Malaika Mutere

“I Am a Black Man” ~ George Tait (poem)

Andreas Woods, the mathematics-major Morehouse class of 2000 Valedictorian who would go on to get a Ph.D. in Egyptology, used this moment in the Morehouse spotlight to explain why he rejected the Cecil Rhodes Scholarship for himself. Morehouse is an all-male HBCU. Distancing himself from Rhodes, the notorious racist & agent of colonial chaos in Afrika […‘Set’ of Kemetic mythology], Woods recites a poem by George Tait entitled I Am A Black Man – unambiguously staking his claim to the identity and mission of Afrika-descended manhood [aka ‘Heru / Horus / Hero’ in Kemetic mythology]. Read More

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Posted on September 23, 2019 by malaika mutere

African Culture, Colonial Experience, Hero's Journey, Oral Aesthetics, Oral Tradition, Pan-Africanism, Reparations, Storytelling

Andreas Woods, Black Arts Movement, Cecil Rhodes, George Edward Tait, HBCU, I Am A Black Man, Morehouse College

Blessed Be…

♥♥♥

“A Blessing on a Home” [from Blessed Be]

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Posted on August 8, 2019 by malaika mutere

Hero's Journey, Reparations, Shero's Journey, Storytelling

Rise… Enter…

♥♥♥

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Posted on July 22, 2019 by malaika mutere

Shero's Journey

Messages in Maps… [re-post]

[CLICK TITLE BELOW TO LINK TO ORIGINAL 2/11/17 POST]

Messages in Maps: Psychogeography, Cultural Ecology and the Prefigured Place

Pop Medicine

Travis Hedge Coke

Ta-Nehisi Coates rewrote the map of Wakanda. Of all his work on Black Panther and related comics, the new map impresses me the most. It is, while not wordy, the most literary action. While seemingly nonjudgmental, the most political. He de-anglicized some of the place names and outright removed those with – at best – unfortunate connotations, such as the Primitive Peaks and what is listed on earlier maps as Domain of the White Gorillas (Mostly Uncharted). He concretized Wakanda’s six major cities, in opposition to earlier versions of “mostly uncharted” or generic “Woods” surrounding a centralized city that counts.In passing, this might not even register with the average reader. Some people jump over extras, anyway, but more than that simply don’t sight-read everything and put it into an orchestrated context with a story set in the place a map is illustrating.

People do not often interpolate place names, nearness to waterways or distance from agriculture as even purposeful decisions made by an author. We do not consider it when we know the map is a fiction of a fictional place. We don’t question it when we know it’s an engineered clarification of a real space. And, to be fair, we really aren’t taught that we should, or taught how we can.

Sidenote: Coates and Stelfreeze are talking to something like seven different completely-formed and articulate audiences with every release of Black Panther.

Our primary introductions to maps probably presented them to us as objective and inarguable. It would feel different if a person went around naming everything and claiming it, in real time before us, as theirs or belonging to this ally, etc. Walk up to a local and go, “This thing you call _____ is now _____ because that’s my language and this is about me and what fits well in my mouth,” and the sense is very different than when it’s been done quietly, beforehand, without our witnessing.

The authorship of a map is usually entirely erased by the time we peruse it. That there was an author is obscured from us, in the case of real maps, so they will have the power of truth, and in the case of imaginal lands, so they have the power of conviction. To read a map without questioning the choices of labels, boundaries, or distortions is to be as colonized as the land is as the map is drawn.

We grow up reading maps and we spend year after year in school, most of us, learning cultural ecologies in History, in Cultural Geography, World Cultures, what have you, and yet, don’t consider these systems and narratives to have an angle. We expect the explanation of city life in Italy or rural life in Uganda to be as objective as the multiplication tables in Math class. We extend this to maps of fictional locales the same way we do not anticipate the math or science in a story will be false unless it highlights its falsity.

Sidenote: Anecdotal facts couched within otherwise pure fiction are still treated as objective truths by many in any given audience.

