The Birth of Changing Woman

by Mark Greene, Ph.D.

In transcribing a dream from the previous evening, the individual forces a transformation of unconscious images into the conscious realm of words and grammatical syntax. Similarly, in handing down myths from one generation to the next, whether by oral transmission or via the written word, a people partake in the collective affirmation of the greater mystery of which they are a part. The story being shared through the written or spoken word provides the conscious mind a familiar handle with which it attempts to grasp the inferred embodiment of the frequently intangible archetype. Although the conscious mind's propensity to filter and attenuate the magnitude of primordial energy associated with the archetypes is inherent within the process of dream transcription, it nevertheless affords the analyst with a skeletal structure of the dream experience and thus of the archetypal essence of the dream. In such a way, the myth, when viewed as dream, provides a key to the understanding the psychological makeup of an entire people.

The text used for the purpose of this paper is from a transcript of the ceremonial legend Where the Two Came to Their Father as told by the Navaho medicine man, Jeff King, to Maud Oakes via an interpreter during the fall of 1942 and spring of 1943 (1). This legend is preceded by Jeff King's Introductory Legend which tells of the making of the earth and the migration of the Navaho people from the world below to the world above. Both texts are viewed here as transcripts of a collective Navaho dream and analyzed through the lens of Jungian dream interpretation. The focus of this analysis is upon the events and circumstances leading up to and including the birth of Changing Woman.

The story begins with the Navaho people living at the foot of the Mountain Around Which Moving Was Done. The Navaho's location connotes that they are grounded people on the threshold of a transformative experience. Simply mentioning the base suggests the mountain's peak and so the upward movement connecting the two, "the mystic sense of the peak . . . comes from the fact that it is the point of contact between heaven and earth." (2) At the foot of the mountain, the Navaho are poised at the nexus between the realms of the conscious and unconscious.

The earth and its people are relatively young and there is yet much unconscious material to be integrated into the collective psyche, as suggested by the legend's sub-heading, The Increase of the Monsters. "All went well for a few years . . . then one of the people, a man, had bad dreams. He dreamed of monsters, that they were growing to be very large." (3) The dream within the dream points to an event or insight which has been heretofore more deeply unconscious than the surrounding material and which now requires attention. The Navaho recognize the urgency with which these bad dreams must be tended and thus sing "hogan songs over the man" for four successive nights. Each night the dreams worsen suggesting that the nature of the unconscious material will erupt and be acknowledged no matter how much the collective tries to assuage it.

Finally, the people decide to use "the fire stick, because it can go into the fire and not get hurt. They let the man hold it, while they prayed to the east, then to each of the three other directions; when the prayers were finished, he was all right and had no more bad dreams." (4) A stick which does not burn when thrust into a fire illustrates one of the fundamental paradoxes of alchemy. The image conveys two opposite elements co-existing in a new form without either one giving up its own essence or claiming the other's. Yet, each is strengthened by the union and thus embody a reconciliation of opposites. The Navaho medicine men of the legend acknowledge the contradiction inherent in combining the volatile energy of the unconscious, as represented by the fire, with the practical and fragile nature of the conscious, as represented by the stick. The image of the stick which does not burn foreshadows a higher level of power resulting from the integration of conscious and unconscious forces which eventually will manifest in the birth of Changing Woman.

The Navaho prosper and multiply: "they had plenty to eat, and their crops were good. At the same time, the monsters began to kill people and to cause plenty of trouble." The existence of the monsters is attributed to the women of the tribe "as a result of the evil brought up from the world below." (5) The introductory legend tells of the time soon after the Navaho emerged from the world below and the first corn crops were ripe. It is at this juncture that the women "had been doing evil things, abusing themselves with different kinds of horns of animals they had found . . . they went away, so that the men would know nothing about it, and they gave birth to babies and left them there to die. The babies did not die, but became monsters." (6) When an individual masturbates, a fantasy usually accompanies the act. By using animal horns for their self-stimulation, one possible imaginal association is that of bestiality. Intercourse with the horn of an animal or fantasizing upon images inspired by such intercourse suggests an expression of a deeply chthonic drive not yet tempered by any opposing spiritual force. Another interpretation is that the "shape of a horn (phallic outside and hollow inside) endows it with a complex symbolism (including that of the lingam, or symbol of generation)." (7) Marie-Louise von Franz asserts that "though the fantasy starts on a low level - Christ after all was born in a stable - it (masturbation) is really the fantasy of union with the divine wisdom and should be accepted in that way." (8). Monsters indeed are generated even after the women leave them to die. It is as if the women were not yet ready to assume the responsibility for their desires of union with something other than men; instead, they chose to run away and express their primal desire in a way which excluded the possibility of transcendence to a higher level, for the horns are only vestiges of life and do not constitute a true body to which the women could stand in binary opposition.

