Download or read book From Elder to Ancestor written by S. Kelley Harrell and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2024-06-04 with total page 231 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: • Explains the importance of creating a direct personal connection with Nature and how it is key to becoming an elder who will go on to become a wise Ancestor • Presents exercises and rituals to awaken and deepen your animistic connection to the world and help you intentionally craft yourself as a fit elder • Explores deep spiritual work with the Sacred Self, including shadow work and trauma honoring, as well as practices to help you heal your family line For millennia people connected with the Ancestors as part of their regular spiritual practice, seeking wisdom and inspired vitality from those who came before. Each member of a community grew up guided by sage elders, naturally walking the path into fit elderhood themselves and, upon their good deaths, becoming wise, capable Ancestors to whom their descendants could turn. Revealing how to restore the path from fit elder to wise ancestor, S. Kelley Harrell explores the spiritual, cultural, and ancestral aspects of aging well and presents practical exercises and rituals to help you intentionally craft yourself as a fit elder on the path to Ancestorhood. She explains the importance of creating a direct personal connection with Nature and of respecting the spirits who surround us, including asking their permission before engaging them in ritual or healing work. Exploring the concept of animism and how it is key to becoming an elder who will go on to become an Ancestor, the author shares exercises for awakening and deepening your animistic connection to the world around you as well as rituals for embodiment and grounding. Examining the most powerful obstacles to dying well, the author explores deep spiritual work with the Sacred Self, including shadow work, the initiatory rite of heartbreak, and how to honor the traumas that created your shadow parts and their dysfunctional patterns. She looks at Ancestor work, including forging a supportive connection with our Sacred Parents, the first Ancestors, as well as specific practices to help you heal your family line. She shows how recognizing that you are Nature, part of the sacred order, allows you to begin rewilding and how honoring your own sacredness, the divinity of your inner cosmology, allows you to identify and value what you have to offer your community as an elder. Showing that initiation into elderhood is the work of our lives, this book explains how, through personal introspection and engagement with the living world around us, we can cultivate our unique way to elder well.

Download or read book From Elder to Ancestor written by David Prendergast and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2021-10-01 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This insightful account of the treatment and provision for an ageing population in South Korea adds considerably to the literature in what is happening in the fusion between older Korean culture and modern Western individualism.

Download or read book Ancestors written by David Hertzel and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2017-08-03 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: People involve their ancestors in every aspect of culture. Individuals and societies worldwide and throughout history have incorporated ancestors into rituals public and private, religious and secular. Societies often organize their aristocracies, tribes, and other kinship groups around ancestral constructions which are defined through laws and customs governing marriage, naming, guardianship, inheritance, and other social practices. Medical professionals consider ancestral information important to a patient’s diagnosis and to the study of disease; many psychiatrists consider one’s relationship to ancestors important in understanding the mental and emotional disposition of subjects. Ancestry and perceptions of ancestry frequently function as a determinant of personal, ethnic, racial, and national identity. For all its larger philosophical, medical, psychological, and religious implications, one fascinating aspect of ancestry is how passionately many people hold to ‘their own’ ancestry, and to their own perceptions of the same. In Ancestors, David Hertzel offers an introductory foray into the nature of relationships people today have with their ancestors, and explores the significance of ancestry and ancestral belief in our modern world. Guided by two questions—“who are your ancestors?” and “what is your relationship to your ancestors?”—Hertzel interviewed thirty-five elders and people of prominence within particular social or intellectual communities. Interviewees were accomplished in an area related to ancestry, its nature or its meaning, and included genealogists, geneticists, tribal chiefs and elders, researchers in some aspect of family or ancestry, family elders, and experienced practitioners or supervisors of particular ancestral rituals. Interviewees were selected from a variety of cultural backgrounds for purposes of contrast, comparison, and breadth—but they are not spokespeople and were not asked to ‘represent’ particular belief systems, doctrines, or Peoples. Rather, the interviewees describe their own personal experiences and beliefs involving ancestors. From these interviews, Hertzel identifies common themes to ancestral practices and beliefs, such as the way we sanctify our ancestors, how we create a living narrative of our ancestry, and how experiences like suffering and love are shared across generations and appear to transcend death. Excerpts from interviews serve as examples throughout his narrative exploration of the concept of ancestry; a selection of full interviews are embedded throughout the text and offer glimpses into the diversity of ways that people think about who they are and where they come from.

