The remarkably accurate original translations of Native American myths from one of 19th-century America's foremost linguists. Native American mythology shows vestiges of religious concepts already old when the Egyptians evolved their form of worship. This volume offers an unusual collection of myths from two Native American cultures, the Wintu and Yana, recorded and translated in the 1880s by Jeremiah Curtin, one of the outstanding American linguists of the later 19th century. Because Curtin sought out storytellers who were not influenced by other cultures, his translations offer remarkably accurate accounts of the fundamental beliefs of Native Americans. In his introduction, Curtin explains the profound antiquity of these myths of creation, which preserve some of the earliest religious expression. He also provides an unflinching account of the appalling genocidal attacks on the peaceful Yana by white Californians in the 1860s. Because the Yana became extinct, Curtin's rendering of some of their important myths is an especially valuable contribution to contemporary understanding of Native American mythology. Introduction by scholar Karl Kroeber offers new insight into the significance of Curtin's collection for understanding the creation myth system of Native America Contains original translations of the system of creation myths as told to Curtin by members of the Yana and Wintu tribes

This project is an attempt to bring together the many fragments of history concerning the Yoruba religious community and their rise to prominence in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil, from the mid-nineteenth to the late-twentieth centuries.

Tony Swain has prepared a comprehensive bibliographical survey of all substantial publications on Aboriginal religions appearing between 1798 and early 1990. The volume opens with a three-chapter narrative section which provides the historic and analytic contexts for the cataloguing that follows. The 1,076 entries are critically annotated and classified by geography and theme. More specific investigation of selected topics can be pursued through the four indexes which, besides offering an alphabetical listing of all titles and authors, provide access by "tribes and places" and general subjects. The three narrative chapters explore the history of the study of Aboriginal religions, the emergence of key themes in investigating these traditions, and the unique features of the regions which provide the primary classification for the bibliography that follows. Chapter one shows how a succession of theories, conceptions, and blatant prejudices have molded the way writers approached the traditions of the Aborigines. Chapter two examines those themes scholars have felt useful in analyzing Aboriginal religions, placing their emergence in historical perspective and discussing their usefulness as conceptual tools. Finally, the third chapter highlights the unique features of the ten regions used as the primary categories of classification, describing possible historical forces which have shaped their particular forms. This first bibliography of Australian Aboriginal religions is an essential acquisition for all serious academic libraries.

Ritual Imagination is a study of spirit possession and ritual dynamics. Based on fieldwork in eastern Madagascar, Hilde Nielssen shows how tromba possession works as a flexible and fluid force, whose ritual imaginary playfully draws together elements from radically different cultural and social domains, thereby constituting human realities and creating ways of relating to changing and disjunctive circumstances. Tromba's strength lies in its fluid capacities to relate to ongoing social change by altering its own practices, while at the same time continuing to heal person and cosmos. The book critically addresses the still dominant perspective in anthropology, where rituals are understood as representations of culture and society. Using tromba as a pivotal case in the critique of ritual as representation, this book offers a fresh perspective on ritual and spirit possession.

Between the years of 1898 and 1926, Edward Westermarck spent a total of seven years in Morocco, visiting towns and tribes in different parts of the country, meeting local people and learning about their language and culture; his findings are noted in this two-volume set, first published in 1926. The first volume contains extensive reference material, including Westermarck's system of transliteration and a comprehensive list of the tribes and districts mentioned in the text. The chapters in this, the second volume, explore such areas as the rites and beliefs connected with the Islamic calendar, agriculture, and childbirth. This title will fascinate any student or researcher of anthropology with an interest in the history of ritual, culture and religion in Morocco.

African religions, as well as those religions that derive much of their cosmology, beliefs, and rituals from African religions, are becoming more international in scope and appeal. Yet they continue to be viewed either as indiscriminately adaptable or as static traditions. Neither view suggests much spiritual or psychological value outside their original milieu when compared with the so-called world religions.

The chapters in this volume focus on African and African-derived religions, and challenge many of these positions. They examine how these religions display themselves in the contemporary world, particularly in the Americas, the Caribbean, and Europe. These religions' continued dynamism and their relationship with other religious traditions, especially through the process of syncretism, are also explored. This multidisciplinary collection makes a major contribution not only to a better understanding of African and African-derived religions, but it also contributes to the wider and ongoing debate on syncretism that continues to engage those in anthropology, history, and sociology of religion.

