GO BACK & UNDO

Sankofa bird

Ghana is home to the Akan people, whose philosophy and way of life gave birth to the idea of Sankofa. Sankofa  means “return to the source and fetch it”, “look back and walk forward”and “the wisdom of learning from the past to build for the future”.

 ”It is often associated with the proverb, “Se wo were fi na wosankofa a yenkyi,” which translates “It is not wrong to go back for that which you have forgotten.” Inherent in the understanding of Sankofa is the belief:

“It is not taboo to return and fetch it when you forget.

“You can always undo your mistakes.”

The idea of Sankofa is literally embedded in the culture of the Akan, for it is found within their Adinkra writing system. The Adinkra is a series of symbols used to communicate the Akan’s organizing logic or spirituality of their culture.

The website www.allafricawithin.com states that the literal translation of Sankofa is:

“The symbol is based on a mythical bird that flies forwards with its head turned backwards. This reflects the Akan belief that the past serves as a guide for planning the future, or the wisdom in learning from the past in building the future.

The Akan believe that there must be movement with times but as the forward march proceeds, the gems must be picked from behind and carried forward on the march.

In the Akan military system, this symbol signified the rearguard, the section on which the survival of the society and the defense of its heritage depended.”  ©VisionThought 2010. All Rights Reserved.




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AFRICAN TALES: the price paid

tattooed babe in a chair was all he saw and the only words out her mouth devalued what could have been the gold of her soul. Without the tutelage of soul and spirit a boy would never see the woman if he was taught about sex through the practice of gang rape. It is a troubling kind of mentality that reeks within the bodies of many young Black and Hispanic men across the United States. It is an ingrained process in many neighborhoods. It isn't mentioned in polite and wealthy circles, or the upper, or middle class neighborhoods. It should because many of the better educated families are losing the mentality of their sons to this notion of women as objects; as pussy for the taking.

Oblivious to the touch of opulence, and arrogance is the history of a people who have struggled to reshape family as an African people. But the centuries have not been kind, or favorable, or had merciful understanding of what was created within the souls of Black People fighting for survival and dignity. For complex reasons the 21st century is playing out a frightening story in African-American communities and Native American and Hispanic communities across the country. At the core of the dramas acting out in homes and on streets and in prisons the loss of the ability to ground one's self into the spiritual tradition of their ancestors through acts of terror fled the consciousness of the generation.

There are profound ways to shift consciousness, but there are employed actors in the game of terror that have effectively shut down the creative and magical process in children that makes adult mentorship programs too hard to assimilate into the culture of pain, and denial, and fear, and loss. There are words, powerful words that can shift direction and awaken the creative abilities to undo, to unlearn the craftsmanship of dying, and Death, but after thirty some years of attack upon the minds of colored peoples the words of say an Albert Einstein (1879-1955) are too abstract for a common mind to grasp.

Einstein said, "Time and space are modes by which we think and not conditions in which we live."

There is a lot in there. There is a path to freedom in those words, but people holding on to their tragedies can't hear the deeper teachings that lead out and away from the crudeness. It is hard, and I understand. I also understand that should a Messiah come he would be automatically minimized by the nature of belief that dominates and oppresses the minds of the oppressed.

These are my words. I am Gregory E. Woods a Keeper of Stories.
8.30.13

Dreadlocked beauty of a Fierce woman is a reminder of the heritage, the strong lineage of holy people, mothers, warriors, inventors, strategists, fighters, fathers, philosophers, our ancestral knowledge, the artistic traditions of the soul of the various tribes we came from, and the genius of the spirit of who  we are and who we were as a People. Who we will become is the product of our thoughts, the depth and meaning of our intent, the breath of our ancestors, and our definitions of power, where we stand, and how we envision the futures. It is through our loins in the solitude of turmoil and the relieve of quieter times we can speak to our grandchildren's children.

This has always been our way of surviving, and living in the depth of the moments we have.

 - Alowan Chanteh Inyan Wichasha
8.3.13

tattooed bodies of 2 Black women with big assess was all he talked about. Graham never spoke of them by their names. "They was his bitches!" he claimed.

Little Mike was 12. Only twelve and he looked up to Graham without balanced questions. That was the shame of it and that was the end of it for Don. Don was a quiet man who lived by himself near where all the action took place in this part of South Chicago. He worked as a plummer on the Saturdays his dad needed help, but most of his money was made working for the city government, and his side jobs as a photographer. It was the photography gig that got him involved with Mark and Mike.

Don had taken some pictures of a fight near Mr. Lee's restaurant that sold handsomely to a couple of publications. But, during the development process of his film he noticed the two boys and the delight in their eyes watching Graham brutally beat a woman in front of her children. That stirred Don into rage and later action. He took time to find out about the two boys. Got to know some of their family members, and tried to build a friendship with the boys. It was too hard. Little Mike loved the street life, and was suspicious of Don's intention. He was afraid of him. Thought he was a fag of some sort. It was this perception of Mike's that got Don on Graham's target list. He didn't like what fags had done in his family.

That was two years before Mike shot Don in the head and was initiated into the gang that later turned him out when he tried to defend the life of a woman who used to baby sit him. The gang thought he was soft, and didn't, as they repeatedly said, "Didn't give a fuck!" about the woman. To them she had pussy to be taken, and everyone knew she had no Old Man, and no gang claimed her. She was a working stiff trying to make a living and get out duh 'hood. That's what Rodriquez said after his turn in her.

