Working with Spirit

Working with Spirit
Author :
Publisher : Berghahn Books
Total Pages : 274
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780857450159
ISBN-13 : 0857450158
Rating : 4/5 (59 Downloads)

Synopsis Working with Spirit by : Jo Thobeka Wreford

In the current model of health dispensation in South Africa there are two major paradigms, the spirit-inspired tradition of izangoma sinyanga and biomedicine. These operate at best in parallel, but more often than not are at odds with one another. This book, based on the author’s personal experience as a practitioner of traditional African medicine, considers the effects of the absence of spirit in biomedicine on collaborative relationships. Given the unprecedented challenge of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the country, the author suggests that more cooperation is vital. Taking a critical look at the role of anthropology in this endeavor, she proposes the development of a “language of spirit” by means of which the spirit-inspired aetiology of izangoma sinyanga may be made comprehensible to academic scientists and applicable to medical interventions. The author discusses white izangoma in the context of current debates on healing and hybridity and insists that there exists a powerful role for izangoma in the realm of societal healing. Above all, the book constitutes a start in what the author hopes will develop into an ongoing intellectual conversation between traditional African healing, academe, and biomedicine in South Africa.

African Spirits Speak

African Spirits Speak
Author :
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
Total Pages : 290
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9781620553497
ISBN-13 : 162055349X
Rating : 4/5 (97 Downloads)

Synopsis African Spirits Speak by : Nicky Arden

The moving story of an expatriate coming to terms with her country's history, and her joyous spiritual and emotional rebirth as an African healer. • One of the first accounts of the mysterious sangomas, the healers of South Africa's black population. • A mystical journey that will appeal to those wishing to reunite with their roots and a more spiritual life. Set against the stirring backdrop of a crumbling apartheid regime, African Spirits Speak is the lyrical account of white South African Nicky Arden's journey into the world of the sangomas, the diviners, doctors, psychologists, and priests of South Africa's black population. While in her early twenties Nicky fled South Africa with her husband as the stranglehold of apartheid tightened on her native land. For twenty-two years they lived in California as expatriates--never once returning to their homeland--until a deep depression, followed by a spiritual awakening in the California desert, compelled Nicky to return to South Africa. During her visit, while exploring deep in the bush, she unexpectedly met an old black medicine woman--a sangoma. This meeting would change her life. Few white South Africans are even aware of the world of the sangomas, but this prophetic old woman saw in Nicky the spirit of a fellow healer and set the author on a mystical journey that would reunite her soul with its African roots. Thus began her astonishing and complex initiation into a nearly unknown world and her quest to discover the truth about herself and her heritage.

The Healing Wisdom of Africa

The Healing Wisdom of Africa
Author :
Publisher : Penguin
Total Pages : 345
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780874779912
ISBN-13 : 087477991X
Rating : 4/5 (12 Downloads)

Synopsis The Healing Wisdom of Africa by : Malidoma Patrice Some

Through The Healing Wisdom of Africa, readers can come to understand that the life of indigenous and traditional people is a paradigm for an intimate relationship with the natural world that both surrounds us and is within us. The book is the most complete study of the role ritual plays in the lives of African people--and the role it can play for seekers in the West.

Spirit and Healing in Africa

Spirit and Healing in Africa
Author :
Publisher : UJ Press
Total Pages : 334
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9781920382186
ISBN-13 : 1920382186
Rating : 4/5 (86 Downloads)

Synopsis Spirit and Healing in Africa by : Deborah van den Bosch-Heij

There is a great need for healing in Africa. This need is in itself no different elsewhere in the world, but it is greatly determined by the involvement of religious communities and traditions. Faith communities and religious institutions play a major role in assisting African believers to find health, healing and completeness in everyday life.

