Categories
Haile Selassie I - Teachings

Learn Languages

“Difference in language often creates misunderstanding, and can seriously affect the responsibilities that are being bestowed on you. Lack of knowledge of the national language will be a barrier for the education we have in mind for you. In addition to your national language, it is necessary for you to acquire knowledge of a foreign language, for in this way you will not only acquire the basic education, but also will be able to attain the University standard. It is imperative that you encourage your children in the acquisition of education. It is exceedingly difficult for you to fulfill your duties as members of Parliament through interpreters. We have opened the door to education, and it is your duty to use that education. If, through idleness, you do not avail yourselves of this opportunity, you will have condemned yourselves to ignorance.”

–  H.I.M. Haile Selassie I – Ogaden Speech, August 25 1956

Categories
Spiritual Poetry

Education is the Key

“The key for the betterment and completeness of modern living is education.”
(Selected Speeches p. 34)
“Woe unto you, lawyers! for ye have taken away the key of knowledge: ye entered not in yourselves, and them that were entering in ye hindered.”
(Luke 11, 52)
Look a key
how much precise
ingenuity
technically fits
the hole
and gears rotate,
measure the lock
solve the problem
to open the port
expand the frontier
of my liberty place,
or keep it closed
and safe
science of mind
gives force
to my hand of right
harness
the space,
and patronize
width and length
I owe
I shall enter
the room
a globe
of complete size,
while fool
is still knocking
in vain
cannot born
again
on the other side.
Categories
Haile Selassie I - Teachings

Fear Egziabhier only

ETHIOPIA DEFIANT AS ITALY PLANS TO GRAB AFRICA
‘Ethiopia is not afraid of Italy. We are not looking for war, but if Italy invades our country, we are willing to die to the last man’.
Thus did Emperor Haile Selassie, ruler of the only absolute monarchy in the world today, and a descendant of King Solomon, answer Mussolini’s ultimatum.
Following this declaration, the Emperor instructed his envoy at Rome, Negradas Yesus, to say that Ethiopia would not pay one cent of the $44.900 indemnity demanded by Italy for the death of Italian colonials, nor meet the harsh demands of Italy.”
Categories
Haile Selassie I - Testimonies

The Kansak City Star, January 13 1963

‘KING OF KINGS’ LEADS TOWARD DEMOCRACY.”
The first faint stirrings of modern democracy are coming to Ethiopia. In the strange highlands of the African horn, it is no longer quite true to call his imperial majesty Haile Selassie I one of the last of the absolute monarchs.
The constitutional government he created in name 32 years ago is emerging at last as an infant fact. Recently the Ethiopian lower house of 251 members debated for two days a change in the penal code. The soil is fertile, its tradition proud, its people quick and its climate fine. Sitting on a plateau 8,000 feet above the torrid Red sea coast, Addis lives in continual springtime. (…)
Faced with these handicaps, the emperor in years past has run Ethiopia alone. He has worked day and night, looking personally into almost every plan and contract, appointing the most minor officials, receiving humble petitioners. (…)
Whatever happens, even the restless young men of Addis admit that Haile Selassie I, the king of kings, the conquering lion of Judah, by a superb personal effort has pulled his country into the modern age. There could hardly be another like him.
Categories
Haile Selassie I - Laws and Government

The Seal of the Ethiopian Ministry of Education

The Seal of the Imperial Ministry of Education of Haile Selassie I.
The Torch of Knowledge Enlightenment: fire was the first element created, beginning of the creation of Egziabhier, and similarly, control over fire is the first scientific and technological resource of man in his own creations.
Around the Torch, here the word of the Gospel in Ge’ez, an adaption from John 8,22:
አእምርዋ፡ወአጽንዕዋ፡ለጥበብ፡ወጥበብኒ፡ታግዕዘክሙ።
A(e)m(e)r(e)wa WeAtz(e)n’(e)wa le T(e)beb WeT(e)bebni Tag(e)(e)’zek(e)mu ::
Know and Retain Wisdom and Wisdom also will free you.
The word “Tageezekemu” (will free you) has the same root of the word “Ge’ez“, as the language which is “free” from Babylon curse.
Categories
Haile Selassie I - Teachings

To Die in Freedom

በባርነት፡ከመኖር፡በነጻነት፡መሞት፡ይሻላል።
“BeBar(e)net KeMennor BeNetzanet Memot Yshalal”
“To die in freedom is better than living in slavery.”

