What is the meaning of the Navajo origin legend?

Answer 1

The Hataałii (often called medicine men but really more like a priest, healer and professor of philosophy) say that the creation stories have 12 levels of interpretation. The first level for kids and simple people is the literal one. The rest get deeper and more symbolic.

In all the stories Sa'ah naaghai Bik'eh Hozhoonis created and illustrated. Hózhǫ́ náhásdlį́į́ʼ ,Hozhon is restored, and and restored again. Male and female are balanced, Inner and outer, speech and thought, left and right, white and yellow corn, pairs of holy people,the four mountains and the four colors, all is balanced and ordered. All moves sunwise around the two center mountains within the four sacred mountains, always moving recurrently into old age and into the future. Hózhǫ́ and K'e the central concepts, restraint and symmetry. Hózhǫ́ means beauty and harmony, health, peace, balance, happiness and contentment, wholeness, goodness. K'e about the proper processes and relationships.

The stories recount four different worlds, three before this one (some versions have five). In each world a symbolic color dominates. Each world is more complex and complete than the next. Each world must be fled because taboos are broken or there is fighting. They flee up through the sky and emerge up into the next world. In each world more ritual and ceremonial knowledge is gained. The four sacred mountains and two central ones are created. Spiritual beings and animals and corn and people are created. At one point in the third world, all fertility and creativity stop. Men and women argued about who was more important and seperated. Monsters were born. Changing Woman miraculously is bornand found and the first hogan is made,. She has the very first female puberty ceremony marking the return of fertility. Her twins sons are born. They rid the world of monsters except four, Old Age, Cold, Poverty, and Hunger which are needed for the balance of the world. Changing Woman creates the first clans and leaves to live in the west. Always beauty and balance are restored.