The Rastafari sacrament

For many Rastafari, ganja is a sacred herb used for meditation, prayer, spiritual communion and collective reasoning. Smoking it together is a religious practice, held to be commended by the Bible. For much of the movement’s history, prohibition criminalised that practice. Since 2015 a number of Caribbean states have written the sacrament into their law, and one Rastafari community has refused the offer.

The herb

Rastafari arose in Jamaica in the 1930s. Its followers call the plant ganja, callie, Iley, “the herb” or “the holy herb”. They find it in Genesis, the Psalms and Revelation, where the leaves of the tree of life are “for the healing of the nations”, and they credit it with healing, with bringing “peace and love”, and with an inward attention that lets the smoker discover the divinity within. Some hold that its smoke is an incense against the wickedness of society.

Not every Rasta smokes. Many who abstain say they have reached a state of awareness that no longer needs it, and some regard heavy smoking by others as excess. It is also drunk as tea, cooked with, and used as medicine.

How it is smoked

The setting is a grounding: a gathering in a yard or commune, presided over by an elder, with drumming, chanting, hymns and poetry. Its centre is reasoning: communal discussion, reflection and exchange of spiritual or social ideas. Participants consider the faith and the news together, each speaker carrying the group’s understanding further.

Form	What it is
Spliff	A large hand-rolled cigarette. A prayer to Jah is said while it is rolled, and it is lit only when the prayer is finished
Chalice	A traditional water pipe shared ceremonially among participants; the herb is held in its cup, or cutchie

The pipe goes round the circle counter-clockwise.

The photograph records this shared rite at The Dungle, off Salt Lane in Kingston, on August 5, 1969. Anthropologist Lambros Comitas photographed Brother Morgan drawing from the chalice while another participant lit its ceremonial cup. The archive identifies it as Lighting the Chalice, JA–RT 004, in a sequence documenting preparation, blessing and communion organised by Rastafari elder Mortimo Planno.

The largest gatherings, once called groundations and now Nyabinghi Issemblies, last from three to seven days in the open air: food, ganja and reasoning by day, drumming and dancing round fires at night. They are held on dates tied to Ethiopia and to Haile Selassie, among them his birthday on 23 July and his coronation day on 2 November.

Where it came from

Nobody knows how cannabis entered the faith, and scholars offer three routes. One is Kumina, a religion founded in Jamaica by Bakongo people from Central Africa, in which cannabis was smoked to invite possession by ancestral spirits. A second is Hindu practice: indentured Indians brought ganja, and the word, to the island. A third is simply that smoking was common among poor Black Jamaicans in the early twentieth century, and the first Rastas sanctified a habit they associated with the peasant life.

What is certain is that it was established by the 1940s. Pinnacle, the hilltop commune founded in 1940 by the early preacher Leonard Howell, was known for growing it.

A sacrament against the law

Jamaica had banned ganja in 1913 and in 1941 made a year in prison mandatory. Academics have noted that the harshest laws came in years when the authorities feared unrest among the poor. Pinnacle was raided again and again from 1941, and in 1954 a raid broke it: houses were demolished and hundreds of residents arrested. By 1960 the commune had collapsed, and its scattered residents carried the faith across the island.

Rastas came to see smoking as itself a protest against the laws of “Babylon”. In the United States thousands have been arrested for possession.

Written into law

Country	Year	What the law does
Italy	2008	The highest court acquitted a Rastafarian caught with 97 grams, accepting that he smoked it as a meditative herb
Jamaica	2015	Sacramental possession is protected; smoking is permitted at registered Rastafari places of worship, with cultivation and exempt events subject to authorization. It came fourteen years after a national commission recommended it
Antigua and Barbuda	2018	Religious bodies, Rastafari included, may register to grow and hold more than the ordinary limits
Antigua and Barbuda	2023	Three Rastafari communities received authorizations to cultivate and use cannabis for religious purposes
Barbados	2019	Sacramental use at places of worship
Saint Kitts and Nevis	2023	Registered groups may grow and use it at their places of assembly; the prime minister apologised to the community

Jamaica’s Dangerous Drugs (Amendment) Act 2015 recognised sacramental use under these specified conditions. It allowed Rastafari adults and organisations to apply for religious cultivation and for qualifying gatherings to be declared exempt events. Authorized sacramental cultivation did not permit commercial sales or export.

Antigua and Barbuda’s legal framework came earlier than its first sacramental authorizations. In March 2023, the Medicinal Cannabis Authority issued them to Nyabinghi Theocracy Church Inc., Rasfreeman Foundation for Unification of Rastafari and Wan Love Chant. The authorizations cover religious cultivation and ceremonial use, subject to approved quantities and locations.

Not everyone wanted this. In Saint Vincent in 2018, Rastafari representatives told parliament to drop its religious-use bill: the state, they said, cannot grant a right to their sacrament.

Elsewhere the courts have refused. Kenya’s High Court dismissed a Rastafari petition in 2026. In Ethiopia, where Rastafari settled on land the emperor gave them at Shashamane, the criminal code makes no exception, and the United States has warned Rastafari travelling there that possession can mean prison. In Namibia the head of the Rastafari United Front, Brian Jaftha, asked the High Court in 2021 to strike down the ban, arguing that it was aimed partly at the Rastafari; the court dismissed the case in 2026. In Grenada a bill tabled in 2021 would have allowed Rastafari use in places of worship, but lapsed when parliament was dissolved.^{[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13]}