A smart author and in this case I am considering all major contributors as authors, visual artists, wordsmiths, anyone making a significant choice in regards image or text. Of course, not all comics – not all of any media – is up to the nominal authors, and sometimes you’re tasked with something, as Eliot R Brown was. A former technical artist and designer for Marvel, the first serious effort at a map of Gotham City was Brown’s first work for DC. And, it was a work where revisions seem to have piled onto revisions to the point where the work may be said to have lost any cohesive authoring, and not really, even, a steady hand stitching the piecemeal together.

In fact, the map as it has been published and republished/reused (in movies, advertisements, comics, etc) does not line up with the final version that Brown turned in.

Further down the control-scale we have the map generated for Marvel’s Age of Apocalypse, which just knocks out South America and the Middle East as “Atrocity Zone” or just irradiated wasteland, but also gives us San Francisco, Dallas, and Chicago while the “Human Settlements” in Africa (which, in comics scenes, plenty of exoticism and nonsense) are given no names or clarification.Sidenote: A cognitive map is a mental representation (and thereby a useful distortion) of the relative locations and attributes in a spatial environment. All maps of Wakanda, in print, are representative of cognitive maps.

The anglocentric nature of the map, that the only details are given over to the United States and to England, even in an anglophone comic, seems to run contrary to the intent of a map of the world, illustrating a world issue. It’s a serviceable map, but barely even that. And, even some people who worked intimately on the comics seem unsure how the map really came to be what it is. While the Gotham map may lack an authoritative author, it has authority, while this map does not even have that.

I mention these, primarily, to show the strength of the authorship and cohesive intent of the Coates and Manny Mederos map. But, divers hands or not, cognizant expressions or not, all of these maps are subject to the purviews of cultural ecology, behavioral geography, psychogeography, implicit history and the privileging of information and assumptions. Just because the Coates and Mederos map uses the phrase “political geography,” right on it, does not mean it has more of a political geography than those generated by cartographers or authors who did not use the phrase.Not intending something is never the same as not doing something. Intent does not govern effect. Warrior Falls and Black Warrior Creek to the east of “Mostly Uncharted” and north of Primitive Peaks, no matter how well-intended, had certain effects back when that map of Wakanda was created, and it has different, and perhaps more sharply-felt-by-a-wider-audience effects when considered today. Knocking out all of South America as “wasteland” and leaving Australia completely off your word map has effects. The AoA map isn’t a map of the world, but a map of an embarrassingly childish American perspective of the world. The Gotham map is articulate and full, and its use by storytellers as a settingSidenote: Cultural ecology is the study of human adaptations to social and physical environments. But, in fiction, the near-opposite occurs, and social and physical environments are adapted to primary characters and prefigured plots.

All maps are representative of cognitive maps. Presence and repetition, familiarity and novelty encourages our reflex perceptions and tells us our left from right, our uptown from downtown, why Australia is a continent and why Europe is one (and why some people expect Central America to be one). Maps aren’t topographies and geography. Maps, illustrate.

How we describe worlds describes us. What we accept, how we engage with maps, with the cultural and political ecologies drafted and concretized by authors can define us as readers. When I refer disparagingly to aspects of some of these maps, when I question or beg questions, I am not trying to insult, or even accuse the cartographers and authors. I am grateful for their good work, and for them having done it. Having done their work, the maps are – in many significant ways – no longer about them.

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Posted on June 7, 2019 by malaika mutere

afrofuturism, Colonial Experience, Storytelling

Black Panther, colonialism, DC, Lake Nyanza, Lake Victoria, Maps, Marvel, Matrix, Psychogeography, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Travis Hedge Coke, Uganda, Wakanda

Unbreaking the Egg

“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 the transformation of life, they become as iconic of springtime in the west as rabbits which, due to their energetic breeding, represent fertility. Rabbits are designated as the token animal of Germanic goddess, Eostre [Eos in Greek]. Easter, for many is a season of blurred lines between the Christian celebration of the resurrection of a crucified patriarchal savior and the celebratory pagan ritual of bunnies delivering decorative and chocolatey eggs, all representing the bounty of new life springing forth throughout nature. The Easter Bunny joins a winning cast of rabbit characters we’ve grown up fondly with: Peter Cottontail… Roger… Bre’er… Thumper [from Bambi]… the Velveteen Rabbit… Alice in Wonderland’s White Rabbit… Bugs Bunny… We might even add the Duracell and Energizer Bunnies to this roster.

