MAANKH I:

Book excerpt from page 201 of Maa Aankh V1.

Discovering more Hidden Hands

That’s when it happened. While following the Spirit and allowing it to guide me, one day out of the blue I was led to look at my late grandmother’s obituary that had passed a year after meeting my wife.

            My grandmother, my mother’s mother, the one that approved of my wife, was a strong and loving woman that was married to my grandfather for over 60 years, who passed away a year before her. My grandmother loved children and between her and my grandfather the two of them they had nine children, two adopted children and not to mention the children that would come to the house from their church or the neighborhood to play with their own. People loved my grandparents because they were God-fearing, hardworking people that established a standard based upon the old ways. It was because of this standard they were both looked upon and treated in our family as royalty. To give you an example, unless they were participating in a conversation, when they spoke everyone literally was quiet. This is how all the elders in our family were treated. Another thing that I noticed about my family because of my grandparents is that we didn’t have a large number of divorces and infidelity issues, because there was something that my grandparents instilled within their children and grandchildren that for the most part curtailed that behavior.

            Now, there were a lot of traditions that my family practiced and were passed down to succeeding generations, which I later learned were not created by them. Some of these traditions were created or at least given to my grandparents from my great-grandparents, whom I had the pleasure of meeting before they passed. But there were a lot of other cultural traditions that were in practiced before them and clearly came from someone else I had never known.

            Both of my grandparents lived good full lives. Then, my grandfather passed away, and a year later my grandmother followed. Both my grandparents were well loved and when she passed away people from all over the state of Michigan (and country) came to pay their respect. Unlike most funerals that I attended (especially where the deceased dies at a young age), my grandmother’s funeral was not a somber event full of gloom, but a jovial event. The choir tried to sing somber and soothing gospel songs to comfort the family and guests, but the tempo would always change and it would turn into a spiritual party. This explains the reason why it wasn’t even called a funeral but a “home going celebration”.

As I looked at the photo of her on the obituary and began thinking about some of the experiences I shared with her, I noticed that beneath my grandmother’s photo it read ‘Sunrise: (Her birth date) and Sunset: (The day of her death)’.

            Now, I had looked at this obituary several times before, but I never noticed that it said that. That’s when a familiar voice that I hadn’t heard for years spoke to me and revealed that if a person outside of our culture saw this obituary they would jump to the conclusion that we black folks were worshipping the sun.

            I am not sure if my grandmother’s spirit was the one that showed me this or not, but the fact that I had a fond memory of her and was directed to her obituary continued to verify for me the old African belief that our loved ones are not dead but continue to exist as spirits. As spirits or ancestral spirits, they still take an interest in the lives of their descendants that they left behind. I imagined my grandmother smiling and looking at me over my shoulders, which verified to me that my grandmother was definitely an aakhu (ancestral spirit guide) that was watching over me.

            At that moment, things began to instantly clear up, because I began to see the common misconception held and publicized by Egyptologists, archeologists and all other authors that claimed that the ancient Kamitic people worshipped the sun. Simply put, these western scholars just didn’t know how to interpret what our people did because it was and still is a foreign concept to most of them.

            The equating of one’s life to the sun was not something that the people in the church my grandparents attended created. It was created thousands of years ago. The concept that most Afro-Americans are familiar with, I learned, came from the Kongo-Angolan region during slavery, and was called the Yowa Cross.

The Yowa Cross, also called the Dikenga, Tendwa Nza Kongo and the Kongo Cross, according to Robert Farris Thompson, author of Flash of the Spirit: African and Afro-American Art and Philosophy, was a simple diagram predating Christianity that showed the evolution of the soul. The horizontal line of the cross is believed to be the dividing line between the mountain of the living (above) and their polar opposite the mountain of the dead (below). The mountain of the living is called ntoto (earth) and the mountain of the dead is called mpemba (white clay), which is believed to be resting under the body of water symbolized as the horizontal line called kalunga. In fact, in some interpretations the whole bottom half of the cosmogram is referred to as kalunga to signify that the land of the dead is complete, whole, in regards to understanding the both sides in the cycle of life.

            The discs surrounding the Kongo cosmogram (from right to left) are the sunrise, midday, sunset and midnight (when the sun is believed to be shining on the other side) and the four stages of life –birth, growth, death and rebirth, thus indicating the Kongo belief that the righteous will never truly die but will be reborn like the sun, either in the body or name of their descendant or as an everlasting spirit of nature called a simbi, which I learned from Papá Raúl is the equivalent to a Christian saint.

            Then I began to remember that in the Story of RA and Oset, when RA was asked what his true name is, he responded by saying,”I have a multitude of names and a multitude of forms”. In this response, I noticed that the ancient Kamitic people used the word “RA” as a prefix and suffix to create words, names and places like Auf RA, RA-Ptah, KhafRA, MenkauRA, Asr RA, Khnemu-RA, similarly to the way the ancient Hebrews used the word “el” to create words, names and places like EL-Shaddai, EL-ohim, EL-Olam, ang-EL, Rapha-EL, Micha-EL, Gabri-EL, and Isra-EL (Israel).

