Download or read book Afrikan Ancestral Manuscript written by Unblind Tibbin M.A and published by Austin Macauley Publishers. This book was released on 2024-08-16 with total page 478 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Afrikan Ancestral Manuscript revitalises the honour and amplifies the influence of our great global Afrikan ancestors in our lives. It ensures their legacies are not forgotten, urging us to ‘Know Ourselves’ and to honour our ancestors as we do our elders in Afrikan culture. It’s vital to remember that our ancestors are the elders of our elders, and that the Creator/Creatress is the ancestor of all ancestors. Spanning from January to December, this book allows us to explore, in chronological order, ancestors born on specific days or months, helping us to recall and uplift their missions throughout the year. We are our ancestors, and this tool aids in remembering the path forward. Additionally, it can be used as a divining method to seek guidance from an enlightened ancestor on a specific day. This manuscript makes it clear that we must narrate our ancestors’ experiences in the first person, tapping into their wisdom to enlighten our daily practices.
Download or read book African Religion Defined written by Anthony Ephirim-Donkor and published by University Press of America. This book was released on 2012-07-10 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: African religion is ancestor worship; that is, funeral preparations, burial of the dead with ceremony and pomp, belief in eternal existence of souls of the dead as ancestors, periodic remembrance of ancestors, and belief that they influence the affairs of their living descendants. Whether called Akw?sidai, Homowo, Voodoo, Nyant?r (Aboakyir), CandomblZ, or Santeria in Africa or the African Diaspora, ancestor worship centers on the ancestors and deities. This makes it a tenably viable religion, because living descendants are genetically linked to their ancestors. The author, a traditional king and professor, studies the Akan in Ghana to demonstrate that ancestor worship is as pragmatic, systematic, theological, teleological, soteriological — with a highly trained clerical body and elders as mediators — and symbolic as any other religion in the world. Ancestor worship follows prescribed rites and rituals, formulas, precepts for ritual efficacy, and festivities of honor with music and dances to provoke ancestors and deities into joining in the celebration.
Download or read book African Spirituality written by Anthony Ephirim-Donkor and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2021-03-24 with total page 319 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Using the Akan in Ghana as a paradigmatic African representative group, African Spirituality: On Becoming Ancestors, Third Edition offers a unique African developmental praxis to eternal life immortality. Indeed, this way of life is predicated on the awareness and application of certain intrinsic values, which, if followed, lead to eternal life. As a way of living, African spirituality begins when an individual becomes morally and ethically responsible for one’s own actions while engaged on an ethical path (Ɔbra Bↄ) in pursuance of one’s unique career endeavor (Nkrabea). Though an individual quest, society is, however, the arbiter of one’s ethical and moral life, when society confers on the person adjudged a success the stage title of Nana. At old age, Ɔbra Bↄ ends as an active endeavor. However, as repositories of wisdom, senior elders continue to inculcate in succeeding generations the principles, art, and mastery of ideal life (Ɔbra pa). Then upon death, senior elders are transformed into deities, bequeathing to living descendants names worthy of evocation and worship. Indeed, this book is the first study of its kind to draw on the experiences of an entire people, their psychological dispositions and effects on the Akan during adulthood. Thus, this book brings a unique perspective to the study of spirituality, religion, developmental psychological theory, what it means to achieve perfection as an elder on earth, and upon death join the esteemed company of the Nananom Nsamanfo (Ancestors).
Download or read book African Spiritual Traditions in the Novels of Toni Morrison written by K. Zauditu-Selassie and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Addresses a real need: a scholarly and ritually informed reading of spirituality in the work of a major African American author. No other work catalogues so thoroughly the grounding of Morrison's work in African cosmogonies. Zauditu-Selassie's many readings of Ba Kongo and Yoruba spiritual presence in Morrison's work are incomparably detailed and generally convincing."--Keith Cartwright, University of North Florida Toni Morrison herself has long urged for organic critical readings of her works. K. Zauditu-Selassie delves deeply into African spiritual traditions, clearly explaining the meanings of African cosmology and epistemology as manifest in Morrison's novels. The result is a comprehensive, tour-de-force critical investigation of such works as The Bluest Eye, Sula, Song of Solomon, Tar Baby, Paradise, Love, Beloved, and Jazz. While others have studied the African spiritual ideas and values encoded in Morrison's work, African Spiritual Traditions in the Novels of Toni Morrison is the most comprehensive. Zauditu-Selassie explores a wide range of complex concepts, including African deities, ancestral ideas, spiritual archetypes, mythic trope, and lyrical prose representing African spiritual continuities. Zauditu-Selassie is uniquely positioned to write this book, as she is not only a literary critic but also a practicing Obatala priest in the Yoruba spiritual tradition and a Mama Nganga in the Kongo spiritual system. She analyzes tensions between communal and individual values and moral codes as represented in Morrison's novels. She also uses interviews with and nonfiction written by Morrison to further build her critical paradigm.
