Download or read book Pilgrimage to Broken Mountain written by Alan R. Sandstrom and published by University Press of Colorado. This book was released on 2023-01-20 with total page 481 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An ethnographic study based on decades of field research, Pilgrimage to Broken Mountain explores five sacred journeys to the peaks of venerated mountains undertaken by Nahua people living in northern Veracruz, Mexico. Punctuated with elaborate ritual offerings dedicated to the forces responsible for rain, seeds, crop fertility, and the well-being of all people, these pilgrimages are the highest and most elaborate form of Nahua devotion and reveal a sophisticated religious philosophy that places human beings in intimate contact with what Westerners call the forces of nature. Alan and Pamela Sandstrom document them for the younger Nahua generation, who live in a world where many are lured away from their communities by wage labor in urban Mexico and the United States. Pilgrimage to Broken Mountain contains richly detailed descriptions and analyses of ritual procedures as well as translations from the Nahuatl of core myths, chants performed before decorated altars, and statements from participants. Particular emphasis is placed on analyzing the role of sacred paper figures that are produced by the thousands for each pilgrimage. The work contains drawings of these cuttings of spirit entities along with hundreds of color photographs illustrating how they are used throughout the pilgrimages. The analysis reveals the monist philosophy that underlies Nahua religious practice in which altars, dancing, chanting, and the paper figures themselves provide direct access to the sacred. In the context of their pilgrimage traditions, the ritual practices of Nahua religion show one way that people interact effectively with the forces responsible for not only their own prosperity but also the very survival of humanity. A magnum opus with respect to Nahua religion and religious practice, Pilgrimage to Broken Mountain is a significant contribution to several fields, including but not limited to Indigenous literatures of Mesoamerica, Nahuatl studies, Latinx and Chicanx studies, and religious studies.

Download or read book Poacher s Pilgrimage written by Alastair McIntosh and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2018-03-09 with total page 470 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The islands of the Outer Hebrides are home to some of the most remote and spectacular scenery in the world. They host an astonishing range of mysterious structures - stone circles, beehive dwellings, holy wells and 'temples' from the Celtic era. Over a twelve-day pilgrimage, often in appalling conditions, Alastair McIntosh returns to the islands of his childhood and explores the meaning of these places. Traversing moors and mountains, struggling through torrential rivers, he walks from the most southerly tip of Harris to the northerly Butt of Lewis. The book is a walk through space and time, across a physical landscape and into a spiritual one. As he battled with his own ability to endure some of the toughest terrain in Britain, he met with the healing power of the land and its communities. This is a moving book, a powerful reflection not simply of this extraordinary place and its people met along the way, but of imaginative hope for humankind.

Download or read book Aztec Philosophy written by James Maffie and published by University Press of Colorado. This book was released on 2014-03-15 with total page 512 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Aztec Philosophy, James Maffie shows the Aztecs advanced a highly sophisticated and internally coherent systematic philosophy worthy of consideration alongside other philosophies from around the world. Bringing together the fields of comparative world philosophy and Mesoamerican studies, Maffie excavates the distinctly philosophical aspects of Aztec thought. Aztec Philosophy focuses on the ways Aztec metaphysics—the Aztecs’ understanding of the nature, structure and constitution of reality—underpinned Aztec thinking about wisdom, ethics, politics,\ and aesthetics, and served as a backdrop for Aztec religious practices as well as everyday activities such as weaving, farming, and warfare. Aztec metaphysicians conceived reality and cosmos as a grand, ongoing process of weaving—theirs was a world in motion. Drawing upon linguistic, ethnohistorical, archaeological, historical, and contemporary ethnographic evidence, Maffie argues that Aztec metaphysics maintained a processive, transformational, and non-hierarchical view of reality, time, and existence along with a pantheistic theology. Aztec Philosophy will be of great interest to Mesoamericanists, philosophers, religionists, folklorists, and Latin Americanists as well as students of indigenous philosophy, religion, and art of the Americas.

