The Ethiopian Book of Life
Dating back from the late 19th century, roughly speaking, there has come down to us a number of rare and rediscovered Ethiopian books and documents, including ancient manuscripts which are held at a significantly high value to students and disciples of the religion of Rastafari. One such book is known as Lefafa Sedek, translated as The Bandlet of Righteousness. Lefafa Sedek has often been called The Ethiopic Book of The Dead, but from the Ethiopian perspective it is called The Ethiopic Book of Life. Now the late British Egyptologist, Sir E.A. Wallis Budge, saw a resemblance to the pre-Christian, Christian themes found in ancient Egypt which led Budge to profess that the Lefafa Sedek is in fact the Ethiopian version of the Egyptian Book of The Dead, but from a Judeo-Christian perspective.
Now in the first few centuries following the advent of Christ, the Gospel of Jesus made its way down the Nile and was embraced by the Ethiopian monarch king Ezana. King Ezana attempted to abolish paganism around the year 350 AD and established Christianity as the national religion of his empire. For example, he removed the sign of the crescent moon and sun disk and in their place he inserted the cross of Christ. However, the majority of the king’s people were pagan and they were not willing to abandon their magical cults. As Christianity made its way southwards from Aksum in the succeeding centuries, the people of non-Jewish origin became partially converted, but in spite of their outward professions and their acceptance of the doctrines of the Church of Alexandria and its rituals, the people never wholly abandoned paganism.
As the people did not, and could not, understand the higher spiritual truths found within the Christian religion, so subsequently the magician played out his role side by side with the Christian priest. The people generally preferred the magician over the priest, for the magician commanded the celestial powers to do his bidding by means of his spells and names and words of power, while the Christian priest could only offer up to God petitions and prayers. The Ethiopian craved passionately for immortality, and as he could not entirely believe that Christ would raise him from the dead in His own good time, he appealed to the magician to grant him everlasting life.
As a solution to the division between paganism and Christianity, the Lefafa Sedek, or “Bandlet of Righteousness,” was written. It was most likely composed by someone who was very skillful in fusing Christianity with paganism, to the point that it passed as a fully Christian work. However, the magical elements of the Lefafa Sedek and the beliefs expressed in it were most certainly derived from a people who possessed a higher civilization and a superior religion. These people must have been the Egyptians, who, even after they had embraced Christianity, mummified their dead, and relied on spells and amulets to ensure the preservation and resurrection of the body and to secure the soul’s acquittal in the Hall of Judgment and to enjoy everlasting life, either in the Kingdom of Osiris or in the “Boat of Millions of Years” of the sun-god Ra.
The Ethiopian, like the Egyptian, attached supreme importance to the knowledge of the secret names by means of which celestial beings lived, for he regarded the name as the vital essence of the soul. Among the ceremonies to be performed in conjunction with the use of the book Lefafa Sedek is the making of the sign of the Seal of Solomon three times (once for each Person of the Trinity) over the coffin of the deceased with the book itself. Now the traditions concerning Solomon’s seal are somewhat contradictory. For Solomon had a ring that some say was engraved with a pentacle, while others assert that within Solomon’s ring was engraved a hexagon. Drawings of the Seal of Solomon are found in many Ethiopic amulets, and they claimed to be copies of the device which was engraved on the bezel of Solomon’s ring.
Now “The Bandlet of Righteousness,” was a strip of linen or parchment that was placed over the deceased’s body, and on this covering were inscribed a series of magical compositions, along with drawings of crosses. This Bandlet was wrapped around the body of the deceased on the day of burial, and was believed to protect the soul from the attacks of devils, and enable him to pass through the aerial toll-houses, and ultimately to enter into heaven. The possession of this Bandlet ensured the soul’s acquittal in the Judgment, and therefore escape the eternal torments in the River of Fire. In fact the Lefafa Sedek contains an abbreviated form of all the essential elements found in the Egyptian Book of The Dead, which describes in detail the journey of the soul after death.
But the peculiar character which the Lefafa Sedek possesses was given to it by the Christians of Ethiopia, who managed to combine their cult of magic with the cult of the Virgin Mary. The Ethiopians accepted the Christian doctrine of the Resurrection, but they also wanted to discover how God maintained His life and power, and what was the secret of His essence. The Ethiopians believed that if they found out this secret, it would make them as great and as mighty as the Lord. Now in the Lefafa Sedek, we see that the person to whom we owe God’s revelation of His secret name is the Virgin Mary. Her grief and tears and sorrow for the sufferings which she imagined her kinsfolk would be forced to undergo in the Lake or River of Fire won the compassion and help of her Son, the Word; and He did not rest until God the Father had dictated to Him the secret and magical names in the Book which He had composed before Christ was born in the flesh.
Thus we see that the Ethiopians, like the pagan Egyptians, and the Christian Egyptians, or Copts, and the Gnostic sects who based their magical systems chiefly upon African cults, assigned to God a whole series of magical names which they used as words of power. It is clear that they believed that the life and existence of a god or a man were bound up with the existence of his name. For neither a god nor a man could exist without his name, and the “killing” or destruction of his name was the equivalent to the destruction of his existence. This would echo that which is found in the Book of The Dead concerning the ceremony of the Weighing of the Heart. Even in the Bible we see the concept of annihilation, for at the Last Judgment, all who are not found written in the book of life are cast into the lake of fire, which is the second death (Revelation 20:14,15).
In summation, it can be confidently stated that the Lefafa Sedek is a work composed of both pagan and Christian themes. Simply speaking we see elements of the Egyptian religion as well as Christian doctrines and Ethiopian folklore mixed in with Gnostic beliefs. This work cannot be understood as solely pagan or solely Christian, but as a mixture of both beliefs even though the teachings of these two schools of thought are in opposition to one another. In fact the magical names found within the Lefafa Sedek go against Orthodox Christian theology and dogma. Though this manuscript is a mixture of both pagan and Christian teachings, the Lefafa Sedek is a valuable little book in aiding one to better understand the history of Christianity in Ethiopia and of the religions that came before it.
References:
Lefafa Sedek: The Bandlet of Righteousness. (The Lion of Judah Society, 2011).