Download or read book Ancestor Worship and Korean Society written by Roger Janelli and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 1992-08-01 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The study of ancestor worship has an eminent pedigree in two disciplines: social anthropology and folklore (Goody 1962: 14-25; Newell 1976; Fortes 1976; Takeda 1976). Despite obvious differences in geographical specialization and intellectual orientation, researchers in both fields have shared a common approach to this subject: both have tried to relate the ancestor cult of a given society to its family and kin-group organization. Such a method is to be expected of social anthropologists, given the nature of their discipline; but even the Japanese folklorist Yanagita Kunio, whose approach to folk culture stems from historical and nationalist concerns, began his work on ancestors with a discussion of Japan's descent system and family structure (Yanagita 1946). Indeed, connections between ancestor cults and social relations are obvious. As we pursue this line of analysis, we shall see that rural Koreans themselves are quite sophisticated about such matters. Many studies of ancestor cults employ a combination of social and psychological approaches to explain the personality traits attributed to the dead by their living kin. Particular attention has long been given to explaining the hostile or punitive character of the deceased in many societies (Freud 1950; Opler 1936; Gough 1958; Fortes 1965). Only recently, however, has the popularity of such beliefs been recognized in China, Korea, and Japan (Ahern 1973; A. Wolf 1974b; Kendall 1977; 1979; Yoshida 1967; Kerner 1976; Lebra 1976). The earliest and most influential studies of ancestor cults in East Asia, produced by native scholars (Hozumi 1913; Yanagita 1946; Hsu 1948), overemphasize the benign and protective qualities of ancestors. Some regional variations notwithstanding, this earlier bias appears to reflect a general East Asian reluctance to acknowledge instances of ancestral affliction. Such reticence is not found in all societies with ancestor cults, however; nor, in Korea, China, and Japan, is it equally prevalent among men and women. Therefore, we seek not only to identify the social experiences that give rise to beliefs in ancestral hostility, but to explain the concomitant reluctance to acknowledge these beliefs and its varying intensity throughout East Asia. In view of the limited amount of ethnographic data available from Korea, we have not attempted a comprehensive assessment of the ancestor cult in Korean society; instead we have kept our focus on a single kin group. We have drawn on data from other communities, however, in order to separate what is apparently true of Korea in general from what may be peculiar to communities like Twisongdwi, a village of about three hundred persons that was the site of our fieldwork. In this task, we benefited substantially from three excellent studies of Korean ancestor worship and lineage organization (Lee Kwang-Kyu 1977a; Choi Jai-seuk 1966a; Kim Taik-Kyoo 1964) and from two recent accounts of Korean folk religion and ideology (Dix 1977; Kendall 1979). Yet we are still a long way from a comprehensive understanding of how Korean beliefs and practices have changed over time, correlate with different levels of class status, or are affected by regional variations in Korean culture and social organization. Because we want to provide a monograph accessible to a rather diverse readership, we avoid using Korean words and disciplinary terminology whenever possible. Where a Korean term is particularly important, we give it in parentheses immediately after its English translation. Korean-alphabet orthographies for these words appear in the Character List, with Chinese-character equivalents for terms of Chinese derivation. As for disciplinary terminology, we have adopted only the anthropological term "lineage," which is of central importance to our study. We use "lineage" to denote an organized group of persons linked through exclusively male ties (agnatically) to an ancestor who lived at least four generations ago