            When I looked up the word/name “el”, I found that it roughly translates to mean “might, strength, action, work and power” and was used to signify the true God of Israel. Exactly like the ancient Kamitic word “RA”, which means “To do, act, action, power, the act of working, etc.” and was made into a pronoun to become RA. When I found that the Ancient Semitic name EL-Ro’I or El Rohi (The God of Seeing –meaning we rely upon God to help us to humble ourselves by allowing us to see our faults and weaknesses because God is our shepherd) was phonetically and etymologically simlilar to RA, that’s when I realized that the ancient Hebrews borrowed this concept and practice of using El as a prefix and suffix from the ancient Kamitic people, because the latter were older and had a far longer history of using this exercise. This meant that the Hebrew El was the Kamitic version of RA.

            That’s when it became crystal clear that, if I was able to see this connection, I am sure that archeologists, Egyptologists and other Western scholars, including theologians, could have found this as well, and either they chose to ignore it, or totally disregarded it in order to continue to perpetuate the myth that the ancient Kamitic people (and all people of color) worshipped deities, idols, animals and other things like the sun.

            Then I remembered the various testimonies that were given at the church of my youth. The people that testified made claims of how they were able to accomplish miraculous things because of the power of the Holy Ghost that they had within them. The Holy Ghost, which they claimed is “like fire shut up in their bones”, gave them, according to Galatians 5:22-23, “…joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control”. Other gifts of the Holy Spirit I remember were generosity, modesty, and chastity. As well as the ability to exorcise evil spirits, see angels/demons, perform miracles and speak in tongues.

Now, in one part of the Story of RA and Oset, RA states that he is “KhepeRA in the morning, RA at noon and Tmu (RA Atum) in the evening”, but he still hadn’t told Oset his name. When RA finally reveals his hidden name to Oset he steps out and allows this name to pass from him to her, which causes the dying RA to be renewed. The hidden name of RA was cleverly weaved into the story to mean Amun RA –The Hidden RA. That’s when I began to see the complexity in using RA as a symbol. RA was symbolized as the sun to symbolize that God’s Consciousness is eternal and cannot be created nor destroyed. Yet at the same time RA was understood to be a powerful force. A similar problem existed in the church, which is why there are so many a denominations arguing over whose doctrine is right or wrong. Was it Jesus Only, Jesus and the Trinity, the Trinity, the Father, Son and Holy Ghost…? No one knows, I was shown, because God is an Infinite Spirit and it is difficult to define and describe something (for a lack of better words) that you cannot physically see. This is the same problem the Kamau had. They couldn’t properly define and describe God because they understood the human perception of things was extremely limited. The Kamau understood, it seems, that the only way to define and describe God is based upon inesperience, which is why they used so many stories with allusion and puns, in order to get the listener or reader to delve deeper within.

When I thought about how God cannot be physically seen and compared this to my personal experiences, it made sense why the Kamau had so many different names for God. These names of God weren’t labels but words meant to describe and somewhat define who God is. The reason there were so many names is because no one can properly define who and what God is. No one can put God in a box. It just cannot be done. It is like trying to put the ocean in a box. So, to clarify matters, God, the Supreme Being, was called in the Kamitic language Nebertcher, which means Lord of Everything.

It’s understood that it is the Spirit of God that has the ability to change an individual’s life, because the Spirit of God is an awesome Power. This is why Oset wanted to know the name of God: so that she could be changed from a mere mortal to a divine being. It is the same reason why people in the church seek the Holy Ghost, so that they can overcome their earthly problems through spiritual means. It is the same reason why I sought the Holy Ghost when I was a teen. This all led me to see that there were two RAs that existed in the story. There were the RA talking to Oset that journeyed through the two regions, and the RA that exists at midday, according to the Story of RA and Oset. This explained why RA was described as being strong, mighty and powerful at noonday, yet feeble and old like an old man that could be tricked. If God is omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent, clearly God cannot be tricked because this would contradict who and what God really is. Not to mention the fact that God already knew that someone was trying to trick him. Clearly RA is not Nebertcher. It is an aspect and attribute of God.

The RA talking to Oset, it came to me, corresponded to the Consciousness of God. According to Kamitic thought, in the beginning God didn’t exist but had to self-create Itself[1] because the earth (and everything that existed) was without form, because there was a great void (Genesis 1:2). When RA states to Oset that he is KhepeRA, RA and Tmu (or RA Atum), it is understood that the hidden name is Amun RA. It became clear to me that these were all allusions to the fact that God is always Aware, Alert and Conscious, because God’s Consciousness is always coming into being and transforming like the sun. This meant to me that:

[1] God is androgynous in African thought consisting of both the active masculine energies and receptive feminine energies.