African cults and religions enrich all aspects of Cuba's social, cultural and everyday life, and encompass all ethnic and social groups. Politics, art, and civil events such as weddings, funerals, festivals and carnivals all possess distinctly Afro-Cuban characteristics. Miguel Barnet provides a concise guide to the various traditions and branches of Afro-Cuban religions. He distinguishes between the two most important cult forms - the Regla de Ocha (Santeria), which promotes worship of the Oshira (gods), and the traditional oracles that originated in the old Yoruba city of lle-lfe', which promote a more animistic worldview. Africans who were brought to Cuba as slaves had to recreate their old traditions in their new Caribbean context. As their African heritage collided with Catholicism and with Native American and European traditions, certain African gods and traditions became more prominent while others lost their significance in the new Afro-Cuban culture. This book, the first systematic overview of the syncretization of the gods of African origin with Catholic saints, introduces the reader to a little-known side of Cuban culture.

While there are five important festschriften on Toyin Falola and his work, this book fulfills the need for a single-authored volume that can be useful as a textbook. I develop clearly articulated rubrics and overarching concepts as the foundational basis for analyzing Falola's work.

The Djanggawul religious cult is the focus for this study because it is more important to the Aborigines themselves than other religious cults in the north-eastern region of Arnhem land. The book includes chapters on the following: * Significance of the Djanggawul * The Djanggawul Myth and Content of the Myth * The Djanggawul Songs * The Djanggawul Song Cycle: Parts 1 The book includes an extensive glossary and index. First published in 1952.

Mambu is the name of a native of New Guinea who led what has become known as a 'Cargo' cult. These cults, common in Melanesia, are partly religious, political and economic in nature. Participants in the cult engage in exotic rites, the purpose of which is to gain possession of European manufactured goods, such as knives, medicines, razor blades, tinned foods etc.
The volume discusses why these cults occur and examines a way of life of a New Guinea people and their reactions to European penetration and achievement.
First published in 1960.

First published in 1981. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Carlos Castaneda takes the reader into the very heart of sorcery, challenging both imagination and reason, shaking the very foundations of our belief in what is "natural" and "logical."In 1961, a young anthropologist subjected himself to an extraordinary apprenticeship with Yaqui Indian spiritual leader don Juan Matus to bring back a fascinating glimpse of a Yaqui Indian's world of "non-ordinary reality" and the difficult and dangerous road a man must travel to become "a man of knowledge." Yet on the bring of that world, challenging to all that we believe, he drew back. Then in 1968, Carlos Castaneda returned to Mexico, to don Juan and his hallucinogenic drugs, and to a world of experience no man from our Western civilization had ever entered before.

Walter E. A. van Beek draws on over four decades of extensive fieldwork to offer an in-depth study of the religion of the Kapsiki/Higi, who live in the Mandara Mountains on the border between North Cameroon and Northeast Nigeria. Concentrating on ritual as the core of traditional religion, van Beek shows how Kapsiki/Higi practices have endured through the long and turbulent history of the region. Kapsiki rituals reveal a focus on two fundamental concepts: dwelling and belonging. Van Beek examines their sacrificial practices, through which the Kapsiki show a complex and pervasive connection with the Mandara Mountains, as well as the character of their relationships among themselves and with outsiders. Van Beek also explores their rituals of belonging, rites of passage which take place from birth through initiation and marriage - and even death, with the tradition of the ''dancing dead,'' when a fully decorated corpse on the shoulders of a smith ''dances'' with his mourning kinsmen. The Dancing Dead is the result of the author's lifelong study of the Kapsiki/Higi. It gives a unique description of the rituals in an African traditional religion based not upon ancestors, but on a completely relational thought system, where in the end all rituals are integrated into one major cycle.