Opening to Spirit

Opening to Spirit
Author :
Publisher : HarperThorsons
Total Pages : 348
Release :
ISBN-10 : IND:30000046088906
ISBN-13 :
Rating : 4/5 (06 Downloads)

Synopsis Opening to Spirit by : Caroline Shola Arewa

A gifted spiritual guide and a yoga master illustrates the common root of many of our spiritual traditions through the mythology and spirituality of Ancient Egypt, Early India and West Africa. 8 color plates. 40 line drawings.

Called to Heal

Called to Heal
Author :
Publisher : Lotus Press
Total Pages : 192
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780914955917
ISBN-13 : 0914955918
Rating : 4/5 (17 Downloads)

Synopsis Called to Heal by : Susan Schuster Campbell

This book tells the story of some remarkable people from the African Healing tradition. It exposes many of us, for the first time, to ways of relating to our world that are holistic and shamanistic in nature, adding real quality and value to our lives. It challenges us to integrate the contribution of African healing methods, and these extraordinary healers, into a new healthier vision of our future.

Indigenous Knowledge and Learning in Asia/Pacific and Africa

Indigenous Knowledge and Learning in Asia/Pacific and Africa
Author :
Publisher : Springer
Total Pages : 267
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780230111813
ISBN-13 : 0230111815
Rating : 4/5 (13 Downloads)

Synopsis Indigenous Knowledge and Learning in Asia/Pacific and Africa by : D. Kapoor

This collection makes a unique contribution towards the amplification of indigenous knowledge and learning by adopting an inter/trans-disciplinary approach to the subject that considers a variety of spaces of engagement around knowledge in Asia and Africa.

Sangoma

Sangoma
Author :
Publisher : Sterling Publishing Company, Inc.
Total Pages : 276
Release :
ISBN-10 : 1402761910
ISBN-13 : 9781402761911
Rating : 4/5 (10 Downloads)

Synopsis Sangoma by : James Hall

Nothing in James Hall's life prepared him for what happened. When he was in Africa writing about the legendary singer Miriam Makeba, she perceived he had the rare gift to see both into the future and into people's souls. At her urging, Hall consulted a sangoma, a traditional healer, who told him he was possessed by ancestral spirits. Hall could receive the power to heal others and to become a sangoma himself ... if he was willing to take the risk. He did - embracing an uncertain future and undergoing a two-year spiritual and physical ordeal. What he experienced shook his grasp of reality to the core as he surrendered himself to souls from the spirit world, learned to read messages in divination bones and attained a lifetime's worth of knowledge about collecting and preparing the plants used in traditional medicine. James Hall has written a candid, dramatically personal account of his unique spiritual journey.

Welcoming Spirit Home

Welcoming Spirit Home
Author :
Publisher :
Total Pages : 152
Release :
ISBN-10 : IND:30000065152880
ISBN-13 :
Rating : 4/5 (80 Downloads)

Synopsis Welcoming Spirit Home by : Sobonfu Somé

A natural sequel to Some's book on ritual and intimacy, this book draws on the wisdom of the African ancestors to show how to build communities where children are not only welcomed but prized.

Borders and Healers

Borders and Healers
Author :
Publisher : Indiana University Press
Total Pages : 234
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780253346636
ISBN-13 : 0253346630
Rating : 4/5 (36 Downloads)

Synopsis Borders and Healers by : Tracy J. Luedke

In southeast Africa, the power to heal is often associated with crossing borders, whether literal or metaphorical. This wide-ranging volume reveals that healers, whose power depends on the ability to broker therapeutic resources, also contribute to the construction of the borders they transgress. While addressing diverse healing practices such as herbalism, razor-blade vaccination, spirit possession, prophetic healing, missionary health clinics, and traumatic storytelling, the nine lively and provocative essays in Borders and Healers explore the creativity and resilience of the region's healers and those they heal in a world shaped by economic stagnation, declining state commitments to health care, and the AIDS pandemic. This important book contributes to understandings of the ways in which healing practices in southeast Africa mediate divides between the wealthy and the impoverished, the traditional and the modern, the local and the global.