Ghosts, Spirits & the Afterlife in Native American Folklore and Religion

Ghosts, Spirits & the Afterlife in Native American Folklore and Religion PDF Author: writer Gary R. Varner
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780557480104
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Death. We deny it. We fear it. Some of us welcome it. No matter what age we live in we keep the traditional feelings for our departed. We try to ease the soul into the afterworld as best we can. "Celebrations of life" provide a time for friends and loved ones to gather, share food and stories and grieve. Some who pass on are cremated to free the soul. Some are buried believing that the body will not become corrupted but will survive until the final judgment day. "Grave goods" are still commonly buried or are cremated as well with the body. While we believe we are more "advanced" than those who lived before us, we actually do the same things they did to honor and to provide for our deceased loved ones. We are not so very different after all. This book provides a brief survey of how America's first people reacted to death, how they disposed of their dead, their thoughts about the spirit world and the possibilities of being reborn.

Ghosts, Spirits & the Afterlife in Native American Folklore and Religion

Ghosts, Spirits & the Afterlife in Native American Folklore and Religion PDF Author: writer Gary R. Varner
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780557480104
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book Here

Book Description
Death. We deny it. We fear it. Some of us welcome it. No matter what age we live in we keep the traditional feelings for our departed. We try to ease the soul into the afterworld as best we can. "Celebrations of life" provide a time for friends and loved ones to gather, share food and stories and grieve. Some who pass on are cremated to free the soul. Some are buried believing that the body will not become corrupted but will survive until the final judgment day. "Grave goods" are still commonly buried or are cremated as well with the body. While we believe we are more "advanced" than those who lived before us, we actually do the same things they did to honor and to provide for our deceased loved ones. We are not so very different after all. This book provides a brief survey of how America's first people reacted to death, how they disposed of their dead, their thoughts about the spirit world and the possibilities of being reborn.

Ghosts, Spirits, and the Afterlife in Native American Indian Mythology And Folklore

Ghosts, Spirits, and the Afterlife in Native American Indian Mythology And Folklore PDF Author: G.W. Mullins
Publisher: Light Of The Moon Publishing
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 145

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Book Description
Native American history is filled with stories about animals, creation of the Earth and man, life lessons and of course ghosts... Ghosts, spirits, and the “walking dead” were often known to pay visits to their family and those left behind. Many of these stories revolved around lost loves and attempts to reclaim the person taken from them. Other stories spun tales of revenge and payback for those who wronged them. In any case death was looked at as a doorway to the afterlife and not to be feared. In this book, you will be given many opportunities to relive the past cultures of many tribes and their beliefs in ghosts, spirits and the afterlife. You will be presented with stories of individuals who transcended the plane of death to interact with the living and other spirits who have remained earthbound and troubled who have to work through a life lesson to successfully move on. As is traditional, these stories are here for you to share and pass on to the next generation. Included in this collection are the stories: Ghost of the White Deer, The Story of a Poor Man, The Resuscitation of the only Daughter, The Spirit Bride, Heavy Collar and the Ghost Woman, Bluejay finds a Wife, Two Ghostly Lovers, Origin of the Medicine Man, The Medicine Grizzly Bear, A Little Brave and the Medicine Woman, The Man Who Was Afraid of Nothing, The Ghosts' Buffalo, The Land of the Dead, Blue Jay Visits Ghost Town, The Spirit Land, The Skin Shifting Old Woman, and many, more.

Native American Spirit Beings

Native American Spirit Beings PDF Author: Jeanne Nagle
Publisher: The Rosen Publishing Group, Inc
ISBN: 1622753992
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 120

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Book Description
Native American spirituality is as rich and varied as the cultures wherein it is practiced. Unlike the ancient Greeks and Romans, who worshipped divine gods and goddesses, the indigenous people of North America revere a variety of non-deity spirit beings, which are entities with mystical powers. The crux of Native American spirituality and detailed entries regarding some of the most intriguing spirit beings are discussed in this book. Detailed material on Native American religious traditions, beliefs by culture area, and a complete chapter on nature worship are included in this informative package.