Religion, Culture and Spirituality in Africa and the African Diaspora explores the ways in which religious ideas and beliefs continue to play a crucial role in the lives of people of African descent. The chapters in this volume use historical and contemporary examples to show how people of African descent develop and engage with spiritual rituals, organizations and practices to make sense of their lives, challenge injustices and creatively express their spiritual imaginings. This book poses and answers the following critical questions: To what extent are ideas of spirituality emanating from Africa and the diaspora still influenced by an African aesthetic? What impact has globalisation had on spiritual and cultural identities of peoples on African descendant peoples? And what is the utility of the practices and social organizations that house African spiritual expression in tackling social, political cultural and economic inequities? The essays in this volume reveal how spirituality weaves and intersects with issues of gender, class, sexuality and race across Africa and the diaspora. It will appeal to researchers and postgraduate students interested in the study of African religions, race and religion, sociology of religion and anthropology.

This book formulates a new pedagogy of death with regard to Northeast India and shows how this pedagogy offers an understanding of alternative knowledge systems and epistemes. In documenting a range of customs and practices pertaining to death, dying and the afterlife among the diverse ethnic communities of Northeast India, the book offers new soteriological, epistemological, sociological and phenomenological perspectives on death. Through an examination of these eschatological practices and their anthropological, theological and cultural moorings, the book aims to reach an understanding of notions of indigeneity with regard to Northeast India. The contributors to this book draw upon a range of subjects— from songs, literary texts, monuments, relics and funerary objects to biographies to folktales to stories of spirit possessions and supernatural encounters. It collates the research of scholars primarily from Northeast India, but also from Eastern India and offers an interdisciplinary analysis of these various belief systems and practices. This book will of interest to those researchers and scholars interested in South Asia in general and Northeast India in particular, and also to those interested in the social anthropology of religion, cultural studies, indigenous studies, folklore studies and Himalayan studies.

This book draws on ethnographic studies in Southeast Asia to provide new insights into human-environmental relationships and ecologies, together with a set of theoretical innovations. Contextualizing ecologies in this region as pluralizing or hegemonic, conflictive or cooperative, the case studies in these chapters bring into dialogue ontological approaches, the issue of distinct worldviews and concepts of nature on the one hand and political ecology and power relations on the other. They discuss plural ecologies in diverse settings, reaching from urban Vietnam to the Javanese coast and the dense forests of the Southeast Asian highlands. Southeast Asia is one of the most biodiverse and culturally diverse regions in the world. Thus, what occurs in this region is vitally important to the future of Earth. Documenting the plurality and dynamics of ecologies in Southeast Asia, this book provides prime examples for the potentials of alternative human-environmental relationships and sustainable development. It will be of interest to academics studying political ecology, environmental anthropology, sustainability sciences, political sciences, development studies, human geography, human ecology, Southeast Asian studies, and Asian studies.

The Nso' Concept of Time explores cosmology among the Nso' people of north-western Cameroon. It examines the concept of time within the Nso' world view, along with its implications for culture and traditional religion. The author addresses a wide range of metaphysical, ethical, anthropological, existential, and epistemological issues not only in relation to wider African philosophy, but also in relation to Western conceptions of time. The book is an important new contribution to African philosophy, cultural anthropology, African traditional religion, cosmology, and African metaphysics. It will appeal to scholars and students in a wide range of related disciplines. "This book is most certainly a first in the study of the Nso concept of time. Remi Prospero Fonka has excavated, carefully analyzed, and presented in readable form, a complex metaphysics of time within the Nso worldview. Students and researchers in African cultural studies, philosophy, anthropology, and sociology will find this book a useful resource. Those interested in comparative philosophy will also find in this book a cross-cultural phenomenological confrontation with Western cosmo-metaphysical models."-Nelson Shang, Lecturer of Philosophy, The University of Bamenda and The Catholic University of Cameroon, Bamenda "By highlighting the importance of always considering the concept of time alongside aspects of the universe or cosmos, Remi Prospero Fonka succinctly and with meticulous methodology, avails the opportunity for an understanding of the measurement of African time. The cross-cultural confrontations especially with phenomenological existentialists makes this book a necessary tool for students and researchers in multicultural studies, African philosophy, cosmology, African traditional religion, and African metaphysics."-Valentine Banfegha Ngalim, Associate Professor of Philosophy, The University of Bamenda, Cameroon