by Hope MacLean
The tiny snare is remarkably similar to a “dream-catcher,” a popular craft item made by Native people in Canada. I wonder whether the modern dream-catcher comes from an older concept, perhaps once widespread throughout North America’s Native people and still practiced by the Huichol. Klein (1982, 21–25) writes of the “plaited door,” a netted hoop, disk, or shield that represented a “means of passage through the cosmos.” The netted hoop is seen in Aztec and Mayan art and is said to represent the face of the sun. To the Yucatec Maya, it represented the ability to traverse the cosmos. The Arapaho said a netted hoop represented the entire cosmos as well as the sun and believed that it conferred the ability to fly. Hopi myths contain references to a flying textile, basket, or shield that transported people to the world of the gods and animal spirits (Malotki and Gary 2001, xi, 65–69, 70ff, 79, 228–231). Perhaps these references to travelling the cosmos or flying are figurative references to the shaman’s ability to travel to another plane, and the netted hoop may be a representation of the concept.
Uxa: Face-painting, Colored Lights, and Pollen
The ceremonial face paintings called nierikate have a deeper visionary meaning as well. According to Eligio and some of my other Huichol consultants, shamans can see designs of colored lights on people’s faces and around their bodies. Some have said to me that it looks as though the person’s face is painted with colored lights. The colors give the shamans information about people’s character and state of spiritual development. Different colors may represent different characters or varying levels of spiritual growth. (One consultant told me that dogs can also see these face paintings and that that is why dogs are good judges of human character.)
There is some confirmation in myth of this mystical interpretation. Zingg (1938, 617) recorded an example of this belief, although he did not understand it as an actual ability of shamans: “[The] ‘face’ of the god functions as a true face in indicating the sacred condition of the god. For instance, when the great gods of the sea were baptizing the bad shaman, Jimson-weed-man, to wash out some of his villany [sic], the color of his nealĺka changed to correspond to the change in his heart.” In this myth, the colors in Jimson-weed-man’s nierika changed according to his state of spiritual development.
People may have these visionary colors and face paintings from birth or as a result of their personal life path. Some people appear very beautiful to a shaman; their beauty is not because of their physical features, but rather because of a beautiful light that only the shaman can see. This beauty may be a quality the person is born with. However, people can also seek spiritual development, at which time their face painting changes. In particular, when pilgrims go to Wirikuta, the gods give them face paintings that the shamans can see. Pilgrims retain the colored lights after the pilgrimage. Hence, acquiring visionary colored lights is part of the process of becoming a shaman. Some consultants have told me that people can lose their lights if they go off the shaman’s path, especially if they violate a vow of sexual fidelity or celibacy. They can regain the lights only when they restart the pilgrimages.
As mentioned above, during the peyote pilgrimage, the pilgrims use uxa, a plant with a yellow root, to paint designs on their faces. The plant grows in the desert and was first identified as Mahonia trifoliolata (Moric.) Fedde var. glauca I. M. Johnson, or Berberis trifoliata Hartw., ex. Lindl (Bauml et al. 1990, 101), and more recently as Berberis trifoliolata (Moric.) var. glauca I. M. Johnson (Bauml 1994, 194). The pilgrims cut a piece of the root, and then rub it on a stone with a bit of water to make a thick yellow paint. Then they use a stick and a small round mirror to draw designs on their faces. These are the face-painting designs that Lumholtz called nierika. Lumholtz (1900, 196) translated “uxa” as “spark,” and suggested that the name symbolically linked the peyote pilgrimage to the fire god. However, a spark is a flash of light, and I wonder whether Lumholtz’s consultants were really telling him that “uxa” meant light.
I would suggest that these designs painted with uxa root are far more than just decoration. They may in fact be representations of visionary face paintings. They may also be prayers asking the gods to bestow visionary face paintings or colored lights on the pilgrims. The ceremonial face paintings are much more than just symbolic designs; they may be an indication of what shamans see in shamanic visions.
According to Eligio Carrillo, the visionary face paintings are called Tatei teima wa urrari. His term might be translated as “Sacred colors of our Mother-goddesses.” “Tatei teima” means “our Mothers,” the Mother goddesses who live in Wirikuta and in other places. Eligio elaborates that “Tatei teima wa urrari” is “the nierika, the painting of the gods”; in Spanish, he called the designs “la pintura de los dioses” (Sp.: the paint of the gods). Eligio uses the word “urra” (plural: urrari) instead of “uxa” because he speaks the San Andrés dialect of Huichol, which uses r in place of x.
ELIGIO: That is the paint of the gods. That is how the gods are. For that reason, the people who travel on the pilgrimage paint themselves like the gods are. And they paint themselves here that way, to pay a visit the same as those others [pointing to his face and cheeks]. [The pilgrims paint themselves] in order to be received with pleasure. [To show the gods] that you are with them [and that] you want to learn something. With them. And then, you should paint so that they will also receive you with pleasure. It is as though [the gods are] my friend. Friends. You should be. That’s how that is.
