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Deliberately concealed for centuries, during the Roman Church’s era of imperialism, the history of African prophecy is the oldest and most enduring and replicated in the world. It pre-dates and is the direct inspiration from which Judaism, Hinduism, Islam and Christianity were developed. Contrary to western revisionists history, African deities, sacred ritual and culture dominated the ancient world, and reached high levels of spiritual development and theological and cultural sophistication from its rudimentary beginnings in ancient Africa.
Most in the Diaspora and indeed the world, are familiar with the traditional village religious culture so maligned in the West. However, few are aware that the same deities, and their off-spring are responsible for the major systems of western theological and religious faiths now heavily altered and revised to both conceal its African roots, and to establish the current theological framework of the biblical western world.
199-217 C.E. scene from a catacomb of the African prophet “Jonah” with Sibyl queen in ancient Rome.
The Sibyls were the first global prophetesses in all the ancient world. Their prophecies were the most accurate and relied upon by all the major world leaders and temple authorities. Their temples were more numerous than the Christian churches of today. In fact, most western faith churches were built atop their very ruins in order to lend credibility to their emerging cults. It was the Sibyl prophecies of whom the emerging patriarchal Christian and Levitical Judaic cults seized, altered and attributed to their “prophets” during their bitter wars for global domination after the fall of Egypt, Mycenae and ancient Carthage.
The Amengansie tradition, still extant today, is an off-spring rooted in the ancient tradition of the Sibyls. The Sibyls were varied in both their talents and spiritual abilities. Many were diviners, healers and spiritual heads of the great temples in ancient Ionia, Asia Minor, Egypt and throughout Africa. Just as the ancient Sibyls, the Amengansie priesthood is an ancestral calling born from the lineages of the ancient descendants who were captured and enslaved throughout the world. Their story, hidden for centuries, is a fascinating journey, that once fully understood, will reveal the ancestral and spiritual legitimacy and continuity of African sacerdotal history and its progeny now scattered throughout the western world.
“The Sibyl [prophecies] was ancienter than all the Heathen Learning; that told real events; and whose words you have put into the mouths of your [Christian] prophets . . . “
-Tertullian
Roman Theologian
(c.160-c.230)
“When, in the days of Mark Antony, soldiers were destroyed by storms, and owls and wolves invaded cities, when unexpected sun eclipses darkened the republic, when a thunderbolt damaged the scepter of Jupiter, and when animals brought forth creatures outside their species, the Sibylline oracles were made known with the result that some men became inspired and uttered prophecies.”
-Titus Livius
(59 BC – AD 17) Roman Historian
In the West African Vodoun (and current African-American) traditions, an Amengansie (Ah-mah-gah-see) is defined as a high priest/ess whose primary function is divination. Namely communication with the dead (ancestors), the African deities, and the destin (Ori) souls of the living. It is an ancient tradition in which the dead, the deities, and the souls of the living actually come in direct contact during consultation to speak. The Amengansie tradition is an ancient, ancestral matriarchal tradition that is passed down through the generations. Although there are some male Amengansies, 99% are women. However, in the West, there are an increasing number of males who are being called to take on the tradition of their ancestors.
(left) Founder of The Mami Wata Healers Society Temple of Mawu, Chief Hounon-Amengansie Mama Zodédé.
(right) American-born Founder of The Mami Wata Healers Society Temple of Mawu, Chief Hounon-Amengansie, Mama Zogbé at conclusion of Amengansie ceremonies. A tradition she inherited from her great-great grand mother, who was Chief Amengansie in the United States of America during Slavery.
Many Amengansies are also Queen Mothers, and head their own Egbes. Some are Spiritual Chiefs, meaning that they are also guardian to many of the sacred rare Vodoun deities bequeathed to them from their ancestors.
An Amengansie is the mother of all Mami Wata and Vodoun adherents. More importantly, the Amengansie is known as the first “mouth of Afa,” meaning that their existence pre-dates the current tradition of utilizing the Kpele to consult with the gods. Hence the Ewe proverb, “After Afa comes the Amengansie.” It is for this reason that many in West Africa consult directly with an Amengansie to verify the results of a reading with a Bokono/Babalawo diviner. Today, some Amengansies have chosen to utilize the Kpele, but many have opted to maintain the ancient tradition of speaking directly with the spirits, and carrying out any ritual requests that the spirits might order for their family members and clients.
