Asatru (AH-sa-troo), also called Odinism, is the native religion of the Teutonic peoples as embodied in the fundamentals of their cultural expressions. Much more than just a belief system, it encompasses every aspect of ancient Northern European society. This book is an attempt to explain the basic philosophic and moral ideals of this ancient way of life, while seeking to eliminate many of the misconceptions surrounding it. Demonstrated here is the nature of a faith that has existed for centuries, in spite of numerous campaigns to suppress or destroy it by various powers. Once the reader learns the core values found within this creed, it is easy to recognize how it coincides with our notions of civilization and its evolution. It teaches inner strength and courage, as well as kindness and compassion. In introducing the positive, ethical standards Asatru has to offer, the aim here is to rekindle the primal spirit within us all. The author provides an in-depth introduction for those new to the folkway, yet gives much food for thought to the experienced practitioner. Sure to inspire deeper investigation of the various aspects of Asatru. Highly recommended.

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

In this Native American allegory, a young Lakota boy named David is despondent over the death of his sister and fears that he will never know happiness again. His father gives him a gift, a scroll with seven pictures, which properly understood, holds the keys to self understanding. In a deeply moving way, Lessons of a Lakota blends traditional Native American beliefs, with more modern principles such as positive thinking and self awareness. This book will teach you about yourself, show you what it means to be happy, and lead you on your own personal journey to inner peace.

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.

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.

"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]

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.

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.

A literal translation that preserves the poem's original structure This second volume provides a literal, line-by-line English translation of the Popol Vuh, capturing the beauty, subtlety, and high poetic language characteristic of K'iche'-Maya sacred writings. By arranging the work according to its poetic structure, Christenson preserves the poem's original phraseology and grammar, allowing subtle nuances of meaning to emerge.

Religion and Hopi Life tells the story of Hopi religious life in a way that makes sense to both Hopis and outsiders. In his interpretation of Hopi religion, John D. Loftin does not subject religious meaning to secular analysis. While not the Hopi s own story, his account attempts to honor and do justice to the way in which the Hopi embody religious meaning through the living of their lives. The second edition of this highly praised book keeps scholarly debates and theories to a minimum, except when they help illuminate the understanding of Hopi religious orientation and worldview. Several important studies of the Hopi have emerged since the book s first publication, and their findings have been incorporated. The book also includes new material on shamanism, death, witchcraft, myth, tricksters, and kachina initiations. This updated edition incorporates other minor corrections and additions to the text, and revises and expands the footnotes and the annotated bibliography."

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.

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

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.

EACH YEAR IN THE HIGHLAND Guatemala town of Santiago Momostenango, Maya religious societies, dance teams, and cofradias perform the annual cycle of rituals and festivals prescribed by Costumbre (syncretized Maya Christian religion), which serves to renew the cosmic order. In this richly detailed ethnography, Garrett Cook explores how these festivals of Jesucristo and the saints derive from and reenact three major ancient Maya creation myths, thus revealing patterns of continuity between contemporary expressive culture and the myths, rituals, and iconography of the Classic and Postclassic Maya.

Drawing on fieldwork conducted in the 1970s and renewed in the 1990s, Cook describes the expressive culture tradition performed in and by the cofradias and their dance teams. He listens as dancers and cofrades explain the meaning of service and of the major ritual symbols in the cults of the saints and Jesucristo. Comparing these symbols to iconographic evidence from Palenque and myths from the Popol Vub, Cook persuasively argues that the expressive culture of Momostenango enacts major Maya creation myths -- the transformative sunrise, the representation of the year as the life cycle of anthropomorphized nature, and the erection of an axis mundi.

This research documents specific patterns of continuity and discontinuity in the communal expression of Maya religious and cosmogonic themes. Along with other recent research, it demonstrates the survival of a basic Maya pattern -- the world-creating vegetative renewal cycle -- in the highland Maya cults of the saints and Jesucristo.

Garrett W. Cook is Associate Professor and Chair of Anthropology at Baylor University.

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.

Researched under difficult and sometimes dangerous circumstances during the Banda era, this book is a unique contribution to anthropological research in Malawi. Orginally published in 1976 this new edition has been throughly reworked and edited at a time when many of the domains described by Van Breugel were in a process of decline, transformation or even disappearance. The book offers precious descriptions of rain rituals at Bunda and Tsang'oma, explications of witchcraft phenomena and of the mdulu-complex, a convincing theory of the religious significance of Nyau and extensive deliberations of concepts of God and ancestors. In addition the book serves as a comprehensive overview on all the domains of Chewa Traditional Religion.

