Yei- Navajo SpiritSpirit

The Holy People

The Yei existed before humans did. In the Navajo creation narrative, they were present in the earliest underworlds and helped shape each successive realm as beings passed upward. They were there when First Man and First Woman organized the present world, placed the sacred mountains, and set the sun and moon in their courses.

They dwell now in places of power: at the four sacred mountains, in canyon alcoves, near springs and lightning-struck trees. They travel on lightning and rainbows and sunbeams. Their time is not human time. What seems like days among the Yei may be years on earth, and a person who sees them uninvited, outside the protection of ceremony, may fall ill or lose their mind.

The Visionary's Journey

The Nightway ceremony's origin narrative tells of a young man called the Visionary, the youngest of a family who despised and neglected him. Lost and wandering, he was captured by the Yei and brought into their realm. There he was tested, transformed, killed and restored to life multiple times. Each ordeal stripped away his ordinary perception and replaced it with sacred knowledge.

Over the course of his captivity, the Yei taught the Visionary the complete Nightway ceremony: every song and prayer, every sandpainting and gesture in exact sequence. He learned which masks represent which Holy People, how the dancers must move, what offerings must be prepared. The Visionary lived through each element of the ceremony, his body and mind remade by the process.

When the Yei finally released him, the Visionary returned to his people as a hatałii, a ceremonial practitioner, carrying knowledge that had never before existed among humans. He performed the first Nightway and then taught it to others. The lineage of Nightway practitioners continues to this day.

Black God and the Stars

Talking God, Haashch'ééłti'í, leads the Yei. His high-pitched falsetto cry announces his presence at ceremonies. He is associated with the east and the dawn, and during the Nightway he appears first, directing the other Holy People.

Black God, Haashch'ééshzhiní, the god of fire, was carefully placing the stars in their constellations according to a precise plan when Coyote grew impatient. Coyote seized the remaining stars in his blanket and flung them across the sky. This is why only a few constellations have orderly patterns while the rest scatter at random. The work Black God would have completed was interrupted, and the night sky bears the evidence.

Water Sprinkler, Tó Neinilí, provides a different kind of presence at ceremonies. He stumbles, falls, and clowns while the other Yei move with solemn dignity. The laughter he draws from the assembled people is itself part of the healing.

The Sacred Masks

The masks through which the Yei manifest are among the most sacred objects in Navajo tradition. Each is made from untanned buckskin, painted and adorned to represent a specific Holy Person. Talking God's mask is white with a symbol of corn. House God's is blue. Black God's is black with the Pleiades marked upon it.

Between ceremonies, masks are kept wrapped in sacred bundles. They must be fed corn pollen and treated with song. Only initiated men who have undergone the proper ceremonies may handle them. When a dancer puts on a mask during the Nightway, his human identity recedes and the Yei comes forward. His voice changes to the characteristic calls of the Holy Person, his movements follow the ancient patterns. Witnesses understand that they are in the presence not of a man wearing leather but of a Holy Person made manifest.

The Nine Nights

The Nightway, Yéʼii Bichei ("Grandfather of the Yei"), lasts nine nights. Hundreds of songs are performed in precise sequence, each recounting a portion of the Visionary's origin narrative. Sandpaintings depicting the Yei in their mythological activities are created on the hogan floor. The patient sits upon them.

A person may need the Nightway because they violated a taboo, contacted dangerous influences, or encountered something that disrupted their relationship with the Holy People. Diagnosis comes first: a diviner uses hand-trembling or star-gazing to determine the cause and prescribe the ceremony. Then the hatałii begins.

Over nine nights, the events of the origin narrative are reenacted. The patient becomes, temporarily, the Visionary: taught by the Yei, tested, healed. On the final night, the masked Yei appear before the assembled community. Their dancing extends the ceremony's power beyond the patient to bless all who witness it. What happened in mythological time happens again in the hogan, and the healing that the Visionary received from the Holy People reaches the patient through the same songs, the same masks, the same ancient patterns performed without alteration.