Blessingway


Wyman is introducing the Blessingway rite by state the uses and other important object during the rite. “The Blessingway rite is concerned with peace, harmony and good things, and should exclude all evil,” (Wyman 4). There are two mains rites that Wyman bring up and the other rite is Enemyway. The Enemyway is the opposite of Blessingway, where it mostly focus on bring up negative conditions. As for the Blessingway, it is for “the purpose of the chantways is primarily the curing of illness. They are concerned with the etiological factors supposed to be at work, of which four are most commonly adduced, i.e.; snakes, bears, thunder [or lightning], and winds” (Wyman 4). Will the curing aspect of Blessingway is to help establish a new way to regain harmony again after being over expose to one those etiological factors mention above. There is also another purpose to the Blessingway rites, “no matter what the specific occasion is, the aim ultimately is “for good hope,” for good luck, to avert potential misfortune, to obtain the blessings which man needs for a long and happy life” (Wyman 8). Just like a new house warming party, the Blessingway is very similar in that aspect, but is also cover wedding, birth, girl’s adolescence, and even dreams. Of course no Blessingway rites are exactly the same because each case is different and the event is also different. Recently just mention about the Hogan, will the rite is preoccupied about it. “Blessingway is vastly concerned with the Hogan, a term which has been anglicized from Navajo Hooghan, the place home. This place home is to be the center of every blessing in life: happy births, the home of one’s children, the center of weddings, the center where good health, property, increase in crops and livestock originate, where old age, the goal in life, will visit regularly. In a word, the Hogan spells a long life of happiness” (Wyman 10). Does that description of the Hogan remind you of the American dream? Where, if you got a suburban home with a white picket fence, isn’t that an American dream sound similar to the Navajo Blessingway Hogan rites?