REFLECTIONS ON THE THEME OF THE SACRIFICIAL RAM/LAMB IN
HINDU, ISLAM, CHRISTIAN AND INDIGENOUS AFRICAN PHILOSOPHIES
By Catherine Acholonu and Ajay Prabhakar, co-authors The Gram Code of African Adam.
With contributions from Nneka Egbuna.
HINDU, ISLAM, CHRISTIAN AND INDIGENOUS AFRICAN PHILOSOPHIES
By Catherine Acholonu and Ajay Prabhakar, co-authors The Gram Code of African Adam.
With contributions from Nneka Egbuna.
INTRODUCTION:
This paper is an excerpt that was synthesized from our recent book, The Gram Code of African Adam, Stone Books and Cave Libraries, Reconstructing 450,000 Years of Africa’s Lost Civilizations, co-authored with Prof. Catherine Acholonu and edited by Research Assistant, Nneka Egbuna.
Our research, which we call The Ikom Gram Project, was first presented to the world in May, 2001 at the UNESCO Roundtable on Intercultural Dialogue, Badagry, Lagos, Nigeria under the title “Ikom Monoliths of Cross River State: Pre-Historic Computer or Astronomical Calendar” by Prof. Catherine Acholonu. I joined the research team in 2004 and brought with me the Indian/Asian connection into this global project, which seeks to pull together the cultural, scientific and technological threads that unite us as one human family with the same basic philosophies, needs and problems, hopes and aspirations. More than that, as an Information Technology Specialist and Software Applications Engineer, my entry into the project was inspired by the ongoing attempt by the UN Forum of Arts and Culture and the Catherine Acholonu Center for African Cultural Sciences to bring about an interface between Arts and Science, Culture and Technology in their ongoing quest to resurrect the lost heritage of forgotten civilizations of Africa and the world. My participation in this project was concentrated in the area of Computer analysis of language samples and linguistic data.
On a personal level, my fascination with this research project is driven by the fact that it demonstrates to my personal satisfaction and fascination, that mankind originated from one original family. This original family has been demonstrated by scholars in Molecular Genetics, Archaeology, Paleontology and other related disciplines to have first lived on the African Continent more than 300, 000 years ago. (National Geographic, Oct. 1988; Zecharia Sitchen, Genesis Revisited; Acholonu and Prabhakar, The Gram Code, p. 278-280.)
ONE FAMILY; ONE PHILOSOPHY:
The search for tolerance among nations and cultures of the world must of essence be traced to mankind’s common origins, for if we can demonstrate to the peoples of the various nations of the world that we are the same people and our philosophies, cultures and religions, diverse colorations of one original philosophy, lasting peace and unity would become realizable.
An abiding Philosophy of Tolerance must be able to comprehensively address the fears expressed in UNESCO’s Constitution, namely, “ … that ignorance of each other’s ways and lives has been a common cause, throughout the History of mankind, of that suspicion and mistrust between the peoples of the world that have all too often broken into war…”. On this note we invite this audience to deliberate with us on the symbolism of the Sacrificial Ram and its implications in the Religious philosophies of the Hindu, Muslim, Christian and indigenous Africans of yester-years.
THE ORIGINS:
In the book The Gram Code of African Adam, Stone Books and Cave Libraries; Reconstructing 450,000 Years of Africa’s Lost Civilizations, we undertook the first ever attempted transcriptions and translations of the pre-Historic inscriptions on the Ikom monoliths of Cross River State, Nigeria. The Ikom monoliths (there are over 300 of them) carved stones with enigmatic inscriptions that were discovered in the turn of the 20th Century, located in the villages of Ikom Local Government (and environs) in Cross River State Nigeria, left behind by ancient Africans dating back thousands of years, but yet to be scientifically dated. In the four years during which our research team studied these stone inscriptions (2001-2005), comparing them with ancient writings from the five continents of the globe, we learnt a great deal about the origins of Writing, and in particular, we believe we have been able to decipher, what mankind’s first attempts at writing would have looked like.
