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.

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.

Though Malawi and Central Africa are now predominantly Christian countries, African tradition relgion remains important everywhere. Now a classic, this study was first published in 1979 against the background of neglect in publishing texts on economic and social history and other aspects of cultural development. It provides important information on Central African territorial cults, and it one of a series recording the history of African religious systems. Ten scholars report on detailed case studies conducted in Zambia, Malawi and Zimbabwe.

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.

This controversial text, that was meant for initiates at the threshold of the Ancient Egyptian Inner Temple, speaks to us with intriguing relevance to the problems of today. Taking the form of a dialogue between a man and his soul, this sacred text explores the inner discourse between doubt and mystical knowledge and deals with the rebellion and despair of the intellect at a crucial stage of spiritual development. Accompanied by stunning illustrations carefully selected to enhance the text and the author's commentaries, which combine poetic insight with rigorous scholarship, "Rebel in the Soul" provides a unique access to the secrets of Egyptian symbolism.
This is a new edition of "Rebel in the Soul," the first complete and consistent translation of the Berlin Papyrus 3024, which is thought to be nearly 4,000 years old.

With a new introduction by Thomas Beidelman This series of Classics in African Anthropology is primarily drawn from a distinct family of texts which dominated the academic analysis of society in mid-20th century Africa. The texts reproduced are significant yet often neglected, and have stood the test of time. John Middleton's classic study on the Lugbara was originally published in 1960. New edition published in association with the International African Institute North America: Transaction Books; Germany: Lit Verlag

When Paul B. Steinmetz worked among the Oglala Lakota in South Dakota, he prayed with the Sacred Pipe, conversed with medicine men, and participated in their religious ceremonies.

Steinmetz describes the history, belief systems and contemporary ceremonies of three religious groups among the Oglala Lakota: traditional Lakota religion, the Native American Church, and the Body of Christ Independent Church, a small Pentecostal group. On the basis of these descriptions, Steinmetz discusses the interdynamics of Pipe, Bible, and Peyote, and offers a model for understanding Oglala religious identity. Steinmetz maintains that a sense of sacramentalism is essential in understanding Native American religions and that the mutual influence between Lakota religion and Christianity has been far more extensive than most scholars have suggested.

About 1875 the Crows abandoned their own Sun Dance, but they continued to carry out other traditional rites despite opposition from missionaries and the federal government. In 1941, Crow Indians from Montana sought out leaders of the Sun Dance among the Wind River Shoshonis in Wyoming and under the direction of John Truhujo, made the ceremony a part of their lives. In The Shoshoni-Crow Sun Dance, Fred W. Voget draws on forty years of fieldwork to describe the people and circumstances leading to this singular event, the nature of the ceremony, the reconciliation's with Christianity and peyotism, the role of the Sun Dance as a catalyst for the reassertion of Crow cultural identity, and the place the Sun Dance now holds in Crow life and culture. Voget's description includes photographs and diagrams of the Sun Dance.

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.

Most North Americans experience mythology by way of translations of classical texts, and surprisingly few of us are familiar with Coyote, Spider Woman, Water Jar boy, Falling Sky Woman, or the epic of the Blessingway - to name just a few of the stories retold in this collection of significant myths of Native North America. David Leeming and Jake Page, building on the success of their Goddess: Myths of the Female Divine and God: Myths of the Male Divine, have provided an introduction and commentary on seventy-two myths drawn from a variety of cultures and language groups. They honor the Native pantheons, cosmologies, heroes, and heroines first as cultural expressions, then as variations on other mythic narratives to which they may be related, and ultimately as expressions of the larger human experience of mythmaking. David Leeming is Professor Emeritus of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Connecticut, Storrs. Jake Page is the coauthor of Wild Justice: The People of Geronimo V. the United States, also published by University of Oklahoma Press.

Though Malawi in general, and the areas described in this book, are predominantly Christian, traditional religion is still an important reality, beside and within Christianity in Malawi. Matthew Schoffeleers, a Montfortian missionary priest and social anthropologist, addresses here aspects of African tradition religion, with a particular focus on spirit possesion. Both in its individual importance and in its territorial importance. Of the six papers collected in the book two deal with rain cults, which for centuries have played a central role in the political and religious life of Malawi, two with territorial spirit mediumship and two with cults of affliction.

The Montana Cree is a study of religion as a sustaining force in American Indian life. On the small Rocky Boy reservation in northern Montana, the Cree Indians provide an example of how a people transplanted and persecuted throughout their history can maintain and develop a tribal identity and unity through the continuance of their religious values.

As the adopted son of Mose Michelle, a hereditary Pend O'Reille chief, Verne Dusenberry moved easily within Indian circles as an accepted participant-observer in many religious ceremonies. His ethnographic study provides detailed descriptions of ceremonies - the Shaking Tent, Ghost Dance, and Sun Dance - which are seldom accurately described elsewhere.

