I am seeing, on the internet, many ads for a new version of the old children's tale of "Little Black Sambo", with the boy hero of the tale now called "Rajani", and the tale itself titled "The Boy and the Tigers". There is so much wrong with this, I think I should inform readers of the truth -- the ancient truth, from long before the "known" beginnings of human history -- of the name "Sambo".
I started to write a longish post, about the many things wrong with assuming "Little Black Sambo" to be somehow racist, and the name "Sambo" particularly. A typing accident stopped that, and I don't want to get into the plethora of intellectual insanities that are now being dredged up (vengefully) by angry believers in the dogmas about "race", too long nurtured over the last 50+ years (AFTER the battle for "civil rights" had already been won, nobody wants to notice).
I will just give the definitive knowledge, that could defuse much current social insanity, and let that knowledge speak for itself.
Anyone who read "Little Black Sambo" as a child did NOT consider it "racist" (any more than "Rajani" is racist against Indians, or Hindis). It is merely, in modern times, a charming "magical" story, that can be summarized in one sentence: The little boy escapes the tiger by running in a circle around a tree, until the tiger pursuing him is literally turned into "golden butter". That's all there is to it -- and it is a lot, as a snapshot of ancient sacred knowledge, handed down by all cultures in earliest "myths".
Now, I provided a comprehensive (but not complete) list recently, of ancient mysteries explained by the "Great Design of the 'gods'". It was, in fact, my very last post before this one. It is here. Consider it inserted here; I invite you to read it before continuing here, as I am going to give the rest of this post rather short shrift, rather than repost that list.
In the great design, the entire solar system was re-built, as it were, and reoriented in space. The Earth was set up like a leaning, spinning toy top, with its spin axis precessing around its orbital axis, thus constraining the celestial north pole (CNP), as seen by earthbound humans, to circle the (new, "improved") ecliptic north pole (ENP), over a period of 25,900 years.
That circling, over such a long period, is of course imperceptible to man; yet it was the key piece of sacred knowledge to every earliest-known civilization on Earth, no matter how "primitive"; it was simply disguised (and hence completely misunderstood) as "sacred" myth, handed down to man from the "mythical" gods, "in the beginning".
That circle was given the name of "The Mill of the Gods" in many mythical, metaphorical traditions. Let's make this absolutely clear: The Mill of the gods was the circling of the CNP around the ENP; it "ground slowly", because the precession period -- to go once around the circle -- is 25,900 years, and it "ground slowly but exceedingly fine", because the Earth spins on its axis once every day.
And everything connected to that hidden circle in the starry sky was described as "golden", basically because the Sun, and the planets, representing the 'gods' themselves, all move, in the sight of man, along the ecliptic (whose axis is specified by the ENP point). And the Sun is golden, "Children of Man" (as the 'gods' would say).
In Finland, and in Finnish myth, the Mill was called the "Sampo". In the "Atharva Veda" of India, it was called the "Skambha". The book "Hamlet's Mill" goes into the many ancient world myths about the Mill (although they missed its real, simple meaning); they discuss "Sampo" and Skambha" in Chapter XVII. It was a "prop, support, pillar", as they emphasized. They thought it meant the "pillar" of the Earth's spin axis, represented by the CNP, but they were fundamentally mistaken, as I quite independently (and was the first person in history to identify it) before I ever knew about their book: It is the Earth's ORBITAL axis, the ecliptic axis, represented by the ENP (and circled by the CNP like a millstone circling the central shaft) and everything turns upon that axis, the Sun and planets directly, and the entire celestial sphere over 25,900 years. And the reason this "Mill", or hidden circle in the night sky, was sacred to every earliest "mythical" tradition, worldwide, is because the "pillar" was literally placed there by the world-transforming deeds of the 'gods'. It is the very center of the great design, of both the entire surface of the Earth, and the entire solar system. It was literally all "built", by the 'gods'; that's why the area within the precession circle was described as a "garden", because the ENP, and the circle of the CNP, was not placed just there by chance (see here).
This is why religion, and coercive religious yet divided dogmas, have been at the heart of mankind, and the instigator of every human trial and abuse, throughout history. Because mankind was divided, strewn over the Earth as orphaned children, and implanted with only shattered, mythologized memories of a "Golden Age", of an earlier "Eden" for example" (with a "tree", the "pillar", in the center of the "garden", the eternal circle of the CNP around the ENP).
Just as the CNP circles the ENP, and the Finnish Mill "Sampo" grinds unstoppably (even when "broken loose" -- by the creation of a new ENP in the design of the 'gods' -- and thrown into the very "depths" of the "ocean", where it "grinds sand"), so little black "Sambo" gets the tiger to circle the "tree", turning it into "golden" butter.
So "Sambo" is not a "racist" epithet, even though it was used as such by ignorant, hateful (tribal) whites in the time of slavery of tribal Africans in America. And it should not, indeed cannot, be thrown away by today's well-intentioned but equally ignorant would-be changers of history. It is a clear, indeed stunningly clear, modern link in the chain of myths, stretching from the original design of the 'gods' throughout that history. Like all myths, it is a simple, magical children's story, maintaining the unbroken chain linking us all to the 'gods'. It belongs to the whole world -- not to any "tribe", any "race".