I’m one who’s loved Springtime all on its own, who hasn’t needed an extra excuse to indulge in unhealthy amounts of chocolate treats which [ahem!] I do year-round. The Easter Bunny was never a seasonal distraction for me. But looking through a #MeToo lens, it’s now not a big leap to see the dark side of EOStre‘s animal-spirit. From bedtime fairytales to movies to Easter, masses have been seduced & groomed through cute but de-natured props of patriarchal predation; a mostly male character lineup that’s won over hearts and minds. And somewhere there’s probably a Playboy Bunny tie-in…

Over the top? I ask, perturbed about how Easter has become such a distraction for me this year, and a dark one at that. As I scour the Internet for my own ‘easter eggs’/clues and disclaimers, a popular Mother Goose Rhyme plays like a riddle on a loop in my mind. Then the pictures below pop up as if to illustrate to me that various renowned architects have long been on this next-level trend of appropriating and translating EOStre‘s symbols. Is this their version of putting “Humpty together again”? My question seems to suddenly render Mother Goose mute…

Eostre‘s Greek counterpart – Eos “goddess of the dawn” – has been compared to Khemetic goddess Tefnut, in part because of the latter’s status as goddess of the morning dew. The dawn, like the vernal equinox announces a new day… awakening… new life/birth… springtime’s resurrection/rebirth of nature from the dark sleep of winter, etc. Figurines from the Neolithic period lay an ancient and abiding claim to the divine feminine as goddess of birth, regeneration and resurrection. Iconographies of a hybrid bird-serpent-goddess appear in ancient Khemet and Mesopotamia, which represent her co-creative powers as nurturer, transformer and deliverer of the resurrected seed from her divine masculine/god. [Left figure: Egyptian Predynastic Naganda “Bird Lady” IIa c. 3500-3400 BCE. Brooklyn Museum.] This ancient symbol has been adopted in recent times by a movement in the west whose focus on Goddess worship and femininity was precipitated by the imbalance created by homo-social male-dominated organized religions. The serpentine spiral represents kundalini energy – a life-force which both triggers the formation of the child in the female womb, and also holds the potential to uncoil from the spinal base to awaken consciousness or “3rd-eye” opening… as in Let There Be Light! [Genesis 1:3]

Hathor [Hwt-hr, meaning ‘Mansion of Heru’ ] was worshipped in Khemet as goddess of music, dance, beauty, fertility, childbirth, women, children and foreign lands. At the Temple of Dendera which was built for worship to the Goddess during the first Intermediate period of Khemet, Hathor‘s high priests were musicians and creative artists. The ancient personification of feminine love, joy, mother-hood, and nature – Hathor was the original Nile Goose that Laid the Golden Egg, which was the sun god. Women particularly aspired to embody this deeply loved goddess’s conjoined roles as wife, mother and lover which gained Hathor the titles: ‘Lady of the House of Jubilation,’ & ‘The One Who Fills the Sanctuary with Joy’. Known to assist the dead in their afterworld journeys, Hathor also used milk from her sacred sycamore tree to restore sight to Heru‘s lunar/left eye after his legendary bruising battle against Set – usurper of Khemet’s throne. “His eyes are as the eyes of doves by the rivers of waters, washed with milk and fitly set.” [SoS 5:12]

The relief on the left comes from Hathor‘s Temple of Dendera. Resembling a modern-day light bulb, the Dendera Light as it’s referred to is a depiction from the Hermopolis theology of creation. This theology presents the Ogdoad [8 primordial male-female twin deities] and the Cosmic Egg – from which all life is born. The lotus flower from the primordial sea of Nun gave birth to the sun god, Atum-Ra in a stage known as the first occasion (Dunand, 2004). This flower – pictured around the neck of the goose & at the base of the Dendera Light – is symbolic of Upper Khemet, from where the Nile River flows. The surrounding bulb in the Dendera light relief represents the field of the universe or Cosmic Egg/”Golden Egg” within which the process of creation… birth… enlightenment… springtime… resurrection occurs, and kundalini awakens – as depicted by the rising serpent within. Originally accessible only to high priest initiates, the accompanying texts at Dendera warn against abuse of such knowledge… seemingly in agreement with and reference to the West African mythology from Mali of the Dogon:

