Of Water and the Spirit

Of Water and the Spirit PDF Author: Malidoma Patrice Some
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0140194967
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 321

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Book Description
Maliodoma Patrice Some was born in a Dagara Village, however he was soon to be abducted to a Jesuit school, where he remained for the next fifteen years, being harshly indoctrinated into european ways of thought and worship. The story tells of his return to his people, his hard initiation back into those people, which lead to his desire to convey their knowledge to the world. Of Water and the Spirit is the result of that desire; it is a sharing of living African traditions, offered in compassion for those struggling with our contemporary crisis of the spirit.

Of Water and the Spirit

Of Water and the Spirit PDF Author: Malidoma Patrice Some
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0140194967
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 321

Get Book Here

Book Description
Maliodoma Patrice Some was born in a Dagara Village, however he was soon to be abducted to a Jesuit school, where he remained for the next fifteen years, being harshly indoctrinated into european ways of thought and worship. The story tells of his return to his people, his hard initiation back into those people, which lead to his desire to convey their knowledge to the world. Of Water and the Spirit is the result of that desire; it is a sharing of living African traditions, offered in compassion for those struggling with our contemporary crisis of the spirit.

Thicker Than Water

Thicker Than Water PDF Author: Melissa Meyer
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135342008
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
Blood is more than a fluid solution of cells, platelets and plasma. It is a symbol for the most basic of human concerns--life, death and family find expression in rituals surrounding everything from menstruation to human sacrifice. Comprehensive in its scope and provocative in its argument, this book examines beliefs and rituals concerning blood in a range of regional and religious contexts throughout human history. Meyer reveals the origins of a wide range of blood rituals, from the earliest surviving human symbolism of fertility and the hunt, to the Jewish bris, and the clitoridectomies given to young girls in parts of Africa. The book also explores how cultural practices influence gene selection and makes a connection with the natural sciences by exploring how color perception influences the human proclivity to create blood symbols and rituals.

Water and Ritual

Water and Ritual PDF Author: Lisa J. Lucero
Publisher: University of Texas Press
ISBN: 0292778236
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 271

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Book Description
In the southern Maya lowlands, rainfall provided the primary and, in some areas, the only source of water for people and crops. Classic Maya kings sponsored elaborate public rituals that affirmed their close ties to the supernatural world and their ability to intercede with deities and ancestors to ensure an adequate amount of rain, which was then stored to provide water during the four-to-five-month dry season. As long as the rains came, Maya kings supplied their subjects with water and exacted tribute in labor and goods in return. But when the rains failed at the end of the Classic period (AD 850-950), the Maya rulers lost both their claim to supernatural power and their temporal authority. Maya commoners continued to supplicate gods and ancestors for rain in household rituals, but they stopped paying tribute to rulers whom the gods had forsaken. In this paradigm-shifting book, Lisa Lucero investigates the central role of water and ritual in the rise, dominance, and fall of Classic Maya rulers. She documents commoner, elite, and royal ritual histories in the southern Maya lowlands from the Late Preclassic through the Terminal Classic periods to show how elites and rulers gained political power through the public replication and elaboration of household-level rituals. At the same time, Lucero demonstrates that political power rested equally on material conditions that the Maya rulers could only partially control. Offering a new, more nuanced understanding of these dual bases of power, Lucero makes a compelling case for spiritual and material factors intermingling in the development and demise of Maya political complexity.

High Magick

High Magick PDF Author: Damien Echols
Publisher: Sounds True
ISBN: 1683641353
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 163

