Corpse Powder- Navajo ArtifactArtifact
Also known as: ʼÁńtʼį and Ant'i
Description
Made from ground human remains, particularly the bones of infants and the fingertips of the dead, corpse powder is the primary weapon of Navajo skin-walkers. Dropped through the smoke hole of a hogan onto sleeping victims, it causes the wasting illness known as ghost sickness.
Mythology & Lore
The Powder
Corpse powder is made from ground human remains. The most potent forms come from the bones of infants or the fingertips and back of the skull. Creating it requires desecrating the dead, violating one of the deepest Navajo taboos. The substance looks like nothing more than ordinary dust.
Skin-walkers use it as their primary weapon. In Clyde Kluckhohn's study of Navajo witchcraft, the typical attack follows a pattern: a skin-walker in animal form approaches a hogan at night, climbs onto the roof, and drops the powder through the smoke hole onto sleeping victims below. It can also be blown through a reed into a victim's face or placed in food.
Ghost Sickness and the Enemyway
A person struck by corpse powder wastes. The body thins, appetite vanishes, nightmares settle in. Without ceremonial help, the decline is fatal.
When a hatałii or hand-trembler diagnoses corpse powder, the remedy is the Enemyway ceremony, ʼAnááʼí. Over multiple days of chanting and sandpainting, the ceremony drives out the death contamination and restores the patient to the living world.
Relationships
- Enemy of
- Associated with