In one version of the Navajo creation story, Black God is the first god that First Man and First Woman meet. The main job of Black God is that of a fiery god. As the one who first learned how to make fire, he came up with the idea of a fire practice. He is also linked to the use of magic. Unlike the other Navajo Gods, the black God is not shown to be good.
Instead, because of his old age, he is seen as weak and defenseless. He is sometimes described as “a moody, humorless trickster” who “pretends to be poor so that people will feel sorry for him.”There is holy charcoal and white paint on his buckskin mask, and the Pleiades are on his temple. There is a crescent moon on his forehead and a full moon for his mouth.
The Navajo people tell their version of the story of how the world came to be during a Blessingway Ceremony: The Sky and the Earth were set in place after the People rose from a series of earlier worlds. The First Man, the First Woman, the Salt Woman, and the Black God were the four holy people who planned out how life would work on Earth. In addition, these four people are responsible for where the stars are and how everything on Earth is set up. Navajo people thought Black God was the most important of the four, though, because he was linked to fire. Black God entered the Pleiades constellation with First Man, First Woman, and Salt Woman on his ankle. They were sitting in a hogan, so the story goes.
When some of the Holy People talked about this Constellation, Black God stomped on their foot hard, which knocked the constellation to the ground. The stars showed up on his hips when he got his second stamp. The Holy People was pleased with Black God’s act and bowed their heads. The Constellation was firmly stuck in Black God’s forehead after the third and fourth hits. “There it shall stay!” Black God finally said, suggesting that it was okay. After Black God’s amazing show, the Holy People gave him the job of making constellations to decorate the “upper dark.” Black God agreed, so he carefully spread his star diamonds across the sky until the whole night sky was a beautiful display of his work. But the sky at night stayed dark, and the crystals couldn’t shine. Black God sent some of his fires into the sky to fix the problem by making sure that each constellation has a way to start a fire. After that, Black God unleashed his furious anger on the sun.
In a different story, Black God is given the astronomical job of carefully putting together the stars in a sky that doesn’t have any. A bag around his waist holds the stars. He lights each one up and then sticks it to the sky. When Coyote sees this, it gets mad. The Coyote takes the stars that were left over from Black God’s pouch and throws them into the sky to make the Milky Way. The reason some stars are brighter than others is given by this myth: Black God didn’t get a chance to fire the ones, and Coyote ran away. In one story, the Black God made the Milky Way on purpose. The Navajo used the stars to tell stories, just like people in other old times. Legend has it that these stories from other stars “record laws that… govern mankind for all time” and will therefore remain a “cultural text” for all time. The Navajo philosophy of “Sa’a naghai bk’e hozho” is connected to the Nightway ritual and its main goal of bringing balance, beauty, health, and wholeness back into people’s lives. The constellation of the Pleiades and its placement in the mask of Black God reflect this philosophy.
According to Navajo mythology, the Pleiades star cluster was very important to them. The star itself was also important in everyday life. People who live in places with long, dark winters can use the Pleiades as a kind of sky “clock” to find out how much time is left until morning. Black God is an important part of the Navajo way of making art, but he isn’t usually called upon in ceremonies. The Nightway, a nine-day wintertime practice for healing, is the only sacrament that is linked to Him. There is a person dressed as the Black God on the last day of the rite.
People who traditionally play the Black God would be old men with fox skin, black body paint, and a Black God mask. For his pyromancery show, the fake has a fire drill and chopped bark. They are at odds with each other. Begochidi is the God of Birds and Animals, and Black God is the God of Fire. The stress comes from the Black God’s anger, which destroyed all of Begochidi’s work. Strangely, this rivalry goes on even though the Black God ends up protecting those beings in a different story. In Deer Raiser, the main characters hunt in ways that are different from what the gods say is right. Because of this, Black God has poisonous plants growing all around his home, Black Mountain, and he has animals hiding inside the mountain.