There is plenty of evidence in the pre-historic records of various ancient peoples of the world to suggest that the shape of the human body and the symmetric distribution of its members and parts, was held by the ancient priesthoods the world over as the origin of writing, numbers, numerology and knowledge. Numerology (the study of numbers) was viewed as the origin of all knowledge. Mankind’s ability to count was the opening to the door of knowledge and power because the numbers were seen as representations of various emanations of God (for example: the number ONE stands for God the Father; TWO for God the Mother, and THREE for God in Creation or God the Son). The human body was seen as a book written by Deity about Itself from which man learnt about the nature of God within himself and the secrets of life held within the nature and essence of the numbers 1 to 10. Man learnt to count from 1 to 10 from his own fingers and toes. The open mouth stood for ‘Zero’, and Zero is the symbol of Infinity, which is another name for God the Unknowable. This symbol is fundamental to all religions. Among the Hindi of India and other Asian peoples the Zero is the OM. We found that this letter (the zero/the open mouth) or variations of it, stood for the sound ‘M’ in quite a number of ancient languages such as Hebrew, Greek, Korean, Malayalam (a South Indian language and in the Ikom monolith writings, to mention just a few).
The lidless open eye, centered by a dot has many divine connotations, but one of its central meanings is ‘The Sun’ or ‘The sun within the Sun’. There are traceable links with Hebrew, Hindu and Egyptian esoteric lore. This too is one of the most common inscriptions on the Ikom monoliths. Another variation of this symbol is the concentric circle, which also connotes the letter ‘M’ or ‘OM’. OM! is the invocation of God as Mother. Thus, while the single Zero is the letter ‘M’, and the concentric circle is the invocation of the name of God; the circle centered by a dot is the universal symbol of the Sun in most world-cultures: the symbol of the Sun-God Ra in ancient Egyptian; and of Kether (God the Creator) in Hebrew Cabbalah. (For detailed illustrations see The Gram Code and The Egyptian Book of the Dead.)
THE CONCENTRIC CIRCLE AND THE SPIRAL:
In African traditional Art and life the Zero of Infinity is often represented as a snake whose head is joined to its own tail. A very popular symbol of Infinity is the ring worn on fingers, which has found its way into numerous folklore all over the world. In traditional Africa and India, the bracelet worn by women plays this same function.
A circle represents a full cycle. Concentric circles represent a series of connected cycles. When concentric circles are linked chronologically, they become a spiral. Units of Cycles are counted or designated with lines (or fingers) which connote numbers. These three: circles, spirals, and lines were the basic letters of the Alphabets of the ancient authors of the inscriptions on the Ikom monoliths. We have demonstrated in great detail in The Gram Code, how the monoliths inscriptions correlate with Sumerian Enuma Elish, the world’s oldest preserved epic of creation, written in cuneiform and dating back 4,000 B.C, preserving in graphic detail the stories of the births of cycles, galaxies and planets in and beyond our solar system. We also demonstrated that the first and last letters of the Original Sumerian which preceded Cuneiform by about one thousand years, were possibly exported by the people who invented the orthography of the Ikom monoliths, because the two letters in question were among the inscriptions found on the monoliths. The letters in question are ………… and ……. (See Fig. 1). The letter……. (designating the sound -ki-) which means ‘earth’ was used on the monolith whose name has been transcribed as ‘Khem’ (See Fig. 2). Facial features such as ears, nose, mouth and eyes were dexterously crafted by those who carved the stone to take the form of letters parts of which we have been able to match with letters from Original Sumerian, ancient Egyptian and Malayalam (a language of Southern India).
KHEM AND THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE SACRIFICIAL RAM:
The word Khem is the native African name of the second son of Noah, the Father of Nations in the Hebrew-Christian tradition. Khem (also pronounced Kham, Kheme) is the Egyptian name of the father of African peoples, who is known in the Hebrew Bible as ‘Ham’. The monolith bearing his name among the monoliths of Ikom is located in Alok village, which the natives of Ikom Local Government say is the oldest village in the area and the mother of all the other villages, indicating that the monoliths might have been there longest of all, or that the village holds the key to the origin of the monoliths and their writings. Accordingly, the Khem monolith holds a key that tends to indicate that Ham may have been the inventor of the inscription or the heir to its mysteries.
The key is located on the forehead of the monolith in question, in the form of a set of clearly marked multiple concentric circles, which is the sign of the Sun Kings that bear the Divine heritage of the Cult of the Sun, otherwise referred to as the ‘Sons of the Sun’. An image of a man bearing the exact replica of this set of forehead concentric circles was found among the sacred bronze artifacts unearthed by Archaeologist Thurstan Shaw from a 9th Century grave of an Igbo king in Igbo Ukwu. With the cult of the Sun King goes the philosophy of the Sacrificial Saviour and the Cult of the Sacrificial Ram/Lamb. But what is the actual meaning of this symbol?
