Ancestral Voices

A classic in its genre, it has been hailed as a seminal piece of work surpassing the only other work in this field, John Mbiti's 'African Religions & Philosophy' (1969), as its coverage is not just of traditional continental Africa but also includes ancient Africa and its legacy in the Diaspora.Described by the esteemed historian Robin Walker as a book that 'deserves a place in every home', it is a complimentary counterpart to the film and is the published findings of over 7 years of literature research as well as content from video interviews carried out in action research during filming.Topics covered include African conception of the Creator/'God', Nature and the Natural Forces, nature of humanity, Ancestral veneration and communication and various forms of African rituals and prayers. In addition, it is an invaluable companion for those seeking to live an African Spiritual-Centred life as it contains a whole chapter dedicated to Ritual with practices for daily living, suited for the initiated and non-initiated alike.It is currently available in English and Spanish, with other language translations due including French and Portuguese.

Voices from the Ancestors brings together the reflective writings and spiritual practices of Xicanx, Latinx, and Afro-Latinx womxn and male allies in the United States who seek to heal from the historical traumas of colonization by returning to ancestral traditions and knowledge. This wisdom is based on the authors’ oral traditions, research, intuitions, and lived experiences—wisdom inspired by, and created from, personal trajectories on the path to spiritual conocimiento, or inner spiritual inquiry. This conocimiento has reemerged over the last fifty years as efforts to decolonize lives, minds, spirits, and bodies have advanced. Yet this knowledge goes back many generations to the time when the ancestors understood their interconnectedness with each other, with nature, and with the sacred cosmic forces—a time when the human body was a microcosm of the universe. Reclaiming and reconstructing spirituality based on non-Western epistemologies is central to the process of decolonization, particularly in these fraught times. The wisdom offered here appears in a variety of forms—in reflective essays, poetry, prayers, specific guidelines for healing practices, communal rituals, and visual art, all meant to address life transitions and how to live holistically and with a spiritual consciousness for the challenges of the twenty-first century.

In the wild night hours, or during the heat of the day - whenever man's thoughts whirl feverishly - then truth and fantasy, the past and the future, life and death are indiscriminately mingled on Toorberg, home of the Moolman family. So the magistrate is to learn as he investigates the strange circumstances of the death of little Noah, child of grief, who was not entirely of this world. Every day the case becomes more complex, until it challenges the very foundations of the law. It seems as if the magistrate will have to judge an entire dynasty, both the living and the dead. Everyone's guilt has to be affirmed, or denied, and this means he will have to rip open the lives of all. The Moolmans are a tribe who have long since learned how to deal with their own. Parents cut children out of their lives, shunt them aside to live as stepchildren, scrag-ends of the clan, or as city-dwellers whose names are never uttered. The Moolmans cannot forgive; not when their tribal blood is betrayed.

Scholar and statesman Conor Cruise O'Brien illuminates why peace has been so elusive in Northern Ireland. He explains the conflation of religion and nation through Irish history into our own time. Using his life as a prism through which he interprets Ireland's past and present, O'Brien identifies case after case of the lethal mixing of God with country that has spilled oceans of blood throughout this century of nationalism and that, from Bosnia to Northern Ireland, still curses the world. "O'Brien's bravura performance [is] seductive in its intellectual sweep and literary assurance."—Toby Barnard, Times Literary Supplement "Has the magical insistence which Conor Cruise O'Brien can produce at his best. . . . Where he looks back to his own childhood the book shines. He writes of his mother and father with effortless grace and candor, with a marvelous, elegant mix of affection and detachment."—Observer

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Ancestral Voices is multi-generational epic that traces the histories of several families from the earliest settlement of America to contemporary times. The main conflict of the story develops from a dispute between two brothers in the wake of the War of Independence that has disastrous, as well as joyous consequences almost two centuries later for some of their descendants when the family is reconnected. The novel begins in 1969, the height of the Vietnam War. The central character, Katharine Carter Harrison--about to enter Yale's first coed class--struggles with her identitiy, which is an amalgam of her Connecticut father and her Virginia mother, and with the fate of her beloved brother who enlists to fight in Vietnam. When a distant cousin, Aaron Keeler, unexpectedly enters the lives of Katharine and her brother, it seems that some perverse hand of destiny is at work, as well as a curse that has run through the family for centuries. Ancestral Voices is a compelling love story, a tale of generational revenge, and a saga where the main characters suffer from obsessions with their ancestral past and a terrifying nexus between fiction and reality.

Dr. Joice Christine Bailey Lewis wrote My Ancestral Voices at the age of seventy-four. She tells stories about people and events that occurred in the Alabama community where her ancestors lived for five generations. Dr. Lewis uses autobiographies and biographies to describe events by details and dialogue that are either true, assumed, or plausible. Dr. Lewis, a member of the fifth generation, tells how she drew strength from the historical accounts of survival of people through slavery, Reconstruction, Jim Crow, racial segregation, educational inequality, sharecropping, the civil rights movement, the Second World War, Northern and Western Diaspora, and her ancestors beating great odds to succeed in landowning and community development and in fields of medicine, law, education, and business. The Holly Springs Missionary Baptist Church was erected by the first generation of ancestors who were all freed slaves. It is still in service to the community of Romulus (Ralph) Alabama. The church stands as a monument to its members, who rose up from slavery to create a lasting legacy of hope, love, and family.

The story of Charles Stewart Parnell, one of the greatest Irish leaders of the nineteenth century and also one of the most renowned figures of the 1880s on the international stage, and John Dillon, the most celebrated of Parnell's lieutenants. As Paul Bew shows, the differences between the two men reflect both Ireland's past and its future. The story of Charles Stewart Parnell, one of the greatest Irish leaders of the nineteenth century and also one of the most renowned figures of the 1880s on the international stage, and John Dillon, the most celebrated, but also the most neglected, of Parnell's lieutenants. As Paul Bew shows, the differences between the two men reflect both Ireland's past and its future. Every time the principle of consent for a united Ireland is discussed today, we can perceive the legacy of both men. Even more profoundly, that legacy can be seen when Irish nationalism tries to transcend a tribalist outlook based on the historic Catholic nation, even when the country is no longer so very Catholic.