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any practicing rastafarians?

J

jimsthelizardking

Greenlighter
Joined
Aug 18, 2009
Messages
25
ive been really wanting to get into rastafarianism for along time
ive always adorned my self with rasta flags and symbols but now i want to get to know what its all about. can anyone help me out?
 
Well... for one, call it RastafarI. No isms n' schisms :)

Rastafari is as much a social movement as it is a religion. Leaving out anything to do with marijuana, I think a lot of Rastafari has to do with socializing with, and being taken seriously by, other people who support this movement. Be sure you know the history and key figures (Marcus Garvey and Haile Selassie I, especially), and be sure you agree with the principles they teach.

Rastafari is not intellectual in the least. In fact, I'd say it's more about spiritual and political transformation via returning back to a state of nature ("naturality" is a word they kick around a lot).

There's a lot to be said for throwing off The System, and refusing to be a cog in the machine. But to truly do this (rather than just talk about it while smoking a lot of weed) entails some real sacrifices in today's world. I don't think one can live the American Dream, or a respectable middle class lifestyle in any developed nation, and be true to Rastafari's core principles. Like becoming a wandering ascetic, there is a good deal of voluntary marginalization involved. Don't let a bunch of romanticized reggae lyrics and heady nuggets fool you into underestimating how lonely a path this is likely to be, most of the time.

Rastafari carries the stigma of being Afrocentric, sometimes militantly so. This seems to be downplayed in recent years. Since Rastafari is a decentralized and loosely knit movement with no central spokesperson, I don't know quite what to make of this. I have a feeling many hardcore Rastas still have Afrocentric / Black Power leanings, but hold their tongues in order to protect their religion from being targets of anti-terrorism, or just from further marginalization. Certainly there are Rastas with no African heritage nowadays. But be aware that the religion still carries this stigma, and if you're clearly not African or a member of an indigenous people, you may have a hard time getting taken seriously, especially by non-Rastas.

Rastafari is built on a firm foundation of Evangelical Protestant Christianity and Ethiopian Orthodox (Coptic) Christianity. Some Rastas still consider themselves Christian at the same time. Some don't. It has borrowed superficial elements of Judaism and African folk religions, but beneath the surface, bears little similarity to either one. You'd do well to know the King James Version of the Old Testament / Hebrew Scriptures, if you want to get the references. The Book of Revelations and a non-Biblical Ethiopian book called the Kebera Negast would also help you in this regard. The rest of the New Testament seems to play little, if any, role in Rastafari.

Hope that helps. For the record, I'm a heavy marijuana smoker, partially for spiritual purposes, who likes a lot of Jamaican music and finds some of Rastafari's core principles noble and respectable. But I do not, and won't ever, consider myself Rastafari, because I don't live it and practice it.
 
All man came from Africa so everyone is African in a sense. Yeah I can identify with rastafarian beliefs and shit, and I'd get dreads haha.
 
Ason Unique said:
All man came from Africa so everyone is African in a sense. Yeah I can identify with rastafarian beliefs and shit, and I'd get dreads haha.
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Look up 'Nazirite', and you'll see that the tradition of letting one's hair 'do its own thing' is an ancient practice for renouncing worldliness and the illusion of control. It's a practice documented in the ancient Middle East and North Africa, and the Jamaicans inherited it indirectly, via laborers from India.

There was a tense debate regarding dreadlocks, I believe in Second Opinion, a couple of years ago, in which I made this point. I explained that nonblacks sporting dreadlocks as a symbol of renouncing vanity was not cultural thievery. Rather, it was black power movements that misappropriated this symbol and twisted its meaning. It was not originally a symbol of power or milltant self-assertion of any kind; much to the contrary. Also, sub-Saharan Africans' hair does not naturally form into dreadlocks when left entirely to the forces of nature. It grows into a ball, an Afro. It's naturally non-kinky hair that'll form into clumpy locks when left untouched for years.

As you can probably guess, my point was not well received.

Of course, if well-planned and laboriously-maintained dreadlocks are worn as nothing but fashion, this is all a moot point, since the transformative practice of renouncing washing, combing, and cutting has been lost.