Download or read book Asen Ancestors and Vodun written by Edna G. Bay and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2008 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A social and iconographic history of a West African sculptural form
Download or read book Finding a Place Called Home written by Dee Woodtor and published by Random House Reference. This book was released on 1999 with total page 518 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "I teach the kings of their ancestors so that the lives of the ancients might serve them as an example, for the world is old but the future springs from the past." Mamadou Kouyate "Sundiata", An Epic of Old Mali, a.d. 1217-1257 Two major questions of the ages are: Who am I? and Where am I going? From the moment the first African slaves were dragged onto these shores, these questions have become increasingly harder for African-Americans to answer. To find the answers, you first must discover where you have been, you must go back to your family tree--but you must dig through rocky layers of lost information, of slavery--to find your roots. During the Great Migration in the 1940s, when African-Americans fled the strangling hands of Jim Crow for the relative freedoms of the North, many tossed away or buried the painful memories of their past. As we approach the new millennium, African-Americans are reaching back to uncover where we have been, to help us determine where we are going. Finding a Place Called Homeis a comprehensive guide to finding your African-American roots and tracing your family tree. Written in a clear, conversational, and accessible style, this book shows you, step-by-step, how to find out who your family was and where they came from. Beginning with your immediate family, Dr. Dee Parmer Woodtor gives you all the necessary tools to dig up your past: how to interview family members; how to research your past using census reports, slave schedules, property deeds, and courthouse records; and how to find these records. Using the Internet for genealogical research is also discussed in this timely and necessary book. Finding a Place Called Home helps you find your family tree, and helps place it in the context of the garden of African-American people. As you learn how to find your own history, you learn the history of all Africans in the Americas, including the Caribbean, and how to benefit from a new understanding of your family's history, and your people's. Finding a Place Called Home also discusses the growing family reunion movement and other ways to clebrate newly discovered family history. Tomorrow will always lie ahead of us if we don't forget yesterday. Finding a Place Called Home shows how to retrieve yesterday to free you for all of your tomorrows. Finding a Place Called Home: An African-American Guide to Genealogy and Historical Identitytakes us back, step-by-step, including: Methods of searching and interpreting records, such as marriage, birth, and death certificates, census reports, slave schedules, church records, and Freedmen's Bureau information. Interviewing and taking inventory of family members Using the Internet for genealogical purposes Information on tracing Caribbean ancestry
Download or read book Tongnaab written by Jean Allman and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2005-11-18 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For many Africanist historians, traditional religion is simply a starting point for measuring the historic impact of Christianity and Islam. In Tongnaab, Jean Allman and John Parker challenge the distinction between tradition and modernity by tracing the movement and mutation of the powerful Talensi god and ancestor shrine, Tongnaab, from the savanna of northern Ghana through the forests and coastal plains of the south. Using a wide range of written, oral, and iconographic sources, Allman and Parker uncover the historical dynamics of cross-cultural religious belief and practice. They reveal how Tongnaab has been intertwined with many themes and events in West African history -- the slave trade, colonial conquest and rule, capitalist agriculture and mining, labor migration, shifting ethnicities, the production of ethnographic knowledge, and the political projects that brought about the modern nation state. This rich and original book shows that indigenous religion has been at the center of dramatic social and economic changes stretching from the slave trade to the tourist trade.
