Rastafari

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Haile Selassie receiving the homage of a noble at the coronation festivities in Addis Ababa, on the cover of the French weekly L'Illustration of 15 November 1930.

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Rastafari is a religious movement that arose in Jamaica in the 1930s among followers who held the Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie to be God or his representative, and for many of whom ganja (cannabis, often called "the herb") is a sacrament.^{: 9, 24, 52} In 1975 the anthropologists Vera Rubin and Lambros Comitas wrote that among the Rastafari "the use of cannabis has been ritualized, and ganja is a basic element in their belief system".^: 4 A survey made in Kingston in 1960 found brethren who gave it religious significance and others who would have nothing to do with it.^: 24

Smoked in the water pipe called the chalice or in the hand-rolled spliff, the herb accompanies prayer, the gatherings called reasonings and the Nyabinghi ceremonies, and Rastafari cite verses of the Bible for its use.^{: ch. 3: 1021–1023} Rubin and Comitas traced the uses of ganja in Jamaica to the indentured labourers from India who reached the island from 1845, and a national commission chaired by the anthropologist Barry Chevannes reported in 2001 that the tradition of giving the plant sacred status "is of Indian derivation".^{: 15–16: ch. 3} The movement grew up under Jamaica's ganja laws, which date from 1913, and Rastafari communities were raided for growing the plant from the 1940s.^{: 22–24: 12, 15} The Dangerous Drugs (Amendment) Act of 2015 exempted its sacramental use.^: 4 Elsewhere Rastafari have brought the sacrament before courts and legislatures in the Caribbean, Africa, Europe and the United States.

Origins and belief

Leonard Howell, who founded the Pinnacle community in 1940, in a portrait published by The Daily Gleaner that year.

Ras Tafari was crowned Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia in November 1930. In Jamaica some followers of Marcus Garvey turned to their Bibles and began to preach the new emperor's divinity. The 1960 survey named Leonard Howell as the man held to have first preached it in Kingston, and Joseph Hibbert, Archibald Dunkley and Robert Hinds among the other early preachers.^: 9–10 The survey was made at the request of leading brethren by three members of staff of the University College of the West Indies, who spent two weeks with them; it found only two beliefs that all Rastafari held in common, the divinity of Ras Tafari and repatriation to Africa.^{: 6, 22} In Rastafari belief Haile Selassie is Jah, the name for God, and Babylon the white political power that has oppressed black people.^{: 1016, 1018}

In May 1940 Howell bought Pinnacle, an estate in the hills of St Catherine, on behalf of his society, and settled several hundred followers there.^: 11–12 Brethren told the authors of the 1960 survey that yams were the community's main food crop and ganja its main cash crop.^: 12 The police raided the settlement in 1941 and broke it up in 1954. After the second raid the followers scattered, and the number of men wearing locks in Kingston grew.^: 15

The movement has no single leader and divides into houses. The Nyabinghi order is counted as its first group formation;^: 51 Emmanuel Charles Edwards founded the Bobo Ashanti in 1958,^: 177 and Vernon Carrington, known as Prophet Gad, the Twelve Tribes of Israel in 1968. Haile Selassie granted 500 acres of land at Shashamane in Ethiopia, through the Ethiopian World Federation, to black people of the West.^: 39: 14 From Jamaica the movement spread through emigration, the Nyabinghi gatherings and reggae music to much of the world.^: 1013

The herb in Rastafari belief

For the Rastafari of the early 1970s, Rubin and Comitas wrote, ganja was "the wisdom weed", of divine origin, an elixir of life, "documented by Biblical chapter and verse which overrides man-made proscriptions"; its sacred source permitted "a sense of religious communion, marked by meditation and contemplation".^: 146 Other names in use are "the holy herb"^: 1020 and kali, the Hindi word for the buds, which Jamaicans give to the most potent grade.^: 18 The Rastafari of San Fernando in Trinidad called their own herb ganja and the drug of other users "marijuana" or "madi-juana".^: 152

Scripture

In 1960 users identified ganja with the herb of Genesis 8, Psalm 18 and Revelation 22.^: 24 The creed that the survey printed as the "extreme form of the doctrine" held that the herb was a gift of God, who enjoined its smoking in those chapters and "Himself smokes it"; that it guarded against illness and gave wisdom, love and understanding; and that white and brown Jamaicans, knowing these properties, had forbidden it to black people.^: 51–52 The theologian S.P. Pretorius lists the verses cited in later writing on the movement: Genesis 1:29 ("I have given you every herb bearing seed"), Genesis 3:18, Exodus 10:12, Proverbs 15:17, Psalm 104:14 ("herb for the service of man") and Revelation 22:2, where the leaves of the tree are "for the healing of the nation". Psalm 18:8, "There went up a smoke out of his nostrils", is read to mean that God smokes.^: 1021 Herbs, in this reading, are the means by which God reveals himself, and ganja is chief among them.^: 1021