Mark Prophet in his phenomenal book Cosmic Consciousness (1987), tells us that Concentric circles represent cycles within cycles and worlds within worlds, centered by God: the originator of cycles, and that “the dot in the center of a circle is the point of congruence with Divinity” where man and God become one. Walter and Lao Russel in their seminal book Atomic Suicide (1981) insist that the dot in the center of the circle is God centering all things within creation. Taking this discovery further, we come to the realization that the man with the concentric circles on his forehead symbolizes the attainment of congruence with God or cosmic consciousness.
It is the sign of the God-man!
Field research conducted into various cultures of Africa show that a cult of the Sacrificial Saviour was known and practiced. Among the Dogon of Mali and Ivory Coast, ancient traditions had long before the Christian era, held the sacred belief in a saviour race known as the Nommo and of a particular sacrificial personality who, like Jesus, was “the representative of the Word”.
This ancient (and no doubt indigenous) saviour of the Dogon was said to have been “crucified on a kilena tree, … died and was resurrected (as did the tree) … He will rise in human form and descend on earth … then he will take on his original form and rule”. (Murry Hope: Ancient Egypt, The Sirius Connection, 1990, p.77)
In many religions and cultures of the world, the symbol of the sacrificial Saviour is the Ram (or its close relative, the lamb). The ancient Egyptians practiced a ritual in honour of the god Osiris, whereby a sacred ram was slaughtered once a year in commemoration of what the Egyptians believed to be the sacrificial death of Osiris in the hands of his brother Seth. The Ram so slaughtered was subsequently worshipped as a god and his fleece was preserved in the temple. This ritual was connected with the myth of the Golden Fleece. The cult of the ram that was sacrificed to blot away public error or sin was known and practiced in many cultures of the world, Africa included. This practice, which is still very prevalent in Christian and Moslem religions as well as in traditional African religions, has been found to have originated from the cult of the Sacrificial Son of the Sun otherwise known as the Christ or the Logos.
In Hindu worldview the Sacrificial Ram is exemplified by the god Rama who is also called ‘Ram’. Like the other sacrificial gods of other cultures, Rama is a Sun god. In one of his popular incarnations he was the first son of a Sun king who had to sacrifice his throne by condescending to go into exile for 14 years to save his people and his father’s family. One of his most well-known incarnations is Krishna, who is seen as the Hindu equivalent of Christ.
The Logos, Christ or Avatar is the embodiment and exemplar of Divine Love and Divine Love as exemplified and preached in all known religions: Hindi, Islam and Christianity, is marked by the extremes of sacrifice for the common good, culminating in self-sacrifice. Divine Love knows no barriers. Its circle of love is the boundless Zero of Infinity.
In Yoruba Ifa tradition, the god Orunmila says that when a human being attains wisdom, when a human being brings blessings to the world, he attains the status of a god. (Abosede Emmanuel, Odun Ifa, 2000). By this, Orunmila takes the philosophy of the Sacrificial Ram to another level, insisting that obedience to God onto death makes a person invincible. By way of example, he says that one who is “thrown by God” in a wrestling context cannot be “thrown” (defeated) by man). This is the goal of Ascetism as practiced in all religions Hindu, Christian, Muslim, Sufism and indigenous religions. This is the lesson of the slaughtering of the ram by Muslims at Ramadan, whereby the ram takes the place of the sacrificial saviour, taking upon itself residual sins not eliminated through Fasting.
The indigenous African philosophy of the Sacrificial Ram and its relationship with the Sun cult and man is timelessly captured in a Pre-Historic African cave painting (Fig. 3., Tassili, Sahara, 7,000 B.C.) dating back 9 ,000 years from the present era, depicting three rams with sun discs on their heads; a third ram halved, with its tail forming a heart-symbol around it (the universal symbol of love). In the center of the painting is a man amputated on one foot, spilling his semen on the ground.
