The Friends of the Forks of
the Roads Society, Natchez Juneteenth Organizers, Juneteenth participants and
others gather here at the historic Forks of the Roads enslavement era Afrikan
descendant human sale market sites for this very historic Ancestral Libation
Ceremony. This Libation Ceremony is historic because for the very first time we
are making a libation offering on the very spot where John, Thomas and David
James established the historic first Forks of the Road enslavement trafficking
market that once stood inside of this tri-angle land site. An eyewitness wrote
in his journal that in the 1850s he watched thousands of enslaved persons
parading around on these grounds within this tri-angle piece of land and across
the street in the general area where the muffler shop is. You are standing on
sacred grounds. The City of Natchez demolished the old wooden beer club
building and now virgin and hallow ground soil is exposed to pour libation
on.
Forgotten Offerings are
made in memoriam to The Greatest Generations of Afrikan Descendants ever born
in America, upon whose shoulders we Afrikan descendants now stand. Those
enslaved Afrikan Descendants born between 1820 and 1845 who deliberately
self-emancipated their persons by running away by the thousands from their
places of enslavement in the Mississippi-Louisiana area and intentionally
joined the Union Army during the Civil War, some who served right here on these
hollow grounds at the Forks of the Roads and decisively helped to defeat the
Confederate Army and therefore achieved a double victory of helping to save the
Union of the United States and eliminate slavery. Today we have a personal
account provided to us by the great, great, Grandson of George Thomas aka
George Washington. “George Thomas was born in Virginia. His mother Ann was
purchased with her four month old baby (George) by David Buie from one
Theophius Freeman for eight hundred dollars in Natchez, Mississippi, on May 16,
1837. He was raised on the Buie Plantation, Caseyville, Copiah County,
Mississippi. At the age of 27, George heard that General Grant had taken
Vicksburg, so he escaped from the plantation and traveled over sixty miles
hiding in cane brakes and fields to reach Vicksburg and join up with the
Yankees. George enlisted September 18, 1864 in Company F, 58th
Regiment Infantry under the alias of George Washington and was discharged for
disability May 10, 1865. After discharge, he returned to Caseyville, married
and fathered at least 10 children.” George’s mother’s descendants are still in
the Caseyville vicinity. The 58th Regiment Infantry was housed right
here at the Forks of the Roads during the Uncivil War. In the Freedom Summer of
1863, thousands of local area runaway self-emancipated enslaved able-bodied men
intentionally joined the Union Army and fought in the Vicksburg Campaign Civil
War battles at Fort Butler in Donaldsonville, Port Hudson, Vidalia and
Milliken’s Bend Louisiana and at Natchez, Port Gipson, Grand Gulf, Raymond,
Jackson and on to the outer reaches of Vicksburg. Thousands of runaway enslaved
women; children and older men supported the Union Army and the Union Army
soldiers of African Decent up and down the Mississippi River. Thousands were
housed in the “Contraband Camps at Natchez Under the Hill and here at the Forks
of the Roads. We have our own freedom story to tell here and throughout the
Deep South. We must preface Juneteeenth with our own pre-Civil War and Civil
War stories of self-emancipating runaway enslaved Union Army Freedom Fighters
of Afrikan Decent. President Lincoln’s Army did not have the power and
victories to enforce the Emancipation Proclamation throughout the Southern
Confederacy. The Emancipation Proclamation was hardly worth the paper it was
written on, until over two hundred thousand enslaved and non-enslaved men,
supported by thousands upon thousands of women, children and older men all of
Afrikan decent deliberately injected their persons into the Uncivil War on the
side of Blue Coats and decisively helped to save the Union of the United States
and eliminate slavery, thereby gaining the first mass freedom for black in the
history of America. In Less than twenty-four months after the Freedom Summer of
1863, when our foreparents and ancestors ranaway to be free, joined the Union
Army and fought their enslavers and supporters, General Robert E. Lee and the
Southern Confederacy surrendered. Without the heroic and sherioc deeds of this
Greatest Generations of Afrikan Descendants in America, born under the system
of enslavement, the Emancipation Proclamation, Texas Juneteenth, 13th,
14th and 15th amendments would not have been possible and
all of us black people in Mississippi, Louisiana and other southern
states such as Maryland, Virginia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Georgia,
Florida, Tennessee, Kentucky, Missouri, Arkansas and Texas would still be
physically enslaved. African Americans in Northern, Eastern and Western states
of America, your relatives and friends would still have to escape on the
Underground Railroad for you to be in states like New York, Pennsylvania, New
Jersey, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, California, Arizona and
so on. This Greatest Generations of Afrikans in America Descendants was
responsible for the first mass freedom ever enjoyed in America. They created
churches, schools, communities, colleges, economic institutions, integrated
government (one of them was the first black mayor of Natchez, as Natchez just
elected it’s first black mayor since 1871), and re-established the Afrikan
institutions of family and culture among the many benefits we enjoy in America
today. Is selec-amnesia-forgett-us infecting the minds of so many African
Americans that we forget to honor our Ancestors at Juneteenths and all other
times?
