MEDICINE SOCIETY

in popular literature, any of various complex healing societies and rituals of many American Indian tribes. More correctly, the term is used as an alternative name for the Grand Medicine Society, or Midewiwin, of the Ojibwa Indians of North America. According to the origin myth, the rituals were first performed by various gods to comfort Minabozho, a culture hero and intercessor between the Great Spirit and man, on the death of his brother. Minabozho, having pity on the suffering of man, transmitted the ritual to the otter and, through him, to man. The Grand Medicine Society was an esoteric group consisting at times of more than 1,000 members, including the tribal shamans, prophets, and seers, as well as anyone else who could afford the initiation fee. The Society was thus both a centre of spiritual knowledge and a source of social prestige. Possessing a complex series of four degrees of initiation held within an especially constructed medicine lodge, the Society's central act of initiation was the ritual death and rebirth of the initiate. The powers of an initiate include not only those of healing and causing death but also those of obtaining food for the tribe and victory in battle.