The Navajo House Blessing Ceremony
Written for Final Paper: Ritual, University of Minnesota, 1992.

In the Navajo creation story, First Man and First Woman come up to the
surface of the earth, the fifth world, from the underworld and create a
young man and woman. This young couple was made from "the four directions,
from the waters, mountains, plants--in fact from the cosmos" (McAllester
20). The couple was then told by First Man that they were to be the source
of all life, but that they would never be seen on earth again. He gathered
them up in his medicine bundle, concealing them forever and created the
first hogan, or tradition Navajo dwelling. This structure was then
blessed. The earth surface people, the ones who would inhabit the earth,
were taught by First Man that each new hogan that was built, must be
blessed.

The Navajo House Blessing Ceremony is a ritual; a physical component of
their religious system. Rituals in turn, according to Emile Durkheim, are
actions that help to preserve order within the social sphere. They act as
a reaffirmation of the social group; they strengthen it and hold it
together. In the case of the individual, a ritual or ceremony serves to
initiate the outsider into that collective order; the uninitiated is
dangerous and outside of the status quo. Another sociologist, Arnold Van
Gennep saw rites, particularly rites of passage as transitions within an
individuals life that are marked by specific ceremonies that serve to
initiate and make that individual suited for their new position within
their society.

In this paper, I want to focus on the Navajo House Blessing Ceremony and
its place within the Navajo community. To do this it is necessary to
quickly discuss rites and their place within a cultures' religion.
Specifically, I want to look at two sociological theories regarding rites
and ceremonies and how these two doctorines can be applied to the Navajo
House Blessing Ceremony. They are Emile Durkheim's interpretation of rites
and ceremonies within a social group and Arnold Van Gennep's definitions
of the rites of passage.

Durkheim divided most everything religious into two categories: the sacred
and the profane. The sacred can be defined as objects and people who are
outside of the sphere of everyday life; they are dangerous to people and
objects within everyday life because of the power that they possess. The
profane is everyday life; a village is profane, a boat is profane, but a
church is sacred. When a girl is being initiated and she's in the process
of going through puberty rites, she is sacred; at the conclusion of these
rites she must be made then be made profane. A sacred object is too
powerful for everyday life and needs to be made profane before it can be
brought into the realm of everyday life. A person, on the other hand, can
be made sacred so that he or she can enter the world of the sacred. Shamen
will purify themselves by fasting, sweating, performing certain rites so
that they too, are sacred when they enter the world of the sacred to
achieve their vision. When they are to re-enter the world of the profane,
they will again perform certain rites to make themselves akin to this
environment; so that they are not a danger to anyone within the profane
world.

In the case of rituals, Durkheim felt that they were enacted to achieve
order in the social sphere. Rituals acted as a reaffirmation of the social
group; they straightened a society and helped to hold it together. He felt
that the individual was also dangerous because he was outside of the
accepted, collective order. The uninitiated or the outsider goes against
the established order and threatens that order. Rites, then, are the
necessary vehicles to maintain the individuals place within the status
quo. For example:

Everything is in representations whose only object
can be to render the mythical part of the clan present
to the mind. But the mythology of a group is the
system of beliefs common to the group. The traditions whose
memory it perpetuates express the way in which society
represents
man and the world; it is a moral and a cosmology as well
as a history. So the rite serves and can serve only to
sustain the vitality of these beliefs, to keep them from being
effaced from memory and, in sum, to revivify the most
essential
elements of the collective consciousness. Through it, the
group periodically renews the sentiment which it has of itself
and its unity; at the same time, individuals are
strengthened in their social natures (Durkheim 420).


The above passage is from Emile Durkheim's 1915 book, The Elementary
Forms
of the Religious Life. In it, he discusses the function of commemorative
rites of the Warramunga of Australia. This observation can be just as
easily applied to the rites of the Navajo. The Navajo hogan, when it is
first constructed or is to be reinhabited is sacred; it is dangerous. The
House Blessing ritual is performed to make the hogan suitable for everyday
life and at the same time, reaffirms the Navajo social structure.

