Creek Religion And Medicine

Weaving together a wide array of historical sources with oral accounts gathered from fieldwork, this classic study provides a valuable overview of traditional Creek (Muskogee) religion and medicine. John R. Swanton visited the Creek Nation in the early twentieth century and learned about many important aspects of Creek religious life and medicine. Subjects covered in this book include Creek conceptions of the cosmos; religious stories; death and the afterlife; spiritual forces and beings; various rituals, including the Busk ceremony; prohibitions; the power and skills of different religious practitioners; the cultural force of witchcraft; and herbal and spiritual remedies. Many of these beliefs and practices have been present throughout Creek history and persist today. Creek Religion and Medicine showcases the vibrant culture of an enduring southeastern Native people.

In Creek Indian Medicine Ways, Jordan traces the written accounts of Mvskoke religion from the eighteenth century to the present in order to historically contextualize Lewis's story and knowledge. This book is a collaboration between anthropologist and medicine man that provides a rare glimpse of a living religious tradition and its origins.

This book explores the ways in which the body is sacred in Western medicine, as well as how this idea is played out in questions of life and death, of the autopsy and of the meanings attributed to illnesses and disease. Ritual and religious modifications to, and limitations on what may be done to the body raise cross cultural issues of great complexity philosophically and theologically, as well as sociologically - within medicine and for health care practitioners, but also, as a matter of primary concern for the patient. The book explores the ways in which medicine organises the moral and the immoral, the sacred and the profane; how it mediates cultural concepts of the sacred of the body, of blood and of life and death.

In this pioneering work one of the world's leading experts on Native American traditions offers a detailed survey of Native American practices and beliefs regarding health, medicine, and religion. In contrast to the sharp Euro-American division between medicine and religion, Native American medical beliefs and practices can only be assessed, says the author, in their relation to their religious ideas. Spanning the full length and breadth of Native North American cultural areas, from the Northeast to the Southwest, the Southeast to the Northwest, the book offers "thick" descriptions of traditional Native American medical and religious beliefs and practices, demonstrating that for Native Americans medicine and religion are two sides of the same coin: a coherent and holistic system in which supernaturalism acts as a motor in healing.

Many people agree that prayer is a central feature of spiritual life. But what is prayer? Scientific and Pastoral Perspectives on Intercessory Prayer: An Exchange Between Larry Dossey, MD, and Health Care Chaplains explores common questions and concerns about intercessory prayer, or the act of praying for the benefit of others, from several different points of view. Chaplains, priests, ministers, and clergy in the health care profession will learn how prayer is examined from sources other than traditional Christian views, such as parapsychology. From Scientific and Pastoral Perspectives on Intercessory Prayer, you will learn what prayer means to some chaplains and to their ministry and how prayer can make drastic changes in the lives of your parishioners, patients, and their families. Written by eight chaplains, the articles in this text are in response to an essay by Larry Dossey, a nationally known physician who speaks and writes about prayer. The contributors to Scientific and Pastoral Perspectives on Intercessory Prayer discuss his points of view on intercessory prayer, which are based on quantum physics. You will learn if this area of physics can make a difference in how you practice your faith, how you worship, and what you think about or expect from prayer. Scientific and Pastoral Perspectives on Intercessory Prayer examines several other topics related to prayer, including: discovering whether or not intercessory prayer is truly different from other methods of meditation exploring the relationship between intercessory prayer and meditative or praise prayer linking prayers and their results to the expectations or intentions of those who engage in them differentiating between an intercession and a wish deciding for yourself what constitutes evidence or proof when discussing the aspects of prayer how our opinion of prayer relates to how we think about the universe and about God Since Scientific and Pastoral Perspectives on Intercessory Prayer focuses on the cooperation between science and theology, you will discover that, in many instances, people believe that the power of prayer should be taken seriously. This text also shows you how the questions and functions of prayer are shared by everyone, despite religious differences or methods of praying. Encompassing research and personal experiences, Scientific and Pastoral Perspectives on Intercessory Prayer will help you answer questions about religion and its role in the lives of parishioners, patients, and clergy, as well as provide you with evidence to the positive and healing power of prayer.

This groundbreaking work explores the relationship between religion and medicine, and offers a unique perspective on the way in which the two disciplines interact. Drawing on a range of sources, including personal reflections and historical accounts, this book provides a fascinating insight into the ways in which religion can be used to promote healing and well-being. This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

The purpose of this treatise is: 1) to draw attention to the presence of situations arising within medical practice in which religious beliefs play an important role. 2) to emphasize the fact that most students and many doctors are given insufficient training in such matters, which are of considerable import to a fair percentage of the public. 3) to provide a few examples of what is meant by a religio-medical situation, and a bibliography for further exploration by the initiate in such matters. The stimulus to think along these lines stemmed from the examples set me by my erstwhile chiefs', Sir James Patterson-Ross, Professor Sir E. F. Scowen and Sir Stanley Davidson. Further encouragement came while I was in Edinburgh from the Reverend Dr. H.C. Whitley of St. Giles and his brother counterparts Msgr. Quill and the Reverend A. Brysh-White. In Australia, Bishop E.H. Burgmann of Canberra gave me the benefit of his legendary experience and passed me on to Father Michael Scott of Newman College, Professor D. McCaughey of Ormond College and Mr. Ben Gurewicz in Melbourne. The Reverend Granger Westberg of the Lutheran ministry in the United States infused his enthusiasm into the venture and this, with an intellectual commentary from Professor B. Hamnett of the State University of New York, along with the constructive critique volunteered by members of the local Baha'i community, tidied up many loose ends. In respect to the actual page-by-page construction I must mention my wife and Professor G. Bolton of the University of Western Australia who turned my thoughts into reality. My gratitude to these and many other people of distinction and industry can never be satisfactorily expressed. I hope they will accept my efforts to interpret or to pass on their humane counsel as part payment.