Founded by free people of color in Philadelphia in the aftermath of the American Revolution, the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church emerged in the nineteenth century as the preeminent black institution in the United States. In 1896, the church opened mission work in South Africa, absorbing an independent ""Ethiopian"" church founded by dissident African Christians a few years earlier. In the process, the church helped ignite one of the most influential popular movements in South African history. Songs of Zion examines this remarkable historical convergence from both sides of the Atlantic. James Campbell charts the origins and evolution of black American independent churches, arguing that the very act of becoming Christian forced African Americans to reflect on their relationship to their ancestral continent. He then turns to South Africa, exploring the AME Church's entrance and evolution in a series of specific South African contexts. Throughout the book, Campbell focuses on the comparisons that Africans and African Americans themselves drew between their situations. Their transatlantic encounter, he argues, enabled both groups to understand and act upon their worlds in new ways. |Discusses the interaction between the African Methodist Episcopal Church in the United States and in South Africa, arguing that each group influenced the other to understand and act on their worlds in new ways.

The religious fervor known as the Ghost Dance movement was precipitated by the prophecies and teachings of a northern Paiute Indian named Wovoka (Jack Wilson). During a solar eclipse on New Year's Day, 1889, Wovoka experienced a revelation that promised harmony, rebirth, and freedom for Native Americans through the repeated performance of the traditional Ghost Dance. In 1890 his message spread rapidly among tribes, developing an intensity that alarmed the federal government and ended in tragedy at Wounded Knee. The Ghost Dance phenomenon is well known, but never before has its founder received such full and authoritative treatment. Indispensable for understanding the prophet behind the messianic movement, Wovoka and the Ghost Dance addresses for the first time basic questions about his message and life. This expanded edition includes a new chapter and appendices covering sources on Wovoka discovered since the first edition, as well as a supplemental bibliography. Michael Hittman is the author of Corbett Mack: The Life of a Northern Paiute (Nebraska 1996). He is chair of the Department of Anthropology and Sociology at Long Island University, Brooklyn Campus.

To many Westerners, the disappearance of African traditions of witchcraft might seem inevitable with continued modernization. In The Modernity, of Witchcraft, Peter Geschiere uses his own experiences among the Maka and in other parts of eastern and southern Cameroon, as well as other anthropological research, to argue that contemporary ideas and practices of witchcraft are more a response to modern exigencies than a lingering cultural custom. The prevalence of witchcraft, especially in African politics and entrepreneurship, demonstrates the unlikely balance it has achieved with the forces of modernity. Geschiere explores why modern techniques and commodities, usually of Western provenance, have become central in rumors of the occult.

Witchcraft is viewed as both a leveling and an oppressive force: a weapon of the weak to attack the powerful but also a tool of the powerful to maintain their position. Modern witchdoctors play a pivotal role not only in local cultures but also in stories of success and failure of state politicians, businessmen, and local football teams. Since the early 1980s they have been used as expert witnesses in state trials, helping to condemn defendants by their supposed expertise, rather than by hard evidence. The belief in witchcraft pervades all political levels: President Soglo of Benin, one of the few democratically elected on the continent, nearly missed his own inauguration because of an alleged witchcraft attack. Geschiere suggests that the African state is a true breeding ground for modern transformations of witchcraft because the ambiguity of this discourse can contain both the obsession of power and the increasing feelings of powerlessness among thepeople in the face of modern developments. There are unexpected parallels here with certain aspects of politics in Western democracies.

The ease with which witchcraft has incorporated the money economy, new power relations, and modern consumer goods is a striking example of its resilience in the face of Western influences. Geschiere uses the evolving relationship of witchcraft and modernity to demonstrate that democracy in Africa can succeed only if it is related to local cultures and their discourse on power.

This study is one that anthropologists, political scientists, and others concerned with contemporary Africa cannot afford to ignore.

This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.

This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.

This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.

Contents: Mysteries of the East and of Barbarous Nations; The Grecian Mysteries and the Roman Bacchanalia; The Pythagorean League and other Secret Associations; Son of Man, Son of God; A Pseudo-Messiah; A Lying Prophet; The Knights Templar; The Femgerichte; Stonemasons' Lodges of the Middle Age; Astrologers and Alchemists; Rise and Constitution of Freemasonry; Secret Societies of the Eighteenth Century; The Illuminati; Secret Societies of Various Kinds.

This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.

Joseph Booth penned his appeal in 1897 in protest of the racist stereotpying of the Africans by the colonisers; and witnessing the unjust and inhumane exploitation of the native peoples, for the sole benefit of the Europeans. He drew his ideas from the social and political messages he inferred from the Gospel and his appeal was published only thirteen years after European leaders met in Berlin to divide up the African continent. This now seminal text was republished in its centenary year and has continual relevance to debates about race and development in Africa. It is edited to include explanations of local and contemporary political references, biblical references and the sources of the author's citations.

The Agwu is the Igbo patron deity of health and divination, and one of the basic Igbo theological concepts employed to explain good and evil, health and sickness, wealth and poverty, and fortune and misfortune. Belief in the Agwu was widespread in thepast. Most communities had some Agwu people, who were considered victims of its malignant powers or recipients of its positive influences, such as priest-diviners and physicians. This books analyses this belief system in past and present times, and posits the view that it still exists but to a lesser degree or in a modified forms. The author conducted his research through personal interviews and observer-participant methods. Themes range from beliefs about the Agwu deity through the rites and initiation into Agwu cult, to the guild of diviners and traditional healers. The six chapters cover: supernaturalism and disease causation; the anthropocentricity of Agwu; art and symbol in the Agwu cult; the rites of Dibia initiation; significance and consequences of Dibia initiation; and Agwu therapeutic forces in a time perspective.