The Ancestral Sacrifice

The Ancestral Sacrifice PDF Author: Kaakyire Akosomo Nyantakyi
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781886094796
Category : Africa, West
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book Here

Book Description

The Ancestral Sacrifice

The Ancestral Sacrifice PDF Author: Kaakyire Akosomo Nyantakyi
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781886094796
Category : Africa, West
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book Here

Book Description


The Ancestral Sacrifice

The Ancestral Sacrifice PDF Author: Kaakyire Akosomo Nyantakyi
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Country life
Languages : en
Pages : 139

Get Book Here

Book Description


Ancestral Memory in Early China

Ancestral Memory in Early China PDF Author: K.E. Brashier
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 1684170567
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 487

Get Book Here

Book Description
Ancestral ritual in early China was an orchestrated dance between what was present (the offerings and the living) and what was absent (the ancestors). The interconnections among the tangible elements of the sacrifice were overt and almost mechanical, but extending those connections to the invisible guests required a medium that was itself invisible. Thus in early China, ancestral sacrifice was associated with focused thinking about the ancestors, with a structured mental effort by the living to reach out to the absent forebears and to give them shape and existence. Thinking about the ancestors—about those who had become distant—required active deliberation and meditation, qualities that had to be nurtured and learned. This study is a history of the early Chinese ancestral cult, particularly its cognitive aspects. Its goals are to excavate the cult’s color and vitality and to quell assumptions that it was no more than a simplistic and uninspired exchange of food for longevity, of prayers for prosperity. Ancestor worship was not, the author contends, merely mechanical and thoughtless. Rather, it was an idea system that aroused serious debates about the nature of postmortem existence, served as the religious backbone to Confucianism, and may even have been the forerunner of Daoist and Buddhist meditation practices.

Divine Consumption

Divine Consumption PDF Author: Stephen A. Dueppen
Publisher: Cotsen Institute of Archaeology Press
ISBN: 195044631X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 328

Get Book Here

Book Description
Kirikongo is an archaeological site composed of thirteen remarkably well-preserved discrete mounds occupied continually from the early first to the mid second millennium AD. It spans a dynamic era that saw the growth of large settlement communities and regional socio-political formations, development of economic specializations, intensification in interregional commercial networks, and the effects of the Black Death pandemic. The extraordinary preservation of architectural units, activity areas and industrial zones provides a unique opportunity to discern the cultural practices that created stratified mounds (tells) in this part of West Africa. Building from a new detailed zooarchaeological analysis and refinements in stratigraphic precision, this book argues that repeated ritual activity was a significant factor in the accumulation of stratified archaeological deposits. The book details consistencies in form and content of discrete loci containing animal bones, food remains, and broken and unbroken objects and suggests that these are the remnants of sequential ancestor shrines created when domestic spaces were converted to tombs or dedicated mortuary monuments were constructed. Continuities and transformations in ancestral rituals at Kirikongo inform on earlier West African ritual practices from the second millennium BC as well as political and social transformations at the site. More broadly, this case study provides new insights on anthropogenic mound (tell) formation processes, social zooarchaeology, material culture theory, historical ontology, and the analysis of ritual and religion in the archaeological record.

Human Sacrifice and the Supernatural in African History

Human Sacrifice and the Supernatural in African History PDF Author: Mbogoni, Lawrence E.Y.
Publisher: Mkuki na Nyota Publishers
ISBN: 9987082424
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 270

Get Book Here

Book Description
Since time immemorial, human beings the world over have sought answers to the vexing questions of their origins, sickness, death and after death; the meaning of natural phenomena such as earthquakes, eclipses of the sun and moon, birth of twins etc. and how to protect themselves from such mysterious events. They invented God and gods and the occult sciences (witch craft, divination and soothsaying) in order to seek the protection of supernatural powers while individuals used them to gain power to dominate others and to accumulate wealth. Human sacrifice was one way in which they sought to expiate the gods for what they believed were punishments for their transgressions. One example, the Ghana Asante Kingdom's very origins are associated with human sacrifice. On the eve of war against Denkyira, individuals volunteered themselves to be sacrificed in order to guarantee victory. Later, human sacrifice in Asante was mainly politically motivated as kings and religious leaders offered human sacrifice in remembrance of their ancestral spirits and to seek their protection against their enemies. The Asante Kingdom is one of several examples included in this study of human sacrifice and ritual killing on the African continent. Case studies include practices in Sierra Leone, Tanzania (Mainland), Zanzibar, Uganda and Swaziland. Advertisements relating to the occult was a common feature of Drum magazine, the popular South African magazine in Southern, Eastern and Central Africa in late years of colonial and early years of postcolonial periods, indicating a wide belief in these practices among the people in these countries? Each case examined is introduced by an expose of folklore that puts in perspective beliefs in the supernatural and how folklore continues to perpetuate them. Through careful study of these select cases, this book highlights general features of human sacrifice which recur with striking uniformity in all parts of sub Saharan Africa, and why they persist until today. He draws upon extensive written sources to expose these practices in other cultures including those in Western societies.

Mortgaging the Ancestors

Mortgaging the Ancestors PDF Author: Parker Shipton
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300152744
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 348

Get Book Here

Book Description
This title looks briefly at European and North American theories on private property and the mortgage, then shows how these theories have played out as attempted economic reforms in Africa.