That was the comment that released Little Mike's rage, and got him shot in the head by his boys. That was the shot that rang out with the truth the neighborhood taught him to scorn and ignore. - Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories 8.30.13

"We should all start to live before we get too old. Fear is stupid. So are regrets." 

- Marilyn Monroe

Adriana Lima, international model

August 26, 2013

Cameron 5 

"There is always hope of redemption!! With breath there is Life. Within Life there is hope to remember and reclaim!" - Dawn Wolf, Keeper of the Drum

Teresa Ware Moody & her husband in church!!!!

Taraji P. Henson in a sequined pink & leopard Basler gown with plunging neckline is amongst the best of our best. Our best is not good enough until our best is not the exception. - Dawn Wolf, Keeper of Stories 

Riddle to Question

Robert's Black Heritage Page

Sade in a black dress accented by cowrie shell necklace 

"Being an exquisite beauty is it different from having exquisite characteristics that endear one to another, or are the two the same?" 

The answer to the riddle is in the questions to one's life. The questions one's life stirs and creates in another's is testament to the vitality and validity of one's life. Any answer is an abstract way of measuring what cannot be measured, and touching what touches the soft inner fabric of perception(s)!" - Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories 11.4.13

... face of a Black woman is impeccable. 

 Looking into the face of a Black woman fully coiffed extends the legendary proportions of the mythical edge Black women hold amongst women of the world, who stood and still stand in awe of the entrance Black women make into the worlds of women the world wide. Terror, or fear is not associated with African women, nor follows them like terror has followed white women around the globe.

The stories white men created to disassemble the integrity and the enormous energies and influential histories of Africans has long proceeded our entrance into the work place, people's lives, and the countries they live in, but the depth of the spiritual powers of African peoples throughout our Diaspora is obvious, active, and cannot be contained, or truly suppressed; not even by African people themselves. Such mysterious wisdom, capabilities in the realms of talent, access to Realms of Ancestral powers, potential and the old powers of our spiritual teachings, knowledge, and spells alive within our DNA, the marrow of our bones, musics, and our tribal bloodlines creating substance in the worlds spun from the Word.

When Bob Marley sang, "... there is a natural mystic flowing through the air..." he was talking to the collective African spirit about the African spirit echoing the sound of the Gathering of Ancestors from all the people upon the Earth, our Mother! - Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories 11.7.13

CROSSING LINES of thought

THE REPTILLION DNA MIXED INTO THE HUMANS DNA : what this means?

Many have tried to Warn. they have Tried to Show what this means. the Fail, in Egypt, that the PHAROH holds is a CLUE. the 'SNAKE' an the KUNDALINI. YOGA was Developed for the Express Purpose of Breaking the Grip the Matrix has ON US from our Nervous System. sometimes i wonder if the Brain was a ByProduct - after all, it is split, NOT whole, and it is just full of grey matter. the Egyptians had no traces of Brain in their Mummies. Trepination was an Obsession with certain Mystics... there are cases of people who lived fully functional lives, who upon Autopsy after Death, it was discovered had Encephalitis - water INSTEAD of Brain. one was a Cambridge Mathematician. YOGA is literally Translated as 'YOKE.'

The Bible is the Book of the Sect of Beings who Still consider themselves as GODS. - Ad Man

a SHIFT

Control the images raise the child:

from gallery of Auset Queen

“Starting children young with a sense of the initiatory process of African and indigenous spirituality feeds the growth to Maturity with something tangible that consumerism takes away from the first drop of its elixir.” – Alowan ChantehInyan Wichasha 1.9.13

AFRICAN LESSON in life

"How I knew, grasped and internalized this as a child I couldn't tell you, but understanding it as a little Indian boy, and later as an African teenager shadowed my consciousness. In church I was unable to pray with my eyes closed. I was always expecting missionaries, and other white people to come and snatch me away, or someone else. So, I was on guard. Someone had to be vigilant I thought. The practice carried on deep and long into my adulthood, and only a few times in this century have I been able to consciously shake the habit in public.

This is a deep testament to the power of our past." - Dawn Wolf, Keeper of Stories 2.8.13

Found this little story and illustration on Facebook.
Tribal Unity 4 Liberation

CELEBRATION of sepia

gallery of Sanya Sinclair

BLACK ASS

A Black woman’s ass is the asset that capsized the ships of many a European man. His fall for the body of African women changed the course of their history and altered the history of others around the globe. For every vision in fashion for white women was the vision their men had of African women’s bodies, principally their large round bottoms, and the shape of their bodies long revered as the form of Godliness, and the shape of the Mother.

So highly esteemed is the Goddess campaigns to woe her have fallen, out of weakness, into coarse elements for lack of eloquence, and style. It is not only men who've lost the way to critique themselves introspectively, and failed to provide a living space for the Goddess women have failed to grasp the significance of who she is in the struggles for survival. As a spiritual focus tool an African woman’s naked body is sufficient under the tutelage of an Elder.

It is spiritual work to raise the conscious level of men and women and the tools are as varied as the needs for validation. – Dawn Wolf, Keeper of Stories 1.13.12

a vision in the water

“The unique function of Oshun within the Orisha Awo (Mysteries of Nature) is to provide the spark of passion that attracts the Forces of expansion, and contraction to each other. This attraction occurs on all levels of existence from the polarities, which guide the formation of planets to the attraction between men and women. Oshun as the source of passion is the Goddess of the Erotic, and according to Ifá the power of the erotic motivates the Orisha in every realm of Being…”

– Awo Fá’lokun Fataunmbi, author,

OSHUN: Ifá and the Spirit of the River page 3