David Obey has in his nearly forty years in the U.S. House of Representatives worked to bring economic and social justice to America s working families. In 2007 he assumed the chair of the Appropriations Committee and is positioned to pursue his priority concerns for affordable health care, education, environmental protection, and a foreign policy consistent with American democratic ideals. Here, in his autobiography, Obey looks back on his journey in politics beginning with his early years in the Wisconsin Legislature, when Wisconsin moved through eras of shifting balance between Republicans and Democrats. On a national level Obey traces, as few others have done, the dramatic changes in the workings of the U.S. Congress since his first election to the House in 1969. He discusses his own central role in the evolution of Congress and ethics reforms and his view of the recent Bush presidency crucial chapters in our democracy, of interest to all who observe politics and modern U.S. history.Best Books for Regional General Audiences, selected by the American Association of School Librarians, and Best Books for General Audiences, selected by the Public Library Association"

"An old dog (galu wamkota) does not dig for nothing," so the proverb says. The two authors, one from America (with 45 years in Zambia); the other from Zambia, explore the encounter of the Christian faith with African Traditional Religion, treating concept(s) of God, the world of the spirits, of powers and witchcraft, and then how the Bible can be translated into the language of Zambia and Malawi taking into account both changes in concepts of translation and in society

"Song of the Caiman""Spiritual Beliefs of the CiBoNey Peoples""Connect with the ancestors and there Florida and Caribbean descendents"For more information please contact: Ciboney Tribe of [email protected]

Lynn V. Andrews takes the reader with her as she goes on inward journeys with the help of the Sisterhood of the Shields, and relates the stories of others.
Join her as she is initiated into the Sisterhood and creates her own shield, which will show her the nature of her spiritual path ("Spirit Woman"). Follow her to the Yucatan, where the medicine wheel leads her, and she is faced with the terrifying reality of the butterfly tree ("Jaguar Woman"). Enter the Dreamtime with her, where she emerges in medieval England as Catherine, and encounters the Grandmother, who offers to show Andrews how to make her life one of goodness, power, adventure, and love ("The Woman of Wyrrd").
Not all these stories describe the author's own spiritual experiences. Meet Sin Coraz?n, an initiate into the Sisterhood, whose husband abandons her. She nearly succumbs to her inner dark power and unleashes her rage on men and the Sisterhood ("Dark Sister"). Andrews also writes about the elder women of the Sisterhood: their loves, their lives, their losses ("Tree of Dreams").
Andrews shows us how to channel our own spiritual and intellectual energy and balance the need for love with the desire for power ("Love and Power"). She takes the reader on numerous spiritual journeys that inevitably uplift.

Introduction; The Instruction of Ptah-Hotep; The Instruction of Ke'Gemni; Note to appendix; The Instruction of Amenemheet; Explanation of Names; Bibliography.

The first art historical study of Yoruba-descended, African Brazilian religious art based on an author's long-term participation in and observation of private and public rituals.

At a time when the art of the African diaspora has aroused much general interest for its multicultural dimensions, Mikelle Smith Omari-Tunkara contributes strikingly rich insights as a participant/observer in the African-based religions of Brazil. She focuses on the symbolism and function of ritual objects and costumes used in the Brazilian candomble (miniature "African" environments or temples) of the Bahia region, which combine Yoruba, Bantu/Angola, Caboclo, Roman Catholic, and/or Kardecist/Spiritist elements. An initiate herself with more than twenty years of study, the author is considered an insider, and has witnessed how practitioners manipulate the "sacred" to encode, in art and ritual, vital knowledge about meaning, values, epistemologies, and history. She demonstrates how this manipulation provides Brazilian descendents of slaves with a sense of agency -- with a link to their African heritage and a locus for resistance to the dominant Euro-Brazilian culture.

Manipulating the Sacred will be of value to students of art history, religion, anthropology, African American studies, and Latin American studies, and to the growing English-speaking community of initiates of African-based religions.

Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for everyone!

Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for everyone!

Are you searching for a spiritual path that speaks to your cultural identity? Are you curious about the connection of the African-American experience to ancient African culture and spirituality? The Quest for Spiritual Transformation: An Introduction to Traditional Akan Religion, Rituals, and Practices is an important contribution to the exploration of cultural approaches to healing the mind, body, and spirit. Author Nana Opokuwaa clearly illustrates the connection between the traditions and beliefs of Africans born in the Diaspora to the ancient customs of the Akans. Her writing style exhibits a special sensitivity and compassion that shows appreciation for the reader's need for guidance. Opokuwaa's approach to explaining the Akan Akom Tradition brings clarity to the complicated practices associated with African religion in the Diaspora. In addition to seven study guides meant to serve as discussion points within your organization, group of friends, or for yourself, this book includes a list of references to enlighten you about Akan culture, customs, and traditions. utilized in the book and an index for readily available reference. In the follow-up to Akan Protocol: Remembering the Traditions of Our Ancestors, Opokuwaa continues her effort to share information about the ancient traditions and customs of the Akans of Ghana, West Africa.