Gladys Reichard states that the Navajo religion, "must be considered as a
design in harmony, a striving for rapport between man and every phase of
nature, the earth and the waters under the earth, the sky and the land
beyond the sky, and of course the earth and everything on it" (Reichard,
1977, 14). This rapport is achieved and retained by the control that the
Earth Surface People have been given by the Holy People. This control
comes through the knowledge of rites and ceremonies that can serve as
protective, preventative, and/or curative agents.

The Navajo House Blessing ceremony is a protective and preventative rite.
It is based upon the original blessing which First Man gave to the first
hogan, which was shaped like an inverted cone, with a covered entry way;
it has been described as a "four-forked-beams-hogan" (McAllester, 13). The
blessing done by First Man was described by Leland C. Wyman in his 1970
account, Blessingway:

"These [main poles] of the hog along the east, the south,west, north, four
in number, will be the important ones", was said. "And the one in the east
is going to be picked up first, the south one next, the west one is
between the others, the north on being last in line. And on the east side
two stones are placed for its pole, by which that side may be recognized,"
was said.
And this person who directs it will speak of it as it goes along.
So it was decided. Right along these points the line of songs runs. "And
when set there will be a prayer said with it", was announced. "There will
be a prayer with the one at the east, at the south, the west, and the
north", was said. "There will be prayer with the fillers put on them and a
prayer with [soil] put on its surface", was said. (Wyman, 112-113).

Durkheim felt that a rite that is prescribed by a social groups ancestors
is commemorative and carries with it the authority of tradition, which he
saw ultimately as a social dynamic. This tradition was important to him,
not solely for the effects that the rite may produce, but that it
established and reinforced the normal social order of the group. The House
Blessing Ceremony, from a Durkheimian point of view, is first performed to
retain the normal social order, and any preventative or protective
benefits that it may provide for the inhabitants of the hogan is
secondary.

The Navajo divide their social organization into two categories: the diyin
dine e-- Holy People and nihookaa dine e, --the Earth Surface People. The
Earth Surface People are composed of matrilineal, exogamous clans with a
child born into its mother's clan. Navajo communities are based upon a
residence group which is organized around a head mother, a sheep or cattle
herd, and/or agricultural fields. Rights of residence within a group are
acquired through birth (through the mother) or the spouse (through the
wife). A Navajo can live where his or her mother lives or where his wife
lives. A Navajo residence group usually consists of more than one
household of which almost every married couple has their own. This house
they share with their children. Witherspoon identifies a household as, "
the group that eats and sleeps together" (Witherspoon, 57). This household
is the social unit of daily religious activity.

The Navajo House Blessing Ceremony is called hooghan da ashdlisigil in the
Navajo language and is performed to bless a newly constructed dwelling or
in more recent times, one that is to be reinhabited. The blessing, as it
was given to the Earth Surface People by the Holy People, is used to
promote peace, harmony, good luck, and general well-being for its
inhabitants. The Ceremony also prevents general misfortune, hardship, wind
and fire destruction illness, bad dreams, visitations from ghosts and evil
spirits, and protection from evil (Frisbee, 1980, 165).

There are two types of House Blessing ceremonies; a private one for an
individual household and a larger, public ceremony that is used to bless
buildings such as schools, hospitals, and stadiums. The private ceremony
is shorter and lasts only one night, while the public version can last
anywhere from one to four nights. Both of these ceremonies involve the
marking of the structure and prayer, while the public version can also
employ song, costumes and props, formal prayer, dance and sometimes,
sandpainting.