Land of Our Fathers

Land of Our Fathers PDF Author: Francesca Stavrakopoulou
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 0567551172
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 208

Get Book Here

Book Description
The biblical motif of a land divinely-promised and given to Abraham and his descendants is argued to be an ideological reflex of post-monarchic, territorial disputes between competing socio-religious groups. The important biblical motif of a Promised Land is founded upon the ancient Near Eastern concept of ancestral land: hereditary space upon which families lived, worked, died and were buried. An essential element of concept of ancestral land was the belief in the post-mortem existence of the ancestors, who were venerated with grave offerings, mortuary feasts, bone rituals and standing stones. The Hebrew Bible is littered with stories concerning these practices and beliefs, yet the specific correlation of ancestor veneration and certain biblical land claims has gone unrecognized. The book remedies this in presenting evidence for the vital and persistent impact of ancestor veneration upon land claims. It proposes that ancestor veneration, which formed a common ground in the experiences of various socio-religious groups in ancient Israel, became in the Hebrew Bible an ideological battlefield upon which claims to the land were won and lost.

Animals Through Chinese History

Animals Through Chinese History PDF Author: Roel Sterckx
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108428150
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 293

Get Book Here

Book Description
This innovative collection opens a door into the rich history of animals in China. This title is also available as Open Access.

Ancestor Worship and the Elite in Late Iron Age Scandinavia

Ancestor Worship and the Elite in Late Iron Age Scandinavia PDF Author: Triin Laidoner
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429815999
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 135

Get Book Here

Book Description
Ancestor worship is often assumed by contemporary European audiences to be an outdated and primitive tradition with little relevance to our societies, past and present. This book questions that assumption and seeks to determine whether ancestor ideology was an integral part of religion in Viking Age and early medieval Scandinavia. The concept is examined from a broad socio-anthropological perspective, which is used to structure a set of case studies which analyse the cults of specific individuals in Old Norse literature. The situation of gods in Old Norse religion has been almost exclusively addressed in isolation from these socio-anthropological perspectives. The public gravemound cults of deceased rulers are discussed conventionally as cases of sacral kingship, and, more recently, religious ruler ideology; both are seen as having divine associations in Old Norse scholarship. Building on the anthropological framework, this study introduces the concept of ‘superior ancestors’, employed in social anthropology to denote a form of political ancestor worship used to regulate social structure deliberately. It suggests that Old Norse ruler ideology was based on conventional and widely recognised religious practices revolving around kinship and ancestors and that the gods were perceived as human ancestors belonging to elite families.

The Ancestor

The Ancestor PDF Author: Lee Matthew Goldberg
Publisher: All Due Respect
ISBN: 9781643961149
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 348

Get Book Here

Book Description
A man wakes up in present-day Alaskan wilderness with no idea who he is, nothing on him save an empty journal with the date 1898 and a mirror. He sees another man hunting nearby, astounded that they look exactly alike except for his own beard. After following this other man home, he witnesses a wife and child that brings forth a rush of memories of his own wife and child, except he's certain they do not exist in modern times-but from his life in the late 1800s. After recalling his name is Wyatt, he worms his way into his doppelganger Travis Barlow's life. Memories become unearthed the more time he spends, making him believe that he'd been frozen after coming to Alaska during the Gold Rush and that Travis is his great-great grandson. Wyatt is certain gold still exists in the area and finding it with Travis will ingratiate himself to the family, especially with Travis's wife Callie, once Wyatt falls in love. This turns into a dangerous obsession affecting the Barlows and everyone in their small town, since Wyatt can't be tamed until he also discovers the meaning of why he was able to be preserved on ice for over a century. A meditation on love lost and unfulfilled dreams, The Ancestor is a thrilling page-turner in present day Alaska and a historical adventure about the perilous Gold Rush expeditions where prospectors left behind their lives for the promise of hope and a better future. The question remains whether it was all worth the sacrifice... Praise for THE ANCESTOR: "Lee Matthew Goldberg is an animal-there is no other way to say it. His prose is heavyweight ambitious, as visceral as a sweaty-toothed dog at your throat. He evokes Robert Louis Stevenson as much as he does a modern thriller novelist. And I'll be honest: I expected a crime novel, but I got a spell-binding epic, an epistolary revelation, a tale as rich as a paying gold mine. The Ancestor is more than a novel. It's an ode to the rich tradition of adventure storytelling...seasoned with ample spice of love and violence and greed." -Matt Phillips, author of Countdown and Know Me from Smoke "In The Ancestor, Lee Matthew Goldberg masterfully weaves together a story involving family and violence set against the backdrop of an unforgiving Alaska of both past and present." -Andrew Davie, author of Pavement and Ouroboros "From the icy opening battle of man vs. wolf, you feel yourself in the hands of a master storyteller and that feeling never lets up." -SJ Rozan, bestselling author of Paper Son "This thrilling novel is rich in descriptions of the vast, snowy, and deadly wilderness of Alaska; it ably captures the type of person who chases gold." -Foreword Reviews "A story that blends the familiar and the supernatural in a manner that calls Stephen King's work to mind. That said, Goldberg's book possesses a flavor all its own-a distinctive mélange of the sincere and the strange." -Kirkus Reviews "Beautifully written, and capturing the unforgiving grit of Gold Rush Alaska, Lee Matthew Goldberg's The Ancestor is a thrilling page-turner with an ache in its heart. I'm a huge fan." -Roz Nay, author of Hurry Home and Our Little Secret "A suspenseful historical thriller." -Indie Reader "One of the year's best thrillers. Blake Crouch fans will love Goldberg's Alaskan opus." -BestThrillers