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Book Description
“Magick is not a path for followers; it is a path for questioners, seekers, and anyone who has trouble settling for dogma and pre-formulated answers. Magick is for those who feel the desire to peel away the surface of reality and see what lies beneath. Like various persecuted forms of mysticism, magick promotes direct contact with the source of creation.” —Damien Echols Discover a Powerful Practice for Transforming Yourself and Your Reality At age 18, Damien Echols was sentenced to death for a crime he didn’t commit. “I spent my years in prison training to be a true magician,” he recalls. “I used magick—the practice of reshaping reality through our intention and will—to stave off incredible pain, despair, and isolation. But the most amazing feat of all that practice and study was to manifest my freedom.” With High Magick, this bestselling author shares his first teaching book on the powerful spiritual techniques that helped him survive and transcend his ordeal on death row. Though our culture has consigned “magic” to fiction, stage illusions, or superstitions about dark practices, the magick Damien learned is an ancient Western tradition equal the Eastern practices of Buddhism, Taoism, and yoga in its wisdom and transformative power. Here he brings you an engaging and highly accessible guide for bringing magick into your own life, including: • What is High Magick? Damien clears away the stigma and reveals the history and core teachings of this extraordinary art. • The Four-Fold Breath—a foundational meditation practice to train your mind and body to channel subtle energies. • The Middle Pillar—how to bring divine energy into the central channel of your body for empowerment and healing. • The Qabalistic Cross—a centering technique to help you stay balanced and protected regardless of circumstances. • The Lesser Rituals of the Pentagram—powerful practices for banishing negative energies and invoking energy to manifest your goals. • Working with angelic beings and other spiritual allies to support your practice. • Creating thoughtforms to assist you in your ongoing magickal development. • Guidance for overcoming your doubts, enhancing your visualization skills, creating talismans, practicing magick ethically, and much more. “Magick is a journey,” writes Damien. “It’s a continuously unfolding path that has no end. You can study and practice magick for the rest of your life and you will still never learn everything that it has to teach you.” If you’re ready to discover your untapped potential for co-creating your reality with the energy of the divine, then join this extraordinary teacher to begin your training in High Magick.

Water Graves

Water Graves PDF Author: Valérie Loichot
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
ISBN: 0813943809
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 344

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Book Description
Water Graves considers representations of lives lost to water in contemporary poetry, fiction, theory, mixed-media art, video production, and underwater sculptures. From sunken slave ships to the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, Valérie Loichot investigates the lack of official funeral rites in the Atlantic, the Caribbean Sea, and the Gulf of Mexico, waters that constitute both early and contemporary sites of loss for the enslaved, the migrant, the refugee, and the destitute. Unritual, or the privation of ritual, Loichot argues, is a state more absolute than desecration. Desecration implies a previous sacred observance--a temple, a grave, a ceremony. Unritual, by contrast, denies the sacred from the beginning. In coastal Louisiana, Mississippi, Georgia, Miami, Haiti, Martinique, Cancun, and Trinidad and Tobago, the artists and writers featured in Water Graves—an eclectic cast that includes Beyoncé, Radcliffe Bailey, Edwidge Danticat, Édouard Glissant, M. NourbeSe Philip, Jason deCaires Taylor, Édouard Duval-Carrié, Natasha Trethewey, and Kara Walker, among others—are an archipelago connected by a history of the slave trade and environmental vulnerability. In addition to figuring death by drowning in the unritual—whether in the context of the aftermath of slavery or of ecological and human-made catastrophes—their aesthetic creations serve as memorials, dirges, tombstones, and even material supports for the regrowth of life underwater.

The Social Life of Water

The Social Life of Water PDF Author: John R. Wagner
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 0857459678
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 325

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Book Description
Everywhere in the world communities and nations organize themselves in relation to water. We divert water from rivers, lakes, and aquifers to our homes, workplaces, irrigation canals, and hydro-generating stations. We use it for bathing, swimming, recreation, and it functions as a symbol of purity in ritual performances. In order to facilitate and manage our relationship with water, we develop institutions, technologies, and cultural practices entirely devoted to its appropriation and distribution, and through these institutions we construct relations of class, gender, ethnicity, and nationality. Relying on first-hand ethnographic research, the contributors to this volume examine the social life of water in diverse settings and explore the impacts of commodification, urbanization, and technology on the availability and quality of water supplies. Each case study speaks to a local set of issues, but the overall perspective is global, with representation from all continents.