Download or read book Ancient Bones written by Madelaine Böhme and published by Greystone Books Ltd. This book was released on 2020-09-08 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Splendid and important... Scientifically rigorous and written with a clarity and candor that create a gripping tale... [Böhme's] account of the history of Europe's lost apes is imbued with the sweat, grime, and triumph that is the lot of the fieldworker, and carries great authority." —Tim Flannery, The New York Review of Books In this "fascinating forensic inquiry into human origins" (Kirkus STARRED Review), a renowned paleontologist takes readers behind-the-scenes of one of the most groundbreaking archaeological digs in recent history. Somewhere west of Munich, paleontologist Madelaine Böhme and her colleagues dig for clues to the origins of humankind. What they discover is beyond anything they ever imagined: the twelve-million-year-old bones of Danuvius guggenmosi make headlines around the world. This ancient ape defies prevailing theories of human history—his skeletal adaptations suggest a new common ancestor between apes and humans, one that dwelled in Europe, not Africa. Might the great apes that traveled from Africa to Europe before Danuvius's time be the key to understanding our own origins? All this and more is explored in Ancient Bones. Using her expertise as a paleoclimatologist and paleontologist, Böhme pieces together an awe-inspiring picture of great apes that crossed land bridges from Africa to Europe millions of years ago, evolving in response to the challenging conditions they found. She also takes us behind the scenes of her research, introducing us to former theories of human evolution (complete with helpful maps and diagrams), and walks us through musty museum overflow storage where she finds forgotten fossils with yellowed labels, before taking us along to the momentous dig where she and the team unearthed Danuvius guggenmosi himself—and the incredible reverberations his discovery caused around the world. Praise for Ancient Bones: "Readable and thought-provoking. Madelaine Böhme is an iconoclast whose fossil discoveries have challenged long-standing ideas on the origins of the ancestors of apes and humans." —Steve Brusatte, New York Times-bestselling author of The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs "An inherently fascinating, impressively informative, and exceptionally thought-provoking read." —Midwest Book Review "An impressive introduction to the burgeoning recalibration of paleoanthropology." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
Download or read book Spear Masters written by Molefi Kete Asante and published by University Press of America. This book was released on 2007 with total page 174 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Spear Masters contends that in Africa there exists only one religion with a vast array of "denominations." African religion is expressed in a different way by each of the denominations, which creates confusion for those who believe that there are more than one African religion. Spear Masters presents information about some of the larger and most significant expressions of the sole African religion, so that the reader will understand the relationship between God the creator and the notions of the relationship with the family and community. The term "spear master" relates to the integrity and ethics that had to accompany the maker and user of the spear in ancient African societies. The essence of religion presented in Spear Masters is the deification of one's society and nation, and making sacred the traditions and rituals of the ordinary lives of the people.
Download or read book African Personality and Spirituality written by Anthony Ephirim-Donkor and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2015-12-17 with total page 211 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There is a divine pronouncement among the Akan that all human beings are children of God (Nana Nyame), none a child of the earth (mother); meaning that human beings are spiritual in origin, descending directly from God via the Abosom (gods and goddesses). Every person then has a deity as father (Ᾱgya-bosom), recognition of which existentially enables a person to fulfil one’s career or professional blueprint (Nkrabea). Intrinsically, therefore, human beings embody the very essence of the Abosom, which manifests itself behaviorally and psychologically in a manner identical to those of the gods and goddesses. African Personality and Spirituality: The Role of Abosom and Human Essence therefore addresses ultimate existential concerns of the Akan, revealing the essence of the primeval gods and goddesses and how they transform themselves into human beings, as well as the psychology of personality characteristic attributes, the phenomenon of spirit alightment, and other manifestations of the gods and goddesses, and the imperative of ethical existence and generativity (Ↄbra bᴐ) as basis of eternal life.
Download or read book Chronicles of an African Ancestor The Beja Tonga written by Vonakani Maluleke and published by Vonakani Maluleke. This book was released on 2024-05-19 with total page 159 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Book About the Oldest Recorded History of South-Eastern Africa. Forget everything you think you know about southern Africa. Embark on a thrilling quest to unearth the lost secrets of the Beja Tonga, an ancient civilization shrouded in mystery. Chronicles of an African Ancestor isn't just a history book - it's a time machine! Decipher the code: Is "Tsonga" a recent invention or a whisper from a forgotten era? Unravel the enigmatic origins of this word and its hidden connection to the Tonga people of southern Mozambique. Witness empires rise and fall: Experience the Beja Tonga's epic journey through history, a saga of migrations, cultural clashes, and the rise and fall of mighty empires. Unmask the truth: Dive deep into the colonial era and see how it reshaped the Beja Tonga's identity. Discover the hidden meanings behind "Tsonga," a word that once signified the power of the east. More than history: This book isn't just about dusty facts. It's a testament to the ancient chronology of the Beja Tonga and the incredible power of language to carry a legacy across generations. Prepare to be captivated by a story that transcends time. Chronicles of an African Ancestor is your key to unlocking the profound truths of southern Africa's past and the remarkable story of the Beja Tonga.
Download or read book A Genealogist s Guide to Discovering Your African American Ancestors written by Franklin Carter Smith and published by Genealogical Publishing Com. This book was released on 2009-12 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tracing one's African-American ancestry can be uniquely challenging. This guide helps overcome the obstacles and pitfalls of specialized research by offering a proven, three-part approach.
