Jah lives — and Africa is the promised land.
Born in 1930s Jamaica when Haile Selassie I was crowned in Ethiopia and Marcus Garvey's prophecy seemed answered: God (Jah) is present in each person, Selassie is divinity crowned, Babylon's systems are to be resisted, and livity — natural, righteous living — is the practice. Reggae carried it to the world.
Why it is filed this way
Rastafari has no central body, no membership roll and several houses that do not recognise each other, which is why it is often filed as a movement. It is carried here as a tradition because it has its own scripture reading, its own dietary law, its own rites and three generations of adherents born into it.
DeitiesJah — God indwelling; Haile Selassie I as divinity crowned (readings differ)
Founded1930 CE · Jamaica
AfterlifeLife everlasting — death is not dwelt upon; Babylon's funerals refused
TextsBible — read through Ethiopia · Kebra Nagast
The map
Rastafari’s corner of it — solid lines are descent; dotted lines are resemblance only, ideas held in common across unrelated faiths. Click a node to recenter; ✕ returns here. All 171 faiths →
c. 1000 BCE Judaism 30 CE Christianity 1517 CE Protestantism 1930 CE Rastafari
Jah lives in every person.
I and I: the divine is not out there but in here — the phrase collapses the distance between God, self, and other.
Go deeper — context →
Babylon must be resisted.
The systems of oppression — colonial, commercial, mental — are named Babylon, and livity is lived against them.
Go deeper — context →
Haile Selassie I is divinity crowned.
The 1930 coronation read through scripture: King of Kings, Lion of Judah — held by many as God incarnate, by others as Jah's chosen king.
held by most
Go deeper — context →
J
Jah.
God as present tense: indwelling, spoken to and from in the same breath — I and I.
Meet them — context →
H
Haile Selassie I.
The Ethiopian emperor read through scripture as the returned king: divine to many Rastafari, God's anointed to others — the reading is the movement's live wire.
Meet them — context →
Reasoning.
Scripture, politics, and the state of the world reasoned through in a circle — the sacrament is the conversation.
Go deeper — context →