Customer Reviews

Voices of Ancestors

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

I have had a friend's copy of this book for six years and finally needed to buy a copy of my own. The writing is clear and rich. Each page is filled with information and insight that I would find hard to live without. I will be reading this book for the rest of my life.

very very interesting book. granted it has its share of grandiose conclusions or assumptions. many rituals and other defining instruments. but the heart and soul of this book is beautiful. it could have been the timing of when i read it. but the one thing i can say, is it got this rat off his wheel. some of her perspectives are just simply beautiful and oh so profound. it left me with the feeling of very benignly putting a match to the american dream. which i did hehehehehe

Not an easy read but wonderful explaination of the American Indian spirituality.

As far as bizarro New Age books go, this one is actually sort of charming.

I was having some very hard times and this book found it's way to me. It held some great wisdom, and provided me with some spiritual healing, a strength and answers that I despirately needed. I have read it several times and have kept it as my "bible" of life. I have recommended it to others. I would like to thank the author.

I have only read half of this book however, I find it beautifully written and easy to understand. I think if all of us followed the advice on creating our own clear mind, the world would look quite different. I would recommend this book to anyone who is looking for a way to better their lives and the world in which we live.

In the union of Mother Earth and Father Sky (the Cosmic Creator, Father in Heaven), man was given a gift - the gift of light, the soul, the breathe... Believe in the unity of our human relations, beyond religious dogma, political institutions and race. Your opennesss of the mind and heart will tune into the teachings of many - through Dhyani Ywahoo as she weaves the teachings of Cherokee, Buddhism and our cosmic relatives. It is vain to think we are the only creations of God in this infinite universe. So isn't it nice to know we have good relations beyond Earth? Through wisdom knowledge and practices of meditation given in this book, the Sacred fire in each of us will truly spark as she sings these words into your heart, mind and spirit - For all of us can learn the mindful ways of the Peacekeeper of good relations - for our home is the Earth and the Stars beyond.

The teachings outlined in this book, especially those concerning the Pleidians, are New Age teachings, not traditional Cherokee teachings. The author combines New Age, Buddhist, and some Cherokee teachings into a collage approach that does little justice to either the Buddhist or the Cherokee traditions. Much of the historical data the author gives is clearly revisionist and just plain wrong. The material on crystals is clearly a New Age overlay.

We often hear about how New Age authors and musicians rip off Indian cultures in order to sell books and music. It seems, in this case, that the opposite has happened: an Indian author is heavily borrowing from New Age ideas to sell her books, thus diluting the traditional teachings for the sake of larger sales.

Pleidians! Actually not as "wierd" as this may seem to some, there ARE traditional teachings within the Tsalagi world view suggesting this stellar point of origin.

I see the book has been criticized because it is not a "traditional Cherokee point of view" and it doesn't represent any currently recognized Cherokee "tribe." I have also heard of Dhyani Ywahoo described being described by one of the former "Chiefs" of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma as "a thorn in the side of the Nation."

Well, can we really expect that all medicine people in the various Native American traditional streams to be museum pieces who never learn anything new or who have very narrow parameters which within they work? In an age where medicine people from different tribes learn from each other and share information and practices (and my intuition says this has always been the case, even if to a lesser extent in the past) isn't it almost inevitable that things will sometimes appear very differently than the practices of the past, even for those working within a tradition? That Ywahoo is not an Oklahoma Cherokee (and never claims to be in the book) is more of an issue of US/Tsalagi Ayeli politics more than anything else.

The book does not purport to be a teaching of any particular tribe as much as a continuation, a building upon, what Ywahoo claims was taught to her within her family tradition...and that family tradition (which is the Cherokee traditional way of looking at things by the way) identifies itself as Tsalagi...that is good enough for me.

The book presents Dhyani Ywahoos way of understanding the traditions she was taught. I have no way of "checking out" the veracity of those claims. There are a lot of helpful teachings in here though, and certainly it is "one way" of understanding some of the Tsalagi traditional teachings.

If you are hoping to work within the traditions of Tsalagi medicine teachings, this is certainly a helpful book in instruction on her perspectives of that tradition. There are definite exersizes she presents in the book that one can "work" with. If you're looking for a more "canonical" approach to Tsalagi tradition, this might not be the best place to look.

I only bought this book because it was listed in the readinglist of two Cherokee books I respect.

"Medicine of theCherokee" J.T. & Michael Garrett

"Walking on the wind" Michael Garrett.

This book is not Cherokee teachings. It is New Age Pap. I was not able to finish it.

Here are some of the things I have problems with in this book.

Page 7: "The New cycle of thirteen heavens began August 30, 1987" Looking at the misery from the first 13 years of the First heaven, I doesn't look like heaven to me.

Page 9: "Tsalagi Elo-our philosophy, our oral tradition - tells how the Principle People, the Ani Yun Wiwa, originated in the star system known as the Pleiades"

Page 16: "The last dragon was seen in the Smoky Mountains in the 1700s"

Page 17: "The Native people, particularly the Tsalagi, had a philosophy and a written language probably before the people of Europe were emerging from their caves" I find this extremely offensive. It is is revisionist history at best. The Cherokee did not have a written language until it was invented by Sequoyah.

Page 25: "My grandmother Nellie Ywahoo was a priestess trained by her father. She lit up the world and now she is a planet; she is an island for those in need."

Page 25: "The fire is the strength of the people, a symbol of the wisdom fire carried here from from the Pleiades." Here she is referring to the two sacred fires of the Cherokee that burn in North Carolina, and Oklahoma.

Page 120: "Just as life's energy moves through holy riverways, the meridians of our bodies" Meridians and Ch'i (QI) is Chinese philosophy not Cherokee.

Page 130: "The wind currents are disturbed by removal of uranium and coal"

Page 142: "The uranium is more beneficialy energetic in the Earth, drawing rains to refill the aquifers."

If you want to spend money on drivel like this; be my guest.

Wah doh Ogedoda