Star upon the Road of Life ¾
Light from a Navajo Indian Shaman
Karl
W. Luckert
This is a revised version of the essay published by Ernst Benz and Karl W.
Luckert -- "The Road of Life:
Report of a Visit by a Navajo Seer" -- in
Ethnomedizin II, 3/4 (1973).
When
on the evening of
Centuries ago, when the Navajo Indians were still hunters, their shamans divined the whereabouts of game animals; they also divined which animals or gods might have cast vengeful spells and caused certain people to become ill. After they had diagnosed an illness, the archaic shamans arranged for a reconciliation of their patients with the offended Holy-people (gods) whom they had discovered to be the cause. In contrast to the early shamans, a contemporary Navajo diviner no longer serves a society of hunters and gatherers. His fellow shepherds call upon him, to retrieve lost or stolen livestock and other goods, to find lost children, and to locate water sources in arid lands. He is also consulted to determine whether one's wife might have become guilty of adultery. For some time now the primary effort of Navajo diviners has been directed to the diagnosis of human illnesses.
The diviner's ability to see hidden things is considered a gift of the gods or Holy-people. Presently it has been bestowed on only a few Navajo people. Beyond possessing the initial "gift" or aptitude, these people achieve clairvoyance by one of several methods. Kluckhohn and Leighton list stargazing, chewing a narcotic plant, hand-trembling, and listening.(1) While hand-trembling is perhaps the most common method used today in Navajoland, stargazing is still being practiced. The apparently rare traditional method of chewing the Datura plant has found an echo in the widespread Peyote cult. Some spiritual leaders of that cult divine the causes of certain conditions and situations with the help of their chosen divine plant-person, Peyote. Intense listening to the Wind-people and to other divine messengers appears to have been abandoned as some Navajo diviners have complained about the interfering noises from automobiles and airplanes. The "star-gazing" method of Mr. H involves reading his diagnosis from quartz crystals in his hogan, under a starry sky. The answers come to him in a mild state of trance, induced by introductory prayer chants. In addition, he orients himself and his patients along a "Road of Life" within the abstract miniature world of his dry-painting.(2)
Traditionally, in Navajo culture, the agent
of an illness has been discovered as having been some offended god or
Holy-person. Accordingly, the diviner prescribed the proper remedy -- a specific reconciliation ceremony in honor of that particular divine
person. But if the illness was caused by ghosts or by witches, reconciliation
with them was out of the question. These evil nuisances had to be confronted
and driven away. In these situations different types of ceremonies, rites of
exorcism, were required. Then in competition with, and in adaptation to, the
This high degree of ritualization among Navajo healers resulted in a trend toward specialization. While most ceremonial performances got into the hands of specialized practitioners, of so-called "singers" or "medicine men," the shamanic gift of divination survived among a smaller number of diagnosticians and healers. Mr. H appears to be a rare example in that he has succeeded to combine his role as an archaic visionary with the practice of some elaborate healing ceremonials. In addition, he even has managed to include in his practice a few products that can be obtained without prescription from Anglo-American pharamacies.
One thing was unique, however, on that spring
evening in March 1972. The seer's first patient that night was a historian of
religions from the
That afternoon, when we first met the seer,
he was quite confident about his abilities. People are coming to him from far
away. Here was a patient from
The sun disk dipped behind the reddened horizon. The first stars had appeared on the now dark-blue sky. A lantern illuminated the interior of the spacious hogan where the seer began his preparations for the diagnosis. From a converted oil drum a fire roared into the stove-pipe upward through the roof. With help from his youngest son the seer constructed a dry-painting. For that purpose to the east, between the seer and his patient, a heap of brown sand was leveled about one meter in diameter (see Figure 1).
Unto the smooth surface, from between their
fingers, the old man and his youngest son trickled colorful sands and thereby
produced designs of amazing uniformity and precision (see Figure 2). The round
plot before us represented the patient's world -- also the
world of his friend who meanwhile had come to be regarded as a co-patient.
Eight rainbows and four mountains define this microcosm. In the east was the
large oval hillock which represented
The system of colors used in this nocturnal
divination rite is somewhat different from the customary Navajo preference.
Ordinarily, white is associated with east and black with north. The present
reversal of these directional colors is nevertheless easily explained on hand
of the seer's primary symbol, the Road of Life. A straight white stripe was
spread to extend from the yellow
Situated along the Road of Life, the First
Quartz Crystal was to capture and reveal the cause that earlier had made the
patient ill. The spotted stone pillar, further down the road, served as a
"control," namely, to confirm the indications of the First Quartz
Crystal. Somewhere between this Stone Pillar and the Second Quartz Crystal the
patient happened to be presently situated. Thus, from the patient's
perspective, the crystal at the foot of
The Stone Arrow-heads in the east, and the
Painted Arrow-heads between the cardinal points, were all placed to guard
against various kinds of evil influences. Soft Prayer Feathers from under the
shoulders of an eagle were stuck into the sand, one each on top of the
southern, western, and northern mountains; two such prayer feathers were placed
upon
The star that is superimposed at the center of the patient's world is especially worthy of note. This five-pointed star does not fit the Navajo/Pueblo four-directional world. The diagnostician explicitly identified this feature as the Star of Bethlehem: "Three shepherds saw it, at Christmas. At Christmas Christ came. Later he died. We the Navajo people are shepherds also. We live under the star. This is how it all belongs together." When asked about whether his grandfather told him this, the man admitted that he had come to recognize this by himself. "So it is. I just know that it is so."