Solitude_within said:
I'm curious about these purposes, MDAO. Would you mind elaborating?
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Sure. Marijuana, I find, makes it easier for me to turn off the middleman which is my inner monologue, and more directly feel the interface between inner world (yin, darkness, subjectivity) and outer world (yang, light, objectivity). The state of marijuana intoxication, in this way, provides for pure and unfiltered experience. There is only pure experiencing, not experiencing as symbol for something else, not experiencing as a means to some imagined end. All of this is very helpful, especially out in nature, for reminding me that I am a being made of pure action, an eddy in the great river of existence.
 
^ I think you both have a good point.

Ason Unique, it's true that all people come from one common source, and this is good to keep in mind when we can see nothing but petty differences amongst one another. It's also good to keep this in mind lest we let a social, political, or spiritual movement promise solidarity in the face of oppression, but then go on to deliver divisiveness. Think of the pigs in 'Animal Farm': committing the same crime of insularity and exclusiveness as those whose tyranny you oppose, really doesn't win you much moral high ground.

BiG StroOnZ, as you're pointing out, saying 'Everyone is essentially African' really renders the entire category 'African' meaningless, and in so doing, ignores a very real historical struggle imposed on people who have the phenotypical markers of being indigenous to Africa. This very sad and violent legacy deserves to be dealt with and come to terms with, not least of which by the descendants of that African diaspora, many of whom continue to live as second-class citizens outside of Africa. This is not to say I endorse celebrations of African (or any other) heritage that draw their appeal by their opposition to outside ethno-racial groups. But I am saying there is a very real need amongst the descendants of the African diaspora, to make peace with their rather hard-to-bear historical experience.

Rastafari fills that need.
 
Not to de-rail the thread, but...


MyDoorsAreOpen said:
Also, sub-Saharan Africans' hair does not naturally form into dreadlocks when left entirely to the forces of nature. It grows into a ball, an Afro. It's naturally non-kinky hair that'll form into clumpy locks when left untouched for years.
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I agree 100% with everything you've said about dreadlocks, except this. I'm half-sub-Saharan African, with very kinky hair, and I know that in my pre-dreadlock days, if I didn't comb my hair every day then I'd get little dreadlock formations after a few weeks. My hair takes very well to dreads, and to be honest I got this hairstyle mostly out of convenience because my hair tangles ridiculously easily, and I'd been spending a lot of time, money and heartache on hair products and trips to salons, etc, to make my hair manageable. I love my locks because not only do they look good to me, but they have spared me a lot of pain and hassle these past 6 years.

Also, I've seen many mentally ill homeless people on the streets in my country who had long dreadlocks which resulted from never combing their hair - the thick, matted kind, about two or three of them on the whole head which are definitely not styled. Afros need to be combed regularly and maintained or they will quickly turn into dreads.

But I agree that the cultural snobbery surrounding dreadlocks is wrong. I'm not a rasta - it annoys me when people think I am merely because of my hairstyle. I tell people I have dreads to honour the traditions of my Viking ancestors, just to confuse them ;) (I'm half Swedish, although I doubt I descend from the Vikings). While I appreciate and admire the sentiment behind dreadlocks with a spiritual or political message, I don't think it takes away any value from the hairstyle itself that people sport dreads for other reasons, even ones so seemingly trivial as fashion and convenience - to me that just makes dreadlocks all the more beautiful and versatile.
 
^ I stand corrected, gb. Doesn't seem like any human group has a corner on the market for dreadlockable hair, then.

I've definitely got nothing against wearing dreads as simply a hairstyle, don't get me wrong. Looks great on the right people. I just find it kind of ironic the way some people who DO claim an ideological basis for this hairstyle can spend more time, energy, and money maintaining it than more conventional hairdos.
 
Could someone explain how rastas deal with the fact that Selassie I told rastas to not believe he was divine? I'm not tryin to be an ass by any means, much respect to rastafari.
 
spaceyourbass said:
Could someone explain how rastas deal with the fact that Selassie I told rastas to not believe he was divine? I'm not tryin to be an ass by any means, much respect to rastafari.
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I was under the impression he never specified that he was or was not Jesus incarnate? Consider that the Buddha told his followers he was not a god and yet is still praised like any other diety.
 
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