The Ceremonies in the Beji-Nite Religion

This is a good example of a bush church.

My increasing personal interest would make me a willing partner with my paternal grandmother, Fanny E. Reid, particularly in our excursions into the “bush.”  We traveled to different religious ceremonies by public transportation to as far as Chivo-Chivo and Chilibre which today are as far by automobile as they were in those days of the late 1940’s.

I acquired a great interest in attending those ceremonies that my grandmother was so attracted to and I later had the opportunity to study them for myself as a personal specialty in the new field of the Black Studies movement of the late 1960’s. Although I’d have the personal opportunity, or rather privilege, of partaking of such ceremonies in Panama, it wasn’t until I lived in the United Sates that I would finally have access to the intellectual knowledge that would reveal some of the mystic symbolism and colors used in those ceremonies.

The relevance of colors worn in the African-derived religions evidencing the degrees of spiritual advancement of the adept in our Panamanian Beji-Nite religious ceremonies would become clearer to me as I found encouragement in some of the literature. Again, it would be a triumph for me as I engaged in the studies of the Africanized traits that our Panamanian Westindian culture revealed to me. Since, by the mid 1960’s, I had also briefly engaged in the study of the ancient martial art of Judo the Japanese culture had taught me, I felt at the time that the art of combat and self defense and the reassurance it gave you also highlighted for me the aspects of spiritual defense contained in our own African derived religions.

It was then that I sought to become more acquainted with what my research labeled as the “Pocomania Religion” derived from our Barbadian and Jamaicans ancestors of Panama. Also, the use of the word Obeah by our Westindian people was a very important link that researchers in the West Indies linked to the community of the “Myal” people of the Bokongo culture of Central Africa. Once we’ve recognized and understood our entire Intangible historical cultural heritage it is incumbent upon us as descendants of the Silver Roll People of the Panama Canal, to regain or retake its essence and make of it a tradition as it once was.

It is crucial for us to recognize that our ancestral heritage had been for too long hidden from us much to our detriment. For us it must become a duty to uphold the work of all the great noted Africanist researchers who spent years studying our African derived religions that had been practiced since the beginning of time, and of the nefarious slave trade that wreaked havoc amongst our people. These African derived religions practiced in Barbados and Jamaica openly since the 18th century have been handed down to us by various means right down to our modern day and its wonderful electronic medium.

It is here in the Silver People Chronicle of Panama that we want to declare that the Beji-Nite Religion has been a part of our Panamanian Westindian cultural heritage and that we thus honor and venerate our African Ancestors today in the 21st Century and beyond.

As one who has been a participant observer of my Westindian Panamanian People who settled in our country with generally no intention of returning to their motherland in the West Indies we, today, make a public apology and thank them for their foresight to have seen it as a duty to practice these worship ceremonies directed at our ancestors. Whether they knew it or not in practicing these age old ceremonies they left us a cultural legacy for our benefit as their descendants.

Even today I recall how, as a child I sought out religious training, and that I observed that many of our black people who today sit in the black organized churches as members and identify themselves as Christians, are, in fact, believers of and part of the Revival of Zion, Kumania and even of the Pocomania religions.

In the Republic of Panama our Beji-Nite and other African derived churches join hands in their mysticism and in essence are Afro-Barbadian and Afro-Jamaican based. Both of these churches are distinctly Panamanian Westindian and in their ceremonial attire with the colorful symbolism and with the most potent forms of trance possession are really indistinct in their rituals. The ceremonies and divination sessions carried out in these churches, as I have personally noted and as reported by researchers in the field, are organized for the general purposes of healing.

However, as I have striven to impress upon you they also have the aim of keeping the religious tradition alive and to restore our love for the environment and, most of all, to honor our ancestors. These noble motives in themselves are a healing.

This story continues.