It is rather interesting to see how the Navajo/Pueblo surface world, into which according to their mythological traditions the human race has emerged from Mother Earth through a central hole -- the hole that is depicted at the center of many traditional dry-paintings -- has now through a glimpse of the Star of Bethlehem become oriented toward heaven. In direct opposition to traditional Navajo eschatological beliefs that are oriented northward, the human destiny now is understood as moving in the direction of sunrise and as going upward and living among the stars. Here, indeed, appears a natural homespun point of contact, if not a transition, between the Navajo religious awareness and the encroaching Christian religion.
An important question remains to be answered
regarding this Star of Bethlehem. Has the Navajo seer introduced this feature
into his microcosm especially for the sake of a patient whom he might have
presumed to be a Christian? The temptation for this explanation lies near. But,
upon a closer reflection it seems certain that the two dry-painters, old Mr. H
and his youngest son, have put together the design in a way where each has
added smoothly and quickly his accustomed portion. It was obvious from their manner
of performance that a Star of Bethlehem had been in their dry-painting many
times before. After all, the ceremony for which these artifacts were made and
sanctified is known as the
During the making of the dry-painting Mr. H was willing to explain every feature of the design. But then the solemn diagnosis began. Each participant was given an Eagle-feather Bundle to hold in his left hand and a Quartz Crystal to hold in his right hand. The diagnostician sang four songs by which he called upon some of the Holy-people and pleaded with them for divine clairvoyance. The feathers and the quartz crystals in the hands of the participants helped to integrate each of them into the cosmos of the dry-painting where similar sacred objects had been placed. Like seeks like; it resonates and unites with it.
The patient and the co-patient were asked to
blow the Eagle-bone Whistle which had been resting north of
Subsequently, the older son of the diviner
scraped a quartz crystal against the Grinding Stone. The resulting quartz
powder he then applied to the feet, legs, chest, neck, and head of both the
patient and co-patient. The meaning is clear: Like combines with like; and in
this manner the past life of the patient was reflected, like unto a radar
screen, pictorially into the First Quartz Crystal along the patient's Road of
Life in the dry-painting. When the quartz crystal then received the
one-directional beam of a flashlight, three spherically shaped images could be
seen in it. For verification, similar spherical images were detected at the
surface of the stone pillar, down the road. The diagnostician suspected three
steel-helmeted soldiers. Had the patient been a soldier? Yes. Had he been in
combat and killed an enemy? No, he was a chaplain in the Wehrmacht during World
War II, on the campaign into
Failure at diagnosing the cause would have presented no problem had the patient been a Navajo man who was thinking straight in Navajo categories. A Navajo patient would have made every effort to think of an occasion when possibly he could have touched or had contact with the neck of a corpse. As it was, the seer knew from our introduction that his patient was a German. He could estimate his age. And thanks to war movies that Americans and Navajo people saw during World War II, Germans in Navajo language have come to be known as The Steelhelmeted Ones. In addition, ghost trouble, especially that which is caused by enemies whom one had killed in hostile action, has in the course of Navajo history frequently been diagnosed as a cause of illness. The proper treatment would have been a lengthy exorcistic Ghostway ceremony that would have dispelled the evil influence of the vengeful dead. For such a lengthy ceremony the patients did not have the time. Moreover, an herb that was needed for this ceremony was still dormant and would have appeared only weeks later. So for lack of having the correct measures immediately available, the seer recommended for temporary relief some things that were easier to get -- castor oil and gray colored lozenges to reduce pain in the patient's throat.
Reading from the Second Quartz Crystal along
the Road of Life, below
This is what has happened in March of 1972.
Meanwhile, both men have indeed bought new cars, inasmuch as such machines wear
out a lot faster than human bones. The hair of the primary patient got whiter
while he continued to live as an emeritus professor at the
Endnotes
- Clyde Kluckhohn and Dorothea Leighton, The Navaho (Garden City: Doubleday and Co.) 1962 revised edition, p. 210.
- The customary designation "sand-painting" is misleading in that actually nothing is "painted." Sands, powders, pollen, and corn meal are trickled upon a smooth background of ordinary sand.
- Kluckhohn and Leighton 1962, p. 229. Note: In light of my own work, of having recorded a full nine-night version of Coyoteway in 1974, I am inclined to evaluate this statement by Kluckhohn and Leighton as being somewhat exaggerated. In performing a Navajo healing ceremony there is some room for improvizations.
- Leland C. Wyman, "Navajo Ceremonial System," in Handbook of North American Indians, Volume 10 Southwest, Washington D.C., the Smithsonian Institution, 1983.
Suggestions
for Additional
Armer, Laura A., 1931. "Navajo Sandpainters." American Anthropologist 33:657.
Haile, Father Berard, 1940. "A Note on the Navajo Visionary," American Anthropologist 42:359.
Haile, Father Berard, 1947. Starlore among
the Navajo.
Hill, W. W., 1935. "The Handtrembling Ceremony of the Navaho." El Palacio 38: 56-68.
Kluckhohn,
Luckert, Karl W. The Navajo Hunter
Tradition. 1975.
Luckert, Karl W. and Johnny C. Cooke, Navajo
Interpreter. Coyoteway, a Navajo Holyway Healing Ceremonial, 1979.
Tucson/Flagstaff,
Morgan, W. 1931, "Navajo Treatment of Sickness: Diagnosticians." American Anthropologist 33:390-405.
Newcomb, Franc J., 1938. "The Navajo Listening Rite." El Palacio 45:46-49
Wyman, Leland C., 1936. "Navajo Diagnosticians," American Anthropologist 38:236-246.
..... Southwest Indian Drypaintings,
1983.
....."Navajo Ceremonial System," in
Handbook of North American Indians, Volume 10 Southwest,
Back to the Luckert-bibliography