Journey through the Crossroads of Magick with 12 Iconic Women Beside You A follow-up to the bestselling Good Juju, Powerful Juju provides guidance and comfort in times of hardship. Najah Lightfoot introduces you to a dozen goddesses and legendary figures, from mythology and modern times, who offer inspiration and protection against the most difficult parts of life. Each one is accompanied by a song to soothe and uplift your spirit, a list of correspondences, a brief description, a full ritual, and instructions on setting up sacred space to bring her energy into your life. You'll meet Sekhmet, Frida Kahlo, Doreen Valiente, Tituba, Nina Simone, Lilith, and others. These women were specially chosen to accompany you through the crossroads of magick, helping you be strong and carry on.
Spiritual Rites, Spell Work, and Folk Practices to Enhance Your Well-Being and Personal Power Learn to better express your spirituality and build up your magical practice with this book's powerful spells, rituals, and tools. Designed to help you navigate whatever ups and downs life throws your way, Good Juju is your perfect choice for learning to embrace nature, the old ways, and the magick all around you. Using simple practices that don't interfere with any religions, Good Juju helps you lay a foundation for daily ritual work. You'll also learn how to craft mojos, create and work with altars, tune in to your intuition, and much more. Author Najah Lightfoot guides you in keeping your mind, body, and spirit strong as you discover your magical work and align with your higher power.
The African Diaspora presents musical case studies from various regions of the African diaspora, including Africa, the Caribbean, Latin America, North America, and Europe, that engage with broader interdisciplinary discussions about race, gender, politics, nationalism, and music. Featured here are jazz, wassoulou music, and popular and traditional musics of the Caribbean and Africa, framed with attention to the reciprocal relationships of the local and the global.
How can we account for the power of ritual? This is the guiding question of Black Critics and Kings, which examines how Yoruba forms of ritual and knowledge shape politics, history, and resistance against the state. Focusing on "deep" knowledge in Yoruba cosmology as an interpretive space for configuring difference, Andrew Apter analyzes ritual empowerment as an essentially critical practice, one that revises authoritative discourses of space, time, gender, and sovereignty to promote political—-and even violent—-change. Documenting the development of a Yoruba kingdom from its nineteenth-century genesis to Nigeria's 1983 elections and subsequent military coup, Apter identifies the central role of ritual in reconfiguring power relations both internally and in relation to wider political arenas. What emerges is an ethnography of an interpretive vision that has broadened the horizons of local knowledge to embrace Christianity, colonialism, class formation, and the contemporary Nigerian state. In this capacity, Yoruba òrìsà worship remains a critical site of response to hegemonic interventions. With sustained theoretical argument and empirical rigor, Apter answers critical anthropologists who interrogate the possibility of ethnography. He reveals how an indigenous hermeneutics of power is put into ritual practice—-with multiple voices, self-reflexive awareness, and concrete political results. Black Critics and Kings eloquently illustrates the ethnographic value of listening to the voice of the other, with implications extending beyond anthropology to engage leading debates in black critical theory.
This book explores how local development interventions related to witchcraft in Africa intersect and conflict with globally accepted development practices. It argues for expansion and diversification of development practices and problematizes international development practices that can jeopardize the well-being of the people it seeks to support.
The Foo-Foo Tree and more Efik Folktales is a selection of folklore thought to have originated from the Efik people . The Efik are native to South East Nigeria even though they were said to have migrated from the Cameroons. Originally the economy of the region which they occupy was based on fishing and trading . This aspect of their daily lives as well as the mortal dread of the Ekpe secret society which regularly made and enforced laws, will be seen to have formed the bedrock of their local anecdotes.
The author shares his experience, travail, betrayal, legal battle, and custody in a false accusation. He describes how perception, emotion, and power undermined his battle for survival. He suggests that one needs goodwill, good conscience, and right attitude to survive the unknown. The author, advises readers to be careful in all situations. He reminds them that their greatest strength could easily be their greatest weakness. Therefore, there is a need to always engage the mind before taking any decision to avoid mistakes. A little distraction brought his life to a standstill. This resulted in a fight for life, truth, and vindication.
This title was first published in 2003.Wolfgang Stolper was one of the first Western economists to serve as an adviser in the government of an independent African country. In 1960 he was brought in by the Nigerian government to help shape Nigeria’s first post-independence development plan. His remarkably candid diaries chronicle his struggles and frustrations with officials, interference, waste and corruption at the heart of a government and unfolds the extraordinary story of his warmth and friendship with a country and its people. Brutally frank, compelling and disarmingly thoughtful, Inside Independent Nigeria brings to light one of the most exceptional documents on post-independence Nigeria, and delivers a fascinating picture of a pivotal era in the development of Western economic planning in Africa. No student or researcher of African political history, economics or development studies will want to be without this utterly riveting book.
When did the intimate dialogue between Africa, Europe, and the Americas begin? Looking back, it seems as if these three continents have always been each other’s significant others. Europe created its own modern identity by using Africa as a mirror, but Africans traveled to Europe and America long before the European age of discovery, and African cultures can be said to lie at the root of European culture. This intertwining has become ever more visible: Nowadays Africa emerges as a highly visible presence in the Americas, and African American styles capture Europe’s youth, many of whom are of (North-) African descent. This entanglement, however, remains both productive and destructive. The continental economies are intertwined in ways disastrous for Africa, and African knowledge is all too often exported and translated for US and European scholarly aims, which increases the intercontinental knowledge gap.This volume proposes a fresh look at the vigorous and painful, but inescapable, relationships between these significant others. It does so as a gesture of gratitude and respect to one of the pioneering figures in this field. Dutch Africanist and literary scholar Mineke Schipper, who is taking her leave from her chair in Intercultural Literary Studies at the University of Leiden. Where have the past four decades of African studies brought us? What is the present-day state of this intercontinental dialogue?Sixteen of Mineke’s colleagues and friends in Europe, Africa and the Americas look back and assess the relations and debates between Africa-Europe-America: Ann Adams, Ernst van Alphen, Mieke Bal, Liesbeth Bekers, Wilfried van Damme, Ariel Dorfman, Peter Geschiere, Kathleen Gyssels, Isabel Hoving, Frans-Willem Korsten, Babacar M’Baye, Harry Olufunwa, Ankie Peypers, Steven Shankman, Miriam Tlali, and Chantal Zabus write about the place of Africa in today’s African Diaspora, about what sisterhood between African and European women really means, about the drawbacks of an overly strong focus on culture in debates about Africa, about Europe’s reluctance to see Africa as other than its mirror or its playing field, about the images of Africans in seventeenth-century Dutch writing, about genital excision, the flaunting of the African female body and the new self-writing, about new ways to look at classic African novels, and about the invigorating, disturbing, political art of intercultural reading.
Your Gentle Companion for the Journey of Grief When loss leaves you reeling, struggling emotionally and spiritually, Sacred Tears offers support from a Witch's perspective. Courtney Weber provides guidance as you navigate the grief spiral at your own pace. She reassures you that grief is not only necessary, but sacred, and need not be rushed. Providing dozens of rituals, prayers, and journal prompts, Courtney meets you where you are and accompanies you through all kinds of grief. She encourages you to incorporate your own spirituality, sharing stories from her experiences that help you cope in your unique way. Learn how to communicate your needs, comfort others who are hurting, and mourn when you can't get closure. This heartfelt book guides you through something none of us want to endure but all of us will.