The Promise Key

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The Promise Key is a Rastafari movement tract by Leonard P. Howell, a Jamaican preacher. Published around 1935 under Howell's Hindu pen name G.G. [for Gangun Guru] Maragh, meaning "teacher of famed wisdom", the tract bears some similarities to the Royal Parchment Scroll of Black Supremacy, without the stream-of-consciousness language, long opaque abbreviations, and repetition. Most significantly, the identities of 'King Alpha and Queen Omega' were transposed from Fitz Balintine Pettersburg and his wife as in the Royal Parchment Scroll, to Emperor Haile Selassie and Empress Menen Asfaw. This was one of the key innovations of the Howellites, and is today an article of faith of Rastafari.

In 1933, Howell started to preach that Emperor Haile Selassie I of Ethiopia (Ras Tafari) was the Messiah, that Black people were the chosen people, and would soon be repatriated to Ethiopia. He soon attracted the attention of the colonial authorities, and was arrested in December 1934 for sedition. In March 1935 he was sentenced to two years imprisonment, when he apparently wrote The Promise Key. After he was released he published a newspaper called "The People's Voice". In 1954 his commune was raided and much literature, including copies of this book, were burned. Howell was found dead under suspicious circumstances in February 1981.