Women and Water

Women and Water PDF Author: Rahel Wasserfall
Publisher: Brandeis University Press
ISBN: 1611688701
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 292

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Book Description
The term Niddah means separation. During her menstrual flow and for several days thereafter, a Jewish woman is considered Niddah -- separate from her husband and unable to practice the sacred rituals of Judaism. Purification in a miqveh (a ritual bath) following her period restores full status as a wife and member of the Jewish community. In the contemporary world, debates about Niddah focus less on the literal exclusion of menstruating women from the synagogue, instead emphasizing relations between husband and wife and the general role of Jewish women in Judaism. Although this has been the law since ancient times, the meaning and practice of Niddah has been widely contested. Women and Water explores how these purity rituals have affected Jewish women across time and place, and shows how their own interpretation of Niddah often conflicted with rabbinic views. These essays also speak to contemporary feminist issues such as shaping women's identity, power relations between women and men, and the role of women in the sacred.

Water Witchcraft

Water Witchcraft PDF Author: Annwyn Avalon
Publisher: Weiser Books
ISBN: 1578636469
Category : Crafts & Hobbies
Languages : en
Pages : 290

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Book Description
"Water witch Annwyn Avalon presents a comprehensive guide to Celtic water lore including spells, rituals, water spirits, and merfolk. She explores the magic of the sea, but also features lakes, rivers, canals, swamps, and other watery locations as well as the craft and magic that have been and continue to be practiced at these places. Within these pages, you will learn how to set up your own personal water altars and shrines, gather or craft the magical tools of water witchery, and access the power of rain and ice. Most crucially, you will learn how to connect and communicate with the water spirits themselves."--Back cover.

Steps to Water

Steps to Water PDF Author: Morna Livingston
Publisher: Princeton Architectural Press
ISBN: 9781568983240
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 260

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Book Description
From the fifth to the nineteenth centuries, the people of western India built stone cisterns to collect the water of the monsoon rains and keep it accessible for the remaining dry months of the year. These magnificent structures-known as stepwells or stepped ponds-are much more than utilitarian reservoirs. Their lattice-like walls, carved columns, decorated towers, and intricate sculpture make them exceptional architecture., while their very presence tells much about the region's ecology and history. For these past 500 years, stepwells have been an integral part of western Indian communities as sites for drinking, washing, and bathing, as well as for colorful festivals and sacred rituals. Steps to Water traces the fascinating history of stepwells, from their Hindu origins, to their zenith during Muslim rule, and eventual decline under British occupation. It also reflects on their current use, preservation, and place in Indian communities. In stunning color and quadtone photographs and drawings, Steps to Water reveals the depth of the stepwells' beauty and their intricate details, and serves as a lens on these fascinating cultural and architectural monuments.

Ritual Baths

Ritual Baths PDF Author: Deborah Hanekamp
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0062997718
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 460

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Book Description
In this gorgeous, full-color illustrated guide, “fashion’s favorite healer” (Vogue) teaches you how to use baths to relieve stress and depression and soothe common aches and pains. Ritual Baths shows you how to use common crystals, herbs, and flowers in your bathtub to achieve inner peace and spiritual wellness. A blend of ancient traditions and contemporary self-care methods, this indispensable handbook, packed with more than 250 color photographs, provides helpful advice and sixty bath recipes, organized by aura color, including: Awareness Wolf Bath Empath Bath Hope Bath I am Nature Bath Be My Own Healer Bath Love of My Life Bath Ally Bath Healthy Boundaries Bath Warrior Bath Find My Purpose Bath My Gut Bath Confidence Bath Deborah Hanekamp leaves no crystal unturned and no restorative plant unused. She teaches you about auras, touches on phases of the moon, explains crystal and herbal magic, and provides an encyclopedia of ingredients that addresses each element’s healing properties. We all want to achieve wellness and live our best lives. Ideal for anyone interested in natural healing and alternative medicine, as well as everyone looking to integrate beautiful and accessible self-care practices into their daily routine, Ritual Baths shows you how to create your own medicine and transform your bathroom into a unique healing space.