In the early 1970s some Jamaican users claimed Africa as the original home of the plant and cited "Biblical references to the existence of 'the herb,' or marihuana, on King Solomon's tomb";^: 120 South African Rastafari describe ganja as the sweet weed that grew from Solomon's grave.^: 167

Abstention and dispute

The 1960 survey found that many brethren held ganja to be evil and to befuddle the brain, and that those who objected to it complained that influential people used it to exploit others.^{: 25, 52} Some Rastafari cannot smoke for reasons of health and still recognise the herb's place in the faith; Pretorius finds little consensus among them about its use.^{: 1023, 1027} Garvey himself, Pretorius writes, called ganja a dangerous weed, very harmful to the user, and asked for serious steps to suppress it.^{: 1027–1028} The Church of Haile Selassie I told the National Commission on Ganja in 2001 that it gave out the herb for private use only to men aged 21 or over ("our women don't smoke ganja") and rejected its recreational use: the herb was "not for any form of enjoyment or desire".^{: ch. 3}

Pretorius found it "not clear why Rasta adopted ganja as their 'holy weed'", since the plant appeared to have been in use for centuries, and reported the theory that early Rastafari smoked it to defy colonial authorities who wished to control it.^: 1020 The Trinidadian converts of the 1970s whom the anthropologist Ansley Hamid studied refused every stimulant except the "holy herb", which they held had been given by Jah for the "healing of nations".^{: 75, 87}

Reasoning and Nyabinghi

Reasoning, with "sighting", "citing up" and "grounding", is one of the names for the spoken commentary of Rastafari.^: 147 Nyabinghi elders called it in 2001 the "foundation reasoning", where Rastafari attitudes to politics, theology, repatriation and reparation are shaped.^{: ch. 3} In 1960 informal groups of brethren often served as ganja-smoking clubs that gave their members religious and social companionship.^: 28 Pretorius describes the ritual that precedes nearly every lighting of the chalice: the smokers stop talking, take off their caps and pray for a blessing and in praise of Jah, often in words from Psalms 19 and 121. The smoking is likened to the communion cup and to incense, offered in the true temple of the believer's body.^{: 1022–1023} The chalice is a water pipe made from a gourd, a horn, bamboo or a tin can, with a clay or wooden bowl; the name is given to the pipe and sometimes to its bowl, which is also called the kochi. A conical pipe, the chillum, is also common.^{: 1022–1023} In Trinidad in the 1970s the chalice was made from the shell of a mature coconut, with a bowl of a hard wood such as mora.^{: 62, 188}

Elders of the Nyabinghi order from the Pitfour tabernacle near Montego Bay described their observance to the National Commission on Ganja in 2001. The ceremony called a nyabinghi, or "binghi", is held five or six times a year in a tabernacle and may last up to twelve days, during which all trade is forbidden on the grounds. Rastafari farmers grow herb for the occasion alone and present it to the High Priest, who places some on the altar to burn as incense and keeps the rest in a calabash for those who ask. A bonfire lit at sunset burns throughout the gathering. The High Priest enters the tabernacle with seven priests and seven matriarchs, lights the herb on the altar and offers ganja to each elder and matriarch; then the drumming and chanting begin and continue until dawn.^{: ch. 3}

By day the elders reason. A senior elder prays over the herb, calling on Haile Selassie I for a blessing, and the circle chants a psalm while it is cut up and sprinkled with water. It is usually mixed with ground tobacco, "which signifies balance". Another psalm is said before the chalice is lit, and it then passes from right to left until it is spent. Each man may instead roll his own spliff from the herb held in common.^{: ch. 3} One elder called the herb integral to reasoning "because herb stimulates that part of the thought that keeps us lucid, open and receptive"; in their account, smoking it burns incense to God within the temple of the body.^{: ch. 3} The Church of Haile Selassie I, by contrast, places the herb on an altar called the tabu for the priest to bless and burns part of it in a censer over the congregation; its leaders explained the rite by analogy with the Christian doctrine of transubstantiation.^{: ch. 3}

Indian roots of the ganja complex

Main article: Spread of cannabis to the Americas

Indian workers newly arrived in Jamaica, on a lantern slide of the Church of Scotland's foreign missions committee, before 1917.

