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Navajo religion medicine men - page 2 of 2

All rituals are passed down orally, and many are lengthy and extremely complex. Because of this, few medicine men know more than two or three complete ceremonies. A specific medicine man is selected to perform almost solely on the basis of his training in the ceremony required to heal the patient's particular affliction. Involved are chants, songs, prayers, long lectures, dances, the use of sweat baths, herbs, emetics, prayer sticks, assorted fetishes, and, of course, sandpaintings. The medicine man's relative artistic ability is of minor importance because the ceremonial sandpainting is not regarded as the creation of art. Rather, the ceremony is regarded as a collection of sacred symbols which can help restore a healthy relationship between a man and his total physical and spiritual world.

While the lengthy sings go on, the medicine man performs an extremely complicated ritual with his bundle of herbs, prayer sticks, pollen, emetics, at times, and sand and sandstone for the dry paintings. The following, taken from a Beautyway ceremony, sung to the medicine man's ministrations, has only perplexity for the uninitiated:

For the Navajos, however, every line of a sing is important. Under the two categories of ceremonies, Blessingway and Evilway, there are far too many ceremonies for any one medicine man (singer) to know all of them. Most medicine men specialize in one to six or seven ceremonies, and rarely will a medicine man specialize in more than eight. Everything has to be learned by memory. It takes years to learn the songs or chants, the myths and origins of each song, each ceremonial ritual, and the design and interpretation of sand paintings--if they are used. Learning is accomplished through apprenticeship to noted medicine men. After their education, medicine men have to be ceremonially ordained for each ceremony they perform.

• Navajo Creation
• Navajo ceremonies
• Navajo medicine men
• Navajo ceremonial sandpaintings
• Navajo sacred lands

Navajo religion medicine men - page 1

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