The history of the Rastafari movement is very marked by this date, the 2 of November, the day that can be said was the beginning of everything.
is that today 1930, make 92 years, in ethiopia were crowned as their Imperial Majesties Haile Selassie I and Woizero Menen, just as it was prophesied some years before by Marcus Garvey.
Garvey, essential part of this story, was a Jamaican preacher and journalist born in 1887 which is considered one of the pioneers of Pan-Africanism and one of the first activists for the liberation of blacks, in a context with strong racism in the West.
in as well as sheath in 1914 the Universal Association for the Improvement of the Black Man (UNION, for its acronym in English), whose motto was “One God, One Aim, One Destiny” (A God, a purpose, a destination), whose objective was “unite all the people of African descent in the world into one body to establish a country and government of their own”.
The flag of the UN, said to have been designed by Garvey himself, had three horizontal stripes with the red colors, black and green, emblem that to this day represents Pan-Africanism.
Garvey's Prophecy
In the early years of the 20's′ Garvey made a prophecy that became the basis of the Rastafari movement: “Look at africa, when a black king is crowned, liberation day is near”.
few years later, the 2 November 1930, Garvey's prophecy was finally fulfilled with the coronation of the Ras (Prince) Tafari Makonnen who adopted as name Haile Selassie I (Power of the Holy Trinity, in Amharic) and of the empress Woizero I go.
“Last Sunday a grand ceremony took place in Addis Ababa, the capital of abyssinia (what was ethiopia known at that time). It was the coronation of the new emperor of Ethiopia, Ras Tafari. According to reports and expectations, the scene was of great splendor and will be remembered for a long time by those present”, Garvey himself wrote a week after the coronation in his magazine Blackman.
The prophet also highlighted in his publication that “the psalmist prophesied that princes would come out of Egypt and that Ethiopia would stretch out her hands to God. We have no doubt that the time has come. Ethiopia is now really reaching out its hands. This great kingdom of the East has been hidden for many centuries, but gradually it is rising to take a leading place in the world and it's up to us, the black race, help in every way to hold the hand of Emperor Ras Tafari”.
Solomonic dynasty
Tafari Makonnen also came from the direct lineage of the king David and of king solomon, because the latter had a son with the Queen Makeda of Sheba, which was called Menelik, who was the one who started the Solomonic dynasty that ruled Ethiopia until the days of Emperor Selassie.
The important link between Abyssinia and the Kingdom of Israel initiated with Makeda was such that the holy book of Ethiopia, the Kebra Nagast, narrates how Menelik brought the Ark of the Covenant to Axum, in northern Ethiopia, where it remains to this day in the Iglesia Santa María de Sión. After that, his mother named him king., renamed Menelik I.
Many black Jamaicans, influenced by the prophecy of Marcus Garvey and also by the Psalm 87:4-6 to which he alludes in his text of the magazine Blackman (“I will mention Rahab and Babylon to those who know me: behold Philistia and Tire, with Ethiopia; this man was born there. And of Zion it shall be said, This and that man was born in her, and her higher self will establish her. The Lord will recapitulate, when you do accounts with people, that this man was born there”) what they saw in the coronation of Haile Selassie the return to the land of the Messiah, of the Christ, this time as king.
For all the above, it can be placed Selassie's coronation as the starting point of the Rastafari movement, that from that moment began to form strongly in Jamaica and some decades later it became known in the world, but that's a story we'll go over another time.
From this platform we greet with great affection those who celebrate this 2 November the coronation of their Imperial Majesties in Ethiopia.
