Sacred Site

Pinnacle

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 Sitethe subject's own account

Religious settlement or planned community 1

Type of Site Detailthe subject's own account

Rastafari commune in Jamaica, founded 1940, remembered as the movement's first organized settlement before colonial raids destroyed it. 1

Pilgrimagethe subject's own account

Pilgrimage attested historically; not continuing 1

Attributions

Traditionthe subject's own account

Rastafari 1

Origins

Origin Periodthe subject's own account

from 1940 1

Founderthe subject's own account

Leonard Percival Howell 1

Countrythe subject's own account

Jamaica 1

Regionthe subject's own account

Near Sligoville, St. Catherine Parish 1

Status

Status Todaythe subject's own account

Ruin or archaeological site; the cult has ceased 1

History

Historical Notethe subject's own account

Destroyed 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

Latitudethe subject's own account

18 degrees north 1

Longitudethe subject's own account

77 degrees west 1

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.

Connections

Associated With

First Pinnacle

This source names Pinnacle directly: "The first of four Pinnacles, from the reduced birth month added to the reduced birth day."

Source Numerology: Or, What Pythagoras WroughtUnderwood Dudley

First Pinnacle Ending

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."

Source Numerology: Or, What Pythagoras WroughtUnderwood Dudley

Formative Cycle

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."

Source Numerology: Or, What Pythagoras WroughtUnderwood Dudley

Fourth Pinnacle

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."

Source Numerology: Or, What Pythagoras WroughtUnderwood Dudley

Jamaica Apologises For The Coral Gardens Suppression

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."

Source PM Holness Apologises For The 1963 Coral Gardens Incident (Jamaica Information Service)Jamaica Information Service; statement by Prime Minister Andrew Holness

Leonard Howell Founds the Pinnacle Commune

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..."

Source Pinnacle Great House Ruin (Jamaica National Heritage Trust)

Pinnacle Great House Ruin (Jamaica National Heritage Trust)

This source names Pinnacle directly: "community of roughly 4,500 members at Pinnacle in the hills of St."

Source Pinnacle Great House Ruin (Jamaica National Heritage Trust)

PM Holness Apologises For The 1963 Coral Gardens Incident (Jamaica Information Service)

This source names Pinnacle directly: "and the designation of six lots at Pinnacle in Saint Catherine as a protected Rastafari Heritage and Cultural Centre."

Source PM Holness Apologises For The 1963 Coral Gardens Incident (Jamaica Information Service)Jamaica Information Service; statement by Prime Minister Andrew Holness

Productive Cycle

This source names Pinnacle directly: "fifties and schools that key it to the Pinnacle turnover will assign the same number to different decades."

Source Numerology: Or, What Pythagoras WroughtUnderwood Dudley

Second Minor Challenge

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."

Source Numerology: Or, What Pythagoras WroughtUnderwood Dudley

Second Pinnacle

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."

Source Numerology: Or, What Pythagoras WroughtUnderwood Dudley

Second Pinnacle Ending

This source names Pinnacle directly: "The age at which the second Pinnacle gives way to the third, nine years after the first turnover."

Source Numerology: Or, What Pythagoras WroughtUnderwood Dudley

Third Pinnacle

This source names Pinnacle directly: "The third of the four Pinnacles, made by adding the first two Pinnacle numbers and reducing."

Source Numerology: Or, What Pythagoras WroughtUnderwood Dudley

Third Pinnacle Ending

This source names Pinnacle directly: "The age at which the third Pinnacle gives way to the fourth, nine years after the second turnover."

Source Numerology: Or, What Pythagoras WroughtUnderwood Dudley

Belongs to Tradition

Rastafari

Source Pinnacle: The Truth About the Matter (Jamaica Observer, 2014)

Contained In

Jamaica

Source Pinnacle: The Truth About the Matter (Jamaica Observer, 2014)

In the Other Atlases

Located In

Jamaica

Also in Geography Atlas: where this subject is located.

Sources

1. Pinnacle: The Truth About the Matter (Jamaica Observer, 2014)

Jamaica Observer, 2014The 1940 founding, the commune's scale and economy, and the 1941 and 1954 police raidsView the Source

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