The Shaman's Mirror

by Hope MacLean

  They are white with red eyes or some of them are just blue when they come out. Just like blue horses.

  Some of them just really blue, some of them white, and some of them pure yellow.

  The similarity was striking. Was it possible that my own vision was a common experience, shared not only by the Huichol but by shamans of other cultures as well?

  There are accounts of anthropologists sharing visionary experiences with their consultants. Bruce Grindal (1983, 68) records a vision of the corpse dancing and drumming in an African funeral ceremony.

  From both the corpse and the goka [shamans] came flashes of light so fleeting that I cannot say exactly where they originated. The hand of the goka would beat down on the iron hoe, the spit would fly from his mouth, and suddenly the flashes of light flew like sparks from a fire.

  Then I felt my body become rigid. . . . Stretching from the amazingly delicate fingers and mouths of the goka, strands of fibrous light played upon the head, fingers, and toes of the dead man. The corpse, shaken by spasms, then rose to its feet, spinning and dancing in a frenzy. . . . The talking drums on the roof of the dead man’s house began to glow with a light so strong that it drew the dancers to the rooftop. The corpse picked up the drumsticks and began to play.

  The participants later told Grindal that “seeing the ancestors dance” and hearing the dead man drum was an experience shared by some, but not all, of the participants. He concluded that the fundamental problem raised by his vision was epistemological. Since a vision is not subject to consensual validation by rational observers, one must depart from the ordinary canons of research and assume that reality is relative to one’s consciousness of it.

  Sharing visions, and the dilemma of what to do about them, has become a theoretical springboard for some anthropologists. Victor Turner (cited in E. Turner 1996, xxii–xxiii) labeled his insight the anthropology of experience and challenged his colleagues to learn about ritual processes “‘on their pulses,’ in coactivity with their enactors.” An increasing number of anthropologists now write about their own extraordinary experiences. Lupe’s husband, Ramón, gave peyote to Barbara Myerhoff (1974, 40–42), and she had a vision of herself “impaled on an enormous tree with its roots buried far below the earth and its branches rising beyond sight, toward the sky.” She interpreted it as the world tree and said that she saw exactly the same image in a Mayan glyph several years later.

  Edith Turner (1996, xxii) saw an African healer extract a grey mass, like smoke, from a patient, then later learned to feel illness through her own hands in an Inupiat village. Her experience inspired her to admonish fellow anthropologists: “It is time that we recognize the ability to experience different levels of reality as one of the normal human abilities and place it where it belongs, central to the study of ritual” (Turner 1994, 94).

  While attending a lecture by a Métis healer, Jean-Guy Goulet (1998, 178–179) had a vision of a Dene girl who had died; after he described his vision to Dene consultants, he found that they were much more forthcoming in sharing their own visionary experiences. David Young and Jean-Guy Goulet (1994, 328–329) call on anthropologists to develop theoretical models that encompass such experiences. Visionary experience is an important part of Native American culture. As Goulet (1998, xxv–xxxiii) points out, information gained through vision is considered as valid and important as information gained through other senses such as sight, sound, or touch.

  We do our consultants a disservice if we reject this information. Moreover, we risk failing to understand the complex metaphysical explanations of Huichol religion if we automatically reject the subjective visionary experiences that may underlie it. I would venture to say that sharing our consultants’ experiences may give a whole new perspective to fieldwork. For example, once while participating in a ceremony, I suddenly saw a deer standing in the middle of the circle, facing the shaman.6 I asked one of the other Huichol whether I had really seen what I thought I saw. She replied, “Of course, the shaman has been standing there talking to that deer for a while.”

  If we, as anthropologists, do not realize that this is what is going on, we may simply see a shaman standing and singing or waving his plumes in the air. We may miss the whole point of what the ceremony is about and what is really happening from the participants’ points of view.

