Rating: 
Summary: Entertaining
Review: As far as bizarro New Age books go, this one is actually sort of charming.
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent reading material
Review: 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.
Rating: 
Summary: These are Cherokee Teachings? I don't think so!
Review: 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
Rating:
Summary: Cherokee Teachings From the Wisdom Fire
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Very Good
Review: Not an easy read but wonderful explaination of the American Indian spirituality.
Rating: 
Summary: roots and runners...
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: roots and runners...
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Information that provides a path to reconnect and live.
Review: The invasion of the Western Hemisphere in the 16th century is for many the beginning of history here as well - history is written by the victor and this is the most readily accessible knowledge in our society. So the first benefit of reading this book is its eye-opening presentation of views rooted in another history - the one that was already well under way in 1492 and which is kept alive in songs, habits and traditions handed down though the years of genocide to this day. Ywahoo & Du Bois have provided a treasure - a book capable of aiding the off-axis "Western" mind in the journey back from a hell created by the "White" or Western world view which views nature and the material world as abstractions to be owned, used and disposed of. What we have forgotten is what the First Nations have always known. The book is medicine against the malaise of debilitating falsehoods that arise in the historic conflict between Western and Native peoples. People, of whatever "race", have the choice to make a life that resonates in harmony with nature - or to identify easily and without reflection with the world of the conquerors (i.e. "the world has always been like this..." -- "Progress is Good, Growth is Good, Man is Destined to Rule the Earth"). But this choice is not "racial" at all - the book drew me away from "us and them" conundrums that confuse through false divisions of race, ethnicity etc. The identity of a person is determined partly by circumstance but ultimately the truth is that the world is literally what we imagine it to be - in the case of "White" culture, a world of scarcity, competition and souless "inanimate raw materials" to be endlessly hunted down and exploited for their "value". The point is that with information such as is found in 'Voices of Our Ancestors' one can further the process of finding within one's self the root identity beneath the victor's false veneer of "historic" identity. One can struggle to remove the blinds and refuse to be identified by one's masters (the victors definately won something) as "White", "Black", "Red", "Brown". This is the path away from the precipice, the collapse of the web of life which is the legacy of a culture whose dreams are lies and in whose thrall I find myself less and less thanks to books like 'Voices of Our Ancestors' P.S. - I have lent two copies which have not returned... if you who reads this find an extra, send it my way :-)
Rating:
Summary: Makes You Sicker than the Flu.........
Review: The novel (and I mean novel as in a fictional story) Voices of Ancestors will make you sick to your stomach if you know anything about Cherokee, or any "Native American," teachings. The author's constant generalizations, like the "Indian voice can bring rain" -or something to that effect, is really weird. Gee, I'm half "Indian" and I can't go outside and make it rain, too bad. But really, the mixture of buddhism, "newage" crystal magic, and minute elements of Cherokee teachings mislead readers into thinking that all the information presented in this book is Cherokee practice. I could not read this entire story because most of it is false and it just made me sad and angry. I can't believe that people can be so gullable and misinformed that they believe that anything that claims to be "Indian" really is. This book should not even be allowed to be sold, that's how false it is. Maybe it is because of books like these that people do not have any clue who the Cherokee, and the hundreds of other nations, really are. So, this author's broad generalizations that all "Indians" are the same, that we are all in harmony with nature, that we all can do this magical stuff just naturally, are sickening and in no way do they represent anyone but the author. I am an individual with free will (in other words I am human), nature does not rule my life (Indians have difficulty finding time to recycle too), and I do not have special magical powers that allow me to control my environment or the natural world. Ywahoo is a fruad, and you can find proof of this. I am not going to say thank you, just regretfully a reader. P.S. -It is impossible to rate this book as zero stars, but if I could I would.
Rating:
Summary: Knowledge full of Wisdom for ALL Peacekeepers of Earth...
Review: 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.
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