medicine society

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 Ojibwa religion, Midewiwin rituals were first performed by various supernatural beings to comfort Minabozho—a culture hero and intercessor between the Great Spirit and mortals—on the death of his brother. Minabozho, having pity on the suffering inherent in the human condition, transmitted the ritual to the spirit-being Otter and, through Otter, to the Ojibwa.

Traditionally, the Grand Medicine Society was an esoteric group consisting at times of more than 1,000 members, including shamans, prophets, and seers, as well as others who successfully undertook the initiation process. The society was thus both a centre of spiritual knowledge and a source of social prestige.

With a complex series of four degrees of initiation that were held within an especially constructed medicine lodge, the society’s central acts involved the ritual death and rebirth of the initiate. The powers of an initiate included not only those of healing and causing death but also those of obtaining food for the tribe and victory in battle.