This book describes itself as: 'a cultural, psychological study of the way Christian Malawians account for their involvement in African traditional religion'. It is a qualitative study of how Christians manage to be at the same time involved in African traditional religions, of which the Christian church, on the whole, disapproves. It lends insight into the ways in which individuals enact two different religions in their daily lives, focusing particularly on religious practices. It further aims to adopt a position of religious pluralism, representing the voices and perspectives of the peoples studied.

This is the first volume of a projected three-volume work on the little-known South Indian folk cult of the goddess Draupadi and on the classical epic, the "Mahabharata," that the cult brings to life in mythic, ritual, and dramatic forms. Draupadi, the chief heroine of the Sanskrit "Mahabharata," takes on many unexpected guises in her Tamil cult, but her dimensions as a folk goddess remain rooted in a rich interpretive vision of the great epic. By examining the ways that the cult of Draupadi commingles traditions about the goddess and the epic, Alf Hiltebeitel shows the cult to be singularly representative of the inner tensions and working dynamics of popular devotional Hinduism.

This work contains a brief view of the myths, traditions and religious belief of races with concise studies in ethnography. These short studies in ethnography were written chiefly in the British Museum. It is meant for the general reader and not scientists, so the references given have usually been from easily attainable works in English, and only a small portion of the abundant notes that might have been given from French, German and Latin authors have been used. The object of this book is to throw light on the many important passages in Holy Writ, and to show that the finest learning and most recent discoveries have not antagonized the Mosaic author, but have followed the path he traced.

IN everyday life the shaman is not distinguishable from other people except by an occasionally haughty manner, but when he is engaged in communicating with spirits he has to make use of a special dress and special instruments. Of these the most important and the one in most general use is the shaman's drum. It may be said that all over Siberia, where there is a shaman there is also a drum. The drum has the power of transporting the shaman to the superworld and of evoking spirits by its sounds.

"Will be of interest not only to specialists in Afro-Cuban and African Diaspora religions, but also to medical anthropologists and students of anthropology, psychology, and religious studies. This work provides a particularly revealing entry way into the realities of contemporary Cuba."-- George Brandon, Sophie Davis School of Biomedical Education, City University of New York Johan Wedel offers a visit inside the world of Santeria healing. Drawing upon extensive fieldwork in contemporary Cuba, including interviews with Santeria devotees, firsthand observations of divination sessions, and interviews with healed patients supplemented by comments from Santeria healers, Wedel demonstrates how Santeria healing is carried out and experienced by the participants. Santeria--with roots in Africa and the slave trade and rituals including divination, animal sacrifice, and possession trance--would seem an anachronism in the modern world. Still, Wedel argues, it offers treatment and ideas about illness that are flourishing and even spreading in the face of Western medicine. He shows that Santeria healing is best understood as a transformation of the self, allowing the patient to experience the world in a new way. He grounds his analysis of Santeria in lively and sometimes frightening narratives in which people reveal in their own words the experience of illness, sorcery, and healing. Wedel's account will appeal to scholars and others interested in Santeria, Cuba, and religious healing. He shows that Santeria is not only a challenge to Western medical theory, but also an important contribution to our understanding of illness, suffering, and well-being. Johan Wedel is instructor in social anthropology at Goeteborg University, Sweden.

When the Spanish took over Central America in the 16th and 17th centuries they made certain to destroy the writings and holy books of the native Mayans in an effort to convert them to Christianity. Few texts survived, yet one did of the highest importance. It is called The Popol Vuh. It is the creation story of the Mayan culture and, according to the author, this was the first English rendering of that text. It tells the story of a great flood, gods who created mankind, and a number of other interesting parallels to mythologies from around the world. This is the "Genesis" of the mysterious Mayas and should be essential reading for those interested in our ancient past. The book also contains three bonus chapters from Spence on mythology and religion from ancient Mexico. All of the gods and deities are fully explained and at times compared with those from Greece, Rome, and Egypt. All told, this is a fascinating collection of mythology from Central America and Mexico.

The Dreaming, or the Dreamtime, is the English translation of a complex Aboriginal religious concept. It relates to the idea of an ancestral presence which exists as a spiritual power that is deeply present in the land. This presence or power also exists in certain paintings, in some dance performances, and in songs, blood and ceremonial objects.In Ancestral Power, Lynne Hume seeks to further our understanding of human consciousness by looking through a Western lens at the concept of the Dreaming. She examines the idea that Aboriginal people may have used certain techniques for entering altered states of consciousness. Could their experiences in such states, together with their extensive knowledge of their environment, have helped to create the cosmological scheme we call the Dreaming?With these questions in mind, she brings together and examines, for the first time, a wide range of existing literature on Aboriginal cosmology and spiritual practices, together with studies of Aboriginal art, data from anthropologists and ethnomusicologists, and statements by Aboriginal people from many different regional areas of Australia. Much of the information she highlights is little known.Ancestral Power suggests that Aboriginal spirituality is much more complex and compelling than the early missionaries could ever have imagined.