  As I attended ceremonies and asked the artists about the meaning of their paintings, the Huichol stressed repeatedly the importance of visionary experience. Visions may include hearing sounds and voices, seeing images, or otherwise knowing or apprehending information through empathy or “gut feeling.” Visionary experience may include dreams while asleep or visions experienced while awake or in some form of trance. They may include phenomena induced by hallucinogens such as peyote, or experiences undergone while a person is cold sober. Shamans envision when they sing. Ordinary Huichol may envision when they attend ceremonies. Visions are also a recurring part of everyday life that anyone, including young children, are able to experience. Discussion of dreams and visions is a regular part of conversation in some Huichol families.

  I deal at length with visionary experience in this book. Here, I will address some methodological issues. Some readers may subscribe to the Western, scientific view that humans have five senses only and that what might be called psychic phenomena have little place in anthropological research (Krakauer 2003, 338; Bateson 1984, 209). Such readers may feel that reports of psychic and shamanic experience cannot be verified and may be falsified by consultants trying to gain some sort of advantage. However, I feel that if we are to understand how the Huichol feel and think about their religion and their art, we must at the very least suspend disbelief and listen closely to what they say. David Young suggests proceeding as if the information were true, and then following the conversations and ideas where they might lead. For example, if a person reports seeing a deer spirit, the researcher may ask what kind of deer, what it said or did, what it meant to the person, and so on. A skeptical reader may at some point choose to believe that reports of visionary experience are false or are the product of cultural fantasy. However, at the very least, we should understand that many Huichol take these phenomena absolutely seriously. If we are to understand what the Huichol are talking about, then we need to listen to them with attention.

  An anonymous reviewer of one of my articles once suggested that Huichol artists make up stories of visionary experience in order to entice buyers, and that therefore this information cannot be trusted. I suggest that this concern be dealt with by the usual anthropological methods of verification, such as getting to know consultants well, finding out how they are regarded by others in the community, and using multiple consultants. I occasionally met artists who made up stories to impress me; for example, one young man showed me a photograph of a Mariano Valadez painting and claimed he had painted it. He quickly backed down when I recognized the painting and challenged him. Another artist claimed to be an important shaman, and at the time I was skeptical. I found out several years later that he had completed the required number of pilgrimages and was regarded by others in the community as having some shamanic powers, although he was not as influential as he claimed.

  Not all Huichol claim shamanic or visionary experience. Many Huichol told me quite clearly that they were not shamans or did not have these abilities. Their disclaimers indicate that these consultants were not trying to gain any advantage by claiming to be shamans.

  It is also valuable to check the consistency of shamanic claims—in particular, whether verbal claims are consistent with observed behavior. Is the person recognized by others in the community as having visionary ability? (In Huichol culture, a person may have visionary ability without being a shaman.) Has the person completed the steps required to become a shaman? Do other people come to the person for shamanic services such as singing or curing? Is the person practicing what he or she preaches? Does the person live according to shamanic principles? Does he or she practice the ceremonies and leave offerings? Do
es he or she consistently offer the same kinds of explanations for phenomena? For example, does he or she have a clear and consistent explanation of the activities of deities? Is visionary experience a regular part of family discourse? Do people dream and then talk about it with their families in the morning?

  The same anonymous reviewer asked whether Huichol are not normally secretive and reluctant to explain their shamanic thought to outsiders. I agree this can be so, and like most anthropologists, I have certainly met people who did not want to talk to me. Several artists told me that some shamans did not wish to share information with anyone, even within their own families. Nonetheless, I consistently found that the artists were willing to explain their yarn paintings in considerable detail, and without hesitation. More than that, the artists were usually pleased and proud to have a chance to explain their work. They were also willing to tell me about visionary or dream experiences. The key factor was that I asked for an explanation and was willing to listen to the response. This means that I spoke Spanish well enough to understand, and respected indigenous etiquette by allowing the speaker ample time to explore his or her thought without interrupting. Also, after spending a considerable amount of time among the Huichol, I developed personal relationships with people who were known to the artists. Sometimes I asked artists why they were telling me certain things, and their answer was simple: “Because you asked.” I have concluded that a sincere and interested questioner will be taken at face value and will be given an intelligent and comprehensive response.

