Origin from 1940
Pinnacle was a commune founded in 1940 by Leonard Percival Howell on an old estate near Sligoville in St. Catherine Parish, Jamaica, and is remembered as the first organized settlement of the Rastafari movement. Howell had already been targeted by British colonial authorities for preaching that Haile Selassie I, crowned Emperor of Ethiopia in 1930, was divine, and moved his followers to Pinnacle after his earlier organizing was labeled seditious. At its height the community held between roughly five hundred and sixteen hundred residents, who built a largely self-sufficient economy growing their own food and cultivating cash crops for sale in Kingston, including ganja, which took on lasting religious significance for Rastafari through Pinnacle's example. Colonial police raided the commune in January 1941 after neighbors reported that residents had demanded tax payments in Haile Selassie's name, and returned in far greater force in 1954, when a government-organized raid burned the settlement's houses and ganja fields, confiscated more than eight tons of cultivated ganja, and took some one hundred forty residents into custody, permanently scattering the community and its members across Jamaica. Though the physical settlement was destroyed, Pinnacle is widely credited by historians of Rastafari with establishing the movement's early organizational and communal model.
Facts
Site
Type of SiteSourced to the subject's own accountReligious settlement or planned community 1 Type of Site DetailSourced to the subject's own accountRastafari commune in Jamaica, founded 1940, remembered as the movement's first organized settlement before colonial raids destroyed it. 1 PilgrimageSourced to the subject's own accountPilgrimage attested historically; not continuing 1 Attributions
TraditionSourced to the subject's own account Origins
Origin PeriodSourced to the subject's own account FounderSourced to the subject's own accountLeonard Percival Howell 1 CountrySourced to the subject's own account RegionSourced to the subject's own accountNear Sligoville, St. Catherine Parish 1 Status
Status TodaySourced to the subject's own accountRuin or archaeological site; the cult has ceased 1 History
Historical NoteSourced to the subject's own accountDestroyed by a Jamaican colonial police raid in 1954 that burned the settlement and its ganja fields and arrested roughly one hundred forty residents. 1 Geography
LatitudeSourced to the subject's own account LongitudeSourced to the subject's own account Location
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Pinnacle, a Commune That Outgrew the Colony That Tried to End It
Leonard Howell had already been in trouble with Jamaica's colonial government for years before Pinnacle existed. He had spent the early 1930s leading nonviolent protest and founding the Ethiopian Salvation Society, adding an explicit theology to Marcus Garvey's message of Pan-African independence by naming Haile Selassie I, crowned Emperor of Ethiopia in 1930, as a living divine figure, a claim colonial authorities treated as sedition rather than religion. Facing sustained police harassment for it, Howell moved his followers in 1940 to an old estate he renamed Pinnacle, in St. Catherine Parish, and what he built there over the following sixteen years was less a hideout than a working alternative society. Between five hundred and sixteen hundred people lived at Pinnacle at different points, growing their own food, and selling cash crops in Kingston that included ganja, a plant that took on lasting religious meaning for Rastafari in large part because of the role it played in Pinnacle's own economy and communal ritual. The colonial state never fully left the community alone. A first raid in January 1941 followed reports that residents had demanded tax payments from neighbors in the name of Haile Selassie, a claim of sovereign authority the government was not prepared to tolerate. The far larger raid came in 1954, when police and colonial militia burned Pinnacle's houses and its ganja fields, confiscated more than eight tons of the crop, and arrested roughly one hundred forty residents, an action that ended the settlement permanently and scattered its members across Jamaica. What survived the fire was not the physical commune but the model it had demonstrated, a self-governing, self-sufficient Rastafari community built around Howell's theology, which former Pinnacle residents and their example carried into the wider Rastafari movement that grew across Jamaica in the decades that followed, well beyond anything the raid that destroyed the original settlement was able to reach.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Associated With
This source names Pinnacle directly: "The first of four Pinnacles, from the reduced birth month added to the reduced birth day."
This source names Pinnacle directly: "The age at which the first Pinnacle gives way to the second, taken as thirty-six less the single-digit Life Path."
This source names Pinnacle directly: "some schools tie the cycles to the Pinnacle ages, others to fixed ages near twenty-eight and fifty-six, and a few run them by nine-year rhythms instead."
This source names Pinnacle directly: "The last of the four Pinnacles, from the reduced birth month added to the reduced birth year, and the only one with no closing age."
This source names Pinnacle directly: "and the designation of six lots at Pinnacle in Saint Catherine, the site of Leonard Howell's own early Rastafari community, as a protected Rastafari Heritage and Cultural Centre."
This source names Pinnacle directly: "Known as Pinnacle, the settlement grew to between roughly five hundred and sixteen hundred residents at its height, who built a largely self-sufficient economy growing their own food and cultivating..."
This source names Pinnacle directly: "community of roughly 4,500 members at Pinnacle in the hills of St."
This source names Pinnacle directly: "and the designation of six lots at Pinnacle in Saint Catherine as a protected Rastafari Heritage and Cultural Centre."
This source names Pinnacle directly: "fifties and schools that key it to the Pinnacle turnover will assign the same number to different decades."
This source names Pinnacle directly: "is felt, some tying them to the Pinnacle periods and some treating both as present throughout, with the second merely surfacing later."
This source names Pinnacle directly: "The second of the four Pinnacles, from the reduced birth day added to the reduced birth year, covering the nine years following the first turnover."
This source names Pinnacle directly: "The age at which the second Pinnacle gives way to the third, nine years after the first turnover."
This source names Pinnacle directly: "The third of the four Pinnacles, made by adding the first two Pinnacle numbers and reducing."
This source names Pinnacle directly: "The age at which the third Pinnacle gives way to the fourth, nine years after the second turnover."
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