In this dreamscape, the monsters function as psyche's expression of a desire to achieve divine conjuntio before a proper collective psychological context has been set. The women cause problems, but in the end, their monstrous progeny function as catalysts for the situation's eventual resolution as later told in the legend of Where the Two Came to Their Father. It is no surprise that the resolution between the conscious and unconscious appears in the form of a changing woman and not a man for it was woman who made the first cry for integration. It is with women, too, that the wound of giving birth to monsters must be healed.

Many more years pass wherein the monsters continue to harass and kill the people. After observing the people and the monsters, the head monster, Big Giant exclaims, "Don't kill them all; something awful might happen to us." (9) The unconscious, as represented by Big Giant, is given voice and comments that either extreme, conscious suppressing unconscious or vica-versa, can bring no good to the collective psyche. With this said, the legend segues into the actual birth of Changing Woman. "One morning, at dawn, they saw a dark cloud over Gobernador Knob." (10) The appearance of the cloud portends the birth of Changing Woman. "Clouds are another aspect of the Upper Waters" or the mountain lake which in turn symbolizes an integration between the unconscious, as represented by the water of the lake, with spirit, as symbolized by the mountain's height." (11) Talking God climbs the peak and finds the baby girl laying on a bed of flowers beside a rainbow under a softly falling rain, "she was born of darkness, and Dawn was her father." (12) Once again, the binary opposition of dark and light, unconscious and conscious, provides the context for the emergence of Changing Woman, who in turn represents the "regulative function of opposites." (13)

The legend tells that "when she came of age, a Blessing Kite was given over her, called Walking into Beauty. This same ceremony is given today over every Navaho girl who comes of age. The only difference is that at this first one Changing Woman lay . . . facing west; since then the girls must face the east." (14) If you picture a young woman lying on her back, her feet pointing eastward toward "Earth and Sky" and imagine Changing Woman lying facing the opposite direction with her head nearly touching the young woman's, what occurs is an energy line connecting the two by way of each one emitting creative energy from their loins. The line encircles the planet and joins the two women. Here is a beautiful example of the healing power of the circle which in this case functions as a rite of passage for the young woman and a continual healing for all women.

Changing Woman embodies the Wise Old Woman archetype for it is said that "Changing Woman, who changes with the seasons, had bad and good dreams. The people would go to her for advice. She would tell them what to do and what not to do, where to go and where not to go." (15) The literal translation of the Navaho name for Changing Woman, "A Woman She Becomes Time and Again" (16), suggests that this regulative process of reconciliation of opposites has dialectical properties akin to Jung's transcendent function, by which he means "a combined function of conscious and unconscious elements." (17) Changing Woman appears in the legend via psychological necessity.

In reading the paper up to this point, the reader has looked at a native American culture's origin myth through the lens of a psychology distilled through the psyche of a man born into the white middle class of Europe centuries after the emergence of the myth. How valid can this analysis be? In siding with Jamake Highwater in his article, The Sun: Cultural Piracy, I believe that the preceding analysis can be viewed as a positive example of the inevitable cultural and psychological blending which occurs between two cultures centuries after the original clash. For by simply performing such an analysis upon an native American myth affords the Jungian with an opportunity to see what cross-cultural proof is to be found of archetypal likenesses. It would be interesting to hear a Navaho speak about our origin myths.

"In the unexpected and the unknown we are able to imagine ourselves." (18)

Footnotes

1. Maud Oakes and Joseph Campbell, Where the Two Came to Their Father (Princeton: Bollingen Series, 1991), p. 6.
2. J.E. Cirlot, A Dictionary of Symbols (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1971), p. 219.
3. Oakes, p. 33.
4. Oakes, p. 33.
5. Oakes, p. 34.
6. Oakes, p. 26.
7. Cirlot, p. 62.
8. Marie-Louise von Franz, Alchemy: An Introduction to the Symbolism and the Psychology (Toronto: Inner City Books, 1980), p. 132.
9. Oakes, p. 34.
10. Oakes, p. 34.
11. Cirlot, p. 366.
12. Oakes, p. 34.
13. James Hillman, The Dream and the Underworld (New York: Harper & Row, 1979), p. 76.
14. Oakes, p. 35.
15. Oakes, p. 35.
16. C.G. Jung, Collected Works, Vol. 6, (Princeton: Princeton University, 1954), para. 184.
17. Jamake Highwater, "The Sun: Cultural Piracy," The Language of Vision: Meditations on Myth and Metaphor, (New York: Grove Press, 1994), p. 299.

Copyright 1995 Mark Greene. All rights reserved.