Everything about Gitchi Manitou totally explained
Gitchi Manitou in more recent
Anishinaabe culture, is
God, the Creator of all things and the Giver of Life. "Manitou" is an
Anishinaabe word for spirit, or deity. Historically, Anishinabe people believed in a variety of deities, in whose images idols were carved and placed near doorways for protection. Although no one can prove this is true for thousands of years, for all Anishinaabe people. With the coming of Christian missionaries and their need to translate the idea of monotheism, "Gitche Manitou" meaning "Great Deity" was coined. In other Algonquian languages such as
Iynu the word manituw originally referred to underwater creatures to whom hunters offered tobacco in order to appease them when travelling through their territories. The Province of
Manitoba, in
Canada is partly named from the word "Manitou."
Gitche Manitou
Gitche Manitou is often treated as those cultures' analogue to the
Christian God. When early Christian
missionaries preached the
Gospel to the Algonquian peoples, they absorbed Gitche Manitou as a name for God through the process of
syncretism. This can be seen, for example, in the words of the "
Huron Carol". Other related names for God incorporated through the process of
syncretism are
Gizhe-manidoo ("venerable
Manidoo"),
Wenizhishid-manidoo ("Fair
Manidoo") and
Gichi-ojichaag ("Great Spirit"). While
Gichi-manidoo and
Gichi-ojichaag both mean "Great Spirit",
Gichi-manidoo carried the idea of the greater spiritual connectivity while
Gichi-ojichaag carried the idea of individual's soul's connectivity to the
Gichi-manidoo. Consequently, Christian
missionaries often used the term
Gichi-ojichaag to refer to the Christian idea of a
Holy Spirit.
Manitou as mystical term
The term
Manitou itself refers to the concept of one aspect of the interconnection and balance of nature/life, similar to the East Asian concept of
qi; in simpler terms it can refer to a
spirit. This spirit is seen as a (contactable) person as well as a concept. Everything has its own manitou—every plant, every stone and even machines. These Manitous don't exist in a hierarchy like European gods/goddesses, but are more akin to one part of the body interacting with another and the spirit of everything; namely the collective is named Gitche Manitou.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Gitchi Manitou'.
|
External Link Exchanges
Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:
<a href="http://gitche_manitou.totallyexplained.com">Gitche Manitou Totally Explained</a>
Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned. |