The Afrikan Libation
Ceremony is one of the world’s oldest spiritual rituals dating back to the
Afrikan origin of civilization in the up South Nile Valley land of the Khui
(Ancestral Spirits) at the Mountain of the Moon in central Africa. It is
the science of communion with God’s Divine Spiritual Energy and Conscience
that has always been and will be and that was once embodied in and animated
physical vehicles called persons or humans. Libation scientifically involves
sounds, smells, colors and actions that work on the metaphysical spiritual
planes. The Afrikan Libation Ceremony presented to civilization the
understanding of there is life after death or that life is continuous and that
understanding is present today in various religions.
Two
factors in libation are sacrifice and offering. The act of sacrifice is not
where the emphasis is placed, but is what’s being offered very significant?
From their earliest Afrikan origin these two spiritual factors have been
brought onward in today’s various religions and individual activities such as a
savior sacrifice, communion, placing flowers and other objects on graves, death
sites, mounds, temples and alters. Practices of commemorating the dead with
monuments, names on buildings, streets, rooms, special days, including birth or
earth days, prayer, incense and candle burning offerings, placing pictures of
deceased love ones on alters and etc. are all basically rituals brought on from
their thousands of years ago Afrikan beginnings.
ANCESTORS: “Ancestors are the Energies of the Divine
He/She Creator that were incarnated upon this Divine Earth as spiritual/physical
beings. They lived upon this Divine Earth prior to and were the
procreators of those of us who descended from them. They were the male and
female vehicles containing all the necessary physical and biological factors
for procreating generations upon generations, which is caused by an infinite
scission of the sacred Matter and Energy of the Divine She/He
Creator. Their Divine Consciousness and Energy exists on the
internal inner planes of the real world of cause, which is bodily not readily
visible to us in the external world of physical appearance and effect. They are
capable of acting in both planes. Those who have obtained ENLIGHTEMENT,
but not yet returned to the Source of all things, A-men, are
always trying to get through to us, to help show us the Way to True Light
or success in our daily lives. We can communicate with our Ancestors’ Energies
if we learn how. They some time succeed in getting through to us with guiding
directions as those ENLIGHTENED tend to do (I know you all have experienced
the “something out of the blue told me to do this, not to do this or go this
way or not go this way or that you previously had a feeling that something like
so and so was going to happen, you just knew it”). Each one of us has our own
personal guiding Ancestor. We must turn-off the noise, slow down our pace, sit
down, shut down, and close down, in order to better get in touch with them and
our True Divine Self.” [Extracted from Ancestors’ Wisdom Yesterday and
Today authored and self published by Ser Seshs Ab Heter-Clifford M. Boxley
1994]
The
Divine Energies and Conscience made in the images and likeness of
Neter (God) of the Greatest Generations of self-emancipating
Freedom Fighting Union Army Civil War soldiers of African Decent now living in
the land of Ancestors, made supreme sacrifices of love supreme and offered up
their lives here on this Divine Earth for justice, truth, righteousness,
harmony, love, reciprocity and peace. These acts of sacrifice and offering had
to be motivated by ENLIGHTENED SPIRIT and CONSCIENCE dwelling
within.
There
are others in their life-time then and now who have made much sacrifice and
offered up many offerings to justice, truth, righteousness, harmony, love,
reciprocity and peace at the crossroads of life’s adversities. It is those
of us the living possessed by ENLIGHTENED SPIRIT and CONSCIENCE
along with ENLIGHTENED ANCESTORS (many people and ancestors are
enveloped in darkness and they need Light) who are called upon to continue
projecting Light against those unenlightened Spirit and Conscience
who stand for untruth, injustice, disharmony, no peace, non-love,
non-reciprocity and unrighteousness today.
Purifying
the libation space: Frankincense and myrrh, chanting sound and snapping of
fingers moving out negative Energy.
Items
of libation’s union of Ancestors connections: Mississippi corn whiskey,
waters from the Nile, James and Ohio rivers, soil, sand, brick and metal from
Great Zimbabwe Temple Conical Tower floor, courtyard of Maison de esclaves
(house of the enslaved) Goree(y) Island Senegal, Bunce Island Sierra Leone,
Cape Coast and El Mina prisons for Afrikans held in captivity, Sullivan Island
captive Afrikans holding place South Carolina and spring water.
