Baba Wagué is only four years old when he is sent to the tiny Malian village of Kassar, West Africa, to be raised by his paternal grandparents, according to the family tradition. He is most unhappy about this at first, but under his grandmother's patient and wise tutelage, he comes to love his close-knit village community, as he listens to his grandmother's stories, learns about his own history and traditions, and experiences many hilarious and sobering adventures along the way. He learns how to catch a catfish with his bare hands, learns the true meaning of the appearance of a snake in the granary, flees from an army of bees and mistakes a hungry albino cobra snake for a pink inner tube. And he survives, with trepidation and pride, his circumcision - a ceremony that brings together the entire village. Finally, Grandma Sabou decides that Baba is educated enough to go to school, and he moves back to the city, where his family struggles to provide him with a formal education. But he brings his village stories with him, and in the process of sharing them with his neighborhood, he not only uncovers his immense artistic and storytelling talents, but eventually finds his way to America, where he embarks on a new life as a writer and artist. Diakité's engaging storytelling style and bright, bold illustrations make this a beautiful gift book and a wonderful tribute to Malian village life.
An introduction to the spiritual source of the beliefs and practices that have so profoundly shaped African American religious traditions.Most of the Africans who were enslaved and brought to the Americas were from the Yoruba nation of West Africa, an ancient and vast civilization. In the diaspora caused by the slave trade, the guiding concepts of the Yoruba spiritual tradition took root in Haiti, Puerto Rico, Cuba, Brazil, and the United States.In this accessible introduction, Baba Ifa Karade provides an overview of the Yoruba tradition and its influence in the West. He describes the sixteen Orisha, or spirit gods, and shows us how to work with divination, use the energy centers of the body to internalize the teachings of Yoruba, and create a sacred place of worship. The book also includes prayers, dances, songs, offerings, and sacrifices to honor the Orisha.
Black Man/Black Woman Seeds of the PO/ET/TREEBy: BaBa EngAbout the Book/AuthorThis collection of po/et/tree and essays are the expressions of a man locked down under the most inhumane conditions imaginable here in the United States of America. BaBa Eng was sentenced to twenty-five years to life in New York State's prison system in 1977 for shooting a man who had pulled a gun on his wife in an illegal afterhours club in Harlem, New York. When Mr. Eng discovered the enormity of the act he had committed, he dedicated himself to education and self-improvement. That pursuit, according to Mr. Eng, was so he could at least attempt to balance the scales and be able to work for his community upon release from prison. These writings are the result of his meditations and contemplations while in prison, in solitary confinement, and upon his release.Upon his release in 2013, BaBa, as he is affectionately known in prisons throughout New York State, became an advocate for his fellow prisoners and in the Western New York community as a social justice advocate, his writing and his work continues. Black Man/Black Woman Seeds of the PO/ET/TREE represents the reflections of a Black Man determined to share love and justice in a world where both are so desperately needed.