We believe that the Arts and crafts of the ancients, their cave paintings and stone inscriptions were records of the lifestyles, beliefs, histories and achievements of the civilizations that made them. And that this painting, like the monoliths inscriptions, were eloquent testimonies that the ancient Africans who made them, believed and lived by the philosophy that Godhood was the divine right of the one whose seed was sacrificed to the common good. And we believe that Ham was this man whose innocent seed, Canaan, was wrongfully cursed by Noah, and as our research has also demonstrated, generations of Africans that were sold into slavery were actually from the domain of Canaan, the place we know today as the Nigeria/Cameroon axis.
THE DOGON RECORD OF A CHALDEAN CHRIST:
Going back to the issue of the crucifixion, which is a fundamental aspect of indigenous Dogon religion, our research has proved that contrary to the assumptions of some Western researchers, the claim to a North African or Mediterranean origin for the Dogon people has absolutely no basis in fact. Dogon have their roots in West Africa and they are as Negroid as their neighbouring brethren. In fact their physical appearance says that much.
What is new, however, is the hitherto unknown fact that 450,000 to 500,000 years ago there was a High Civilization on the African Continent – a forgotten civilization that the world ascribes to a little-known group of wizards called the Chaldeans. Sumerian historian, Berossus listed the world’s first kings up till the Deluge, and his record spanned a period of close to 450,000 years. (Robert Temple: The Syrius Mystery, 1987)
Emerging information from esoteric quarters and hitherto hidden records attest to the fact that -
“Africa once (knew) an age of … enlightenment long lost to recorded history. It was a Golden Age civilization with marvelous advances in science and technology.” The same source says that “the black race, long ago, was part of what was known as the blue race … Their skin actually had a blue or violet hue. These souls had a spiritually advanced civilization that existed on the continent of Africa.” (E.C. Prophet: Afra, Brother of Light, Summit Lighthouse Library, 2003) This source confirms our own conclusion that Berossus’ Chaldean king-list was a record of the first African world leaders due to the fact that it places the Age of this great African civilization within the same period recorded by Berossus as the time when the Chaldeans ruled the world, namely 500,000 BC!
The source reveals that around the year 500,000 B.C. on the African continent, a man was “crucified by his own people”. It identifies this man by the name ‘Afra’ and says that he ascended into heaven after his death. Though the source did not actually use the word “resurrection”, we can deduce from Dogon records that he might have resurrected. However we are told that “Afra was the Christ in the midst of his own people…”. (Prophet, 2003, p.24) “Afra was the first member of the Black race to make his ascension… The continent of Afr-ica takes its name from Afra. He is the patron of the land and also the patron of the black race.” (p. 15)
Afra was a man who lived in the same time period as the Chaldeans, the only group of people in the world identified with the word “Magi”. Curiously the three kings who visited the infant Jesus at birth were called “the Maji from the East”. They were the only people in the world who knew of the coming Savior (apart from Jesus’ own family), indicating that Jesus’ mission was following the tradition of Chaldeans. Then again, the Biblical Statement that Jesus was a “eternal priest” after the Order of Melchizedeck indicates that Jesus was the first or only Christ.
CONCLUSION:
While we were putting finishing touches on the manuscript of The Gram Code of African Adam, Prof. Acholonu had insisted on drawing the conclusion that the term “blue blood”, which is used in the West to identify the royal blood of the kings and queens of Europe, was a hidden reference to the Black African Gene of Ham, who, according to our discoveries was of the lineage of the Divine Sons of the Sun. I had my doubts, but she would not be persuaded otherwise. Four months after The Gram Code was published, one of us accidentally stumbled on the above quoted book. We could hardly believe our eyes, but there it was in black and white that “the black race of Africa have come forth on the blue ray and the violet ray” and that “in the ancient civilization of Africa the people’s skin had a blue or violet hue” (p. 18).
It is said that “all races on earth have come forth from the heart of God under the seven rays or seven parts of initiation…” These seven rays are identified by the various colours. Our discovery that the Black race was originally of Blue skin is also key to our thesis that indeed Africa, as the place of human origins, was the initiator of the high cultures and divine philosophies which all peoples and religions of the world (including present-day Africans) aspire to attain. In particular I refer to my own native Hindu religion and to our great god Krishna who has been compared with the Christian Christ, but who is actually an incarnation of Rama, and even Shiva. These gods are usually depicted with skins of blue colour. It had been generally argued by black scholars, that the blue colour of Hindu gods was a cover for black, but now we know that the Blue colour was actually blue. And that these gods were indeed among the Chaldeans that left the African continent to populate India and other continents more than three hundred thousand years ago. Interestingly my part of India was known of old as Hindu Kush. Kush, as I have come to realize, was the first son of Ham, the father of the Black race, which places the heirship and legacy of Ham squarely on the Hindu people. Africans of today might consider visiting India to study about the lost civilizations of our common ancestors.