“In the beginning, Amma, alone, was in the shape of an egg: the four collar bones were fused, dividing the egg into air, earth, fire, and water, establishing also the four cardinal directions. Within this cosmic egg was the material and the structure of the universe, and the 266 signs that embraced the essence of all things. The first creation of the world by Amma was, however, a failure. The second creation began when Amma planted a seed within herself, a seed that resulted in the shape of man. But in the process of its gestation, there was a flaw, meaning that the universe would now have within it the possibilities for incompleteness. Now the egg became two placentas, each containing a set of twins, male and female. After sixty years, one of the males, Ogo, broke out of the placenta and attempted to create his own universe, in opposition to that being created by Amma. But he was unable to say the words that would bring such a universe into being. He then descended, as Amma transformed into the earth the fragment of placenta that went with Ogo into the void. Ogo interfered with the creative potential of the earth by having incestuous relations with it. His counterpart, Nommo, a participant in the revolt, was then killed by Amma, the parts of his body cast in all directions, bringing a sense of order to the world. When, five days later, Amma brought the pieces of Nommo‘s body together, restoring him to life, Nommo became ruler of the universe. He created four spirits, the ancestors of the Dogon people; Amma sent Nommo and the spirits to earth in an ark, and so the earth was restored. Along the way, Nommo uttered the words of Amma, and the sacred words that create were made available to humans. In the meantime, Ogo was transformed by Amma into Yurugu, the Pale Fox, who would always be alone, always be incomplete, eternally in revolt, ever wandering the earth seeking his female soul. “

In Genesis1:28: “God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth‘” (NRSV). As a well-intentioned environmental steward mansplains from biblcal text: “First the word “subdue”. In Hebrew this is kabash. You can’t get around it; it does mean… “enslave”, and even in the harshest instances “molest” or “rape”… Ummh, Yurugu/Set better stay in his lane!!! In my own well-intentioned effort to not throw the baby out with the bathwater, I’ll follow the lead of the Shulamite sistah who knows “love is strong as death” [Song of Songs 8:6]. She is the Southern Queen to whom the God of Revelation [3:11] says: “Behold, I come quickly: hold that fast which thou hast, that no man take thy crown.” May our circle 4ever B unbroken... ❤ ❤ ❤ 121

Refs:

Dunand, Françoise, and Christiane Zivie-Coche. 2004. Gods and Men in Egypt: 3000 BCE to 395 CE. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

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Posted on April 21, 2019 by malaika mutere

African Culture, Colonial Experience, Oral Tradition, Shero's Journey, Storytelling

Amma, Atum-Ra, Bird Lady, Cosmic Egg, Dendera, Dendera Light, Dogon, Easter, Eos, Eostre, Golden Egg, Goose that laid the Golden Egg, Hathor, Hermopolis theology, Heru, Humpty Dumpty, kundalini, lotus, Mansion of Heru, Mother Goose, Naganda, Nommo, Nun, Ogdoad, Ogo, Paisley Park, Set, Shulamite, Tefnut, Temple of Dendera, The Egg, Trickster, Yurugu

Hapi’s S/Hero Journey

“We came from the beginning of the Nile where God Hapi dwells, at the foothills of The Mountains of the Moon” ~ is a declaration in The Papyrus of Hunefer, which was a copy of the ancient Book of the Dead. Hunefer, owner of this papyrus, was “Scribe of Divine Offerings,” “Overseer of Royal Cattle,” and steward of Pharaoh Seti 1 during Khemet’s 19th Dynasty period [c. 1300 BCE]

“We…” refers to ancient Egyptians in the Delta region [papyrus symbol]

“…beginning of the Nile…” refers to the River Nile’s Great Lake estuary cradled in its East-Central African source [lotus symbol]. Nile comes from ‘Neilos’ – a Greek corruption of ‘nwy’ meaning ‘water’ in Khemet, though locals referred to it as ‘iterw’ meaning ‘the river.’

“…Mountains of the Moon” refers to the Rwenzori Mountains which border present-day Uganda and DR Congo. Some of the Nile waters flow from the peaks of these mountains.