Indigenous religions are the majority of the world's religions. This Companion shows how much they can contribute to a richer understanding of human identity, action and relationships. It also challenges their marginalization in the study of religions. An international team of contributors discuss representative indigenous religions from all continents in relation to significant themes. In the process they illustrate a variety of approaches to the study of religions. The Companion therefore provides a valuable resource and a provocation to a full consideration both of some of the most dynamic religions of the world and of ways in which they might be approached. The 17 chapters are divided among three parts labelled "People", "Power" and "Gifts" which encapsulate much of what is significant about a diversity of religions which are often pragmatic, multi-stranded, layered, non-dogmatic but unanalytical. They are frequently concerned with reciprocal rather than hierarchical relationships. Some challenge the obesssion with deities, showing that religions are concerned with a far broader range of relationships, many initiated and furthered by humanity not by putative "spiritual" beings. Others challenge obsessions about the afterlife or next world, showing that religions can be concerned with the pursuit of health, wealth and happiness in this world now. The possibility that this is true of all religions makes this Companion relevant to everyone interested in human religiosity today.

In the celebrated Buffalo Woman Comes Singing, Brooke Medicine Eagle revealed her extraordinary spiritual odyssey from her first guided steps on the medicine path to her ongoing work as one of the most respected Native American teachers of the modern era. Now she shares a groundbreaking approach to spiritual transformation--by revitalizing the powerful ancient ritual The Ghost Dance.

Four centuries ago, when European invaders were ruthlessly plundering indigenous cultures, a Paiute tribesman received a vision of hope and resurrection, given by Father Spirit, to help survivors of the onslaught create a beautiful new life in the face of defeat, broken dreams, and death. That vision was celebrated in an ecstatic ghost dance honoring those who had perished.

Brooke Medicine Eagle explains how and why we are profoundly connected to The Ghost Dance. As she herself becomes initiated into the "illusion of death" and the wisdom of "heart-centered ascension," she teaches us how to confront our deepest fears, overcome our resistance to change, and renew our lives. Through prayer, music, and dance, Medicine Eagle provides us with the tools to bring about the final fulfillment of this profound ritual--by living in harmony with earth's rhythms, practicing sustainable living, honoring and sharing with all our relations, and freeing ourselves from the burden of possessions and possessiveness.

Perceptive, practical, and luminous, The Last Ghost Dance is a call to action, a challenge to raise up from the ashes of our desecrated planet a world that welcomes the full flowering of the spirit--and a new age of abundance, love, and peace.

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.

Weaving together a wide array of historical sources with oral accounts gathered from fieldwork, this classic study provides a valuable overview of traditional Creek (Muskogee) religion and medicine. John R. Swanton visited the Creek Nation in the early twentieth century and learned about many important aspects of Creek religious life and medicine. Subjects covered in this book include Creek conceptions of the cosmos; religious stories; death and the afterlife; spiritual forces and beings; various rituals, including the Busk ceremony; prohibitions; the power and skills of different religious practitioners; the cultural force of witchcraft; and herbal and spiritual remedies. Many of these beliefs and practices have been present throughout Creek history and persist today. "Creek Religion and Medicine" showcases the vibrant culture of an enduring southeastern Native people.

"The Oneida Creation Story" is the oldest tradition of the "Onyota'aka" (People of the Standing Stone) and is one of the greatest pieces of oral literature of Native North America. Ancient elements of Iroquoian cosmology are the heart of the saga: Sky-world, the fall of Sky-woman, the creation of Earth upon Turtle's back, and the creation of mankind and early society by the twins. Various versions have been passed down from generation to generation, but the story has never before been published in the Oneida language. "The Oneida Creation Story" makes this majestic and beautiful story available in both Oneida and English for the first time. This special bilingual edition also features earlier translated versions of the Creation Story, a discussion of its cultural and historical contexts by Oneida Indian historian Anthony Wonderley, and lexicons cross-referenced to the story.

This introduction to the imaginative world of the Mexica (or Aztec) explores sacrifice in the richly textured life of 16th-century Mexico. Kay Almere Read describes a universe in which every object was timed by a given lifespan and in which sacrifice was the mechanism by which time functioned. This book makes a convincing case for what sacrifice meant religiously and for how it came to be that human sacrifice of staggering proportions could be accepted, matter-of-factly, by the Mexica people.