Humanity is one family one people and one philosophy, of which none is higher than the other. Let us look to the things that unite us and go beyond mere tolerance to Divine Love, unity and peace.
Our research, which we call The Ikom Gram Project, was first presented to the world in May, 2001 at the UNESCO Roundtable on Intercultural Dialogue, Badagry, Lagos, Nigeria under the title “Ikom Monoliths of Cross River State: Pre-Historic Computer or Astronomical Calendar” by Prof. Catherine Acholonu. I joined the research team in 2004 and brought with me the Indian/Asian connection into this global project, which seeks to pull together the cultural, scientific and technological threads that unite us as one human family with the same basic philosophies, needs and problems, hopes and aspirations. More than that, as an Information Technology Specialist and Software Applications Engineer, my entry into the project was inspired by the ongoing attempt by the UN Forum of Arts and Culture and the Catherine Acholonu Center for African Cultural Sciences to bring about an interface between Arts and Science, Culture and Technology in their ongoing quest to resurrect the lost heritage of forgotten civilizations of Africa and the world. My participation in this project was concentrated in the area of Computer analysis of language samples and linguistic data.
On a personal level, my fascination with this research project is driven by the fact that it demonstrates to my personal satisfaction and fascination, that mankind originated from one original family. This original family has been demonstrated by scholars in Molecular Genetics, Archaeology, Paleontology and other related disciplines to have first lived on the African Continent more than 300, 000 years ago. (National Geographic, Oct. 1988; Zecharia Sitchen, Genesis Revisited; Acholonu and Prabhakar, The Gram Code, p. 278-280.)
ONE FAMILY; ONE PHILOSOPHY:
The search for tolerance among nations and cultures of the world must of essence be traced to mankind’s common origins, for if we can demonstrate to the peoples of the various nations of the world that we are the same people and our philosophies, cultures and religions, diverse colorations of one original philosophy, lasting peace and unity would become realizable.
An abiding Philosophy of Tolerance must be able to comprehensively address the fears expressed in UNESCO’s Constitution, namely, “ … that ignorance of each other’s ways and lives has been a common cause, throughout the History of mankind, of that suspicion and mistrust between the peoples of the world that have all too often broken into war…”. On this note we invite this audience to deliberate with us on the symbolism of the Sacrificial Ram and its implications in the Religious philosophies of the Hindu, Muslim, Christian and indigenous Africans of yester-years.
THE ORIGINS:
In the book The Gram Code of African Adam, Stone Books and Cave Libraries; Reconstructing 450,000 Years of Africa’s Lost Civilizations, we undertook the first ever attempted transcriptions and translations of the pre-Historic inscriptions on the Ikom monoliths of Cross River State, Nigeria. The Ikom monoliths (there are over 300 of them) carved stones with enigmatic inscriptions that were discovered in the turn of the 20th Century, located in the villages of Ikom Local Government (and environs) in Cross River State Nigeria, left behind by ancient Africans dating back thousands of years, but yet to be scientifically dated. In the four years during which our research team studied these stone inscriptions (2001-2005), comparing them with ancient writings from the five continents of the globe, we learnt a great deal about the origins of Writing, and in particular, we believe we have been able to decipher, what mankind’s first attempts at writing would have looked like.
There is plenty of evidence in the pre-historic records of various ancient peoples of the world to suggest that the shape of the human body and the symmetric distribution of its members and parts, was held by the ancient priesthoods the world over as the origin of writing, numbers, numerology and knowledge. Numerology (the study of numbers) was viewed as the origin of all knowledge. Mankind’s ability to count was the opening to the door of knowledge and power because the numbers were seen as representations of various emanations of God (for example: the number ONE stands for God the Father; TWO for God the Mother, and THREE for God in Creation or God the Son). The human body was seen as a book written by Deity about Itself from which man learnt about the nature of God within himself and the secrets of life held within the nature and essence of the numbers 1 to 10. Man learnt to count from 1 to 10 from his own fingers and toes. The open mouth stood for ‘Zero’, and Zero is the symbol of Infinity, which is another name for God the Unknowable. This symbol is fundamental to all religions. Among the Hindi of India and other Asian peoples the Zero is the OM. We found that this letter (the zero/the open mouth) or variations of it, stood for the sound ‘M’ in quite a number of ancient languages such as Hebrew, Greek, Korean, Malayalam (a South Indian language and in the Ikom monolith writings, to mention just a few).