Download or read book Ancestors written by William Hare Newell and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 1976 with total page 440 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book When Descendants Become Ancestors written by David A. Kendall PhD and published by Balboa Press. This book was released on 2014-09-05 with total page 391 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An Excerpt from When Descendants Become Ancestors "Congratulationsyoure going to be an ancestor (someday). You cannot escape it. Nor can I. Nor can anyone else. Thats not necessarily a bad thing, depending on your beliefs about an afterlife, but each body ultimately ceases to exist. We all know that. From the moment of birth, each of us begins a journey that must ultimately conclude with our entrance into ancestry. As we research our own ancestors and mourn the lack of information available to us, we forget that we are the future ancestors of our descendants. And if we dont leave to them the kinds of information about our lives that we crave to know about our own forefathers, then we are merely perpetuating the problem." How often have you regretted your failure to engage the elder generations of your family for information about their lives and memories? How many times have you wanted just one more hour with a deceased relative who could answer that one burning question that you suddenly thought about, and that no one else can answer? Perhaps you remember a time when an older acquaintance wanted to share with you some stories about the good old days, but you couldnt be bothered. Most of us have had regrets like these, as will our descendantsunless we seek to record and preserve some stories for their use. Whether our stories are short and simple or long and complex matters not, but these stories will become part of their heritage and can certainly influence their lives. Though our contributions may not be recognized for decades, our lives matter to future generations and our stories should be told. The rest is up to each of us.

Download or read book Ancestors written by Robyn Davidson and published by Simon & Schuster. This book was released on 2013-10-12 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Unable to escape the ancestral ghosts that haunt her, Lucy returns home to the Australian rainforest and the loving, eccentric aunt that raised her in order to confront the hauntings of her past. Raised an orphan in the rainforest of North Queensland, Lucy McTavish grew up as a wild child. Independent, intelligent, and bored with her one-teacher school, Lucy would do anything to satisfy her desire for adventure. When she escapes the rainforest and the ghosts that haunt her within it, Lucy continues on with her rebellious life of experimenting as she engages in communal counterculture living, casual sex, time as a gangster’s mistress, and sudden success as a tightrope artist in the circus leading her to fame, parties, and world travel. But even as her world grows beyond her imaginations, Lucy is unable to escape the ancestral ghost of her past. Returning to the enchanted forest where she was raised, Lucy abandons the elaborate parties and her fame to spend her days in long therapy sessions with the ghosts of ancestors, finding herself on a journey for peace as she reconnects with the people of her past.

Download or read book Ancestor Worship in the Diaspora Chinese and China Universes written by Khun Eng Kuah and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-04-16 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Kuah explores the centrality of ancestors and ancestor worship of the Chinese in the Diaspora Chinese and China universes. Building on the original work and book on “Rebuilding the Ancestral Village: Singaporeans in China”, this book goes beyond the premise of remaking the ancestral home. Ancestor worship and the ancestors, together with selected cultural practices, constitute an important aspect of the broad Chinese culture shared by these two groups of Chinese and leads to the making of a collaborative cultural basin. This book takes the audience on an ancestor worship journey to uncover the complexity of ancestors and ancestral souls crossing transnational spaces, their choices of ancestral soul homes, the significance of the lineage ancestral house and the engagement of women through food offering contesting patriarchy. It also explores the increasing role of the Mainland Chinese state in appropriating ancestor and ancestor worship as a cultural icon and during the Qingming festival as a socio-moral capital and cultural bridge to foster closer ties with the Diaspora Chinese in its attempt to bring them into its “Chinese civilizational polity”. The book also takes the audience on a photographic journey to visually experience the various rituals and the vibrancy of the ritual performances conducted during the different stage from pre-communal to communal ancestor worship. An essential read for scholars of Chinese society and religion, Chinese migration and diaspora studies.