Download or read book Indigenous Science and Technology written by Kelly S. McDonough and published by University of Arizona Press. This book was released on 2024-05-21 with total page 309 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a book about how Nahuas—native⁠ speakers of Nahuatl, the common language of the Aztec Empire and of more than 2.5 million Indigenous people today—have explored, understood, and explained the world around them in pre-invasion, colonial, and contemporary time periods. It is a deep dive into Nahua theoretical and practical inquiry related to the environment, as well as the dynamic networks in which Nahuas create, build upon, and share knowledges, practices, tools, and objects to meet social, political, and economic needs. In this work, author Kelly S. McDonough addresses Nahua understanding of plants and animals, medicine and ways of healing, water and water control, alphabetic writing, and cartography. Interludes between the chapters offer short biographical sketches and interviews with contemporary Nahua scientists, artists, historians, and writers, accompanied by their photos. The book also includes more than twenty full-color images from sources including the Florentine Codex, a sixteenth-century collaboration between Indigenous and Spanish scholars considered the most comprehensive extant source on the pre-Hispanic and early colonial Aztec (Mexica) world. In Mexico today, the terms “Indigenous” and “science and technology” are rarely paired together. When they are, the latter tend to be framed as unrecoverable or irreparably damaged pre-Hispanic traditions⁠, relics confined to a static past. In Indigenous Science and Technology, McDonough works against such erroneous and racialized discourses with a focus on Nahua environmental engagements and relationalities, systems of communication, and cultural preservation and revitalization. Attention to these overlooked or obscured knowledges provides a better understanding of Nahua culture, past and present, as well as the entangled local and global histories in which they were—and are—vital actors.

Download or read book The Aztec Myths A Guide to the Ancient Stories and Legends Myths written by Camilla Townsend and published by Thames & Hudson. This book was released on 2024-06-04 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The essential guide to the world of Aztec mythology, based on Nahuatl-language sources that challenge the colonial history passed down to us by the Spanish. From their remote origins as migrating tribes to their rise as builders of empire, the Aztecs were among the most dynamic and feared peoples of ancient Mexico, with a belief system that was one of the most complex and vital in the ancient world. Historian Camilla Townsend returns to the original tales, told at the fireside by generations of Indigenous Nahuatl speakers. Along the way, she deals with human sacrifice, the raising of great temples, and the troubling legacy of the Spanish conquest. Few cultures are generally understood to have been so controlled by their religion as the Aztecs, and few religions are envisioned as being as violent and celebratory of death as theirs. In this introduction to the Aztec myths, Townsend draws from sixteenth-century historical annals and songs written down by Nahuatl-speaking peoples, now known as the Aztecs, in their own language to counter this narrative, inherited from the conquering Spaniards. In doing so, she reveals a rich tapestry of mythic tradition that defies modern expectations. Townsend retells stories ranging from the creation of the world, revealing the Aztec cosmological vision of nature and the divine, to legends of the Aztecs’ own past that show how they understood the foundation of their state and the course of their wars. She considers the impact of colonial contact on the myths and demonstrates that Indigenous engagement with the new cultural customs introduced by the Europeans never entirely uprooted old ways of thinking.

Download or read book The Newark Earthworks written by Lindsay Jones and published by University of Virginia Press. This book was released on 2016-04-01 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Considered a wonder of the ancient world, the Newark Earthworks—the gigantic geometrical mounds of earth built nearly two thousand years ago in the Ohio valley--have been a focal point for archaeologists and surveyors, researchers and scholars for almost two centuries. In their prime one of the premier pilgrimage destinations in North America, these monuments are believed to have been ceremonial centers used by ancestors of Native Americans, called the "Hopewell culture," as social gathering places, religious shrines, pilgrimage sites, and astronomical observatories. Yet much of this territory has been destroyed by the city of Newark, and the site currently "hosts" a private golf course, making it largely inaccessible to the public. The first book-length volume devoted to the site, The Newark Earthworks reveals the magnitude and the geometric precision of what remains of the earthworks and the site’s undeniable importance to our history. Including contributions from archaeologists, historians, cultural geographers, and cartographers, as well as scholars in religious studies, legal studies, indigenous studies, and preservation studies, the book follows an interdisciplinary approach to shine light on the Newark Earthworks and argues compellingly for its designation as a World Heritage Site.