The lidless open eye, centered by a dot has many divine connotations, but one of its central meanings is ‘The Sun’ or ‘The sun within the Sun’. There are traceable links with Hebrew, Hindu and Egyptian esoteric lore. This too is one of the most common inscriptions on the Ikom monoliths. Another variation of this symbol is the concentric circle, which also connotes the letter ‘M’ or ‘OM’. OM! is the invocation of God as Mother. Thus, while the single Zero is the letter ‘M’, and the concentric circle is the invocation of the name of God; the circle centered by a dot is the universal symbol of the Sun in most world-cultures: the symbol of the Sun-God Ra in ancient Egyptian; and of Kether (God the Creator) in Hebrew Cabbalah. (For detailed illustrations see The Gram Code and The Egyptian Book of the Dead.)
THE CONCENTRIC CIRCLE AND THE SPIRAL:
In African traditional Art and life the Zero of Infinity is often represented as a snake whose head is joined to its own tail. A very popular symbol of Infinity is the ring worn on fingers, which has found its way into numerous folklore all over the world. In traditional Africa and India, the bracelet worn by women plays this same function.
A circle represents a full cycle. Concentric circles represent a series of connected cycles. When concentric circles are linked chronologically, they become a spiral. Units of Cycles are counted or designated with lines (or fingers) which connote numbers. These three: circles, spirals, and lines were the basic letters of the Alphabets of the ancient authors of the inscriptions on the Ikom monoliths. We have demonstrated in great detail in The Gram Code, how the monoliths inscriptions correlate with Sumerian Enuma Elish, the world’s oldest preserved epic of creation, written in cuneiform and dating back 4,000 B.C, preserving in graphic detail the stories of the births of cycles, galaxies and planets in and beyond our solar system. We also demonstrated that the first and last letters of the Original Sumerian which preceded Cuneiform by about one thousand years, were possibly exported by the people who invented the orthography of the Ikom monoliths, because the two letters in question were among the inscriptions found on the monoliths. The letters in question are ………… and ……. (See Fig. 1). The letter……. (designating the sound -ki-) which means ‘earth’ was used on the monolith whose name has been transcribed as ‘Khem’ (See Fig. 2). Facial features such as ears, nose, mouth and eyes were dexterously crafted by those who carved the stone to take the form of letters parts of which we have been able to match with letters from Original Sumerian, ancient Egyptian and Malayalam (a language of Southern India).
KHEM AND THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE SACRIFICIAL RAM:
The word Khem is the native African name of the second son of Noah, the Father of Nations in the Hebrew-Christian tradition. Khem (also pronounced Kham, Kheme) is the Egyptian name of the father of African peoples, who is known in the Hebrew Bible as ‘Ham’. The monolith bearing his name among the monoliths of Ikom is located in Alok village, which the natives of Ikom Local Government say is the oldest village in the area and the mother of all the other villages, indicating that the monoliths might have been there longest of all, or that the village holds the key to the origin of the monoliths and their writings. Accordingly, the Khem monolith holds a key that tends to indicate that Ham may have been the inventor of the inscription or the heir to its mysteries.
The key is located on the forehead of the monolith in question, in the form of a set of clearly marked multiple concentric circles, which is the sign of the Sun Kings that bear the Divine heritage of the Cult of the Sun, otherwise referred to as the ‘Sons of the Sun’. An image of a man bearing the exact replica of this set of forehead concentric circles was found among the sacred bronze artifacts unearthed by Archaeologist Thurstan Shaw from a 9th Century grave of an Igbo king in Igbo Ukwu. With the cult of the Sun King goes the philosophy of the Sacrificial Saviour and the Cult of the Sacrificial Ram/Lamb. But what is the actual meaning of this symbol?
