The Tree of Forgetfulness
– 6 min read
From Rising Firefly 79
By Neb Nehez Meniooh
The massive, melancholic tree bearing poisonous fruit served as the centerpiece for captive men and women who were forced to encircle it as if they were cattle being driven. But wherever this march was leading was much heavier, much more devastating than simple slaughter. Many of these individuals had been stolen from their village, grabbed from where they stood in the bush with their herd, or looted from their farms as if they were a part of the harvest. They had been beaten until the fight within them was silenced by pain and fatigue. On their journey, they had already been thrown in and snatched from houses that served more like holding cells where they were fed and kept alive long enough to make their next march towards the ocean. After being imprisoned, for months living in each other’s tears, vomit, and excrement, they had finally arrived at the coast. They didn’t know what awaited them. It was only here at the coast that many of them saw a white man for the first time. They saw many new sights: new “slave catchers” who this time were accompanied by priests, even directed by Kings. They marched their tired bones around the tree three times. Men from right to left and women from left to right. After their march, they each took a final bath, a bath that would go down in history as their “last bath” and from there, the horrors only increased. After the bath, they watched these horrors through a sort of haze or disorientation that they couldn’t quite explain….
The horrors of slavery have been studied and presented for over a century. Chattel slavery ended in legislation, just 150 years ago and with it one of humanity’s darkest and most gruesome hours. It is so gruesome that many turn their ear away from listening to its accounts. Others hide behind complaints that we should let the past live in the past or that the descendants of enslavement should move forward and stop finding excuses for their situation. However, we all know that it is necessary to investigate, even interrogate our history. Though today becomes the past, it is the past that has given birth to today. Studying the past is studying to better understand today. But, the majority of what has been studied in the West is limited to what has taken place in the West. Once the slave ships docked and enslaved men, women and children entered this brave… no, this terrified new world, the horrors that followed under whips and hot brands, behind iron bits, or at the ends of nooses is what most of us are all too familiar with.
The perseverance and endurance these stories prove about our spirit is astounding. The patience and tolerance displayed by a people who when chattel slavery ended, didn’t even look towards revenge but towards a peaceful existence in which they could be as intelligent, resourceful and successful as possible is unbelievable. But what lessons, what pieces have we missed in being mostly ignorant of the first half of the journey?
After 2019 was coined the Year of the Return, many Black Americans among the celebrity and middle class flocked to tourist destinations on the coast of West Africa; more were exposed to some of the stories that had been passed down. They toured the infamous slave castles that still exist today in Elmina, Cape Coast, Goree Island, etc. They saw the slave dungeons where their Ancestors were caged. They saw the churches inside the slave castles that their Ancestors were forced to pray in before they were returned to their cages. They returned and saw with pride somehow in their hearts the gates of no return through which our Ancestors were marched before they went on the long trip across the ocean. Some even saw the well where the water was taken to administer this “last bath” given to enslaved individuals before they were marched through this gate to the slave ship.
However, truth be told, the stories they heard when shown this integral point in their history were not the original ones. They were the ones that fit the business model of the tourist industry controlling these castles. They are the ones approved by UNESCO, the branch of the UN that funds the upkeep and maintenance of these castles. It is these governmental agencies that have brought the “world heritage site” designation and secured an aspect of control over the story that is presented. The indigenous stories were not heard.
One thing that all indigenous people of Africa will tell you is that Africa (or more appropriately called Meritah, Our Beloved Land, or Kemet, the Black Lands) is a land full of spiritual realities that are largely being lost and misunderstood around the rest of the world. It is the home of humanity’s spiritual heritage and it is a place that nature still thrives and humanity still submits to it in order to receive its benediction and learn its secrets. No matter how an initiated African presents himself to fit into the global system that is ripping through the world, he knows that his Ancestral spiritual heritage is where his power is. He knows that the way his people mastered nature and interacted with the spiritual world is what gives him the ability to not be terrified of life like those born in modern cities.
This is Africa’s wealth. This is why, today, the Kemetic continent can be painted as a poor, underdeveloped continent. Long ago, Kemetic society realized that material wealth and development is only a distraction in life, one must invest their time and energy into a wealth that doesn’t finish with death. The African spiritual culture is one that is feared across the world for its power and mystery. What many descendants of enslaved Africans are unaware of today is that African spiritual culture and the knowledge of nature contained within it was used to break the individuals leaving African coasts.
The priests and temple caretakers of the coastal tribes of Africa used their knowledge to strip the individuals leaving their shores of the spiritual powers and heritage that was contained in their blood. The last bath given to captives and the infamous seven circuits around chosen trees were done to break the spiritual power and protection of members of African kingdoms that were spiritually powerful. These chosen trees were known as the “tree of forgetfulness”. Traditional priests used the powerful spirits and energies of these trees to put a curtain over the spiritual sight and ability of the individual. Unlike many spiritual baths that are used to cleanse the impurities of a person so that their spiritual potentials could be met, the “last bath” was one to remove the spiritual protections and powers that had been accumulated in an individual’s blood. The coastal tribes were very important in providing this final step in the enslavement process.
Unlike modern historical opinion presents, these coastal tribes were not authors of enslavement. No African representatives travelled to Europe pitching the value of slaves or selling people back on the African continent. They had entered into these partnerships through a sort of manipulation. But, the fact is, they were manipulated by European culture which sat at the level of spiritual novice. In the human family, the burden to avoid evil’s hypnosis was on the initiated and instead of living up to that responsibility and leading human beings towards better partnerships, these coastal kingdoms employed their knowledge in partnerships dictated and led by novice cultures. This process ensured that they provided the Europeans merchants of the trans-Atlantic slave ships with bodies that were de-spiritualized, or spiritually declawed so to speak, so that they could be better subdued for physical burden.
Four to five centuries of physical burden, torture and degradation would follow. Four to five centuries of living in spiritual deprivation is only now just letting up. More and more individuals are looking beyond the religions of slavery towards our Ancestral ways. Many, in spite of the Year of the Return gimmicks and propagandas, are realizing that a return home must include a return beyond just moving the physical body from one location to another. A true journey home will have to include a renewal of our Ancestral paradigm through spiritual initiations, ceremonies, and spiritual baths that cleanse centuries of dreadful experiences and reconnect us to our very own spiritual heritage. It is this spiritual heritage wherein our power lies. It is only because of the residue of this spiritual heritage that we have survived until today, survived to read these words, hear the call of our Ancestors and enter the next chapter of our becoming, a chapter of recovery, of activating the memory that lives within our blood. Do not be distracted by the wealth, suffering or infatuations of the physical world.
“Protecting your flesh will be your downfall. Remember that time and events shall pass.
Your invaders do not understand the transcendence of the spirit – the expansion of matter.”
- The Priest Kaqemna