Walking With Spirits Native American Myths, Legends, And Folklore

Walking With Spirits Native American Myths, Legends, And Folklore PDF Author: G.W. Mullins
Publisher: Light Of The Moon Publishing
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 316

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Book Description
Before the time of books, computers, tablets and recording devices, the history of many cultures was passed down, from person to person, by word of mouth. The rich histories of so many people were told in songs, chants, poems and stories. This was the way of Native American tribes. Each in its own way enriching their stories with their own experiences. By reliving these stories and songs, we have the opportunity to bring life back to the ancient spirits that created them. We have a chance to walk with the spirits of the past.  Being there were so many different tribes with countless beliefs and customs, the only way to understand their ways is through understanding their stories. In this book you will understand the Native American people a little better and see where they have come from and what they can offer the world. By exploring these stories offered you will get a glimpse into an often forgotten past. These stories are given to you, to carry forward for younger generations to explore and learn. Included in Volume One are the stories: Origin of the Pleiades, The Woman Who Fell from the Sky, Grandmother Spider Steals the Fire, White Bead Woman, The Origin of Corn, The Hunter and Selu, Myth of the White Buffalo Woman, The Origin of Eternal Death, How Coyote Stole Fire, The Lame Warrior, The Story of Hungry Wolf, Origin of the Sweat Lodge, The Legend of the Cherokee Rose, Contents of the Medicine Bag, Raven's Medicine, The First Fire, Origin Of Disease And Medicine, The Daughter Of The Sun, The Journey To The Sunrise, Why The Mole Lives Underground, The Terrapin's Escape From The Wolves, Origin Of The Groundhog Dance, The Haunted Whirlpool, The Man In The Stump, The Mother Bear's Song and many, many more. You are invited to go Walking With Spirits.

Teaching Spirits

Teaching Spirits PDF Author: Joseph Epes Brown
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 9780195138757
Category : Electronic books
Languages : en
Pages : 178

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Book Description
This text offers a thematic approach to Native American religious traditions. The author demonstrates how themes within native traditions connect with each other while upholding the integrity of individual traditions.

American Indian Myths and Legends

American Indian Myths and Legends PDF Author: Richard Erdoes
Publisher: Pantheon
ISBN: 080415175X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 546

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Book Description
More than 160 tales from eighty tribal groups present a rich and lively panorama of the Native American mythic heritage. From across the continent comes tales of creation and love; heroes and war; animals, tricksters, and the end of the world. “This fine, valuable new gathering of ... tales is truly alive, mysterious, and wonderful—overflowing, that is, with wonder, mystery and life" (National Book Award Winner Peter Matthiessen). In addition to mining the best folkloric sources of the nineteenth century, the editors have also included a broad selection of contemporary Native American voices.

Dancing Ghosts

Dancing Ghosts PDF Author: Mark Thomas Hoyer
Publisher: Western Literature and Fiction
ISBN:
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description
How did an Illinois Methodist homesteader in the West come to create one of the most significant cosmological syntheses in American literature? In this study, Hoyer draws on his own knowledge of biblical religion and Native American cultures to explore Austin's creation of the "mythology of the American continent" she so valued. Austin lived in and wrote about "the land of little rain," semiarid and arid parts of California and Nevada that were home to the Northern Paiute, Shoshone, Interior Chumash, and Yokut peoples. Hoyer makes new and provocative connections between Austin and spiritual figures like Wovoka, the prophet of the Ghost Dance religion, and writers like Zitkala-sa and Mourning Dove, and he provides a particularly fine reading of Cogowea.

Spirits of Blood, Spirits of Breath

Spirits of Blood, Spirits of Breath PDF Author: Barbara Alice Mann
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199997209
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 379

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Book Description
Before invasion, Turtle Island-or North America-was home to vibrant cultures that shared long-standing philosophical precepts. The most important and wide-spread of these was the view of reality as a collaborative binary known as the Twinned Cosmos of Blood and Breath. This binary system was built on the belief that neither half of the cosmos can exist without its twin. Both halves are, therefore, necessary and good. Western anthropologists typically shorthand the Twinned Cosmos as "Sky and Earth" but this erroneously saddles it with Christian baggage and, worse, imposes a hierarchy that puts sky quite literally above earth. None of this Western ideology legitimately applies to traditional Indigenous American thought, which is about equal cooperation and the continual recreation of reality. Spirits of Blood, Spirits of Breath examines traditional historical concepts of spirituality among North American Indians both at and, to the extent it can be determined, before contact. In doing so, Barbara Alice Mann rescues the authentically indigenous ideas from Western, and especially missionary, interpretations. In addition to early European source material, she uses Indian oral traditions, traced as much as possible to their earliest versions and sources, and Indian records, including pictographs, petroglyphs, bark books, and wampum. Moreover, Mann respects each Indigenous culture as a discrete unit, rather than generalizing them as is often done in Western anthropology. To this end, she collates material in accordance with actual historical, linguistic, and traditional linkages among the groups at hand, with traditions clearly identified by group and, where recorded, by speaker. In this way she provides specialists and non-specialists alike a window into the purportedly lost, and often caricatured, world of Indigenous American thought.

