of old… The Beautyful Ones Are Now Being Reborn… Sankofa ❤ ❤ ❤ UbuNtu
Malaika Mutere 