The 3 Most Important Days of Your Life: A Journey into African Spirit Science
The ancient knowledge already inside you
Anthony BrowderOct 01, 2025
My life has been shaped by aphorisms (those pithy observations that contain universal truths).
Here’s one that came to me recently, and I believe it holds the key to understanding not just our individual purpose, but our connection to something far greater than ourselves.
The three most important days in a person’s life are:
- The day you were born
- The day you realize why you were born, and
- The day you realize you have been born before
The Awakening: Morehouse College, 1984
Forty-one years ago, I sat as a 33 year-old in the audience at the Nile Valley Conference at Morehouse College, while scholars presented information on the African origins of Nile Valley civilization.
As I listened to each presenter, something profound shifted inside me. I had an epiphany right there in that auditorium. I decided that’s what I wanted to do with my life: gain knowledge about Nile Valley civilization and share it with my community.
More than that, I wanted to bring these brilliant minds to Washington DC.
That decision led me to start the Free Your Mind lecture series in 1987.
Between then and 1993, we sponsored over 60 presentations that helped transform the consciousness of Washington DC. We brought giants like Asa Hilliard, Na’im Akbar, Ivan Van Sertima, Runoko Rashidi, and many others to share their knowledge with our people.
The Catalyst: Meeting Charles Finch
One of the most significant speakers I brought to DC multiple times was Dr. Charles Finch—and it’s Charles who convinced me about a decade ago that I had been here before.
Charles doesn’t call me Tony. He calls me Karakhamun, after the priest of Amun in the 25th dynasty of ancient Kemet, whose tomb I excavated for 15 years.
I was reluctant to accept this name at first because I thought it was somewhat egotistical.
But over the years, Charles kept reinforcing the idea and I’ve come to embrace it. I now realize that the things that have happened to me throughout my life and the things that I’ve done thoughout my life could not have been accomplished without the assistance of knowledge gained from previous lifetimes.
In most of Africa, people understand that there is no death—only transition from one life to the next.
Death is a doorway. The body is temporary, but the spirit and soul are eternal. The soul returns in a new body, and a child is born as the continuation of an ancestor. They are taught this knowledge through a series of rites of passages.
With this understanding, we don’t have a life—we have a continuum of lives.
This knowledge allows us to tap into wisdom acquired over previous lifetimes, enabling us to accomplish what some consider impossible. The intergeneration transmission of knowledge was lost during enslavement, colonisation and integration.
Dr. Charles Finch brings a unique perspective to this ancient wisdom.
He’s a retired physician—trained at Yale—yet he’s also deeply rooted in African spiritual traditions. Charles with his wife Ellen, embody the marriage of Western medical training with authentic African healing knowledge.
Their latest book, “African Medicine: A Spirit Science Out of the Shadows,“ explores this integration in ways that challenge everything we’ve been taught about healing and medicine.
A Spirit Science Out of the Shadows
In a recent WPFW radio show, Ellen explained why African medicine is called a “spirit science”:- First, life in Africa is viewed on multiple levels—biophysical, mental and spiritual. All three levels are acknowledged and addressed when dealing with health and disease.
- Second, anyone who practices medicine in Africa is also a priest. You don’t have physicians—you have physician-priests. The spiritual and physical are intertwined.
- Third, the spirit world actively participates in healing through possession, dreams, communication, divination, offerings and direct conversation with those intuitive enough to listen.
It involves precise knowledge of herbs and natural remedies. The spiritual and scientific elements don’t oppose each other—they complement each other perfectly.
This knowledge is emerging “out of the shadows“ because for too long, people thought Egypt (Kemet) was separate from the rest of Africa.
Nobody believed serious medicine existed anywhere else on the continent.
They were dead wrong.
Charles learned this first hand during his years working with traditional healers in Senegal, particularly with Mama Fatu Seck, who lived to over 100 years and was one of Senegal’s most prominent healers. Through her, he discovered that healing requires connection to spiritual forces.