Hapi [Hep/Hap/Hapy] – was a pre-dynastic name for the Nile deity of fertility who was also known as ‘Lord of the Fishes and Birds of the Marshes’ – provisions along with the annual inundation [known as the ‘Arrival of Hapi’] which have always sustained Nile Valley civilizations. So Hapi was often revered by citizens above other gods with chants, prayers, and sacrifices. Even Akhenaten [the so-called ‘heretic king’] could not banish Hapi as he had other gods during his reign. Instead, he tried to suggest that Hapi was an incarnation of Aten – the controversial solar disk god whom Akh’en’aten promoted himself as being the likeness of:

“I propitiate him who lives by truth,
The Lord of Diadems, Akhenaten,
Great in his lifetime.
O Hapi, by whose command
One is powerful
The food and nourishment of Egypt,
The vital ruler who forms me,
Makes me, fosters me…”

Hapi‘s blue or green skin denotes his status as a deity of fertility. God of both Upper and Lower Khemet, Hapi‘s portrayals included the lotus [symbolizing the life-giving/resurrecting source of the Nile’s Upper region] as well as the papyrus [which symbolized the Lower Nile Delta region where the river’s journey climaxed]. Depictions of twins ‘Hapi-Reset‘ [Upper Nile/lotus] and ‘Hapi-Meht‘ [Lower Nile/papyrus] tying together of these two plant symbols reflect the uniting of the “Two Lands.” Similarly, Hapi’s depiction as a hermaphrodite who was endowed with both feminine and masculine features [breasts and a penis], symbolized this same unity in human form, while the false beard of the pharaoh denotes Hapi‘s authority as Nile Valley god/dess. As a “key of life” principle, the co-creative unity and balance that must exist between divine feminine and masculine is a consistent and sacred African ideal, commonly portrayed as a ‘feminine’ oval surmounting a ‘masculine’ crucifix in the ancient ankh symbol.

To tarot deck readers, Hapi might be compared to the World card [#21 or XXI] – the final Major Arcana card which in some decks is depicted by an androgynous figure suspended between heaven/above and earth/below. The World card represents cosmic consciousness – the completion of a significant S/Hero’s journey cycle and a pause in life before the next big cycle begins once again with the Fool [usually the #0/“zero” card of the Major Arcana]. As such, the World amounts to our perfect union with the One uniting force of the universe [Ntu, in the Bantu world-view] which, seeded within the divine feminine womb, contains all the potentials for the next phase of our ascension journey.

The adinkra symbol of conjoined halves of a heart represents Sankofa – an African term that reminds us: “In order to move forward, you must reach back to reclaim that which may have been lost, forgotten, or stolen.” The process of truth-seeking in our respective journeys as divine feminine and masculine which provides the elixir that leads to our collective re-pair and ascension – is one of traversing the arcanum from “the fool” to “the world.” The elixir that is discovered in this process is ideally what ushers in humanity’s next-level, soul-restoring unity-consciousness which is referred to in Africa as Ubuntu, meaning “I am, because we are.”

The testimonial of the Papyrus of Hunefer thus presents a dilemma by drawing attention to the waters at the “…beginning of the Nile where God Hapi dwells” – a spiritual resource which was stolen through the violence of colonial assaults, nonsensical geographic constructs, and subsequently-falsified texts [biblical… historical… philosophical… geographical…]. In Kiswahili, these waters at the source of the Nile are referred to as ‘Maziwa Mkuu,’ meaning ‘great milk’ – a tacit African recognition of the Milky Way flowing as the nurturing heavenly river on earth which blossomed in ancient times as Khemet. “Victoria” – the river’s yet-to-be-reclaimed source – has, by her blatant presence, poisoned sacred waters, created a false matrix, and maintained a state of arrested development [the Fool] over a consequently colonized human consciousness [the World]… even as we stand today at the emancipatory cusp of the Age of Aquaria [card of the Star/Water Bearer].