  It is also possible that some shamans see things in me that make them willing to share information; one shaman told me that I had “many beautiful colors painted on me” and that this attracted him. This means of gaining entrée is not the usual one recommended in manuals on fieldwork methods, but it may be the reality of what happens in an indigenous culture.

  Indigenous consultants have sometimes confided dreams and visionary experiences to anthropologists. Extraordinary images and symbols are scattered like fragments throughout the anthropological literature. Whether those images and symbols are recognized as visionary is another matter. In addition, such visionary statements have not been collected systematically. (Ethnographers may set out with a list of categories for data collection, such as house building or agricultural techniques, but few have set out to collect data on visions.) As a result, accounts of visionary experience occur randomly, such as when an ethnographer wrote down what a shaman or other visionary said. Sometimes they are just presented as myths. Nonetheless, despite being unsystematic, these accounts are vital information on shamanic perception.

  I have pulled together some of these references and compared them to my own Huichol information; they deepen our understanding of how vision forms a constant source of information in indigenous thought. I have mainly compared the Huichol to other Uto-Aztecans, such as the Aztec, Paiute, Yaqui, Papago, and Hopi, who share similarities of thought and worldview. The information is spotty in the anthropological record. It often depends on whether an anthropologist was sensitive about recording it and on how open his or her consultants were to talking about it. For example, Ruth Underhill (1938, 1939, 1979), an early Boasian ethnographer, recorded remarkable material about Papago dreams and visions. The Yaqui seem to have been very open in describing their views of a spiritual flower world to ethnographers such as Muriel Painter (1986) and Edward Spicer (1980).

  Occasionally, I have extended the comparison to other Native peoples, especially to the Navajo, who are Dene (Athapaskan), but who intermarried extensively with the Uto-Aztecan Hopi. I suspect that some Navajo thought is strongly influenced by Uto-Aztecan ideas of visionary experience. When I have drawn on other cultures, such as the Cree or Winnebago, it is usually because I found a specific description of visionary experience that sheds light on my own Huichol data.

  Eligio Carrillo Vicente, Artist and Shaman

  Eligio Carrillo Vicente is one of my most important consultants on yarn painting and visionary experience. I first met Eligio in 1994. Lupe’s family had recommended that I talk to Eligio if I wanted to learn more about yarn painting from a very good artist. Eligio was the uncle of Presiliano Carrillo Rĺos, a young man who was married to Lupe’s niece, Marĺa Feliz. After about a week of false starts and cancelled trips, I prevailed upon Presiliano to take me to Eligio and introduce me.

  We took a Volkswagen combi (minivan) along the newly built highway leading into the Santiago River region. The combi dropped us at the side of the highway, and we walked down a cobblestone road to a small rancho. As we approached a concrete-block house, I saw a stocky, heavily muscled man sitting at a wooden table. Eligio waved hello and immediately offered me a chair. I presented my credentials, including my letter of introduction from the Instituto Nacional Indigenista. Eligio read the letter carefully, and I felt that it made him more willing to talk to me. He asked me a few questions, then agreed to a tape-recorded interview. I talked to him for several hours that day. He gave me some of my most important clues to the inner meaning of yarn paintings, although I did not realize it at the time. After our talk, I continued to travel around the Sierra, looking for and interviewing other artists. It was only much later, when I had finished transcribing my tapes and was writing my thesis, that I realized how significant were some of the things he said.

  Fig. 1.3. Eligio Carrillo completing a yarn painting, 2005. The Huichol say that the colors in their clothes replicate the colors of the clothes the gods wear. The gods are pleased when they see humans wearing the same kinds of clothes that they do. Photo credit: Hope MacLean.

  At the end of our interview, he described a dream he had had several times over the past week. He saw a woman in white walking up the path to visit him. When he saw me coming—by coincidence, I was dressed all in white—he turned to his wife and said, “Watch what will happen. That is the one I was dreaming about.” His dream was the reason he decided to answer my questions.