Taken from a Black Moor (Phoenician) coat-of-arms, is an ancient symbol of an Ethiopian “Sibyl Prophetess.” These amulets were universally cherished and worn as a symbol of luck and protection especially during battles. After the destruction of their ancient temples by the Romans, many Sibyls were sold as slaves, and forced to perform spiritual duties in the now male dominated Sun/thunder temples; particularly in the Black Egyptian colonies scattered throughout Greece, Rome, Palestine and other colonies scattered throughout the ancient Mediterranean world.
If ever there was an ancestral tradition that dispels the myth regarding the ancient origins of the Vodoun tradition or the system of slavery being confined to the West, it is that of the Amengansie. The Amengansie predates its current West African location. It has its ancient ancestral origins in the East (Africa) where they were known as Sibyls. Reminiscent of the current Trokosi systems in West Africa today, in ancient Egypt, during the rise of African patriarchy, the Sibyls were often sold as slaves, and forced to work in the male (priestly) controlled Sun/Thunder temples in the Egyptian colonies in Libya and at Dodona and Delphi in ancient Greece, Rome (see slide-show) as well as in other African temples scattered throughout the ancient world.
Universally known as the "Black Doves”, the Sibyls have been referred to by many names, such as “Sisters of Isis, and [prophetesses] of the Black Di-Ana of Ephesus”. The “doves,” symbolize the sacred soul or “holy spirit.” An Afro-mystical symbol later adopted by the emerging Christian cults. It was the Sibyl matriarchal groups who settled at Asia Minor (ancient Turkey), and installed Mami’s worship, more than 2500 years before the Dorian (Greek) and Turk invasions.
“Mami” whom the Sibyls venerated in ancient Minoa (pre-Dorian Greece) as “Laocoon with her serpents,” was known as the manifestation of the Divine logos, with her holy temples scattered all throughout Asia Minor (Cushitic Mitanni Empire) and in Minoa and Mycenae (Aegean Islands).
Togolese Amengansie python priestess. The sacred serpent was demonized and outlawed by the emerging Roman Church Papals in the 7th century.
During the decline, and the dismantlement of the African matriarchs, many were exiled, condemned as “harlots” “infidels,” “false prophetesses” and “witches.” Many fled, but most who were unable to flee were murdered or enslaved if they refused to convert to the religion of their conquerors. Their forced migration drove them from East to West Africa by the emerging patriarchal Mohammedan Islamic, Judaic and Christian invaders.
During these intense periods of religious persecution, the ancestors of these enslaved Africans bequeathed to them a means in which they could continue to consult with them and with the African deities who were now condemned as “pagan” and “lustful idols,” by the many foreign (Assyrian, Persian, Turk, Greek, Roman i.e.,) invaders.
It was these foreign invaders who carried out the final destruction of the Sibyl temples, and converted (forever concealing) the multi-faceted images of the African mother deities into the ethnic faces passed down to the West today. During the entrenchment of African patriarchy, many Sibyls were persecuted, and stripped of their sacerdotal pre-eminence, and ultimately forced to the foreground of African religious, social and political life where they remain today.
American born Founder of The Mami Wata Healers Society Temple of Mawu, Chief Hounon-Amengansie Mama Zogbé, paying respect to the oldest living Chief Amengansie in Togo, West Africa. It is from these lineages which is the hallmark of the Vodoun, Mami Wata, and Amengansie traditions. At their cosmological core, they are ancestral, and the (African) Diaspora must not lose sight of this as others try and downplay this critical aspect.
But their sacerdotal powers are still respected and utilized by all who seek their counsel.
Contrary to Western historical speculations that the enslavement of Africans in the West is largely an isolated phenomena rooted in West African chieftaincy ambitions, the history of African enslavement actually follows a continuum which began in the East more than 2000 years ago.
Many Africans enslaved in the New World already descend from these ancient matriarchal clans including Mama Tchamba. In the Amengansie and Vodoun traditions of West Africa, the songs, proverbs, dances, and lore are dominated by the history of slavery which pre-dates slavery in the “New World.”
Many of these ancestral spirits are still longing for their kin scattered the world over.
Hence, today, anywhere the Africans were enslaved the spirit of the Amengansie is born into many of the families in the Diaspora. Unfortunately, because the Amengansie tradition is a secret tradition, many women (of all sexual preferences) in the Diaspora are not aware of its symptoms as they seek spiritual wholeness in the African Traditional/Diaspora religions available to them in the West. It is the ancestral calling of Mama Zogbé whose great-great grandmother was an Amengansie chief in America, and Chief Hounon Amengansie Mama Zodédé, who carries the legacy of Mama Zogbé today, to re-introduce this ancient tradition back into the Diaspora.
