Moorish Science

Wearing a red fez and hawking his Old Moorish Healing Oil for fifteen cents a bottle, Noble Drew Ali established the Moorish Science Temple of America in 1913. By 1925, the Temple in Chicago alone commanded a membership of 12,000 and Drew was earning $36,000 a year.

Born Timothy Drew January 8, 1886 on a Cherokee reservation in Sampson, North Carolina, legends abound about his early life. The one most often told is that by age sixteen he was traveling abroad as a circus magician and while studying magic in Egypt, he became a Noble of the Egyptian Mystic Shrine of African Masons. Upon returning to the States, he was inspired to open his first temple "for the uplifting of fallen mankind" in Newark, New Jersey, but persecution forced him and his followers to Chicago, where the movement began to grow.

When he died in 1929, Drew had established over 15 branch temples, 20 subordinate temples, and his membership ran well over one hundred thousand. Faithful members and followers had established Moorish businesses, newspapers and schools and Drew became an early voice in the "Black Power" movement.

Believing that "in order to change a people you must first change their literature," Drew re-interpreted history to better fit an African-American world-view. In 1916, the same year the Zionist Movement was established, Drew founded the Moorish Divine and National Movement of North America. Drew's self- published  7 Circle Koran combined his own ideas with the Aquarian Gospels and Rosicrucian texts.

Speaking for those disenfranchised by traditional institutions and culture, Drew wrote; "When we rely upon others to study the secrets of nature and think and act for us, then we have created a life for ourselves, one which is termed 'Hell.'" Drew urged Black America to shuck off the view point of the dominant white culture (which he called "Pharaoh" or "Babylon") and create their own. To proclaim their new national identity, it was common for a Moorish-American to change their name or to add a title such as Marshal, Contessa or Governor when signing their Moorish "passport."

Although splintered into factions after Drew's death, the movement continued to spread through the 1940s and traces of Moorish doctrine began to appear in other emerging groups.  Accepting members from all ethnic communities (who obtained passports as Persians or Celts), the growing fringe outside the main-stream was attracted to Drew's teaching that "we are creators and we make our own" reality which finally led to the establishment of the Moorish Orthodox Church  in 1964.  

The Moorish Orthodox Reformed Church of today still suggests that there is no form or "order" which we have not imagined and produced ourselves.  Hakim Bey (Sufi scholar Peter Langbourn Wilson) writes that "out of nothing we imagine our values, and by this act of invention we shall live."

The following lines, culled from the 7 Circle Koran, have become the basis of the work of The Wandering Bishops:

"Man may believe what others say, but thus he never knows. If man would know, he must, himself be what he knows."

"Men comprehend the inner life by what they see and do. They come to Allah through ceremonies and forms."

"You are, each one, a priest, just for yourself."

"A man's ideal is his God, and so, as man unfolds, his God unfolds. Man's God today, tomorrow is not God."

Symbolic forms such as language, ritual, music and drama create and shape who we are as people. The Wandering Bishops stage theme environments to build individual and community identity, to invent and pass along what we call "the story of our lives."

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