BOOK REVIEW

The Sibyls: The first prophetess’ of Mami (Wata). Zogbé, Mama. Martinez, GA: Mami Wata Healers Society of North America Inc. 2007. 154 pp. ISBN 978-0-9716-2456-6.

Reviewed by Dr. Gail Singleton-Taylor

In her new booklet, ‘The Sibyls’, Mama Zogbe writes persuasively about the role African women played in numerous ancient civilizations including Mesopotamia, Egypt, Ancient Greece and Rome. She reveals the intentional, historical cover-up regarding the sibyls’ centrality to the success of these early civilizations. Drawing on numerous historical documents and academic sources, Mama Zogbe provides much-needed information about their work, lives and challenges. These Mami prophetesses provided divinations, healings, and prophecies to both the low and high-born. They were the divine moral authority; the ancient predecessor of the modern-day Vatican. Political and military leaders like Alexander the Great and Augustus Caesar regularly consulted these holy women. Included in the booklet are brief biographies that personalize these highly-revered women, like, Cumae, Eriphyle and Themis of Delphi. (Mama Zogbe admits that the vast majority of sibyls may never be identified.) The fascinating final chapter “Images of Ancient Sibyls” illustrates how they were artistically depicted---both positively and negatively---throughout the ages. Unfortunately, due to the rise of a virulent racist ideology coupled with patriarchal belief systems (which borrowed dogma heavily from them) the sibyls eventually lost their cultural, economic and political clout. The most sobering example was the co-opting of the Sibylline Prophecies which were eventually plagiarized into epic poems like Homer’s Odyssey and the highly revered Judeo-Christian Bible.

The Sibyls can be viewed as a call to African women throughout the Diaspora to comprehend that their present oppressed and disempowered condition was not always the case. This concise, well-researched text is an astonishing historical revelation about these powerful African priestess clans whose true spiritual, educational, economic and cultural impact on the ancient world has been both largely and deliberately concealed. It is also a devastating critique of mainstream religious tradition.

The Sibyls is divided into 5 chapters with an index of topics, copious endnotes and an extensive bibliography to inspire future study and research. This material, which was printed originally in Volume I of the ground-breaking “Mami Wata,” is part of the series “Reclamation of the Religious Heritage of the Diaspora Project.” The riveting history of the sibyls truly deserves to stand alone. Highly recommended for those interested in learning about the authentic, ancestral, spiritual role(s) of African women from ancient times to the present day.

Augusta, GA (PRWEB) July 10, 2007 -- Author, Vivian Hunter-Hindrew claims in her well researched, ground breaking new book, “ The Sibyls: The First Prophetess' of Mami (Wata)”, that for 6,000 years, Africa was ruled by a powerful order of matriarchs known throughout the ancient world as "Sibyls." Hindrew contends that the Sibyls produced the world's first prophetic oracles, prophetess' and prophets.

Believed to be the actual priestesses of Isis,’ Hunter-Hindrew asserts that the Sibyls were known as "Pythoness," because their oracle source was a mighty ancestral python that “spoke” prophecy to them during trance possession. “It was the Sibyls who built and worked the powerful oracles in the African Egyptian colonies of ancient Greece, Rome, Turkey, Israel, Syria and Babylon.”

The most famous of these temples was the (later renamed) “Temple of Amon” in ancient Libya, and the “Temple of Delphi” (meaning “dolphin”) at Dodona and Delos, in the Grecian islands. However, their holy temples were more numerous than the Christians churches of today. According to Hunter-Hindrew, “many of the first Christian churches were created by either assimilating, or were built atop the temple ruins of the Sibyls.” She further contend that in ancient Rome, the Sibyls were the first to establish the "holy seat" of the Vatican. They were celebrated and respected as advisors to the world's heads of state. “The Romans even credit a famous Sybil named “Cimeria” with prophesying the birth of Julius Caesar and his nephew Augustus.”

The famous Roman augur/diviner Navius, speaks about Cimeria in his book on the Punic Wars. Known as great healers. Hunter-Hindrew claims that “centuries before Christ, the Sibyls cured epileptics, the blind, lepers and ‘casted out demons,’and even called-up the dead.” It was a Sibyl, who called-up the spirit of the Apostle Samuel to speak to him from the dead.

Hunter-Hindrew claims that during the inquisitions, the Sibyls were eventually persecuted by the now established Roman Church, and condemned as “witches.” However, their "pagan" prophecies were later collected by the Roman Emperor, Tarquin and compiled into numerous books.

The Sibyls preserved their history in poetic and prophetic prose that would later be used as the basis for Greek and Roman tragedies. Hunter-Hindrew believes that it was these books that were eventually seized by the emerging Roman papal to create a western theological foundation in order to compete with the Kemetically learned levitical Jews.

Hunter-Hindrew concludes that the Sibyl prophecies would later lay the ecclesiastical foundation for the collection of apocryphal books modified as the “Christian” Bible. She believes also that “the New Testament is actually a historical chronicle of the final destruction of these ancient Sibyl temples, and the forced imposition of a “new theology” revised by church officials from the more ancient books of the Sibyls and others.”

The evidence in this book is compeling and does offer another perspective on the origins of Christianity. The Vodoun religion of which Hunter-Hindrew (aka as Mama Zogbé, Chief Hounon- practitioner has been accused for decades of borrowing from Amengansie) is awestern, Christian elements. This information contained in this book proves it might be the opposite.

Other books by this author.