Nut – Goddess of the Sky whose arms and legs create the four pillars between heaven and earth – is the primordial water-bearer, as depicted in her crown. (She is often synthesized with goddess Hathor – prototype of the Madonna-Child as Divine Womb and Celestial Nurse [milk-provider].) As I’ve posted previously, the water-bearer is epitomized by the African woman whose water vessel symbolizes humanity’s womb and portal into life. Culturally she is regarded as maternal in her element as the ocean, seas, and lakes – such as the veneration given to the Yoruba orisha [deity] Yemaya. On the other hand, as the river orisha Oshun, she is associated with sensuality, playfulness, fertility, love and beauty. Both are aspects of the same goddess archetype which, according to followers throughout the African world, unite in the figure of Mami Wata – a figure who is commonly depicted as a mermaid holding a mirror and/or a fan. All three orishas prefer the color gold, interchangeably with yellow.

For me, the confluence in Hapi’s S/Hero’s Journey through this Nile Valley Mystery becomes a ground-breaking revelation when the right pieces are understood within a non-linear [read: “non-Eurocentric”] playing field. The proposition: “We came from the beginning of the Nile where God Hapi dwells, at the foothills of The Mountains of the Moon” [from the Papyrus of Hunefer] signals the divinely-sanctioned return and reunion of the African God/dess. The unbreakable bonds of their sacred union [“Upper/Lower… North/South… above/below… within/without…”] are represented through Hapi‘s imagery and symbology, including the significance of the papyrus and the lily respectively, as well as within their sacred tethering. This revelation-through-symbol to me also connects with Tut’ankh’amun [pictured right. See posts here & here]. Corresponding biblical references abound, e.g.: “The queen of the south shall rise… behold, a greater than Solomon is here” [Matthew 12: 42]; “Make haste my beloved…” [SoS 8: 14]; “Behold, I come quickly: hold that fast which thou hast, that no man take thy crown” [Rev 3: 11]…

In Khemet, crowns represent an evolution of consciousness resulting from the respective journeys of the divine feminine in concert with her divine masculine who, as Tut’ankh’amun, travels through the after-world on his necessary mission. Their successful outcome and bond becomes the nucleus of a collective/communal levelling-up… Hotep ❤ M

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Posted on February 23, 2019 by malaika mutere

African Culture, Hero's Journey, New Age, Shero's Journey

Ankh, fool tarot card, Hapi, Hathor, Heru, lily, Mami Wata, Maziwa Mkuu, milky way, Mirror, Mountains of the Moon, Nut, Oshun, Papyrus of Hunefer, Rwenzori Mountains, Sankofa, star tarot card, Tutankhamun, Water Bearer, world tarot card, Yemaya

Tut’ankh’amun ~ Reflections

The “KING TUT: Treasures of the Golden Pharaoh” tour ends its world premiere today [January 13th, 2019] before moving on to Europe and eventually back to Africa where the exhibition will remain permanently at the Grand Egyptian Museum in Cairo. Since March 24^th, 2018, the California Science Center has been hosting the only scheduled US exhibition of over 150 personal belongings from 18^th Dynasty King Tutankhamun’s 3,300 year-old burial site that were among those removed after the 1922 European discovery and raid of his tomb in Africa’s Valley of the Kings, west of the Nile River. Each of King Tutankhamun’s burial artifacts are presented in the exhibition as narrative pieces of the pharaoh’s quest for immortality as he journeyed through the underworld after his death at the young age of 19 to find his place in the afterlife.

Of the several culturally-significant pieces in the exhibition, two are particularly striking:

1. King Tutankhamun’s gilded ankh-shaped mirror case ~ One of the best-known ancient symbols that is often depicted in the firm grip of a Khemetic deity’s hand is the ankh. With its feminine oval and masculine crucifix, the ankh represents what the ancients regarded as the key of life. When used in hieroglyphic writing, the ankh may mean “mirror,” “floral bouquet,” and/or “life.” Several ankh-shaped mirrors were created in ancient times and, like the one now missing from King Tut’s belongings, were thought by many to reflect eternity. Mirrors were believed to possess magical properties which would respond to the user’s intent, ranging from superficial vanity [Old-School ‘selfies’?] to revelations of the light/shadow afterlife from the reflected physical prism…

Click to hear “Be My Mirror” by Prince [unreleased track]

The Khemetic mirror thus potentially became an imaginative portal to the multi-dimensional realms expressed in the words “as above, so below… as within, so without” – words which are also reflected in proverbs from Amun~Mut’s temple: “All is within yourself. Know your most inward self and look for what corresponds with it in nature… Men need images. Lacking them they invent idols. Better then to found the images on realities that lead the true seeker to the source… The key to all problems is the problem of consciousness… The Kingdom of Heaven is within you…” The Festival of Lanterns honoring Goddess Neith involved the burning of oil lamps through the night to create a reflection of heaven on earth… a scene depicting a feminine portal opening, or a parting of the veil between mirrored worlds.