Rubin and Comitas argued that the many uses of ganja in Jamaica came with the indentured labourers from India, about 36,000 of whom arrived between 1845 and 1917. They found no evidence of cannabis being smoked or used in folk medicine before 1845; the working-class names for the plant and its grades are Hindi (ganja, kali, the chillum pipe) while African names such as dagga and kif are not used; and the beliefs that surround it in Jamaica, including its divine origin and its ritual use, parallel those the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission recorded in India in the 1890s.^: 15–19 They called the result the "ganja complex", passed from indentured workers to the black cane cutters on the sugar estates.^: 16 In India the plant was holy to Shiva, and worshippers invoked him in prayer before taking it (see Cannabis in Hinduism).^: 17

By the 1970s, Comitas wrote, "the Indian paternity of the complex has, for all intents and purposes, been forgotten".^: 120 The National Commission on Ganja, reporting in 2001, took the Indian derivation of the plant's sacred status as given.^{: ch. 3} The historian D.A. Dunkley, writing on Howell, points to the study by Ajai and Laxmi Mansingh of the ritual use of the plant and its association with Indians in the traditions of sadhana and prasad, and writes that Howell joined Hindu imagery to African tradition in shaping the movement. Hamid applied the term "ganja complex" to Trinidad, where he saw Rastafari ideology as the last element needed for its transplantation in the 1970s.^: 75

Ganja law and the Rastafari in Jamaica

Main article: Jamaica

Jamaica's first measure against the plant came in 1913. Church groups had petitioned the Legislative Council against ganja smoking, and the Daily Gleaner had warned of its effect on "coolie" labourers; when the colony ratified the International Opium Convention that year, the council added prohibitions on the importation and cultivation of the plant, punishable by a fine of up to £100 or twelve months' imprisonment. Possession and use were not made offences.^: 21–22 The Dangerous Drugs Law of 1924 punished cultivation, possession, sale and smoking with up to six months' imprisonment or a fine of up to £100 on a first conviction.^: 23 Rubin and Comitas linked its amendment of 1941, which brought mandatory imprisonment into Jamaican law for the first time, to American anti-marihuana publicity, to the labour unrest of 1938 and to what they called "Rastafarian-associated antagonism".^: 23–24

On 14 July 1941 a force of 115 police, half of them armed, raided Pinnacle. About 70 of Howell's followers were arrested, mainly on charges of growing ganja and of violence, and 28 went to prison; Howell himself was convicted of assault, not of growing ganja.^: 12 Dunkley reports that Howell was attacked more than once "due to his unwavering stance on the cultivation of marijuana in the community, and of course its use as a sacrament". The police broke up the settlement on 22 May 1954, after gathering evidence that ganja was grown there on a large scale; 110 of Howell's followers were found guilty of possessing it, and the police returned to Pinnacle on ganja eradication expeditions into the 1970s.^: 12 In 1957 the Commissioner of Police ordered drives against ganja cultivation and traffic, and the Rastafari, "known to praise and esteem ganja", were an obvious target for them.^: 15 The 1960 survey recommended that the police leave innocent brethren alone and pursue the large traders rather than the individual smoker.^: 35–36

At the end of 1961, after an insurrection by the followers of Claudius Henry that the press linked with ganja, growing and dealing became indictable offences carrying obligatory imprisonment of up to five years.^: 26 Rubin and Comitas observed that the amendments of 1941 and 1961 both came at times of economic or political unrest and of "fear of supposedly militant lower-class elements, such as the Rastafari".^: 27 A minimum sentence of 18 months for possession followed in 1964, and in 1972 the courts regained discretion in sentencing.^: 174

On 11 and 12 April 1963 violence at Coral Gardens, a farming community east of Montego Bay, left civilians and police dead. The Public Defender's report of 2015 found that Rastafari had suffered unjustly in the incident, many of them cutting their locks and beards to avoid arrest, and recommended an apology, a trust fund for surviving victims and a licence for a Rastafari co-operative to grow ganja for research and for lawful users; Prime Minister Andrew Holness apologised on 4 April 2017 and promised a trust fund of no less than J$10 million.

Dennis Forsythe, an attorney and Rastafari arrested for possessing marijuana and a chillum pipe at his house, petitioned the Supreme Court in 1997 for a declaration that the Dangerous Drugs Act infringed his freedom of religion. The court dismissed his motion: section 26(8) of the independence constitution of 1962 saved laws in force before independence from challenge under its chapter on fundamental rights.^{: ch. 4} The National Commission on Ganja heard three Rastafari delegations and recommended in 2001 that ganja be decriminalised for private use by adults and "for use as a sacrament for religious purposes".^{: i, ch. 3}

The Dangerous Drugs (Amendment) Act, 2015, in force from 15 April 2015,^: 1 exempts possession of ganja for use "as a sacrament in adherence to the Rastafarian faith". The minister responsible for justice may by order in the Gazette authorise adherents aged 18 or over, or Rastafari organisations, to grow ganja for that purpose on designated land, and may declare an event promoted by Rastafari to celebrate or observe the faith an exempt event, at which no one is liable for the ganja the order allows. Places registered for Rastafari worship are excluded from the definition of a public place.^{: 4, 6–8, 16} In December 2015 the justice minister handed Tony Rebel a letter of exemption for the next staging of the reggae festival Rebel Salute; Mark Golding, the minister, later wrote that two exempt events had been held and had been "successful and incident-free". In 2022 the attorney Marcus Goffe said that many Rastafari, among them an elder charged with growing ganja at a Nyabinghi centre at Bull Bay, had applied for licences to grow it for sacramental use, but that the Ministry of Justice had not put in place a framework to issue them.