The private ceremony, as mentioned earlier, is conducted for the hogan.
This structure is, historically, a very important aspect of Navajo life;
it meant security and well-being for the household. The hogan is most
often treated like a living object by its inhabitants. It needs to be
taken care of and loved to sustain the harmony of the Navajo home life.
"Hogans are personified in ordinary conservation-they are alive; they need
to be fed, cared for, spoken to, and shielded from loneliness" (Frisbie
1980: 166). The ceremony then, not only serves the needs of its
inhabitants, but it serves the needs of the hogan. The ritual aims to
"feed the house, show proper treatment and respect to it, prevent timber
breakage, and remove the hogan's loneliness" (176). The hogan's
loneliness, before the ceremony is performed, is a dangerous thing; it can
attract evil spirits. The hogan is outside of the social conforms of the
group and is thus unaccepted. It is not harmonious with the Navajo world.
Durkheim states that to, "consecrate something, is to put it in contact
with a source of religious energy..." (Durkheim 467). The hogan's
consecration also serves to lift the hogan's taboo. Van Gennep, in The
Rites of Passage, says that, "every new house is taboo until, by
appropriate rites, it is made noa (secular or profane)" (Van Gennep 24).
The house blessing ceremony of the Navajo does this so that the hogan may
be lived in by it's designated inhabitants.

Although today most Navajo live in houses (which are still blessed), this
change in structure occurred somewhat late. Navajo's did not start to
settle in permanent houses until the late 1890's (Jett and Spencer 109).
One reason that is suggested for this is a strong belief in ghosts and
witchcraft. Originally, when a person became ill, they were removed from
the hogan in which they lived and taken to a temporary hogan in which to
die. After death, "the corpse is washed and dressed by those who
volunteer, and left in the hogan...the helpers then clean the hogan using
juniper boughs to obliterate all footprints which may have been made by
the relatives of the deceased in the hogan in order to conceal from the
spirit the direction in which they went in case it should return to harm
them." (Reichard 1969:141-142). Then, after one day, the east entrance is
closed up, and a hole is cut in the north wall of the hogan; it is through
this opening that they body is carried out. The hogan and all of its
content were then burned (142). A hogan can be more easily reconstructed
than a "modern" house. When a death occurs in a permanent house today,
especially when the death is due to old age, the structure can be blessed
by ceremony and considered safe to live in (Frisbie 1980: 188).

The fetishism that the Navajo historically placed upon the hogan make it
an object of a 'rite of passage'. These are transitions that are faced and
undergone by the individual to incorporate him or her into a new level
within a social structure. These rites, according to Van Gennep's model,
contain three stages:
# separation
# transition
# incooration.
which contain three different types of rites:

* preliminal rites
* liminal rites
* postliminal rites
The private version of the house blessing ceremony adheres to this format
and can be seen as a rite, "identifying the future inhabitants with their
new residence" (24). This version is also much simpler and shorter than
its public counterpart. It is not performed by a medicine man or a
specialist, but by the head of the household. The rite of separation, the
first step in Van Gennep's model, is the cleaning of the hogan and the
starting of the fire. This first rite serves as a purification for the
hogan from its earlier world and are preliminal in nature. The next rites
performed in the ceremony are liminal and signify a transition; the hogan
is marked. This is done as it was prescribed in the Creation Story, and as
the Holy People marked the very first hogan. The four cardinal directions,
starting at the east and moving counterclockwise, are marked with corn
meal. In most Navajo ceremonies, corn meal symbolizes, "life and success
along the road" (Reichard 1950: 541). Occasionally, though, corn pollen,
charcoal, ashes, or other substances may be used. These marks are made in
the highest part that can be reached on the inside of the hogan, using a
upward movement.

The next step in the private ceremony is made up of prayers and sometimes
songs. The prayers are not formal ones but are usually made up by whomever
is marking the hogan; the prayers are specifically said for that hogan.
These prayers are most commonly made up of wishes for happiness, long
life, peace, and immunity from misfortune. Often, the prayer is addressed
to the hogan directly, since hogan blessings:

This home, my home, shall be surrounded with sa'ah naaghei
bik'eh hozhoo.
This fire shall be for the good of the family. And the
children that
may be born in this hogan will all be in good health. Any
plans we
make in this hogan will be for the good of the family.

May this be a good place for us to live again, may it be happy
in this home;
may our lives be long and happy in this home.
May I live in this home happily and peacefully and with
respect.
May I have a happy life in this hogan. Myself, my wife, my
children,
my relatives, whomever may come into this hogan, may they
relax
peacefully and rest up. May all of us have no sickness, no
misfortunes.