Similarly, Goddess Seshat – dressed in her signature panther-skin dress – is known in her own right as the “opener of Heaven’s door.” Thus the key of life [‘ankh’] in essence infers the creative interplay between multidimensional and complementary creative forces – within/without… above/below – which in turn confer special standing upon rulers in the earthly realm such as King Tutankhamun.

Tut’ankh’amun was originally named Tut’ankh’aten [“living image of Aten”] after his father Akhenaten, the controversial King who upended Khemet’s centuries-old religious system in Uaset [Gr. ‘Thebes’], to the worship of the singular sun disc Aten from a new religious center in Amarna. Following Akhenaten’s death and a brief intervening period of rule by two pharaohs, aided by powerful advisers, the 9-year-old prince ascended the throne his father had held. During his own 10-year reign, the young pharaoh reversed his father King Akhenaten’s legacy by restoring Khemet’s long-standing god Amun to supremacy and its religious capital to Uaset. He then reaffirmed this allegiance by formally renaming himself Tut’ankh’amun – the name we’re most accustomed to, meaning “living image of Amun.” Thus, the king chose the image ‘above’ and ‘within’ that he wanted to mirror and/or to become as…

2. The King’s mode of underworld/afterlife transportation ~ The black panther depicted in this artifact from Tutankhamun’s tomb acts as a fascinating spiritual and cultural “mirror” between past and present. The biggest movie of 2018, Black Panther, was released in the month just prior to the “KING TUT: Treasures of the Golden Pharaoh” exhibition opening at the California Science Center. As I wrote in a previous post, the scene in the movie in which a presumed-dead King T’Challa journeys through the plane of his Wakanda ancestors… mirrors this specific rendering of King Tutankhamun whose other, signature golden image is itself a “death mask” – perhaps implying that his physical death was an illusion.

The fictional name ‘Wakanda’ in turn reflects the names of real-life kingdoms such as Buganda through which the source of the great Nile River flows, and from where powerful panther kings – entitled Kabaka – still hold sway. As the earthly mirror of the Milky Way in heaven [called Maziwa Mkuu in Kiswahili, meaning ‘great milk’] this sacred River is the true, nature-based Ma’atrix that gave rise to the spiritual-consciousness of ancient Nile Valley civilizations such as Khemet and Buganda. Black panthers are a melanistic variant of the African leopard whose skin features significantly in the regalia of Kabakas and royalty of surrounding kingdoms in present-day Uganda, as well as in the dress of Khemetic deity Seshat – the above-mentioned “opener of Heaven’s door.” Conferring high status on the wearer, this skin [which may also lie beneath a royal leader’s feet] represents the musambwa or territorial spirit in the Uganda region who appears in the form of a panther/leopard and acts as a supernatural guide and protector of the kingdom…

The Baganda have a saying about their royals: “A Kabaka does not die, but gets lost in the forest.” It alludes to their immortality and the possibility of return for those chosen ones who are able to find their way through the forest. Depending on how one examines the mirror/ankh, this ‘forest’ could metaphorically reflect the prophesied 400-year wilderness period [Genesis 15: 13-14] since enslaved Africans first set foot in America. The timing of Black Panther‘s release, T’Challa’s mirrored visual of King Tutankhamun’s crossed crook and flail which are symbols of the biblically-mirrored Great Shepherd – reflects this larger, multi-layered Savior narrative… A true visionary, Ryan Coogler re-links the cultural elements while critiquing the European world’s appropriations, e.g. through Eric Killmonger’s retort to the British Museum director: “How do you think your ancestors got these? Do you think they paid a fair price? Or did they take it… like they took everything else?”

Now, as the “KING TUT: Treasures of the Golden Pharaoh” exhibition moves on from America for the last time, I can’t help wondering what happened to the King’s priceless mirror…?

