The myth is the words or story. Myths can be secular or religious. They can have divine authority or they can reinforce social taboos. All people have myths, all cultures and civilizations. There are historical myths to explain the origin of the world or the origin of a people. There are myths about heroes and sheroes, about events of significance in a people's culture.

Myths function to explain what otherwise cannot be explained. Thus, myths sometimes go beyond the facts, beyond reality into the supernatural. Myths help heal the gaps in a people's psychological repertoire, especially when they have suffered collective amnesia or some other mental condition as the result of a horrific or traumatic event. Zionist mythology is an example. It has turned Israel into a racist regime in its occupation of Palestine. It is a case of mythology gone wild, gone mad, backed by an even sinister mythology called white supremacy or US imperialism.

In the case of African Americans, slavery was an event so terrible, so genocidal, including mass rape, cultural destruction, including language, religion, social institutions, family relations. Despite the terror and destruction, Africans managed to reconstruct and salvage aspects of their culture in the new world.

They syncretized African and European mythology in order to survive, especially in religion since it was such a danger to their continued subjugation. Syncretizm took place not only in the USA but throughout the Americas, in Cuba with Santeria, Brazil with Condomble, in Haiti with Vodun. In North America it was expressed in Holy Ghost ritual.

Africans reshaped European Christianity for their sensibility, including interpreting myths to make slavery more bearable with songs and sermons preaching heaven after you die while the slave master enjoyed heaven on earth. Some of these songs and sermons were in code to inspire revolt and escape, such as the songs "Steal Away" and "Go Down Moses."

But it wasn't until the coming of Master Fard Muhammad and his initiate Elijah Muhammad that a truly original African American mythological system was created, serving as a therapeutic tool in healing the sick psychological condition of the North American African. Master Fard and Elijah tricked the trick out of the so called Negro.

Slavery had turned the African into a trick and whore for the American pimp, but Fard and Elijah taught supreme wisdom that dispelled the inferiority complex of slavery. Supreme wisdom was the Balm of Gilead that healed a multiple of sins in the so called Negro. It gave him mental stability, a historical continuity, restoring his African/Asian roots as the original man.

The Fard/Elijah mythology gave new dignity through its liberating theology that taught freedom, justice and equality, and preached national liberation and independence through separation, mentally and physically. Islamic culture, especially Elijah's Sufistic version (tempered for the so called Negro) was a powerful antidote to the passive, slavery teachings of black Christianity.

The Islamic mythology expedited the decolonization of North American Africans. It was a spiritual force in harmony with the worldwide decolonization of so called Third World peoples in Africa, Asia and Latin America.  It countered the racist policy of divide and conquer by stressing unity as the mighty weapon of liberation.

It took Malcolm X to express this mythology most effectively with his unique oratorical and organizational powers, helping Elijah become the most feared black man in America, and the Nation of Islam grew into the largest black organization since Marcus Garvey's UNIA.

Islamic mythology became the foundation of the Black Arts Movement aesthetics, the inspiration of poems, plays, music, paintings and other artistic expression. While BAM's ritual drama's attempted to utilize the Christian ritual energy, it was the Islamic mythology that gave it substance. See the works of Amiri Baraka, Sonia Sanchez, Askia Toure, Larry Neal, Henry Dumas, Marvin X, the Last Poets and others. We cannot stress the importance of musicians who expressed this myth/ritual energy, such as Coltrane, Archie Shepp, Sun Ra, Milford Graves, Chicago Art Ensemble and others.

After his assassination, Malcolm X became the great hero of BAM and the liberation movement in general. Malcolm's spiritual journey expanded his consciousness and black people's when he turned to orthodox Islam, although Elijah's Islam continued to exert an influence in Black American culture, from black art to black studies, politics and economics.

Ron Karenga's myth/ritual Kwanza was a rehashed African harvest festival designed to negate Christmas, although it has now degenerated into another commercial holiday. The so called Negro never seriously instituted the seven principles of Kwanza. Hallmark has made billions selling cards and the Koreans have made billions selling phony Kenti cloth and outfits for the Kwanza ritual and other Afro-centric occasions.

But surely the Kwanza myth/ritual has had some positive effect on the traumatized African American psyche, thus his spiritual condition.

In summary, myth is the story, ritual is the enactment of the story or the drama. The myth is the word, ritual is the action. Nathaniel Turner took the Christian mythology to another level with his liberation theology and ritual slave revolt. Before and after ole prophet Nat, brothers and sisters enacted the myth/ritual of liberation. And this resistance continues to this day.

Spirituality that does not embrace total liberation from colonialism and neo-colonialism is merely religiosity, thus dysfunctional, whether Christian, Muslim, traditional African or New Age, New Thought.

Religiosity has not and will not lead to the national advancement of North American Africans, rather it keeps us stunted and retarded, instead of guiding us into the upper room of spiritual and political liberation. We shall not realize spiritual maturity until we achieve both.

Church that is merely big business is a sham and desecration of the teachings of Jesus Christ and Muhammad. Meaningless ritual dramas at mega prayer meetings and million people marches have not and cannot lead to liberation, only to the economic benefit of the few. When we free the spirit of the people with revolutionary liberation theology, the vestiges of slavery shall be no more, and strong men and women shall dance into the new day.

posted 5 July 2006

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update 30 July 2008