Download or read book The Bad Ass Librarians of Timbuktu written by Joshua Hammer and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2016-04-19 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: **New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice** To save ancient Arabic texts from Al Qaeda, a band of librarians pulls off a brazen heist worthy of Ocean’s Eleven in this “fast-paced narrative that is…part intellectual history, part geopolitical tract, and part out-and-out thriller” (The Washington Post) from the author of The Falcon Thief. In the 1980s, a young adventurer and collector for a government library, Abdel Kader Haidara, journeyed across the Sahara Desert and along the Niger River, tracking down and salvaging tens of thousands of ancient Islamic and secular manuscripts that were crumbling in the trunks of desert shepherds. His goal: preserve this crucial part of the world’s patrimony in a gorgeous library. But then Al Qaeda showed up at the door. “Part history, part scholarly adventure story, and part journalist survey…Joshua Hammer writes with verve and expertise” (The New York Times Book Review) about how Haidara, a mild-mannered archivist from the legendary city of Timbuktu, became one of the world’s greatest smugglers by saving the texts from sure destruction. With bravery and patience, Haidara organized a dangerous operation to sneak all 350,000 volumes out of the city to the safety of southern Mali. His heroic heist “has all the elements of a classic adventure novel” (The Seattle Times), and is a reminder that ordinary citizens often do the most to protect the beauty of their culture. His the story is one of a man who, through extreme circumstances, discovered his higher calling and was changed forever by it.
Download or read book Analyzing Art and Aesthetics written by Anne Collins Goodyear and published by Smithsonian Institution. This book was released on 2013-10-30 with total page 527 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This ninth volume of the Artefacts series explores how artists have responded to developments in science and technology, past and present. Rather than limiting the discussion to art alone, editors Anne Collins Goodyear and Margaret Weitekamp also asked contributors to consider aesthetics: the scholarly consideration of sensory responses to cultural objects. When considered as aesthetic objects, how do scientific instruments or technological innovations reflect and embody culturally grounded assessments about appearance, feel, and use? And when these objects become museum artifacts, what aesthetic factors affect their exhibition? Contributors found answers in the material objects themselves. This volume reconsiders how science, technology, art, and aesthetics impact one another.
Download or read book Ancient African Bible Messages written by Joseph A. Bailey MD Facs and published by Reflections Publishing. This book was released on 2013-01-01 with total page 366 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ancient African Bible Messages explains how following philosophical building blocks of African Tradition steers one to "Be Right," "Recognize Right," "Do Right," "Make Things Right," and "Defend the Right and engender in Black People a sense of pride in the profound cultural, intellectual, and spiritual achievements of our "super-brilliant" Ancient African Ancestors. Very Ancient African Religion/Spirituality/Philosophy formed the African Bible. For 198,000 years it was the world's only Bible, stressing Unconditional Love, Truth, Reality, and Naturalness in character, daily living, and people relationships as the path to the Heaven Afterlife. Thereafter, its borrowed messages were diluted, polluted, and switched while being fashioned into the world's major religions and philosophies. The Bible of Enslaved African Americans combined the King James' African and Aryan messages with imaginative ingenuity so as to serve as a "Tow-Rope" for enduring their hellish "Trials/Tribulations and for their "Negro Church" philosophy.
Download or read book Sula written by Toni Morrison and published by Knopf. This book was released on 2002-04-05 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the acclaimed Nobel Prize winner: Two girls who grow up to become women. Two friends who become something worse than enemies. This brilliantly imagined novel brings us the story of Nel Wright and Sula Peace, who meet as children in the small town of Medallion, Ohio. Nel and Sula's devotion is fierce enough to withstand bullies and the burden of a dreadful secret. It endures even after Nel has grown up to be a pillar of the black community and Sula has become a pariah. But their friendship ends in an unforgivable betrayal—or does it end? Terrifying, comic, ribald and tragic, Sula is a work that overflows with life.
Download or read book In Search of Foundations for African Catholicism written by Mika Vähäkangas and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2016-05-18 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study deals with the interaction between neo-Thomism and African traditional thinking in Charles Nyamiti's theological methodology. The approach of the study is groundbreaking as it is the first monograph published on the theological method of any African theologian. The question about the position and relevance of Western philosophical-theological systems in a non-Western context also has a wider relevance concerning contextual theologies in general. Nyamiti's theology is a germane and a fruitful choice for the study of this issue because of his programmatic attempt to build a coherent African Roman Catholic theological system. His theology is also well-known for its strong African flavor in elaborating theological questions within the framework of orthodox Roman Catholic doctrine.
