Indigenous Beliefs
It is all in Beauty,
it is all in Beauty,
hozhoni, hozhoni, hozhoni, hozhoni.
The feet of the earth are my feet;
It is all in Beauty, it is all in Beauty, hozhoni, hozhoni.
The strength of the earth is my strength;
The thoughts of the earth are my thoughts;
The voice of the earth is my voice; It is all in Beauty, it is all in
Beauty.
The down-feathers of the earth are my down-feathers;
All that belongs to the earth belongs to me.
All that surrounds the earth surrounds me;
I, I am the sacred words of the earth;
It is all in beauty, it is all in Beauty,
It is all in beauty, it is all in Beauty.
Hozhoni is a Dine word meaning beauty, balance, and harmony; this is part of a chantway ceremony. These ceremonies can be abbreviated in 2 or 5 day versions and last for 9 days in complete form.
Indigenous people worship women and the force of life and creation that they carry within them. We also revere water, which is the source of life and sustains life.
The womb is the first medicine bundle; and childbirth is the holiest of all ceremonies. The child is a sacred creation. It is pure.
Mother Earth is the great life giver: To wrong her is the ultimate sin because it falls upon the shoulders of all her children for generations to come. To help her is the greatest good; no kindness can reach as many people over as many years; that blessing touches all life and all things that support life.
The Great Mystery sang all beings into existence, and the Spirit entering as holy breath lives within all; our breath unites us with all beings that breathe on the earth.
Water
Water is the greatest of all medicines, nothing lives without it. Sea water—or water of a similar salinity and PH—is found within eggs of birds and reptiles, and in the womb of animals and humans. Our tears, our blood, our sweat, and the water within our cells, are this same sea water. We carry this water inside us; we carried it forth from the sea. We were born in the watery womb of a woman just as we were once born in the Ocean womb of the earth.
All existence circles around the creative act like the planets circle around the sun. The creation and birth of life is the first and ‘most holy’ ceremony. The womb is the first medicine bundle.
Born of the Original Fire was hydrogen; this first and original element is the substance that is in our water today. Water goes back to the primordial birth of the universe: Unchanged, hydrogen atoms today are the same hydrogen atoms that existed then.
The water bird is very sacred to native people. It can dive into the deep waters below, or ascend into the distant heavens above when it flight; both places lie beyond human habitation. Shamans or medicine people are the only ones who can regularly transcend the human condition and its limitations. The first art found in Europe was a mammoth bone carved cormorant, a special kind of water bird. It has a long neck like the snake.
(To the Hopi, Huichol, and certain other tribes) snakes were believed to live deep within the earth at winter time and move out into the water at will. Snakes move like streams of water. Being akin to water, snakes represent vitality of life or life force, and are associated with streams and rain. Rattlesnakes (to be avoided, not killed), are related to lightening (Navajo), and fire (Huichol). In Indigenous Europe, snakes are representative of the umbilicus as well as water; and are believed to guard the early life of the fetus as well as newborn babies and infants. In older rural parts of Native Europe food is sometimes placed outdoors to honor them and thank them.Water birds have snake-like features as well as bird features, and make a habitation of the world’s oceans. They are able to locate things deep in the dark depths of these waters; similar to the ability of medicine people who enter the inaccessible realms of ecstasy and of the unconsciousness of humans. Certain shamans and medicine people rely on the ability of water birds to traverse the hidden landscapes of the underworld; there they locate lost and hidden aspects of the soul, travel to the world of the dead, and cure physical and spiritual maladies. The cormorant figurine, discovered in Europe some 35,000 years ago, is an emblem of prehistoric shamanism according to archeologists. Water is central to most all ceremonies of the indigenous cultures of Earth. Water is life.
A Huichol Creation Story involving Water
According to the Huichol Indians of central Mexico, the Universe began in the womb of the Great Goddess, Tacustsi Nakawe. Within her Being, first of a spark, fire issued forth as creation. Her womb filled with cosmic waters. When the earth was originally created, fire appeared as the prime, initiating power. The Earth was only molten fire. The Creator Goddess appeared in human form on the Earth. She used her staff to distance the Earth from the sun so that it could cool and life would not burn. She gauged the distance so that it would neither freeze nor incinerate.
Waters covered the Earth next. The Earth was still too hot for the formation of oceans to occur and the waters moved as clouds of steam over the face of the Earth. Above there was nothing but water; below only fire. Eventually the Earth cooled enough and the ocean was formed. There was only Ocean at this time. No land had yet appeared.
Tacutsi Nakawe then imbued the waters with germs of life. The ocean germinated and life thrived. This life was unorganized and ambiguous. It could not develop into complex life forms that we observe today. It had no true form.Her son, Kayumari, the man who is also a deer, entered the world of time to bestow organization and order upon this life. As he was eternal, he had to accept to die when he entered time. Time has a beginning and end. He entered the world in human flesh although he was an eternal god. When he died, he returned to the eternal world again. He left his body as the deer and the corn, and his mind as a sacred desert cactus. The Huichol consider deer the body of the holy man Kayumari. They use deer and corn ceremonially; with similitude to the Christian Eucharist.
Fire then began to arise again. From within the center of the Earth, the fire increased. The temple floor of the Ocean Goddess, Tatei Haramara, began to lift. It rose high out of the waters to become land. The Earth, Tatei Yurinaka, is therefore the twin sister of the Ocean goddess. She began as the temple floor of the Ocean.
Now that Kayumari has ordained order upon created life, complex higher life forms organized themselves, developed and grew in size. Eventually this life began to crawl up out of the waters of the Ocean home, and moved onto land. Resultantly, humans are evolved creatures, as a result of Kayumari entering the creation and blessing it with his power. This is true for all terrestrial life forms.
This is a brief overview of a version of Huichol creation. There is an enormous amount of narrative involved in its entirety. These creation stories are chanted in poetic form over many nights of ceremony. The chanting lasts most of the duration of each night; which is some seven or more days long for one of the ceremonies. The Huichol are over 18,000 years old and have changed minimally over that period of time. They still maintain the Paleolithic hunter gatherer lifestyle. They developed the earliest corn about 9,000 years ago. Every year the Huichol Indians go on pilgrimage. They must visit the Sea as a part of this pilgrimage, and leave prayer wands, candles, beautiful yarn paintings and other gifts in the ocean at that time. They know the Ocean, Tatei Haramara, as the Originator of all life on Earth. As in the belief system of all indigenous people, water is a most sacred element to the Huichol peoples.