Mark Prophet in his phenomenal book Cosmic Consciousness (1987), tells us that Concentric circles represent cycles within cycles and worlds within worlds, centered by God: the originator of cycles, and that “the dot in the center of a circle is the point of congruence with Divinity” where man and God become one. Walter and Lao Russel in their seminal book Atomic Suicide (1981) insist that the dot in the center of the circle is God centering all things within creation. Taking this discovery further, we come to the realization that the man with the concentric circles on his forehead symbolizes the attainment of congruence with God or cosmic consciousness.
It is the sign of the God-man!
Field research conducted into various cultures of Africa show that a cult of the Sacrificial Saviour was known and practiced. Among the Dogon of Mali and Ivory Coast, ancient traditions had long before the Christian era, held the sacred belief in a saviour race known as the Nommo and of a particular sacrificial personality who, like Jesus, was “the representative of the Word”.
This ancient (and no doubt indigenous) saviour of the Dogon was said to have been “crucified on a kilena tree, … died and was resurrected (as did the tree) … He will rise in human form and descend on earth … then he will take on his original form and rule”. (Murry Hope: Ancient Egypt, The Sirius Connection, 1990, p.77)
In many religions and cultures of the world, the symbol of the sacrificial Saviour is the Ram (or its close relative, the lamb). The ancient Egyptians practiced a ritual in honour of the god Osiris, whereby a sacred ram was slaughtered once a year in commemoration of what the Egyptians believed to be the sacrificial death of Osiris in the hands of his brother Seth. The Ram so slaughtered was subsequently worshipped as a god and his fleece was preserved in the temple. This ritual was connected with the myth of the Golden Fleece. The cult of the ram that was sacrificed to blot away public error or sin was known and practiced in many cultures of the world, Africa included. This practice, which is still very prevalent in Christian and Moslem religions as well as in traditional African religions, has been found to have originated from the cult of the Sacrificial Son of the Sun otherwise known as the Christ or the Logos.
In Hindu worldview the Sacrificial Ram is exemplified by the god Rama who is also called ‘Ram’. Like the other sacrificial gods of other cultures, Rama is a Sun god. In one of his popular incarnations he was the first son of a Sun king who had to sacrifice his throne by condescending to go into exile for 14 years to save his people and his father’s family. One of his most well-known incarnations is Krishna, who is seen as the Hindu equivalent of Christ.
The Logos, Christ or Avatar is the embodiment and exemplar of Divine Love and Divine Love as exemplified and preached in all known religions: Hindi, Islam and Christianity, is marked by the extremes of sacrifice for the common good, culminating in self-sacrifice. Divine Love knows no barriers. Its circle of love is the boundless Zero of Infinity.
In Yoruba Ifa tradition, the god Orunmila says that when a human being attains wisdom, when a human being brings blessings to the world, he attains the status of a god. (Abosede Emmanuel, Odun Ifa, 2000). By this, Orunmila takes the philosophy of the Sacrificial Ram to another level, insisting that obedience to God onto death makes a person invincible. By way of example, he says that one who is “thrown by God” in a wrestling context cannot be “thrown” (defeated) by man). This is the goal of Ascetism as practiced in all religions Hindu, Christian, Muslim, Sufism and indigenous religions. This is the lesson of the slaughtering of the ram by Muslims at Ramadan, whereby the ram takes the place of the sacrificial saviour, taking upon itself residual sins not eliminated through Fasting.
The indigenous African philosophy of the Sacrificial Ram and its relationship with the Sun cult and man is timelessly captured in a Pre-Historic African cave painting (Fig. 3., Tassili, Sahara, 7,000 B.C.) dating back 9 ,000 years from the present era, depicting three rams with sun discs on their heads; a third ram halved, with its tail forming a heart-symbol around it (the universal symbol of love). In the center of the painting is a man amputated on one foot, spilling his semen on the ground.
We believe that the Arts and crafts of the ancients, their cave paintings and stone inscriptions were records of the lifestyles, beliefs, histories and achievements of the civilizations that made them. And that this painting, like the monoliths inscriptions, were eloquent testimonies that the ancient Africans who made them, believed and lived by the philosophy that Godhood was the divine right of the one whose seed was sacrificed to the common good. And we believe that Ham was this man whose innocent seed, Canaan, was wrongfully cursed by Noah, and as our research has also demonstrated, generations of Africans that were sold into slavery were actually from the domain of Canaan, the place we know today as the Nigeria/Cameroon axis.