Outside Jamaica

Trinidad and Tobago

In San Fernando, Hamid found, the first man to grow dreadlocks did so in 1973. By 1976 the leaders of 108 of the city's 110 "blocks", groups of young men organised around the ganja trade, were Rastafari, and by 1979, by his estimate, at least 1,500 people had converted.^: 79–80 Rastafari growers sold only to other Rastafari, on trust and without scales,^: 42 and were the first to plant in the remote forests of the north-east coast near Matelot and Toco.^: 43 During the Carnival of 1979, 150 Rastafari were jailed in San Fernando.^: 91 The Cannabis Control Act, 2022 provides for a religious licence to a non-profit organisation whose constituent documents state that cannabis is required as a sacrament.

Other Caribbean states

Antigua and Barbuda's Cannabis Act, 2018 allows adherents of a religious body, including the Rastafari faith, to register to grow, possess, transport and dispense cannabis for sacramental use, without selling it for profit. Barbados passed its Sacramental Cannabis Bill through both houses in November 2019. The bill lets Rastafari use cannabis as a sacrament in a place of worship and the manager of a place of worship apply for a permit to grow it on the premises. In July 2026 the High Court dismissed a Rastafari challenge to the constitutionality of that Act and of the Drug Abuse (Prevention and Control) Act. In Saint Kitts and Nevis a High Court judge held in May 2019 that Rastafari sacramental use was protected by the constitution, and the Rastafari Rights Recognition Act of 2023 allows Rastafari to grow, possess and smoke cannabis. In Saint Vincent and the Grenadines the government shelved a Permitted Use of Cannabis for Religious Purpose Bill in December 2018 after Rastafari objected that the state could not grant them the right to practise their sacrament.

Africa

The sign of the Twelve Tribes of Israel headquarters at Shashamane, Ethiopia, in 2012.

In the late 1990s most Ethiopians linked the commercial supply of cannabis with the Jamaican settlers at Shashamane, who had grown it for their own use for many years.^: 22 The herb is illegal in Ethiopia, and repatriates at Shashamane tended not to smoke in front of strangers, who might report them to the police.^: 123

In South Africa the movement took formal shape after the end of apartheid in 1994, and its sacramental use of cannabis, smoked, drunk as tea and baked into food, brought it into conflict with the drug law. The rules of the Nyahbinghi order there require the holy herb at all its gatherings.^: 181 Gareth Prince, a Rastafari refused registration as a candidate attorney because he intended to go on using cannabis, lost his religious-freedom challenge in the Constitutional Court by five votes to four in 2002. The United Nations Human Rights Committee accepted in 2007 that cannabis was an essential part of his religious practice but found the general prohibition justified and no breach of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. A later challenge by the same litigant, on the ground of privacy, succeeded in 2018.

In Namibia Rastafari lobbied for the decriminalisation of dagga at public hearings on a drugs bill in 2007, and in July 2026 the High Court held premature a challenge brought in 2021 by the Rastafari United Front and others. In Kenya the High Court accepted in July 2026 that Rastafari is a religion protected by the constitution but dismissed the Rastafari Society of Kenya's petition for a sacramental exemption.

Europe and the United States

In England the Court of Appeal held on 23 October 2001, in R v Taylor, that the prohibition on supplying cannabis did not interfere with the right to freedom of religion under Article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights, although the prosecution accepted that the defendant's cannabis was meant for Rastafari worship. In Italy the Court of Cassation in 2008 set aside the appeal judgment against a Rastafari convicted over 97.3 grams and sent the case back for retrial, holding that the lower court had judged by weight alone without weighing whether the cannabis was for his own use in the light of his faith; in the court's words, adherents use marijuana "not only as a medicinal herb but also as a 'meditative herb'" (non è utilizzata solo come erba medicinale ma anche come "erba meditativa").

In the United States the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit held in United States v. Bauer (1996) that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act could be a defence for Rastafari to a charge of simple possession of marijuana but not to conspiracy or possession with intent to distribute. In People of Guam v. Guerrero (2002) the same court, accepting that Rastafari is a legitimate religion in which marijuana plays a sacramental part, held that the Act gave no defence to importing it.

See also

• Cannabis in Hinduism
• Ganja
• Ganja in Jamaica (1975)
• Jamaica
• Shashamane
• Spread of cannabis to the Americas
• Trinidad and Tobago