Changing Woman- Navajo GodDeity"She Who Changes"

Miraculous Discovery

According to the Diné Bahaneʼ, the Navajo creation story, Changing Woman was not born in the ordinary way. After the people emerged into the Glittering World, First Man noticed a dark cloud resting atop Gobernador Knob (Chʼoolʼiʼí), one of the sacred mountains in what is now northern New Mexico. He climbed the mountain and found a baby girl lying there, born from the meeting of darkness and dawn, of earth and sky. First Man and First Woman took her home and raised her as their own.

The child grew with supernatural speed, reaching womanhood in just four days, each day corresponding to one of the four cardinal directions. When she reached puberty, the Holy People gathered to perform the first Kinaaldá, the ceremony that would sanctify the transition to womanhood for all Navajo girls who came after her.

The Eternal Cycle

Changing Woman, Asdzą́ą́ Nádleehé ("Woman Who Returns Again"), ages through the seasons. In spring she is young. In summer, mature and full of power. In autumn she grows old. In winter her hair turns white and her body bends. But with each spring she returns to youth, renewed entirely.

Her body is the earth itself. The soil is her flesh, the vegetation her hair, and the sacred mountains that bound Navajoland stand adorned with the stones that are her symbols: white shell to the east, turquoise to the south, abalone to the west, jet to the north. When the land blooms, Changing Woman is young. When snow covers the ground, she is old. She is the only one of the Holy People who never causes illness and never demands appeasement. Her power flows only toward sustenance and renewal.

Mother of the Hero Twins

In the time after the emergence, terrible monsters roamed the Glittering World, preying upon the people and threatening their extinction. Changing Woman conceived the Hero Twins through two acts of divine contact: the Sun's rays fell upon her as she lay on a flat rock, and water from a waterfall entered her, giving each twin a different aspect of power. Monster Slayer (Naayééʼ Neizghání) was born of sunlight, Born for Water (Tóbájíshchíní) of the waterfall.

The twins grew rapidly, like their mother, and soon demanded to know who their father was. Changing Woman kept the Sun's identity secret at first, knowing the perilous journey her sons would need to make to reach his house in the sky. When she finally told them, she equipped them with sacred knowledge and protective prayers for the dangers ahead: razor-sharp reeds, crushing rocks, and other trials along the path to the Sun's dwelling.

At the Sun's house, the twins proved their paternity through a series of tests and received weapons of lightning. They returned to the Glittering World and slew the monsters one by one. Yéʼiitsoh the great giant fell first, then Déélgééd the horned monster. With each victory the world grew safer, until the last of the Naayéé' were vanquished or rendered harmless.

Creator of the Clans

Changing Woman shaped the first Navajo clans from her own body. She rubbed skin from her breast and her back, and from each piece formed the first members of a clan: the Towering House People (Kínyáaʼáanii), the Bitter Water People (Tódíchʼiʼnii), the Mud People (Hashtlʼishnii), and the Salt People (Tábąąhá). All Navajo trace their ancestry to these four original clans, making Changing Woman the literal mother of the entire people. Children belong to their mother's clan and are "born for" their father's clan. When two Navajo meet, they introduce themselves by clan, establishing kinship through the unbroken chain of descent back to Changing Woman herself.

The Blessingway

Changing Woman stands at the heart of the Blessingway (Hózhóójí), the most frequently performed of all Navajo ceremonials. The ceremony invokes hózhó, the condition of beauty and harmony that the Navajo seek to sustain in all things. A singer performs hundreds of songs through the night, narrating episodes from Changing Woman's life. Corn pollen, tádídíín, her most sacred substance, is offered throughout, connecting the ceremony to her original acts of creation.

The Blessingway is performed to bless a new home, to protect an expectant mother, to strengthen someone setting out on a journey. Its songs carry the words of the closing prayer: walking in beauty before and behind, above and below.

The Kinaaldá

The Kinaaldá, the puberty ceremony for Navajo girls, directly reenacts Changing Woman's own coming of age on Gobernador Knob. When a young woman experiences her first menstruation, she undergoes a four-day ceremony during which she becomes, temporarily, Changing Woman herself. She dresses in traditional clothing, wears her hair unbound, and runs toward the east at dawn each morning, each day farther than the last. She grinds corn and bakes a large ceremonial corn cake, the alkaan, in an earth pit.

During the ceremony, community members approach the girl to receive her sacred power. She molds the faces of children, conferring blessings of health and beauty. Songs from the Blessingway are sung through the four nights, sometimes numbering in the hundreds, and corn pollen is offered throughout.

The Western Home

After the Hero Twins had slain the monsters and the Glittering World was safe, the Sun desired Changing Woman as his companion. She refused his proposals multiple times, asserting her independence and her right to set the terms. She agreed only when he consented to build her a home in the west, on an island in the Pacific Ocean, a dwelling of turquoise and white shell befitting her status. Even the Sun, bearer of the world's light, could not simply claim her.

From her western home, Changing Woman continues to govern the seasons. She remains accessible through prayer and ceremony, responding to those who approach with offerings of corn pollen and the proper sacred words. Though she dwells far to the west, her presence fills Navajoland: felt in every spring bloom and every generation of young women who stand in her place during the Kinaaldá and become, for four sacred days, Changing Woman herself.