Do Navajo believe in hell

Answer 1

Today, there are more than 300,00 enrolled members of the Navajo Nation. Some follow traditional Navajo ceremonies and religion, some are one of many sorts of Christians, some follow Native American Church (NAC) and many do a mixture of several of these things. Those who are Christian often believe in hell. The word that Navajo have made up for Christian hell is: chʼį́įdiitah. It means land of chʼį́įdii. These are the ghosts or spirits in traditional belief that remain with the body after death as a residue of all the bad in that person. Here is has been generalized to mean land were bad dead spirits reside.

In traditional Navajo philosophy and religion there is nothing like hell. Pretty much what we mean by hell is the ideas of the three related monotheistic religions, Islam, Christianity and Judaism. Further, Navajo ideas of justice tend not to included a punishment aspect or vengance sort of attitude that "hell" implies. Of cousres ideas of "hell" have changed greatly over the years and in different traditions. You might want to examine that in a book called:The History of Hell by Alice Turner.

Most traditional ideas of after death in for most Navajo do not include a afterlife, heaven, hell or reincarnation. There is a lot of variation however. The traditional view is that your spirit is not one permanent thing. It is a collection of things working in balance together. Death is when the body stops working because the balance is permanently broken. The parts of your spirit go off in different directions and become parts of many new things. Your body decays and becomes part of new life. You also live on in your children, the memories people have of you and in ritual knowledge that you increased, passed on and kept in balance. That's four ways you live on. Four is a very important number for their way of thinking.

The only thiing that stays with the body and bones is the residue of the bad thoughts or things you did. Everyone has bad parts so this is the case for all bones. In traditional view this is why you should not ever handle the bones or remains of the dead. Contact can make you spiritually, psychologically, and physically sick. There are traditional ceremonies that are still performed to remedy this situation.