BeBerennet / In Slavery
KeMennor / than living
BeNetzanet / In Freedom
Memot / To die
Yshalal / It’s better

Categories
Spiritual Poetry

Haffi Dreadful to Be Rasta

Teferi
means Terrible
thereafter
haffi Dreadful
faster
to be Rasta
it’s a pilaster
weak heart
shall not prosper
heathen nah like
His Name
as a monster
for slave master
We don’t fear
human figure
gangster
reflect the terror
for the Pastor
in dem minds
smell of disaster
black star.

Categories
Ge'ez ግእዝ Mysteries

The First Element Created – Fire እሳት

Ethiopian Tradition, especially in certain ge’ez books like Sene Fetret and Aximaros, explain us that in the beginning, Egziabhier created before any other thing the 4 elements, by which He would constitute the substance of all His creatures. The are likened to the 4 directions and the first four letters of Ge’ez Alphabet, composing the word “A-BU-GI-DA”. The A-B-C-D we could say, the basic compass of Creation.
Hold on the Torch of Wisdom, His Majesty speaks about. The first creational element, for God as for man, is Fire, what we call in Holy Language (E)ssat እሳት. To create and produce anything, we firstly need a Fire to warm and protect, to cook food as to alterate, mould and manipulate matter. Similarly, the fire of the Sun is the primary energetic source of our life, and that’s why it was worshiped in ancient paganism. In Nyabinghi ritual, we call the central holy fire Fyah-Key, to express that same mystery.
The primacy of fire is manifested by the first letter of its word, that is an Alief እ (E), the first letter of Abughida Alphabeth, whose meaning is 1, and representing the I of God, and the same human image that was shaped in His Likeness. Jah revealed Himself in flames of fire into the eyes of Moses (Exodus 3) and within the fire we can sight the image of God and man. The fire represents the predominant power of the Coscience of God that thought and created all things. That’s why humans are called B(e)(e)si/B(e)(e)sit ብእሲ/ብእሲት Man/Woman from the same root of (E)ssat እሳት, for among the earthly creatures, humans are the only one to have a conscious spirit made of fire, in the image of God.
The second letter of the word is Son ሳ “Sa”, depicted like a candle, meaning physical sound of exalation of fire, its gas-like untangible nature, the burning incense of the temple to glorify God.
The third and last letter of the word is Taw ት “T”, depicted like a cross, meaning the burned wooden substance and its passivity, and spelling the natural crackle of fire.
The ge’ez number for 1 ፩ is basically a flame of fire, geometrically conceived as the idea of center.
The abode of God, the seventh heaven, the so-called Aryam, is made of Fire. Together with “Wind”, it is the main element of the heavenly things, including angels and human spirits. That’s why both Fire and Wind naturally go upward.
Fire is untangible like wind, but differently from wind, it is also visible. So, being untangible but visible, it also reveals its unique power of mediation between the worlds as between the elements. Similarly, it produces carbonized black substance while generating light.
Fire is generally associated to color red/black, that is also the first color, the beginning of the natural spectrum of light.
As it was in the beginning, so shall it be in the end, so everything comes to being from fire, and everything shall be destroyed in the end by a judgement of fire.
Categories
Ethiopian Orthodox Church

Abune Yesehaq about the Title of “Light of the World”

“Haile Selassie I was the first Ethiopian king known as Light of the World – in fact, Rastafarians note very carefully that the title belongs to Christ and therefore justifies their argument regarding who the returned Messiah is.”
– Abuna Yesehaq, The Ethiopian Tewahedo Church: An Integrally African Church, page 220.
Categories
I&I Rasta

Remember the Ethiopian Martyrs

Peter Tosh: “Serious t’ing. Well I got a book the other day, is called ‘History of the Italian Massacres’ something like that, in Ethiopia. I learn that, when I read that book it brings tears to my eyes.”
Interviewer: “Is that Menelek? Or Selassie?”
Peter Tosh: “Selassie I.”
Interviewer: “So it’s the 30’s.”
Peter Tosh: “Yes mon, ’34-’37, around in there. Terrible, terrible. Any man was found with the picture of His Imperial Majesty, head off! Any you can see soldiers, Italian soldiers, and all different kind of soldiers with the head of Rasta in their hands, boasting, posing – send heads, a dozen heads in baskets, to show their family, of the Rastaman’s head. Seen? Plenty people don’t know these things. I see pictures of that.”
Ancient Peter Tosh,
Interview with R.Steffens and H.Holmes, 1980