  I returned to Mexico in the winter of 1999–2000 and decided to look up Eligio again. I wanted to clarify some points raised by our previous interview. I expected to do perhaps one or two interviews. Instead, I spent the whole winter interviewing him. I would tape a long interview of several hours, return home to transcribe it, then go back to ask more questions raised by our conversation. Often, it was only while making a word-by-word transcription that I realized the underlying significance of something Eligio said as a passing comment. For example, his phrase “the colors speak” led me into a discussion of color as a language used by the shamans and gods to communicate. Since then, Eligio has given me an enormous amount of information on Huichol philosophy and on shamanic meaning in yarn painting. We have discussed the nature of the soul, shamanic healing, and the inner structure of energy in the Huichol shamanic universe.

  Eligio is one of the most experienced and skillful Huichol artists. (For his biography, see Chapter 7.) He has participated in many pilgrimages to Wirikuta over the past thirty years. As a result, he says that the gods have given him some shamanic abilities, including visionary ability. Nevertheless, he says that he did not ask to become a shaman and that his healing abilities are limited to curing children’s diseases. Thus, he might be classed as an “intermediate” or “minor” shaman rather than a senior shaman who leads ceremonies, is an important singer, and is in demand as a healer.

  I have confirmed part of what Eligio says with other Huichol and from the literature, but there is also much that is new and so far unpublished elsewhere. Eligio’s family left the Huichol community of San Andrés and moved down to the Santiago River during the Mexican Revolution. Thus, his cultural roots and his knowledge go back to San Andrés. There can be variation between communities and between individuals. His knowledge forms a coherent body of philosophy, but it is quite possible that other shamans and other artists might have different explanations for the same concepts.

  I have used many of our conversations verbatim in this book, presenting the actual words, translated into Engl
ish, because I feel that the language and the phrasing are significant. Perhaps others will see meanings that I may have missed or that were lost in paraphrasing. He is not always easy to understand, and so I have provided explanatory notes in square brackets in the texts. Often, these notes relate to another of our conversations that can help clarify his meaning.

  Eligio wanted to discuss this information because of his concerns about transparency and cultural survival. He feels that Huichol young people are often not interested in the kinds of knowledge he has, and he wants to make sure that it is recorded. He takes pride in sharing information: “I don’t want to take this with me when I die.” I explained at the outset that I was writing for publication, and he allowed me to tape-record all our interviews. He is a strong, intelligent man with a powerful character, and I have trusted his ability to judge what he is prepared to say and have published. I only hope that I can do credit to the information he has entrusted to me.

  2

  wixárika

  children of the ancestor gods

  The Huichol live in the rugged Sierra Madre of western Mexico. “Huichol” is a name given to them by the Spanish, and even the origins of the name are unclear. Early Spanish documents record different versions of this name, such as Xurutes, Uzares, Vizuritas (Rojas 1992, 23), Guisol, Usulique (P. Furst 1996, 40), and Tecual or Teçol (Anguiano 1992, 170–172).

  The Huichol name for themselves is Wixárika. It is pronounced “Wee-sha’-ree-kah” in the eastern dialect or “Wee-ra’-ree-kah,” in the western dialect. Carl Lumholtz (1900, 6), an early anthropologist, translated their name as “prophets” or “healers”; more recently, Liffman (2002, 40) translates it as “diviners.”

  The Huichol speak a language in the Uto-Aztecan language family (Grimes and Grimes 1962, 104), also known as Uto-Nahuan. The Huichol are part of a wide band of Uto-Aztecan language speakers that extends from southern Idaho through the southwestern United States along the western Sierra Madre and the Pacific Coast to the Valley of Mexico, with isolated groups as far south as Costa Rica and Panama (Hill 2001, 913). The Huichol’s closest linguistic relatives are the neighboring Cora, followed by the Nahua (and formerly the Aztecs) of central Mexico (Grimes and Hinton 1969, 795; Hill 2001, 930).