Customer Reviews

The Royal Parchment Scroll of Black Supremacy

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

As much as "The Promised Key" by Leonard P. Howell is the roots text of RastafarI, this text by Rev. Fitz Balintine Pettersburgh is the roots text of "The Promised Key". In fact, the latter largely consists of quotes from the former. Written in 1925/26 - a couple of years before the coronation of Haile Selassie-I - the text rather indirectly refers to H.I.M. and qualifies as the proto-RastafarI piece of work.

It is much longer than the more concise and more easily digestable "The Promised Key": Some 80 text pages compared to 19, the latter of which basically being a "Religious Digest". That is precisely, why it is absolutely worth reading "The Royal Parchment Scroll of Black Supremacy" - as a RastafarI interested in the I roots. Any other reader may not know what to do with it and think of it similarly as the contemporary quotes of rejecting comments about this text given in the prologue.

The full stars-rating has to be seen in this light of the original significance this text has for RastafarI. Even though, to quote the author of the 1996 prologue: "The important factor about The Royal Parchment Scroll of Black Supremacy is not wether readers accept all that he has stated but that he was bold enough to put them forward and challenge the Colonial rulers at their religious sources."

This passionate text is written much more feverish than its abridged and updated version "The Promised Key". In a positive sense: Before, our minds had been sick from (self-inflicting) racist conditioning, and this feverish text has heal-burned away that conditioning, making "The Promised Key" possible.

The prologue's 13 text pages harbor a prayer, a preface of selected words by Haile Selassie-I on proper education and an explanation of the front cover for the 2003 re-print. Which displays a montage of the pope prostrating to Haile Selassie-I. Which corresponds to the seven pictures inside, largely depicting disturbing images of the fascist Italian occupation of Ethiopia. (Having been blessed by the contemporary pope Pius XII.) These pics and the cover are anachronistic to this booklet's content, as they show historically later images. However, the text has to be seen as (indirectly) prophetic in this, making the picture and cover selection an excellent choice after all. Unfortunately, the above mentioned explanation for the choice of cover fails to elaborate on it, which would have been advisable, considering "the audacity" of the cover's montage. For one thing, that explanation does not say that Haile Selassie-I displays the sign of Divinity's descent into the world with his hands. (A descent to have been necessary at the rise of annihilating fascism.) The pope obviously is John Paul II, who isn't only the one who entered the Vatican's path of apologizing for its role in colonialism and fascism, but who is most of everything also the one who served Haile Selassie-I in other ways. Thus, the seeming affront of the montage in reality makes a complimentary spiritual fact. The same way as the seemingly racist term "Black Supremacy" in the title in reality is a complementary fact of science. (Black-skinned were the first humans and white skinned are merely paled blacks.) Maybe the publishers didn't realise that they were serving Haile Selassie-I in this way more than they intended. That's why I do not subtract a star for this lack of explanatory elaboration, as obviously it is the result which counts.