African Spirits Speak

Set against the stirring backdrop of the crumbling South African apartheid regime, African Spirits Speak is the lyrical account of a white South African woman's journey into the world of the sangomas, the indigenous diviners and priests of South Africa, and a mystical journey that changed her life.

The compelling and inspirational tale of the spiritual awakening of a white South African woman details her training as a medicine woman and her spiritual and emotional rebirth as an African and a healer.

"Spirits Speak presents a selection of the most important African masks found in major museums and renowned private collections around the globe: an overview such as has never been compiled in this way before. Artistic mastery, charisma, age and authenticity were paramount selection criteria with only the very best examples representing each well-known mask type. An introductory essay elucidates the conceptual intricacies and varying functions of the masks and sweeps away deep-rooted misunderstandings. Enlightening commentaries offer background information about the function and origins of each mask's use within the ethnic groups from which they originate, and a foldout map places them in their original geographical context."--BOOK JACKET.

Interdisciplinary celebration of the cultural contributions of members of the African Diaspora in the Western hemisphere.

African-Atlantic Cultures and the South Carolina Lowcountry examines perceptions of the natural world revealed by the religious ideas and practices of African-descended communities in South Carolina from the colonial period into the twentieth century. Focusing on Kongo nature spirits known as the simbi, Ras Michael Brown describes the essential role religion played in key historical processes, such as establishing new communities and incorporating American forms of Christianity into an African-based spirituality. This book illuminates how people of African descent engaged the spiritual landscape of the Lowcountry through their subsistence practices, religious experiences and political discourse.

Gathering together under a single cover material from a wide range of African societies, this volume allows similarities and differences to be easily perceived and suggests social correlates of these in terms of age, sex, marital status, social grading and wealth. It includes material on both traditional and modern cults.

Spirits can be haunters, informants, possessors, and transformers of the living, but more than anything anthropologists have understood them as representations of something else—symbols that articulate facets of human experience in much the same way works of art do. The Social Life of Spirits challenges this notion. By stripping symbolism from the way we think about the spirit world, the contributors of this book uncover a livelier, more diverse environment of entities—with their own histories, motivations, and social interactions—providing a new understanding of spirits not as symbols, but as agents. The contributors tour the spiritual globe—the globe of nonthings—in essays on topics ranging from the Holy Ghost in southern Africa to spirits of the “people of the streets” in Rio de Janeiro to dragons and magic in Britain. Avoiding a reliance on religion and belief systems to explain the significance of spirits, they reimagine spirits in a rich network of social trajectories, ultimately arguing for a new ontological ground upon which to examine the intangible world and its interactions with the tangible one.

These miniature versions are packed with color, yet small enough to fit into a pocket. They're as inviting to the eye as they are to the wallet. And there are titles to suit every occasion, taste, and interest. These 'Minis' feature amazing artwork of all kinds, elegantly designed and packaged.