THE DOGON RECORD OF A CHALDEAN CHRIST:
Going back to the issue of the crucifixion, which is a fundamental aspect of indigenous Dogon religion, our research has proved that contrary to the assumptions of some Western researchers, the claim to a North African or Mediterranean origin for the Dogon people has absolutely no basis in fact. Dogon have their roots in West Africa and they are as Negroid as their neighbouring brethren. In fact their physical appearance says that much.
What is new, however, is the hitherto unknown fact that 450,000 to 500,000 years ago there was a High Civilization on the African Continent – a forgotten civilization that the world ascribes to a little-known group of wizards called the Chaldeans. Sumerian historian, Berossus listed the world’s first kings up till the Deluge, and his record spanned a period of close to 450,000 years. (Robert Temple: The Syrius Mystery, 1987)
Emerging information from esoteric quarters and hitherto hidden records attest to the fact that -
“Africa once (knew) an age of … enlightenment long lost to recorded history. It was a Golden Age civilization with marvelous advances in science and technology.” The same source says that “the black race, long ago, was part of what was known as the blue race … Their skin actually had a blue or violet hue. These souls had a spiritually advanced civilization that existed on the continent of Africa.” (E.C. Prophet: Afra, Brother of Light, Summit Lighthouse Library, 2003) This source confirms our own conclusion that Berossus’ Chaldean king-list was a record of the first African world leaders due to the fact that it places the Age of this great African civilization within the same period recorded by Berossus as the time when the Chaldeans ruled the world, namely 500,000 BC!
The source reveals that around the year 500,000 B.C. on the African continent, a man was “crucified by his own people”. It identifies this man by the name ‘Afra’ and says that he ascended into heaven after his death. Though the source did not actually use the word “resurrection”, we can deduce from Dogon records that he might have resurrected. However we are told that “Afra was the Christ in the midst of his own people…”. (Prophet, 2003, p.24) “Afra was the first member of the Black race to make his ascension… The continent of Afr-ica takes its name from Afra. He is the patron of the land and also the patron of the black race.” (p. 15)
Afra was a man who lived in the same time period as the Chaldeans, the only group of people in the world identified with the word “Magi”. Curiously the three kings who visited the infant Jesus at birth were called “the Maji from the East”. They were the only people in the world who knew of the coming Savior (apart from Jesus’ own family), indicating that Jesus’ mission was following the tradition of Chaldeans. Then again, the Biblical Statement that Jesus was a “eternal priest” after the Order of Melchizedeck indicates that Jesus was the first or only Christ.
CONCLUSION:
While we were putting finishing touches on the manuscript of The Gram Code of African Adam, Prof. Acholonu had insisted on drawing the conclusion that the term “blue blood”, which is used in the West to identify the royal blood of the kings and queens of Europe, was a hidden reference to the Black African Gene of Ham, who, according to our discoveries was of the lineage of the Divine Sons of the Sun. I had my doubts, but she would not be persuaded otherwise. Four months after The Gram Code was published, one of us accidentally stumbled on the above quoted book. We could hardly believe our eyes, but there it was in black and white that “the black race of Africa have come forth on the blue ray and the violet ray” and that “in the ancient civilization of Africa the people’s skin had a blue or violet hue” (p. 18).
It is said that “all races on earth have come forth from the heart of God under the seven rays or seven parts of initiation…” These seven rays are identified by the various colours. Our discovery that the Black race was originally of Blue skin is also key to our thesis that indeed Africa, as the place of human origins, was the initiator of the high cultures and divine philosophies which all peoples and religions of the world (including present-day Africans) aspire to attain. In particular I refer to my own native Hindu religion and to our great god Krishna who has been compared with the Christian Christ, but who is actually an incarnation of Rama, and even Shiva. These gods are usually depicted with skins of blue colour. It had been generally argued by black scholars, that the blue colour of Hindu gods was a cover for black, but now we know that the Blue colour was actually blue. And that these gods were indeed among the Chaldeans that left the African continent to populate India and other continents more than three hundred thousand years ago. Interestingly my part of India was known of old as Hindu Kush. Kush, as I have come to realize, was the first son of Ham, the father of the Black race, which places the heirship and legacy of Ham squarely on the Hindu people. Africans of today might consider visiting India to study about the lost civilizations of our common ancestors.
Humanity is one family one people and one philosophy, of which none is higher than the other. Let us look to the things that unite us and go beyond mere tolerance to Divine Love, unity and peace.