Navajo Beliefs
The most important Navajo deity is Changing Woman, who was born in Dinetah and who there created the first corn and the first Navajo people. Changing Woman was reared by First Man and First Woman who marked her transition to womanhood with the first girls' puberty ceremony, called a kinaalda. Changing Woman, who is reborn each spring before maturing and then dying the following winter, represents change and rebirth to the Navajo people.
The Diyin Diné'e, or Holy People, are other important supernatural beings in the Navajo belief system. These beings live in the underworld and, though not human, have the power of speech and live and act like people.
Though they cannot be seen on earth in their human forms, they often inhabit material and living objects such as mountains, plants, and animals. The Diyin Diné'e are for the most part indifferent to human lives, but they may be persuaded to come to their aid through certain ceremonies.
The Holy People are thus neither conceived of as innately good or bad but, because the underworld in which they live is associated with disorder, violence and witchcraft, contact with them is perceived to be dangerous.
Another important concept to the Navajo is that of hózhó. Although there is no single English word that encompasses its meaning, hózhó roughly means something along the lines of beauty, harmony, goodness, and order.
The world that Changing Woman was born into is said to have been one of hózhó, and it is this state that Navajo strive to reach and recreate.
Drawing of a Navajo Diyen by Acee Blue Eagle
Source - http://sirismm.si.edu/naa/74-7/08776400.jpg
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