Download or read book Healing Like Our Ancestors written by Edward Anthony Polanco and published by University of Arizona Press. This book was released on 2024 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This book explores how sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Spanish settlers attempted to uproot Indigenous Nahua healing practices in the process of creating and protecting the settler colony of New Spain. By using primary sources written in Spanish and Nahuatl this book shows how Nahua people's understood their healers and the ways in which they survived, but were altered by, Spanish attacks"--

Download or read book The Serpent s Plumes written by Adam W. Coon and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2024-05-01 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Serpent's Plumes analyzes contemporary Nahua cultural production, principally bilingual Nahuatl-Spanish xochitlajtoli, or "poetry," written from the 1980s to the present. Adam W. Coon draws on Nahua perspectives as a decolonizing theoretical framework to argue that Nahua writers deploy unique worldviews—namely, ixtlamatilistli ("knowledge with the face," which highlights the value of personal experiences); yoltlajlamikilistli ("knowledge with the heart," which underscores the importance of affective intelligence); and tlaixpan ("that which is in front," which presents the past as lying ahead of a subject rather than behind). The views of ixtlamatilistli, yoltlajlamikilistli, and tlaixpan are key in Nahua struggles and effectively challenge those who attempt to marginalize Native knowledge production.

Download or read book A Concise History of the Aztecs written by Susan Kellogg and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2024-02-15 with total page 399 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Moving beyond common misperceptions, this book sheds new light on Aztec history and civilization.

Download or read book A REVOLUTIONARY PILGRIMAGE written by ERNEST PEIXOTTO and published by . This book was released on 1917 with total page 398 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Rain Gods Rebellion written by James M. Taggart and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Providing a rare longitudinal look at the cultural basis of this grassroots insurgency, The Rain Gods' Rebellion offers rare insight into the significance of oral history in forming Nahua collective memory and, by extension, culture.

Download or read book A Pilgrimage Without End written by Cherie Rineker and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2016-06-21 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ~A Pilgrimage Without End is a heartfelt and engaging story about a woman who was diagnosed with an incurable cancer. When life seemed at its best, it was derailed by a serious cancer diagnosis. After Cherie found herself in the Emergency Room with a terminal and incurable cancer, she went through the absolute darkest period of her life. By bringing together all the lessons life had taught her, she found Inner Peace, something most of us long for yet few are lucky enough to possess. ~A Pilgrimage Without End goes deep into the psyche of the author, who overcame a difficult childhood by staying open to the goodness that exists in the world and by taking ownership of her own mistakes. Through her willingness to forgive, and learn from her mistakes, she was able to take a very difficult life, and subsequent cancer diagnosis, and turn it into a powerful Pilgrimage that taught her that Happiness can be found in the unlikeliest of places, as long as we are open to everything life hands us. This book will leave you astonished and empowered, and you will likely walk away with a renewed appreciation for your own life. A Pilgrimage Without End comes with powerful pictures and quotes created by the author herself, making it an all-around fun reading experience. As one reader put it:I hope you will find Cherie to be as engaging an author as I have. Her tale is intimately personal. Cherie shares the deepest part of herself, her struggles and the lessons she has learned along the way. Her story is not just another autobiographical journal of her battle with cancer." A Pilgrimage Without End" is much more than that! It is a well-crafted self-examination from which we all can learn. In it she reveals her deepest, and often darkest emotional, physical and spiritual struggles she has faced throughout her life. Much of what she has to say is relevant to all of us, and not just those facing a battle with cancer. More than this, Cherie's self-examination and search for truth provides the reader with practical and spiritual guidance and insight when facing our own struggles. Thus, her story is one from which we all can benefit, whether we are confronting cancer, emotional struggles, or life changing events. Read it and be blessed.