Lying on the border between eastern and western Christendom, Orthodox Karelia preserved its unique religious culture into the 19th and 20th centuries, when it was described and recorded by Finnish and Karelian folklore collectors. This colorful array of rituals and beliefs involving nature spirits, saints, the dead, and pilgrimage to monasteries represented a unique fusion of official Church ritual and doctrine and pre-Christian ethnic folk belief. This book undertakes a fascinating exploration into many aspects of Orthodox Karelian ritual life: beliefs in supernatural forces, folk models of illness, body concepts, divination, holy icons, the role of the ritual specialist and healer, the divine between nature and culture, images of the forest, the cult of the dead, and the popular image of monasteries and holy hermits. This book will appeal to anyone interested in popular religion, the cognitive study of religion, ritual studies, medical anthropology, and the folk traditions and symbolism of the Balto-Finnic peoples.

To what extent did colonialism affect the terms by which the colonised understood the material and spiritual landscapes in which they lived? What history, memories, and meanings survive from the colonial encounter and before? In this text, Sandra E. Greene explores the material and spiritual meanings that the Anlo-Ewe people of Ghana once associated with particular bodies of water, burial sites, sacred towns, and the human body itself and brings these meanings and memories into contemporary context for the Anlo. As a key to understanding the Anlo world view, Greene reconstructs a vivid and convincing portrait of the human and physical environment of 19th century Anlo. Drawing on her extensive fieldwork, early European accounts, and the archives and publications of the Bremen Missionary Society, Greene charts how these ideas changed following contact with British colonisers and German Pietist missionaries who discouraged spiritual interpretation of these sites in favour of more scientific and regulatory views.; Anlo responses to these colonialist challenges to their ways of organising physical space involved considerable resistance and, over time, selective acceptance of aspects of n

The Encyclopedia of African and African-American Religions covers the religious movements and churches of sub-Saharan Africa, North and South America and the Caribbean. The wide-ranging nature of the book includes religions which have their origin in the African Diaspora as well as discussing those which are products of contact between major world religions (such as Christianity and Islam). In addition, attention is given to the growing worldwide influence of African and African-American religions in Europe, Asia and the South Pacific. The work of anthropolgists, historians, religious scholars and sociologists is drawn upon and covers:
* African religion including major indigenous religions, new religions and non-indigenous religions
* African-American religion in North America including Black churches within mainstream religions; African-American sects; African-American movements
* African-American religion in South America and the Caribbean, including a nation-by-nation survey of African derived religions * General topics, beliefs, practices and institutions * Individuals including: Martin Luther King, Elijah Muhammed, Malcolm X, Father Divine, Jesse Jackson, and Lydia Cabrera. African-American societies and cultures.

In August 1986, Alice Auma, a young Acholi woman in northern Uganda, proclaiming herself under the orders of a Christian spirit named Lakwena, raised an army called the \u201cHoly Spirit Mobile Forces.\u201d With it she waged a war against perceived evil, not only an external enemy represented by the National Resistance Army of the government, but internal enemies in the form of \u201cimpure\u201d soldiers, witches, and sorcerers. She came very close to her goal of overthrowing the government but was defeated and fled to Kenya. This book provides a unique view of Alice's movement, based on interviews with its members and including their own writings, examining their perceptions of the threat of external and internal evil. It concludes with an account of the successor movements into which Alice's forces fragmented and which still are active in the civil wars of the Sudan and Uganda.

They can be found along the side streets of many American cities: herb or candle shops catering to practitioners of Voodoo, hoodoo, Santeria, and similar beliefs. Here one can purchase ritual items and raw materials for the fabrication of traditional charms, plus a variety of soaps, powders, and aromatic goods known in the trade as "spiritual products." For those seeking health or success, love or protection, these potions offer the power of the saints and the authority of the African gods.
In Spiritual Merchants, Carolyn Morrow Long provides an inside look at the followers of African-based belief systems and the retailers and manufacturers who supply them. Traveling from New Orleans to New York, from Charleston to Los Angeles, she takes readers on a tour of these shops, examines the origins of the products, and profiles the merchants who sell them.
Long describes the principles by which charms are thought to operate, how ingredients are chosen, and the uses to which they are put. She then explores the commodification of traditional charms and the evolution of the spiritual products industry--from small-scale mail order "doctors" and hoodoo drugstores to major manufacturers who market their products worldwide. She also offers an eye-opening look at how merchants who are not members of the culture entered the business through the manufacture of other goods such as toiletries, incense, and pharmaceuticals. Her narrative includes previously unpublished information on legendary Voodoo queens and hoodoo workers, as well as a case study of John the Conqueror root and its metamorphosis from spirit-embodying charm to commercial spiritual product.
No other book deals in such detail with both the history and current practices of African-based belief systems in the United States and the evolution of the spiritual products industry. For students of folklore or anyone intrigued by the world of charms and candle shops, Spiritual Merchants examines the confluence of African and European religion in the Americas and provides a colorful introduction to a vibrant aspect of contemporary culture.
The Author: Carolyn Morrow Long is a preservation specialist and conservator at the the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History.