Libation
posture: Right knee touching earth (the lower part of our Spirit) left
hand pointing to heaven (the higher part of our Spirit) [Masons are
familiar with this posture].
Opening
libation chant: Enen A Neter! Ita-em Khe-pe-ra A-ungh-k.
(Salutations
to God, Allah, Yehovah, Buddha, Yahweh, Jah, Krishna, Great Spirit, Creator,
etc. who comes and works in all manifestations)
Acknowledging
the Highest Powers and Workings of A-men, The She/He
Creator Source of all things. A-men means the Hidden One, Unseen
One, Unencumbered One, Peaceful One, Unlimited One, etc.)
Anetch
Hra-k A-men! Ita-em in Ausar!
Anetch
Hra-k Mut/Atef (She/He) Ausar! = Obatala [Unity] + Father/Mother
in heaven.
Ita-em
in A-men
Tu-a
for our share of Eternal Life, as the ocean corresponds to all of Neter’s
Eternal Life, a drop is each of our share.
Anetch Hra-k Tehuti =
Orunmila + Wisdom of God.
Ita-em!
Tu-a
for our share of Neter’s Divine Wisdom and Knowledge (different
from man’s mundane books and facts), as the ocean corresponds to all of Neter’s
Wisdom and Knowledge, then a drop is each of us share.
Anetch
Hra-k Seker(t) = Babaluaiye + Power and Will of God.
Ita-em!
Tu-a
for our share of Neter’s Divine Power and Will to be and do all
things here on Earth (not our Free Will), as the ocean
corresponds to all of Neter’s Divine Power and Will to be and do
all things, then a drop is each of us share.
Thus,
is our True Self “made in the image and likeness of God.”
Anetch
Hra-k Maat = Olulun + Laws of God.
Ita-em!
Tu-a
for the Divine facility of Neter’s Divine Law of Truth, Justice,
Righteousness, Balance, Order, Harmony, Reciprocity, Love and Peace.
Anetch
Hra-k HeruKhuti = Ogun + God’s Justice.
Ita-em
Tu-a
for the Divine faculty of Neter’s Divine Justice, to gain
without transgressing upon others and to wish upon our persons the kind of punishment
we wish upon others for transgressing against our persons.
Anetch
Hra-k Heru = Shango + various western religions’ Savior etc. (Our Free
Will to chose or the Savior part of our Spirit)
Ita-em!
Tu-a
for the Divine faculty of the Free Will, the freedom to
chose to be our True Higher Self Ausar/Obatala at the expense of our
Lower emotional Person Set, Sebek, Elegba, opponent of the Savior. Thus,
is the process of being saved.
Anetch
Hra-k Het Heru = Oshun + the other woman comforting the Savior.
Ita-em!
Tu-a
for the Divine faculty of the Imagination, to
visualize/imagine the deeds of our Honored and regular Ancestors.
To be creative in all we do and for a healthy temple (body) for the Ra Force
(Life Force) to dwell (No healthy body, the Life Force is outta
here).
Anetch Hra-k Sebek =
Elegba (disunity) + opponent of the Savior.
Ita-em!
Tu-a for the Divine
faculty of mundane Intellect/beliefs which if combined or yoked
(yoga) with the correct information and facts of Neter’s Wisdom and Knowledge
(Tehuti) will lead to opening the Way to becoming our True Higher Self
(Ausar/Obatala).
Anetch
Hra-k Auset = Yemaya + Mother of the Savior
Ita-em!
Tu-a
for the Divine faculty of Memory, to recall the deeds of our Honored
and other Ancestors. Tu-a for gestation of our physical beings. Tu-a for
gestation of our Will, Tu-a for nurturing of our Will, Tu-a for
mediumistic trance to reprogram our Spirit to live Truth at the
crossroads of life’s adversities, and tu-a for your role model dedication to
your husband Ausar/Obatala.
Anetch
Hra-k Geb = Oyo + This Divine Earth.
Ita-em!
Tu-a
for this Divine Earth as a platform of trail and error of living Truth
at the crossroads of life’s adversities, thereby gaining the Light
to return the Ra Force to the Source (A-men) from which it came
and for the plant and mineral kingdoms to sustain our lives and energize our Life
Force we pray.
Anetch
Hra-k Shepsu (Enlightened and Honored Ancestors) = Ogugun
+ Saints.
Ita-em!
Tu-a
for living a life of Truth while here on Earth in the flesh,
thereby gaining the Light to now serve as intermediations between
Neter and man/woman.
Tu-a
for your personal guidance (each person’s guiding Ancestral Angel, are you
listening?)
Ser Seshs Ab Heter-CM Boxley at your service.
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