kachina
A kachina (; also katchina, katcina, or katsina; Hopi: ''katsina'' , plural ''katsinim'' ) is a spirit being in the religious beliefs of the Pueblo peoples, Native American cultures located in the south-western part of the United States. In th ...
, embodied by a man, in
Hopi religion
The Hopi maintain a complex religious and mythological tradition stretching back over centuries. However, it is difficult to definitively state what all Hopis as a group believe. Like the oral traditions of many other societies, Hopi mythology is ...
.
Ahöla is one of the important chief katsinam for First and Second Mesas because he opens the mid-winter Powamu ceremony, sometimes called the bean planting festival. On the first night of the festival, he performs inside a
kiva
A kiva is a space used by Puebloans for rites and political meetings, many of them associated with the kachina belief system. Among the modern Hopi and most other Pueblo peoples, "kiva" means a large room that is circular and underground, ...
, the subterranean, ceremonial space, before going with the Powamu Chief to give prayer feathers to Kachina Spring at dawn. Afterwards, Ahöla and the Powamu Chief visit all of the kivas and ceremonial houses, giving out bean and corn plants and marking the doorways with stripes of cornmeal. At the end of the ceremony, Ahöla descends to a shrine, bows four times to the sun, and asks for health, happiness, long life, and good crops. Ahöla is also the friend of
Eototo
Eototo is a Wuya, one of the major kachina deities of the Hopi people and the personification of nature. He is the protagonist of the Powamu ritual.
He is a chief and "father" of the katsinas,
Mesa Verde National Park
Mesa Verde National Park is an American national park and UNESCO World Heritage Site located in Montezuma County, Colorado. The park protects some of the best-preserved Ancestral Puebloan archaeological sites in the United States.
Established ...
* Wright, Barton. ''Kachinas: A Hopi Artist's Documentary.'' Seventh Edition. Flagstaff, AZ: Northland Publishing Company with the
Heard Museum
The Heard Museum is a private, not-for-profit museum in Phoenix, Arizona, United States, dedicated to the advancement of American Indian art. It presents the stories of American Indian people from a first-person perspective, as well as exhibitio ...