May my house be in harmony; From my head, may it be happy;
To my feet, may it be happy; Where I lie, may it be happy;
All above me, may it be happy; All around me, may it be happy;
May my fire be well made and happy; May the sun,
my mother's ancestor, be happy for this gift;
May it be happy as I walk around my house; May this road of
light,
my mother's ancestor, be happy. (Frisbie 1980: 183).


The marking of the hogan, the prayers, and any songs, as mentioned
earlier, are the liminal rites within the house blessing ceremony. These
rites, according to Van Gennep's views on rites of passage, serve as a
transition for the hogan from something that is taboo, into something that
has a designated place in the Navajo social structure. These rites, also
serve to lift the taboo of the unblessed home and serve to make it safe
and happy for the household to inhabit.

Another theorist, Victor W. Turner, associates liminal rites, or more
specifically the liminal situations that these rites help to counter, with
"magico-religious properties" (Turner 108). This is supported by the fact
that the Navajo treat the hogan as a living entity and feel that the House
Blessing Ceremony protects the inhabitants of the house from misfortune,
but more importantly, protects the house from 'being lonely'. This
loneliness, as mentioned before, is dangerous in that the house, being
outside of the collective order, will attract evil spirits that are also
outside of the collective order; spirits that are liminal as is the
unblessed hogan. Turner characterizes liminal entities as being,
"dangerous, inauspicious, or polluting to persons, objects, events, and
relationships that have not been ritually incorporated into the liminal
context" (108-109). The liminal rites in the ceremony serve to incorporate
the hogan into its correct context and take the hogan out of the sphere of
liminality.

The conclusion of the House Blessing Ceremony is the preparation and the
sharing of the communal meal. This meal, which is often the conclusion of
most Navajo ceremonials, is associated with, "the success of a ceremony,
strength, endurance, and transformation" (Reichard 1950: 557). Van Gennep
places the communal meal as the postliminal rite in his rite of passage
model. It serves to incorporate the neophyte, in this case the hogan, into
its new position within society.

The private ceremony, then, is commemorative of the first hogan blessing
and helps reaffirm the accepted social order within the hogan. It provides
a feeling of well-being for the unit of daily religious activity, which in
turn, radiates out to the whole residence group, and ultimately, the
Navajo as a whole. The public House Blessing Ceremony is not required in
the way that the private version is, rather it is commonly performed on
public buildings as a sort of 'consecration ceremony'.

Where as the emphasis of the private blessing ceremony is on the
household, the public version emphasizes the Navajo people as a whole and
is usually performed in front of a large gathering. On this kind of ritual
gathering, Durkheim states, "the essential thing is that men are
assembled, that sentiments are felt in common and expressed in common
acts..." (Durkheim 431-432). A Navajo community are brought together to
achieve a common end, to ensure the continuation of their way of life. The
public House Blessing Ceremony usually has the same components as the
private version, but the public building is not felt to be a living being
as strongly as the hogan is. Therefore, it's not so much a rite of
passage, as it is a standard commemorative rite.

The decision to hold a blessing ceremony for a public building is made by
the community that the building will serve. Unlike the private ceremony,
the public one is 'performed' rather than 'given'. The community must pick
the singer; this choice is usually made by weighing the list of the
following attributes; " a singer who is well-known, respected, qualified,
dependable, and who will thus do the ceremony carefully" (Frisbie
1968:32). The singer who is chosen makes the decisions as to what prayers
will be said, whether there will be other components such as songs, dance,
and sandpainting, and the length of the ceremony. In the 1930's, the
earlier days of the public ceremonies, the singer was often paid with the
feast that was given after the ceremony, in later years and into the
present, the singer often requires a cash fee for their services. This
fee, like the format of the ceremony, was not set -- "the bigger the
building, the more important it is and the more people you expect, the
more impressive your program. You must dedicate that building in a big
way; you need to add a little more ceremony to it to look more impressive"
(1980:175). One would assume that 'the more ceremony' the more the fee.
Research done by Frisbie in 1970, saw this fee to be anywhere between
$10.00 and $1000.00. (175).