Each of these brilliant epistolary poems is a surrealist landscape-blurred beginnings, sorrowful endings, archetypes tangled in the roots of trees-where everything is held together by a speaker who is reading letters culled from a just-opened time capsule. Each poem captures the complexity of the interwoven effects of distance, of loss, of the intricate links to the never-ending African diaspora. And behind each is the Mother-as land, as bloodline, as birth, as the lightning strike that indelibly scars the earth's surface. Reading them is like seeing a forest on fire through an unwavering lens: the splintering, the displacement, the metallic rasp of time as the trees are erased. The effect is mesmerizing and lacerating: "There is no hymn, just history, history." -Mary Jo BangFrance's colonial rule casts a long shadow over Senegal, where the official language of the state and educational system remains French, despite the fact that only twenty percent of the male population regularly speak it, and as little as one percent of the female. The poems in Ghost Letters, written partly in French, partly in Wolof (Senegal's most widely spoken language), and predominantly in English, both reflect the poet's multilinguistic background and, more importantly, contend with the historical, cultural, racial, and personal traumas that inform that background. "I am trying to recover from stings poisoning my tongue," Badji writes, "I am trying to recover from a disease whitening my black skin." With its startlingly urgent, affect-laden verse and prose, Ghost Letters is a rare achievement-one whose formal complexity demonstrates not only the poet's remarkable technical skills, but survival skills as well. -Timothy Donnelly In Ghost Letters, one emigrates to America again, and again, and again, though one also never leaves Senegal, the country of one's birth; one grows up in America, and attends university in America, though one also never leaves Senegal, the country of one's birth; one wrestles with one's American blackness in ways not possible in Senegal, though one never leaves Senegal, the country of one's birth; and one sees more deeply into Americanness than any native-born American could. Ghost Letters is a 21st century Notebook of a Return to the Native Land, though it is a notebook of arrival and being in America. It is a major achievement. -Shane McCraeBaba Badji is a Senegalese-American poet, translator, researcher, and PhD candidate in Comparative Literature at Washington University in St. Louis. He came to America when he was eleven years old. He currently lives in St. Louis, but his permanent home is Senegal, where his extended family remains, and New York City.
• Shows how Amanita microdoses offered help and healing for a broad range of conditions, including hormonal dysfunction, allergies, gingivitis, heartburn, eczema, psoriasis, depression, epilepsy, hypertension, insomnia, and migraine • Reveals how Amanita microdoses are effective for pain relief and for interrupting addictions to alcohol, opiates, nicotine, caffeine, and other narcotics • Details how to safely identify, prepare, and preserve Amanita muscaria, including recipes for tincture, tea, oil, and ointment as well as proper microdose amounts Exploring the results of the first international study on the medicinal effects of microdosing with Amanita muscaria, the psychoactive fly agaric mushroom, Baba Masha, M.D., documents how more than 3,000 volunteers experienced positive outcomes for a broad range of health conditions as well as enhanced creativity and sports performance. Masha discovered that Amanita microdoses offered help and healing for hormonal dysfunction, low libido, allergies, asthma, swelling, gingivitis, nail fungus, digestive issues, and skin conditions such as eczema and psoriasis as well as recovery from stroke and cardiac arrest. She found beneficial effects on depression, epilepsy, hypertension, insomnia, and low appetite and shows how Amanita microdoses are quite effective for pain relief, including in cases of rheumatoid arthritis, menstrual pain, and migraine. The author also reveals how Amanita microdoses can interrupt addictions to alcohol, nicotine, caffeine, opiates, and other narcotics. The author details how to safely identify, harvest, prepare, and preserve Amanita muscaria, and she includes recipes for tincture, tea, oil, and ointment as well as proper microdose amounts. She shares more than 780 personal Amanita microdose reports from study participants, detailing the positive, negative, and neutral effects they experienced, and she also shares some Amanita large-dose trip reports, cautioning against this practice because of the mushroom’s strong dissociative properties, including amnesia. Revealing the vast healing potential of this ancient mushroom ally, Masha’s study shows not only how Amanita can help with many health conditions but also how it activates the ability to feel the value and the significance of your own life experience.
In this book are messages and quotes from the ascended masters (Kwan Yin, Buddha, Jesus, just to name a few) to the human race on how to heal ourselves, as well as the planet, in a world that desperately needs healing. With self-love and love for others and love for the planet, we can do this togetherone person at a timewe become one. Hence, only love can save us.
"The Bektashi Way is profoundly simple yet perplexingly complex, striking in its boldness yet gracious in its subtlety; consequently, while shining forth brightly it still is seemingly cloaked in obscurity. There have been attempts to gather its history, characteristic ideas, and observable aspects together and to elucidate its inner wisdom in prose, but few of these attempts have been made by knowledgeable insiders, and even fewer of these have been made in English. This full translation of Baba Rexheb's Islamic