May this ‘Year of Return’ reawaken humanity to its best reflection and most magnificent Heaven-on-Earth manifestations…

***

UPDATE: Egypt seeks Interpol help to retrieve Tutankhamun bust sold in UK

1 Comment

Posted on January 13, 2019 by malaika mutere

African Culture, Hero's Journey, Storytelling

Akhenaten, Ankh, Aten, Black Panther, Buganda Kingdom, Kabaka, King Tut, Maziwa Mkuu, Mirror, musambwa, Neith, River Nile, Ryan Coogler, Seshat, Thebes, Tutankhamun, Tutankhaten, Uaset, ubuntu, Year of Return

“Woyaya” ~ Osibisa & Elephant Art

Woyaya – the catchy title song of the second album by Osibisa, a London-based Ghanaian and Caribbean Afro-pop band led by Teddy Osei – was released in 1971 and would frequently be heard in various settings throughout 1970-80’s Africa. By the time it was reissued in 2004 along with the self-titled first album [Osibisa], the song had been covered by musicians such as The 5^th Dimension and Art Garfunkel [click on pics for music]. For many Osibisa fans, the uplifting expression “woyaya” has since come to literally mean “we are going… Read More

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Posted on December 22, 2018 by malaika mutere

African Culture, afrofuturism, Pop Music

3D, 5D, 5th Dimension, elephants, Garfunkel, Osibisa, osibisaba, Roger Dean, ubuntu, Woyaya

“Nakumbuka” ~ The MA’ATrix Re-membered

“The Middle Passage” ~ Tom Feelings

‘Nakumbuka‘ means ‘I remember’ in Kiswahili. November 11^th 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 the European enslavers, colonizers and agents of 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. Middle Passage Monument Historically, 11/11 marks the end of 20^th-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-western 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. 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 symbol 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-matrix 3D system 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]

“We’re in the feminine aspect now… That’s where society is… Men have gone as far as they can, right? …I learn from women a lot quicker than I do from men. …At a certain point, you’re supposed to know what it means to be a man, but now what do you know about what it means to be a woman? Do you know how to listen? Most men don’t know how to listen.” [Prince, 2014]

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 – the parasitic system’s god of chaos and 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 and wisdom as she awakens, ascends, dances, re-members… #11/11… #UbuNtu… #Auset/Ausar… #Hathor/Heru… #Ma’at/Djehuti… #Mut/Amun [#Uaset/Sah]… #Nakumbuka… ❤

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Posted on November 11, 2018 by malaika mutere

African Culture, African Proverbs, Colonial Experience, New Age, Pop Music, Reparations, slavery

5th Dimension, Age of Aquarius, Alice Bailey, Armistice Day, Ausar, Auset, Djehuti, Helena Blavatsky, Luxor Temple, Luxor Temple Proverbs, Ma'at, Nakumbuka Day, New Age, Papyrus of Ani, Per-ankh, Prince, Principles of Ma'at, Remembrance Day, Set, Uaset, Veterans Day

Year of Return ~ 2019

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Posted on October 29, 2018 by malaika mutere

Colonial Experience, Pan-Africanism, Reparations, slavery

2019, Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah, Nana Akufo-Addo, Year of Return

Congo Square ~ UbuNtu & the Unbroken Circle

“Every strand of American music comes directly from Congo Square,” musician and trumpeter, Wynton Marsalis once said of this national treasure – the historic birthplace of jazz and Rhythm-‘n’-Blues. Situated in what is now the Louis Armstrong Park in Tremé, the oldest African-American neighborhood in the tricentennial city of New Orleans – at 2.35 acres, today Congo Square measures approximately half of what it was in its heralded 19^th century years.

New Orleans, Louisiana [NOLA] is a major US port whose strategic location facilitates the trafficking of commercial goods between the Gulf of Mexico and the Mississippi River system, which historically included trans-Atlantic cargoes of enslaved Africans. Congo Square was a gathering place Read More

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Posted on September 23, 2018 by malaika mutere

African Culture, Afrocentricity, Oral Aesthetics, Oral Tradition, Pop Music, slavery

bamboula, calinda, carabine, code noir, Congo Square, jazz, Jazz Age, Jazz motif, juba, manifest destiny, ubuntu