Download or read book Jesus Christ as Logos Incarnate and Resurrected Nana Ancestor written by Rudolf K. Gaisie and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2020-10-16 with total page 231 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book seeks to demonstrate the significance of Ancestor Christology in African Christianity for christological developments in World Christianity. Ancestor Christology has developed in the process of an African conversion story of appropriating the mystery of Christ (Eph 3:4) in the category of ancestors. Logos Christology in early Christian history developed as an intricate byproduct in the conversion process of turning Hellenistic ideas towards the direction of Christ (A. F. Walls). Hellenistic Christian writers and modern African Christian writers thus share some things in common and when their efforts are examined within the conversion process framework there are discernible modes of engagement. The mode of Logos Christology that one finds in Origen, for example, is an innovative application of the understanding of Jesus Christ as Logos (incarnate); a new key but not discontinuous with the Johannine suggestive mode or the clarificatory mode of Justin Martyr. African Ancestor Christology is at the threshold of an innovative mode and the argument this book makes is that this strand of African Christology should be pursued in the indigenous languages aided by respective translated Bibles; a suggested way is a Logos-Ancestor (Nanasɛm) discourse in Akan Christianity.

Download or read book Ancestral Medicine written by Daniel Foor and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2017-07-11 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A practical guide to connecting with your ancestors for personal, family, and cultural healing • Provides exercises and rituals to help you initiate contact with your ancestors, find ancestral guides, and assist the dead who are not yet at peace • Explains how to safely engage in lineage repair work by connecting with your more ancient ancestors before relating with the recently deceased • Explores how your ancestors can help you transform intergenerational legacies of pain and abuse and reclaim the positive spirit of the family Everyone has loving and wise ancestors they can learn to invoke for support and healing. Coming into relationship with your ancestors empowers you to transform negative family patterns into blessings and encourages good health, self-esteem, clarity of purpose, and better relationships with your living relatives. Offering a practical guide to understanding and navigating relationships with the spirits of those who have passed, Daniel Foor, Ph.D., details how to relate safely and effectively with your ancestors for personal, family, and cultural healing. He provides exercises and rituals, grounded in ancient wisdom traditions, to help you initiate contact with your ancestors, find supportive ancestral guides, cultivate forgiveness and gratitude, harmonize your bloodlines, and assist the dead who are not yet at peace. He explains how to safely engage in lineage repair work by connecting with your more ancient ancestors before relating with the recently deceased. He shows how, by working with spiritually vibrant ancestors, individuals and families can understand and transform intergenerational patterns of pain and abuse and reclaim the full blessings and gifts of their bloodlines. Ancestral repair work can also catalyze healing breakthroughs among living family members and help children and future generations to live free from ancestral burdens. The author provides detailed instructions for ways to honor the ancestors of a place, address dream visits from the dead, and work with ancestor shrines and altars. The author offers guidance on preparing for death, funeral rites, handling the body after death, and joining the ancestors. He also explains how ancestor work can help us to transform problems such as racism, sexism, homophobia, and religious persecution. By learning the fundamentals of ancestor reverence and ritual, you will discover how to draw on the wisdom of supportive ancestral guides, heal family troubles, maintain connections with beloved family after their death, and better understand the complex and interconnected relationship between the living and the dead.

Download or read book Ancestor Christology written by Cletus Chukwuemeka Nwaogwugwu and published by iUniverse. This book was released on 2011-01-07 with total page 597 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The study of the application of the title ancestor to Christ permits the author to delve into the Christological reflection in Africa today through one of the principal ways. At play here is the inculturation of the faith, which cannot be fully achieved without a process of theological assimilation of the fundamental parameters in the African life. The thesis, therefore, is not only limited to a mere description of the contemporary panorama in that respect, but attempts to offer a theological evaluation of the real expressive capacity of the title, as it has been proposed. The criterion used is therefore double: In the first place, the thesis tried to show that the human and the divine natures of Jesus Christ can be maintained in such a way that there is no rupture with the great tradition of the Christological councils. In the second place, if it is capable of responding to demands of Christology from above and from below. In all this, however, the horizon of the debate is not occidental exegetical investigation well known by the author; but from the theological ambient of sub-Saharan world. The conclusion is positive, pondering the terms involved. The work can be of great use in the christoogical endeavors of contemporary Africa, as well for those who desire to delve into it. Don Alfonso Carrasco Rouco (director of the thesis and now Bishop of the Diocese of Lugo Spain) The work of Don Cletus Chukwuemeka contains a clear description of what we may call African traditional religiosity as well as the theological efforts to inject Christianity into this cultural and religious tradition. The central point of these efforts revolves around the understanding of Christ. The most original aspect of this work is in the critical recourse to the figure of the ancestor or proto-ancestor to present the identity of Christ in a way that is faithful to the Church tradition, and at the same time, significant for the religious and cultural tradition of Africa. Dr. Don Gerardo del Pozo Abejn (Censor of the thesis)