The ceremony begins with a speech by the singer that includes the origins
of the ceremony and its purpose. By relating the mythology of the ritual
to the assembled community, the traditions within the Navajo culture are
enforced. "In saying that the rite is observed because it comes from the
ancestors, it is admitted that its authority is confounded with the
authority of tradition, which is a social affair of the first order...men
celebrate it to remain faithful to the past, to keep for the group its
normal physiognomy..." (Durkheim 415).

After the speech, the singer proceeds to mark the structure. This is done
in the same manner as the private ceremony; the four cardinal directions
are marked with corn meal. In the case of a very large building, the
biggest, or most central room is all that needs to be marked. Sometimes,
for a hotel or a place of business, the singer may also choose to mark the
cash register (Frisbie 1968:33). The prayers for the public ceremony can
be individual ones that were composed specifically for that ceremony, but
more often they tend to be formal prayers taken from a Navajo ceremonial;
usually the Blessingway. These prayers usually ask the Holy People to
watch over the Earth Surface People and to provide them with harmony in
their lives.

Below is an example of an individual prayer given by a medicine man for a
chapter house blessing in 1965:

In my own words I started out mentioning Mother Earth-
Mother earth we have this structure set on you for our use,
and the purpose for that is for the best benefit of the
people. The supreme Holy Being should oversee us so
we discuss things wisely. Then I mentioned the four
mountains, the east mountain, the south mountain, the west
mountain, and the north mountain, and besides that the two
that are in the center, Huerfano and Gobernador. I pleaded
with the Holy Beings who inhabit these mountains as their
homes that they would be supernaturally present at our
discussions, in our meetings, and give us some wise ideas
to discuss our problems. Washington, who is our over-seer
-that they would be wise people and that you Holy Beings,
supernatural beings, enlighten their minds so that they would
give us the best ideas for the welfare of our people. This is
what I said. (Frisbie 1980: 184-185)

Notice how this passage is site-specific to the chapter house. It asks
that the Holy Beings give guidance to the Navajo people and the decisions
that they will make at the chapter house and the Holy Beings give guidance
to 'Washington' -- the U.S. Government, in its dealings with the Navajo
people.

The next example is an excerpt from the other kind of prayer said at the
public blessing ceremony. It is a formal prayer, taken from the
Blessingway ceremony and was recorded by Gladys Reichard in 1940, at the
dedication of the Gallup Stadium:

I am the Child of White Shell Woman,
I am the Child of Changing Woman,
I am the Child of White Shell Woman,
I am the Child of Changing Woman,
Below the east, Talking God, Hogan God,
At the hogan made of dawn,
At the hogan made of square blocks of dawn,
The dawn trails along those blocks,
Talking God's foot has become my foot,
Talking God's leg has become my leg,
Talking God's mind has become my mind,
Talking God's headplume has become my headplume,
The corn pollen with which he breathes, with that
I breathe; therefore I am talking,
The corn pollen with which his mouth is beautified,
My mouth is also beautified with it as I talk,
By means of these I am talking as I go along,
With beauty before me,
With beauty behind me,
With Sa'ah naaghei, bik'eh hozhoo, that is what I am
as I go along, By means of that my home will be beautifully
situated,
From all directions, trails of pollen, they will
travel on them with beauty... (186-187).


The formal prayer relates specific elements of the Navajo religion in the
prayer; White Shell Woman, Changing Woman, Talking God; these deities are
called upon specifically to bless the stadium as they would bless any
structure where the Blessingway was performed. The marking of the public
building commemorates the actions of the Holy People at the Emergence Rim
-- the place where First Man and First Woman entered the earth's surface
from the underworld -- and the prayers vocalize desire for well-being and
the help and guidance of the Holy People in the Navajo's lives. The formal
prayer, recited in front of a large gathering, focus the social groups'
collective consciousness on the ideal social order as prescribed by the
ancestors.

