Followers of Vanuatu’s Prince Philip Movement believe the Duke is descended from one of their spirit ancestors.
Some are convinced the cyclone that ravaged their country in March was nature’s dramatic curtain-raiser to his arrival in 2016.
They believe Prince Philip will, at least, visit them and, at best, take up residence among them.
During a Royal Visit in 1974, a man named Chief Jack Naiva, was one of the paddlers of a war canoe that greeted the royal yacht Britannia at Port Vila.
He became convinced that Prince Philip was the descendant of a Tanna spiritual ancestor.
“I saw him standing on the deck in his white uniform,” Chief Jack is on record as saying. “I knew then that he was the true messiah.”
Prince Philip has exchanged gifts with the islanders, including sending them a signed portrait of himself.
Anthropologists say it is easy to mock the islanders’ beliefs, which have commonly come to be called cargo cults.
Some scholars say is the people’s way of coping the intrusion of colonisers on what for centuries was an undisturbed, traditional way of life.
Source
- telegraph.co.uk
- Image: express.co.uk
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