Download or read book Song of the Mountains My pilgrimage to Maa Ganga written by Shakuntala Rajagopal and published by Hugo House Publishers, Ltd.. This book was released on 2015-04-06 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What Happens When Those Things that are Supposed to Comfort You—Don’t? When Shakuntala Rajagopal lost her husband of forty-seven years in 2010, she was devastated. A devout Hindu, she followed what she had learned since birth. Her family celebrated their beloved father, uncle, and mentor through the many rituals sending him off to his new life. Shakuntala even travelled to India to lovingly give her husband’s ashes to the oceans off the southern coast of India. As her husband’s last ashes floated away, Shaku felt her will to go on float away with him. At the age of seventy, she decided that she needed to revisit her own devout spirituality and take one of the more grueling but one of the most spiritual of all pilgrimages in India—the Char Dham—where she could bathe in the sacred waters of the River Ganges, Maa Ganga. She knew it would be her chance for a rebirth, a new beginning. But she almost doesn’t make it. Song of the Mountains: My Pilgrimage to Maa Ganga is a story of survival, changing and challenging any reader in the way he or she approaches major changes in life. Rajagopal’s story is one that will empower the reader to take action and go forward in their own life, whatever the circumstance they are facing.

Download or read book To a Mountain in Tibet written by Colin Thubron and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2011-03-01 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A superb account of a pilgrimage. . . . Characteristically beautiful, though uncharacteristically haunted." —Pico Iyer, New York Review of Books "Thubron walks for the dead and writes for the living, and I can't remember when I have been so thoroughly and deeply moved by an author's outward journey inward." —Bob Shacochis, Boston Globe New York Times bestselling author Colin Thubron returns with a moving, intimate, and exquisitely crafted travel memoir recounting his pilgrimage to the Hindu and Buddhist holy mountain of Kailas—whose peak represents the most sacred place on Earth to roughly a quarter the global population. With echoes of Peter Matthiessen’s The Snow Leopard, Peter Hessler’s Country Driving, and Paul Theoroux’s Ghost Train to the Eastern Star, Thubron’s follow up to his bestselling Shadow of the Silk Road will illuminate, interest, and inspire anyone interested in traveling the world or journeying into the soul.

Download or read book Circling the Sacred Mountain written by Robert A. F. Thurman and published by Bantam. This book was released on 1999 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Chronicling the inner as well as the outer journey, an influential author offers his personal view of his spiritual adventure amid the breathtaking vistas of the Himalayas.

Download or read book The Sacred Mountain written by John Snelling and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: (4) Truth of the path leading to the annihilation of suffering.

Download or read book Sorcery in Mesoamerica written by Jeremy D. Coltman and published by University Press of Colorado. This book was released on 2020-12-16 with total page 422 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Approaching sorcery as highly rational and rooted in significant social and cultural values, Sorcery in Mesoamerica examines and reconstructs the original indigenous logic behind it, analyzing manifestations from the Classic Maya to the ethnographic present. While the topic of sorcery and witchcraft in anthropology is well developed in other areas of the world, it has received little academic attention in Mexico and Central America until now. In each chapter, preeminent scholars of ritual and belief ask very different questions about what exactly sorcery is in Mesoamerica. Contributors consider linguistic and visual aspects of sorcery and witchcraft, such as the terminology in Aztec semantics and dictionaries of the Kaqchiquel and K’iche’ Maya. Others explore the practice of sorcery and witchcraft, including the incorporation by indigenous sorcerers in the Mexican highlands of European perspectives and practices into their belief system. Contributors also examine specific deities, entities, and phenomena, such as the pantheistic Nahua spirit entities called forth to assist healers and rain makers, the categorization of Classic Maya Wahy (“co-essence”) beings, the cult of the Aztec goddess Cihuacoatl, and the recurring relationship between female genitalia and the magical conjuring of a centipede throughout Mesoamerica. Placing the Mesoamerican people in a human context—as engaged in a rational and logical system of behavior—Sorcery inMesoamerica is the first comprehensive study of the subject and an invaluable resource for students and scholars of Mesoamerican culture and religion. Contributors: Lilián González Chévez, John F. Chuchiak IV, Jeremy D. Coltman, Roberto Martínez González, Oswaldo Chinchilla Mazariegos, Cecelia F. Klein, Timothy J. Knab, John Monaghan, Jesper Nielsen, John M. D. Pohl, Alan R. Sandstrom, Pamela Effrein Sandstrom, David Stuart