April Cincinnati lost her parents in a car accident when she was young. Now, eight years later, she can hear her mother's and father's voices again, along with her grandpa's and nana's. That's because she has met the spirit horses. All her family members that have passed are in spirit horse bodies. Whenever they're in trouble, April is always there to help them. But how long will she last after risking her life more than once?
Midsummer--or the summer solstice--occurs when the sun is at the height of its power, the faeries are most active, and the future can be uncovered with ease. Shakespeare even captured the mischief of the occasion in his play, "A Midsummer Night's Dream." This book explores Midsummer customs and bears witness to their power today.
This is the remarkable and wrenching memoir of a South Korean dissident who was unjustly accused of spying for the North Koreans and jailed for nineteen years as a political prisoner. The updated English-language edition traces Suh Sung's experiences as a Korean citizen of Japan before his incarceration, his time in prison, and his subsequent release. Readers will be moved and awed by Suh's courage under torture and solitary confinement. This memoir is an invaluable document for all concerned about human rights and a moving testimony to one man's incredible determination.
In thirteenth-century China, a Daoist monk named Gao Daokuan (1195-1277) composed a series of illustrated poems and accompanying verse commentary known as the Daoist Horse Taming Pictures. In this annotated translation and study, Louis Komjathy argues that this virtually unknown text offers unique insights into the transformative effects of Daoist contemplative practice. Taming the Wild Horse examines Gao's illustrated poems in terms of monasticism and contemplative practice, as well as the multivalent meaning of the "horse" in traditional Chinese culture and the consequences for both human and nonhuman animals. The Horse Taming Pictures consist of twelve poems, ten of which are equine-centered. They develop the metaphor of a "wild" or "untamed" horse to represent ordinary consciousness, which must be reined in and harnessed through sustained self-cultivation, especially meditation. The compositions describe stages on the Daoist contemplative path. Komjathy provides opportunities for reflection on contemplative practice in general and Daoist meditation in particular, which may lead to a transpersonal way of perceiving and being.
Increasingly, our world is becoming incomprehensible. Many people, societies, even countries, behave in strange ways: America turns intolerant toward its own whistleblowers, Arabia leads the world in opening a women-only university, Britain turns largely un-Christian, India increasingly buries herself under a surfeit of democracy, and China under communism. This book is about the emerging mega-picture, a reinterpretation of world history along Darwinian lines. In order to survive in the biological food web, humans needed connectivity, which our religions provided. It goes into the evolution and dissolution of religions, across centuries, as our biggest connecting and integrating factors yet, and how these weakening faiths are now being replaced by new, robust connectors: democracy, science, technology. Of course, we still have many devout around, but their beliefs have shorter shelf life. These silent but gigantic changes are restructuring our societies. With the change in emphasis in the very infrastructure of the human society, the entire edifice is undergoing transformation and renovation—it is nothing less than the Ascent of Women, the Fourth Wave, for the first time since the dawn of civilization some ten thousand years ago. This book is for those who would enter this New World!
Lance Delano, a ruthless millionaire businessman loses everything in the dot.com crash, except for an interest in a small, cash-strapped oil well drilling company owned by Montana wildcatter, Jeff Bishop, who has just discovered a vast new oilfield in the Canadian wilderness. Delano abandons Bishop in the wilds, leaving him to freeze to death in order to steal his company.Black Dog Running, a member of a lost tribe of Blackfoot Indians living high in the Rocky Mountains, finds Bishop unconscious and near death and takes him back to his people where, suffering memory loss, he is inducted into the tribe. Just prior to marrying Black Dog Running's daughter, Bishop regains his memory and escapes from the tribe, bent on tracking down Delano. He is pursued by Black Dog Running who is under orders to kill the white man to prevent the outside world from learning of the existence of the lost tribe and also to bring back absolute proof of Bishop's death.Helen Coffey, a Salt Lake City corporate public relations officer, is fired from her job after publicly criticizing corporate environmental vandalism. She joins the Sierra Club, working as an activist, trying to stop exploitation and degradation of Indian reservations by big business, taking her cause all the way to the U.S. Congress. With Bishop declared legally dead, Delano sells his company and in an underhanded deal buys oil leases in Great Spirit Valley, a sacred Indian site in Montana. It is there that Delano, Bishop, Black Dog Running and Helen Coffey ultimately collide: Bishop seeking retribution, Delano desperate to escape the wrath of the Indian nations, Black Dog Running reluctant to kill the white man who once was his friend and Helen Coffey, determined to halt Big Oil's insatiable greed.
This book provides a nuanced picture of the notions of body and soul held by the peoples of Europe through the soul concepts associated with the Judeo-Christian tradition and other religions and denominations; and the alternative traditions preserved alongside Christianity in folklore collections, linguistic and literary records. The studies also emphasize the connections between these notions and beliefs related to death and the dead, as well as questions of communication between the human world and the spirit world. The essays here focus on the roles notions of the soul and the spirit world play in the everyday life, religion and mentality of various communities; their folklore and literary representations, as well as the narrative metaphors, motifs, topoi and genres of ideas about the soul and about supernatural communication, along with questions of the relationship between narratives and religious notions. This book will appeal to researchers and students of religion, mythology, folklore and the anthropology of religion, as well as general readers interested in the humanities.
The foundational work on shamanism now available as a Princeton Classics paperback Shamanism is an essential work on the study of this mysterious and fascinating phenomenon. The founder of the modern study of the history of religion, Mircea Eliade surveys the tradition through two and a half millennia of human history, moving from the shamanic traditions of Siberia and Central Asia—where shamanism was first observed—to North and South America, Indonesia, Tibet, China, and beyond. In this authoritative survey, Eliade illuminates the magico-religious life of societies that give primacy of place to the figure of the shaman—at once magician and medicine man, healer and miracle-doer, priest, mystic, and poet. Synthesizing the approaches of psychology, sociology, and ethnology, Shamanism remains the reference book of choice for those interested in this practice.
“A family account of the life of Tashunke Witko, their great Sioux relative . . . For the first time, the Clown family members tell their oral history.”—True West The Edward Clown family, nearest living relatives to the Lakota war leader, presents the family tales and memories told to them about their famous grandfather. In many ways the oral history differs from what has become the standard and widely accepted biography of Crazy Horse. The family clarifies the inaccuracies and shares their story about the past, including what it means to them to be Lakota, the family genealogy, the life of Crazy Horse and his motivations, his death, and why they chose to keep quiet with their knowledge for so long before finally deciding to tell the truth as they know it. This book is a compelling addition to the body of works about Crazy Horse and the complicated and often conflicting events of that time period in American History. “For the first time the first-hand account of Crazy Horse is told . . . The stories were faithfully passed down through the generations . . . It includes Crazy Horse’s account of the last moments of Custer and the near-killing of Maj. Marcus Reno by Crazy Horse’s father.”—Capital Journal “After many years of keeping quiet, the family of Lakota warrior Crazy Horse decided to tell their story of his life and legacy . . . The truth behind the history of Crazy Horse—an iconic Native American warrior—until recently has been kept hidden for more than a century.”—The Monroe News
