Our feature today was very intriguing to me. It depicts Navajo sand paintings, which previous to this puzzle I hadn’t heard of before.
In doing a little bit of reading up on them, I learned that they weren’t created as an art display piece, or even as an art or storytelling object.
Rather they were used in healing ceremonies. The artist, or in Navajo culture – the Medicine Man – would create a painting, by hand pouring different naturally occurring colours of sand out into a picture or image.
Once the painting was completed, then the person that needed the healing ritual sat on top of the painting. The belief was that the sand painting was a portal for healing spirits to come through and heal the patient.
After removing the illness from the person, the spirits would travel back into the painting and therefore trap the illness in the painting. When the ceremony was finished, the painting would be destroyed, thereby destroying the illness.
Again, this was after just a little bit of reading about these paintings, I’d love to learn more about them.
We recently watched the Shining in the theatre, which I’ve seen that movie many many times. But seeing it in the theatre, I picked up a lot of visual details that I’d never noticed before.
I noticed that there were definitely some paintings in the hotel set that looked like this sand painting here. And now that I know these would have been destroyed as part of the ritual, I find that very interesting.
I did read that you may be able to find these nowadays as art, but they would have been made expressly for art’s sake.
This was sadly a very incomplete puzzle, missing 16 pieces in the end. I still really enjoyed this puzzle, and especially learning more about what these Navajo sand paintings are.
550 pieces from Random House Publishing in 1989.
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