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Navajo medicine covers a range of traditional healing practices of the Indigenous American Navajo people. It dates back thousands of years as many Navajo people have relied on traditional medicinal practices as their primary source of healing .
The rites and prayers in the Blessing Way are concerned with healing, creation, harmony and peace. The song cycles recount the elaborate Navajo creation story (Diné Bahaneʼ). One of the most important Blessing Way rites is the Kinaaldá ceremony, in which a young girl makes the transition to womanhood upon her menarche. [1]
Coyote (Navajo: mąʼii) is an irresponsible and trouble-making character who is nevertheless one of the most important and revered characters in Navajo mythology. [1] Even though Tó Neinilii is the Navajo god of rain, Coyote also has powers over rain. [1] Coyote’s ceremonial name is Áłtsé hashké which means "first scolder". [1]
In keeping with this, the number four also has special significance to the Navajo, exemplified by the importance of the four cardinal directions, four seasons, first four clans, and rituals that include four songs. The restoration of harmony in the body is central to Navajo healing.
Despite his importance in the act of creation, Black God (or Haashch’eezhini) appears very seldom in Navajo ritual. The only sacrament involving Him is the Nightway (or Yeibichai), a nine-day midwinter healing ceremony. [5] On the ninth and final day of the ritual, a man arrives in the guise of the Black God.
Hosteen (spelled "Hastiin" in the Navajo language) Klah was born to Navajo parents Hoksay Nolyae and Ahson Tsosie in 1867 in the Tunicha Valley of New Mexico, USA. He was called "Klah" for being left-handed. Able to avoid residential schooling, Klah learned traditional Navajo spirituality from his uncle, who was a medicine man. [2]
On the battlefield, some have devised makeshift rituals of cleansing and forgiveness. At the end of a brutal 12-month combat tour in Iraq, one battalion chaplain gathered the troops and handed out slips of paper. He asked the soldiers to jot down everything they were sorry for, ashamed of, angry about or regretted.
Navajo sandpainting, photogravure by Edward S. Curtis, 1907, Library of Congress. In the sandpainting of southwestern Native Americans (the most famous of which are the Navajo [known as the Diné]), the Medicine Man (or Hatałii) paints loosely upon the ground of a hogan, where the ceremony takes place, or on a buckskin or cloth tarpaulin, by letting the coloured sands flow through his fingers ...