Ancient Wisdom, Modern Application
Charles and Ellen have been married for 53 years, and what strikes me most about their work is how it bridges worlds.Charles created his own version of the Hippocratic Oath—called the “Oath of Swnw” after the ancient Kemetic word for physician:
12 Testaments of the Physician: Life, Strength, Health
- I will not do harm
- I will not spare myself to alleviate pain
- I will not defraud the sufferer
- I will not suffer myself uncleanliness of body or person or spirit, excuse me, of the body or spirit
- I will not mock the blind
- I will not injure the lame
- I will not sneer at the helpless of mind
- I will not profane the knowledge of The House of Life*
- I will not defile the healing balm
- I will not cease to make light the burden of the dying
- I will not refuse ministrations to the poor
- I will not stir up strife between myself and my fellow physicians.
The Recovery of Suppressed African Knowledge
This integration of healing and spirituality isn’t unique to Kemet.We see the same approach among traditional healers throughout Africa and even among Native Americans. In Africa, you don’t get healed until you have connected to that spirit that is in charge of your healing.
And there is a difference between healing and curing.
- Curing is a relief of physical distress or physical symptoms.
- Healing is the reunion of mind, body, and spirit to restore the whole person.
But what I do know is that you can’t erase this knowledge.
It will come back, and we will take it further. The gods and goddesses of Africa walk among us today. We don’t always recognize them, but they’re here.
If you listen carefully and invite them, they’ll communicate with you.
Moving Forward
I’ve been going back and forth to Egypt two or three times a year for decades now, working on excavations and building relationships with scholars worldwide.What started as curiosity at that 1984 conference has become a life’s mission.
And now my mission is about preparing the next generation—those in their 30s and 40s who have genuine interest and, more importantly, the discipline to do the work. Many people are curious about African history and spirituality, but few have the stick-to-it-iveness to pursue deep study and practical application.
The work Charles and Ellen have done—maintaining their medical careers while diving deep into African healing traditions, raising seven children, and producing scholarship that bridges worlds—shows what’s possible when you understand you’ve been here before and you know why you’re here now.
The Three Days in September
This brings me back to three September milestones in my life:- The 1984 Nile Valley Conference.
- The 1989 Elders Symposium at the University of the District of Columbia**
- The 2008 launch of the ASA restoration project in Egypt
(**36 years ago, I convened the Elder’s Symposium at the University of the District of Columbia. This event featured John G. Jackson, John Henrik Clarke and Yosef ben-Jochannan, lecturing together for the first time in two decades. Jackson taught Clarke and they both taught Dr. Ben. Over 1000 people turned out for this gathering of elder scholars and it was one of the proudest moments of my career. I dedicated Nile Valley Contributions to Civilization to these three giants.)
All three events were set in motion by recognizing that we don’t exist in isolation.
We’re part of a continuum of African genius that stretches back thousands of years. The knowledge we’re recovering isn’t new, it’s being remembered.
When you understand this, you stop thinking in terms of single lifetimes and start planning for the long arc of African restoration across multiple lifetimes.
The work Charles and Ellen Finch have done with “African Medicine: A Spirit Science Out of the Shadows“ is part of this larger recovery. They’re bringing ancient wisdom into contemporary form, showing us that it is vital to integrate science and spirit.
The message I want people to take from this is that we’ve been here before and great efforts have been taken to erode that knowledge
But once we know why we’re here now, we can continue our cosmic assignments that extend far beyond this single lifetime.
The ancestors are with us and the knowledge is available.
We just have to remember who we are.
Thanks for reading
Anthony Browder
Founder of IKG
P.S You can listen to Charles and Ellen Finch on The Browder File Show, where we dive deeper into African medicine, spiritual healing, and the brotherhood that’s sustained us for over four decades.
P.P.S Join Me for My Final Tours to Kemet
July 7th and December 14th, 2026 mark my last Egypt study tours after 39 years.
This is your final opportunity to walk where your ancestors walked, see what they built, and understand why they preserved this knowledge for you.
Reserve your place here. The ancestors are waiting.
If you want more information on the tours, I have put together a video which explains everything: Watch Here
