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Join us in commemorating the holy season with the Afrikan story of the resurrection with The Mark Lomax Trio and, narrator, Rev. Dr. F. Willis Johnson. Scroll down to find a full description of the Afrikan resurrection story by Rev. Dr. Mark Lomax, Sr. below. Click HERE to download the program notes.

Ancient Kemet, the Black Land or Land of the Blacks, was as mysterious as it was magical. The mystery of ancient Kemet rests in its deep spiritual complexity. There were a plethora of deities, each one with a unique role and persona, connecting human life and experience to the stellar or solar mythos depending on which priestly order was dominate at the time. Spiritual geniuses studied celestial bodies, noticed their cyclic movements and detected dynamic inner-connections between those cycles, the natural world, and human experience. Over the course of several millennia, they understood and taught the leaders, and people alike, to live in harmony with the phenomenal world - the cycles of sun, moon, and stars, the inundation of the Nile, seedtime and harvest.
 

Since there was no “secular” consciousness or space, the ancient Kemites spiritualized and deified moral and ethical virtues (justice, harmony, balance, truth, order, reciprocity, and propriety) that unite human beings with the phenomenal world and called them “Ma’at.” The internalization and embodiment of these values resulted in the collective/communal creative genius needed to construct temples out of stone at Karnak, the pyramids at Saqqara and Giza, and the Sphinx. Each of these creations are profoundly symbolic in the spiritual sense and speak of the union between life and death, heaven and earth, the inner and outer worlds. The Ausarian drama unfolds in the heavenly council. Osiris/Ausar was King of the living and the dead, God of the underworld, deity of renewal andrebirth, son of Geb, the earth and Nun, the sky. Osiris/Ausar taught the human family civilization and the science of agriculture. Osiris/Ausar’s sister- wife was Isis/Aset. Isis/Aset was the Mother and Patroness of nature, friend of sinners, slaves and the oppressed. Isis/Aset was the first daughter of Geb and Nun, and mother of Horus/Heru.

Set, the brother of Osiris/Ausar and Isis/Aset, planned the assassination of Osiris/Ausar along with seventy-two coconspirators. Set constructed a box perfectly suited for Osiris/Ausar and tricked him to climb into it. When Osiris/Ausar got into the box, Set sealed it with lead and threw it into the Nile. Isis/ Aset hunted for her husband and when she found him he was already dead. Using her powers, Isis/ Aset resurrected her husband. Set saw him one day walking along the Nile, killed him, cut his body into seventy-pieces and sent them to his coconspirators. Again, Isis/Aset searched until she found all of Osiris/Ausar’s body parts except the phallus, made replicas of them and sent them to those who had been coconspirators. In the ancient Kemetic religious psyche, life and death, love and passion, resurrection and renewal all exist in the heavenly council. Just as there is an interplay between heavenly bodies and human experience in ancient Kemet, so also is there between human and divine community.

The chaos in the Kemetic divine community brought on by jealously, hatred, conspiracy and murder is defeated by love. Love is the power that overcomes hatred and continuously resurrects new life from death. Love is that power that won’t accept negativity, violence, and murder as ultimate realities. Love is what allows Lomax, Hulett and Bayard to conjure the spirits of the ancestors, invoke the gods and usher us into the divine presence. The drums roar. The cymbals clash and resonate and our spirits are set on a firm, rhythmic foundation. The voice of the bass vibrates in frequencies so deep and wide as to settle the soul in sweet meditation. The saxophone soars and laments and laughs, petitions and praises in phrases so delightful that we are swept to heavenly heights where memory marries imagination and finds new vision. Love is that virtue that, when married to Ma’at, yanks order out to chaos, victory out of defeat, and life out of death.

Dr. Mark A.“Ogunwale” Lomax, Sr. Stone Mountain, Georgia
January 2013