The Sacred: Ways of Knowledge, Sources of Life

by Peggy V. Beck

Book Overview

An informative introduction to traditional and contemporary religious concepts of North American Indians, and a standard reference for all U.S. and Canadian universities. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0912586249
• ISBN13: 9780912586243
• Release Date: January 1977
• Publisher: Dine College Press
• Length: 393 Pages
• Weight: 1.90 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 8.1" x 11.1"

Customer Reviews

The Sacred: Ways of Knowledge Sources of Life

Book came by date promised. Very clean and even better than stated in ad. Very pleased with purchase. Would purchase from this seller again. A++++

If You Want To Begin To Understand Native American Life-Ways, Past and Present, "The Sacred" Remains

Since I purchased my first copy of "The Sacred: Ways of Knowledge, Sources of Life," I have done all I can to promote the book as the best way to start learning about Native Americans and American Indian Life-Ways. I recommend it to everyone. In 1987 I published the following book review in the prestigious American Indian Quarterly. Some twenty-one years later, by beliefs remain the same, but my hopes that "The Sacred: Ways of Knowledge, Sources of Life" would become a regularly used textbook and standard reference book in libraries remain unfulfilled. And for me the question remains, how do I get people to read this book? I did my part, utilizing it as a textbook for classes I taught at Rocky Mountain College, Northern Montana College, and Carroll College, all here in Montana. When I left Carroll College, the instructor who took my place continued to use "The Sacred" for several years. Since then, however, it has been dropped for more "up to date" books, hoping to reinvent the wheel. Here, then, is my published review: One is seldom afforded the opportunity to read such an exemplary book as Peggy V. Beck and Anna L Walters' "The Sacred: Ways of Knowledge, Sources of Life." As alaudatory contribution towards better literature on American Indians, "The Sacred" serves as both a fundemental resource and a textbook. Although it has been ten years since the book was first published, the book is once more available for classroom use. It is fitting, therefore, that it be re-reviewed in an effort to bring renewed interest in "The Sacred" as both a textbook and a resource. The impetus for writing and publishing "The Sacred" is to provide a textbook that emphasizes "the traditional characteristics of sacred ways in North America" (p. xii; emphasis in the original). However, these traditional values are also viewed by the authors as the foundation for thinking in contemporary American Indian communities. I would say that Beck and Walters have indeed provided an omibus resource, and now it is up to academia to kindle the study of "The Sacred." As a textbook, "The Sacred" is editied into an appropriate, systematic framework that allows the student to move from basic ideas and definitions to contemporary problems and attitudes, building upon itself (the knowledge) to create a holistic understanding of the sources of Indian life. The appropriate use of maps, charts, photographs, and superb illustrations enhances, as well as stimulates, the reader's interest in the topics. Each chapter has a bibliorpahy peculiar to its subject matter, and a more general bibliography is located at the end of the book. The reference section contains a glossary of difficult and/or misconstured terms, a listing of films and filstrips pertinent to each chapter (and where to obtain them), and an index. The text is an integrated combination of reportorial, narrative, biogrphical, and interpretive styles of writing that reveal the attitudes of the authors along woth

The Sacred

A wonderful compilation of Native American Practices and Religion. Interesting to both researchers and Native American practitioners. I would recommend this book to anyone needing insight to a culture that is much older and wiser than the Western European and American cultures.

Info from elsewhere on the internet on this book

Excerpt(s): This textbook is about the sacred ways of Native American people in North America. Through examples from the oral tradition of The People, through interviews, speeches, prayers, songs and conversations, these ways will be explored. The material in this textbook will attempt to describe, not intrude by analysis, the meaning, role and function of sacred traditional practices and observances in the lives of The People, individually and collectively. This textbook will perhaps also help to correct the misinformed views of Native American sacred traditions and observances. These views fill the archives, the libraries, the movies, and the textbooks students use throughout the world. By simply letting The People speak we may come to better understand the profoundness of strength, beauty, and vitality of this dimension of American Indian People. Many Native People find it difficult to explain their ways of life, beliefs, traditions, and observances with the word "religion" Therefore, we tried to find a word that would better describe sources of life and ways of knowledge. For this reason we chose the word sacred which we will define in more detail later on in this chapter. (page 3) The Path of Life The place from which you had started at the beginning seemingly a long time ago, will now appear very close as if you had started but recently. Within several religions around the world is the philosophy or idea that life is envisioned as a path or road. The terrain through which it winds and goes is representative of the pitfalls, or turns of life one must encounter as one travels the "road of life." This is made explicit in the ceremony, like the Mide of the Winnebago. The above quote comes from this ceremony. At the root of Native American aboriginal concepts is the belief that the road conveys an eternal return. There is no end. At death one returns in some way to the beginning. On the path of life, when one has reached old age, one knows what one knew when one was born, but only realizes and acknowledges it for the first time. The concept is at the root of aboriginal beliefs because like the road, the "sacred" had no beginning or end. The road is continuous and never ending. ... In Peyotism, the Peyote "road" is also discussed. An explanation, metaphorically, is given about the altar of a crescent moon. At the west corner, horns to the east, is the crescent altar with a groove or "path" along it from horn to horn, interrupted by a flat space in the center where the "father peyote" is later to rest on springs of sage. The "path" symbolizes man's path from birth (southern tip) to the crest of maturity and knowledge (at the place of the peyote) and thence downward again to the ground through old age to death (northern tip). The priest swung a pointing finger along a narrow groove running through the crest of the altar moon. "You follow life's road,: he explained to me, "then you meet peyote, and your life changes. It has for everyone in

Emtheogens: Professional Listing

"The Sacred Ways of Knowledge" has been selected for listing in "Religion and Psychoactive Sacraments: An Entheogen Chrestomathy." http://www.csp.org/chrestomathy