The use of songs is optional in the private as well as the public
ceremonies but is more common in the public version. One song is usually
felt to be sufficient by the singer and can also, like the prayer, be
taken from the Blessingway ceremony. The song can be sung while the
structure is being marked or after the prayers have been said. The exact
format, as stated earlier, is at the discretion of each individual singer.
The song according to some singers, can make the ceremony, "more holy,
more substantial" (189). The following is an example of a song recorded in
1967 by Frisbie. It is identified simply as a "Hogan Song":
haiye ne yana

It is placed, it is placed, it is placed,
It is placed, it is placed, it is placed,
Now at the Rim of the Emergence Place, it is placed, it is
placed.
At the hogan, blessedness is placed, it is placed,
At the rear, Turquoise Boy, it is placed, it is placed,
At the rear, White Shell Girl, it is placed, it is placed,
At the center of the hogan of soft goods, it is placed, it is
placed,
At the hogan of all kinds of jewels, it is placed, it is
placed,
Now sa'ah naaghei, now bik'eh hozhoo below the hogan,
it is placed, it is placed, It is placed, it is placed,
It is placed, It is placed, neyowo. (191).


The other rites that may be employed in the public ceremonies are dance
and sandpainting. Frisbie surmises that the dancing is probably more often
an example of secular entertainment for the audience than an integral
ritual component (192). Sandpaintings are created on the ground and depict
scenes from Navajo Mythology. This usually illustrates the Earth Surface
People receiving help from the Holy People in overcoming a problem.
Sandpaintings are normally created by a Navajo singer, during a curing
ceremony to help a patient recover from an ailment. After they complete
the ceremony, the paintings are destroyed. In the House Blessing Ceremony,
any sandpaintings creatyed would be small and would most likely depict
Changing Woman's house or a related house subject (1968:30). It seems
probable that these extra components are used more for show than for a
religious significance; which would probably fall under the heading, 'the
bigger the building, the more show was needed.'

The last part of the public version of the House Blessing Ceremony, as
with the private one, is the communal meal. This is done on the last night
of the ceremony and serves the biological need of feeding the community,
as well as bringing them all together and closing the ceremony. Such as
Van Gennep identified the communal meal as postliminal and a way of
incorporation into society; Durkheim identified this feast with the
strengthened social order:

This is why the very idea of a religious ceremony of some
importance awakens the idea of a feast. Inversely, every
feast, even when it has purely lay origins, has certain
characteristics of the religious ceremony, for in every case
its effect is to bring men together, to put the masses into
movement and thus excite a state of effervescence, and
sometimes even of delirium, which is not without certain
kinship with the religious state (Durkheim 427-428).

This meal then, ends the ceremony and serves a physical and social need.
This act also serves to incorporate the participants back into an everyday
act, a profane act, while promoting non-everyday ritual practices.

Radcliffe-Brown stated that, "in the case of both ritual and myth, the
sentiments expressed are those that are essential to the existence of
society", (Kluckhohn 56). In the case of the Navajo House Blessing
Ceremony, the sentiments that are expressed; wishes for harmony, order,
and sa'ah naaghei bik'eh hozhoo, are those that are essential to the
Navajo. This, once again, goes back to the sentiment by Durkheim that,
"everything leads us back to the same idea: before all, rite are the means
by which the social group reaffirms itself periodically" (Durkheim 432).

The Navajo House Blessing Ceremony is a commemorative ceremony which
upholds the Navajo social order by replaying the tradition of the original
rite which is prescribed by Navajo mythology. The private ceremony, in its
humanizing of the Navajo hogan, can be seen as a rite of passage which
lifts the taboo of a newly constructed house or one that is to be
reinhabited. The private ceremony also serves to reinforce the social
structure within household and strengthens the social ties of those
inhabitants.

The public ceremony, in contrast, is done on a larger scale with several
components used more for show than religious reasons. It, too, reinforces
the social structure of the community based upon the rapport and harmony
between the Navajo and their physical surroundings.