Black God (Navajo mythology)

According to one version of the Navajo creation story, Black God is first encountered by First Man and First Woman on the Yellow (third) world. Black God is, first and foremost, a fire god. He is the inventor of the fire drill and was the first being to discover the means by which to generate fire. He is also attributed to the practice of witchcraft. Black God is not portrayed in the admirable, heroic fashion of other Navajo Gods. Instead, he is imagined as old, slow and apparently helpless. Other times he is imagined as a “a moody, humorless trickster” who “passes himself off as poor so that people will be generous to him.”

Black God has a crescent moon on his forehead, a fullmoon for a mouth, the Pleiades on his temple and he wears a buckskin mask covered in sacred charcoal with white paint.

Black God's father is Fire and his mother is Comet.

The creation story of the Navajo people is recounted as part of a Blessingway Ritual: “The Sky and the Earth were placed after the People emerged from a series of previous worlds. Four Holy People – First Man, First Woman, Salt Woman, and Black God – [sat together and] planned the conditions of life on the surface of the earth.” Still more, these four figures are collectively responsible, not just for the organization of all things terrestrial, but for the placement of the stars themselves. Of the four, however, because of his association with fire, the Navajo saw Black God as responsible for the creation, and sustaining of the celestial bodies. As the story goes, First Man, First Woman, Salt Woman were sitting in a hogan (a Navajo hut made of wood and dirt) when Black God entered with the constellation of Pleiades affixed to his ankle. “When several of the Holy People commented on the presence of this constellation, Black God stamped his foot vigorously, bringing the constellation to his knee. A second stamp… brought the stars to his hip.” The Holy People were impressed by Black God’s display and nodded approvingly. Black God then stamped his foot a third and fourth time, until the constellation was lodged in his temple. Satisfied, Black God declared: “There it shall stay!” The Holy People were so captivated by Black God’s performance that they gave him the responsibility of creating constellations with which to adorn the “upper dark.” Black God acquiesced, carefully arranging his star crystals throughout the heavens until the night sky was beautified by his glittering constellations. Yet, the crystals had no light of their own, and the night sky remained dark. “To solve this problem, Black God placed some of his fire in the sky by providing an igniter star to radiate light for each constellation.” Black God went on to impart his fire unto the sun.

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