Walking With Spirits Volume 4 Native American Myths, Legends, And Folklore

Walking With Spirits Volume 4 Native American Myths, Legends, And Folklore PDF Author: G. W. Mullins
Publisher: Light of the Moon Publishing
ISBN: 9781647133108
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 230

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Book Description
Walking With Spirits Volume Four is a huge collection of Native American history. Following on the heels of the highly successful first three volumes, this fourth set offers many more wonderful and entertaining stories. This volume will leave you ready and awaiting the fifth. Through storytelling, the rich history of the Native American tribes is alive and well today. It has been shared and preserved and still pays tribute to fallen heroes of the past. Often, Native Americans have been misrepresented as violent people. It is through the glimpses into the past, and these stories much like the ones that are contained in this book, that you can see what a proud heritage they possess and how in tune with the Earth Native Americans really are. Being there were so many different tribes with countless beliefs and customs, the only way to understand their ways is through understanding their stories. In this book I have endeavored to show a wide landscape of different tribes and hopefully present a true look at their beliefs. With this book I hope you understand the Native American people a little better and understand where they have come from and what they can offer the world. By exploring these stories I hope to offer you a glimpse into an often forgotten past. The past of my people. I was born Cherokee and as a child heard many of these stories. These stories were passed to me in the old traditional way by my grandfather. And now I give these stories to you, to carry forward for younger generations to explore and learn. You are invited again to go Walking With Spirits. Among the stories included in this volume are: The Sun Snarer, Creation of First Man and First Woman, The Fatal Swing, Song of the Ghost Dance, Paiute Medicine Song, Origin of Clear Lake, The Great Fire, The Medicine Grizzly Bear, The Girl Who Was the Ring, How the Rattlesnake Learned to Bite, The White Trail in the Sky, The Cloud People, Crossing the Red Sea, The Eye Juggler, The Rolling Head, The Tower of Babel, The Jealous Father, The False Bride Groom, The Alligator That Stole a Man, and many, many more.

Iroquois Supernatural

Iroquois Supernatural PDF Author: Michael Bastine
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1591439442
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 303

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Book Description
Brings the paranormal beings and places of the Iroquois folklore tradition to life through historic and contemporary accounts of otherworldly encounters • Recounts stories of shapeshifting witches, giant flying heads, enchanted masks, ethereal lights, talking animals, Little People, spirit-choirs, potent curses, and haunted hills, roads, and battlefields • Includes accounts of miraculous healings by shamans and medicine people such as Mad Bear and Ted Williams • Shows how these traditions can help one see the richness of the world and help those who have lost the chants of their own ancestors With a rich history reaching back more than one thousand years, the six nations of the Iroquois Confederacy--the Mohawk, the Oneida, the Onondaga, the Cayuga, the Seneca, and the Tuscarora--are considered to be the most avid storytellers on earth with a collection of tales so vast it would dwarf those of any other society. Covering nearly the whole of New York State from the Hudson and Mohawk River Valleys westward across the Finger Lakes region to Niagara Falls and Salamanca, this mystical culture’s supernatural tradition is the psychic bedrock of the Northeast, yet their treasury of tales and beliefs is largely unknown and their most powerful sacred sites unrecognized. Assembling the lore and beliefs of this guarded spiritual legacy, Michael Bastine and Mason Winfield share the stories they have collected of both historic and contemporary encounters with beings and places of Iroquois legend: shapeshifting witches, strange forest creatures, ethereal lights, vampire zombies, cursed areas, dark magicians, talking animals, enchanted masks, and haunted hills, roads, and battlefields as well as accounts of miraculous healings by medicine people such as Mad Bear and Ted Williams. Grounding their tales with a history of the Haundenosaunee, the People of the Long House, the authors show how the supernatural beings, places, and customs of the Iroquois live on in contemporary paranormal experience, still surfacing as startling and sometimes inspiring reports of otherworldly creatures, haunted sites, after-death messages, and mystical visions. Providing a link with America’s oldest spiritual roots, these stories help us more deeply know the nature and super-nature around us as well as offer spiritual insights for those who can no longer hear the chants of their own ancestors.