Worship
Rastafari doesn’t have a specific religious building that is set aside for worship. Rastafarians usually meet weekly, either in a believer’s home or in a community centre.
The meetings are referred to as Reasoning sessions. They provide a time for chants, prayers and singing, and for communal issues to be discussed. Marijuana may be smoked to produce heightened spiritual states.
The music used at these meetings is known as Nyabingi, and so when meetings are mostly musical they are often referred to as Nyabingi meetings.
Meetings may also include large feasts.
Marijuana
Marijuana plants in a greenhouse Marijuana plants in a greenhouse
Marijuana is regarded as a herb of religious significance. It is used in Rastafari reasoning sessions, which are communal meetings involving meditation.
According to Leonard Barrett, Rastafarians first began using Marijuana in reaction to the treatment of blacks in society. It became a reactionary device to enable freedom from the establishment. (Leonard Barrett, The Rastafarians, The Dreadlocks of Jamaica p. 129)
Marijuana is used by Rastafarians to heighten feelings of community and to produce visions of a religious and calming nature.
Rastafarians are unlikely to refer to the substance as marijuana; they usually describe it as the wisdom weed or the holy herb.
The latter name is used because Rastafarians believe that marijuana use is sacred, following biblical texts justifying its use:
He causeth the grass for the cattle, and herb for the services of man.
Psalm 104:14
…thou shalt eat the herb of the field.
Genesis 3.18
…eat every herb of the land.
Exodus 10:12
Better is a dinner of herb where love is, than a stalled ox and hatred therewith.
Proverbs 15:17
The use of marijuana is a highly ritualised act, and before it is used a prayer is uttered by all:
Glory be to the father and to the maker of creation. As it was in the beginning is now and ever shall be World without end: Jah Rastafari: Eternal God Selassie I.
The marijuana is rolled into a cigarette or placed into a chillum pipe. When smoked it is inhaled deeply, then held, as the devotee enters into a trance-like state.
Dreadlocks and food
Dreadlocks
Rastafarians can often be recognised from the way they style their hair. Rastafarians grow their hair long, before coiling it into dreadlocks.
The wearing of hair in dreadlocks by Rastafarians is believed to be spiritual; this is justified in the Bible:
They shall not make baldness upon their head.
Leviticus 21:5
Food laws
Rastafarians eat strictly I-tal which means natural and clean
Early Rastafarians are unlikely to eat meat, scavengers or shellfish
Rastafarians do not eat pork
Rastafarians regularly eat fish, but will not eat fish more than twelve inches long
Rastafarians eat copious amounts of vegetables, as they are of the earth, and therefore good
Food is prepared without salt, and coconut oil is the most likely form of oil to be utilised
Rastafarians do not drink alcohol
They do not drink milk or coffee, but will drink anything herbal, grown from natural roots, e.g. herbal tea
Rastafarians consume plentiful amounts of fruit and fruit juice