Download or read book Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity of the Human Family written by Lewis Henry Morgan and published by . This book was released on 1871 with total page 638 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

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 The Grasp That Reaches beyond the Grave written by Venetria K. Patton and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2013-06-20 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Grasp That Reaches beyond the Grave investigates the treatment of the ancestor figure in Toni Cade Bambara's The Salt Eaters, Paule Marshall's Praisesong for the Widow, Phyllis Alesia Perry's Stigmata and A Sunday in June, Toni Morrison's Beloved, Tananarive Due's The Between, and Julie Dash's film, Daughters of the Dust in order to understand how they draw on African cosmology and the interrelationship of ancestors, elders, and children to promote healing within the African American community. Venetria K. Patton suggests that the experience of slavery with its concomitant view of black women as "natally dead" has impacted African American women writers' emphasis on elders and ancestors as they seek means to counteract notions of black women as somehow disconnected from the progeny of their wombs. This misperception is in part addressed via a rich kinship system, which includes the living and the dead. Patton notes an uncanny connection between depictions of elder, ancestor, and child figures in these texts and Kongo cosmology. These references suggest that these works are examples of Africanisms or African retentions, which continue to impact African American culture.

Download or read book Explaining the Practice of Elevating an Ancestor for Veneration written by George Shakwelele and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2023-06-13 with total page 221 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Bisa people of Nabwalya, Zambia love their culture and gladly celebrate all their traditional festivals. This book presents exciting research into Kusefya pa ngena, rituals through which the Bisa elect ancestors for veneration. The Bisa speak freely of how their belief in ancestor veneration does not conflict with their worship of God. For them, the two work hand in hand. Traditional practices are considered vital to the community because they enhance life, reinforce cultural values, and explain life events. Those questioned said ancestor veneration should continue because it benefits current and future generations. For example, their most celebrated ancestor, Kabuswe Yombwe, when petitioned, provides rain and a good harvest for the community. People affirmed that rain fell each time they petitioned Kabuswe. One woman, who is married to an elder in a Pentecostal church, vowed not to give up ancestor veneration, to which she attributed the healing of her son and daughter. She pledged her allegiance to both Jesus Christ and to her family’s ancestors. In another story, an ancestor appears in a dream to an expectant woman demanding that her child be given a feminine name. The mother obeys to avoid the child being born with a sickness . . .

Download or read book William Elder written by Mary Louise Donnelly and published by . This book was released on 1986 with total page 648 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: William Elder was born in 1707 in Prince George's County, Maryland to William Elder and Elizabeth Finch. He married Ann Wheeler. She was the daughter of Richard Wheeler. She died 11 Aug 1739. They were the parents of five children. William married Jacoba Clementina Livers 1 Feb 1742. She was the daughter of Arnold Livers and Hellen Gordon. They were the parents of seven children. She died 19 Sep 1807. He died 11 Apr 1775.

Download or read book Communing with the Ancestors written by Raven Grimassi and published by Weiser Books. This book was released on 2016-03-01 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explore the realm of the ancestors with author and Pagan scholar Raven Grimassi. In this fascinating and far-ranging guide, you will learn practices and rituals both ancient and new for communing with the ancestors, specifically: How to build shrines and altars and make offers. Where to find and work with sacred sites, power places, and special portals to the ancients. Guided imagery that will take you into the “Cavern of the Ancestors,” the spiritual corridor where the ancestors can be directly approached. How to access the Spirit-Rider, an ancestor that can travel between the realms of mortals and ancients. How to see and understand the restless dead who remain bound to the Earth realms. The role of reincarnation in the soul’s relationship to ancestral lineage. Plus some of the extraordinary folklore, legend, and superstition surrounding the topic.