Eligio also explains that the real uxa (Sp.: la mera uxa) is not just the yellow root used for face paint. The real uxa is the pollen or flower of the peyote. More than that, uxa is the spiritual power that peyote pollen carries. During the pilgrimage ceremonies, the shaman touches the flower of the peyote to the cheeks, heart, wrists, and legs of each pilgrim. If the peyote is not in flower, they use the flesh of the peyote. I have also seen Huichol touch peyote to themselves when gathering or eating peyote. This touch transfers the uxa, or colored lights, and the spiritual energy from the peyote to the person. Thus, the shaman is painting with light on the person, using the peyote flower almost as a kind of paintbrush.
Again, a myth recorded by Zingg confirms Eligio’s explanation. When the first divine peyote pilgrims went to Wirikuta, they travelled to the upper world and hunted a deer, which transformed into a huge peyote plant with five different colors.
Slowly, in a long line they began to encircle the deer. . . . Then each helped to enclose the circle . . . In the middle a spray of foam sprang up. This was the deer, which was an enormous peyote. One side was green, one white, one red, another black, and another yellow. By means of these colors from peyote each of the hunters painted his face. These colors are the life. . . . The color put on their faces went to their hearts and made them curers. (2004:32)
Thus, in the myth, the uxa, or colors, are powerful in themselves. They have the power to transform the pilgrims into healers and shamans. Mata Torres’s (1980, 84) consultants told him that uxa appeared in much the same colors as the peyote described in the myth: blue (comparable to green), white, red, black, and yellow.
A person’s uxa may also be an omen or predictor of the person’s fate. The Huichol artist José Benĺtez had a dream that he had only four years to live. He depicted the fateful omen in a yarn painting in which “the face of his shadow self is spotted with yellow uxa root design. Some of the spots on the right side of his face are slightly smeared, but most of them are intact” (Negrĺn 1975, 32). In a footnote, Negrĺn added: “When the soul is hungry, one’s uxa fades” (35). A Huichol consultant told Liffman (2002, 151) that uxa designs on faces are like records kept in writing on paper, because a person’s “knowledge and the uxa designs that embody it are ‘written around one’s eyes.’”
Eligio’s explanation adds a great deal to the current ethnography of the term “uxa.” Several authors (Bauml et al. 1990, 99; Lumholtz 1900, 196; Mata Torres 1980, 80, 84; Myerhoff 1974, 147) have written about uxa as the plant with a yellow root or about its use as
face paint in ceremonies. Eligio adds much more to our understanding of uxa’s deeper shamanic and visionary meaning.
Eligio also added information on varieties of the uxa plant. He made me a yarn painting of a sacred site on the route to Wirikuta, a place where uxa grows; he called the site Urra Moyehe. He said there were two forms of uxa. One is male and yellow and grows at a particular sacred site that has rocks surrounding it (shown as jagged lines in the painting). The other uxa is female and whitish (Sp: medio-blanco); it grows elsewhere at a sacred spring. Eligio’s statement is confirmed by one of Bauml’s (1994, 194) consultants from San Andrés, who mentioned two forms of uxa—a white form, which grew in a nearby canyon, and a yellow form, which grew in Wirikuta. Bauml’s consultant did not link the two forms of uxa to gender, but some of Bauml’s consultants did distinguish between male and female forms of other plants.
Another of my Huichol consultants added more information on uxa. He pointed out to me that the yellow pollen falling from a white pine tree in Canada was a type of uxa. He also showed me a tiny red insect in the earth and said that it also had uxa.
Fig. 4.7. Eligio Carrillo Vicente, yarn painting of the sacred site where uxa grows, 2007. 24” x 24” (60 x 60 cm). Uxa is the yellow root used for face paintings. The shaman prays for the power it bestows on his shaman’s basket (takwatsi). Photo credit: Adrienne Herron.
Thus, even in Huichol thought, uxa is not just the yellow root, as anthropologists have supposed, but is a more general term referring to plant pollen, colors, and the sacred properties inherent in these elements.
I would go further and engage in some creative speculation about the ritual use of pollen. Is it possible that the visionary meanings of uxa might also attach to the use of pollen by other indigenous groups? The Hopi, for example, use corn pollen as a blessing in ceremonies. Corn has sacred powers among the Huichol, including the ability to transform into deer and peyote.
There is an even more suggestive reference to pollen among the Navajo. The Navajo are Athapaskans, but are heavily influenced by Puebloan cultures and, in particular, by the Hopi, who are Uto-Aztecans. It is possible that the Huichol and the Hopi share similar ideas on the meaning and use of pollen. The visionary meaning of uxa and pollen may have been transmitted to the Navajo, where it emerged as “the Pollen Path.”
The psychiatrist Donald Sandner (1979, 222–225) discussed the Pollen Path with Natani Tso, a hataali, or medicine man. Tso said that the Pollen Path was not a symbol, but rather a living reality that any person could access. It led to “beauty and harmony” (a simplified translation of Sa’ah naaghái bik’eh hozhóón). Tso explained: “The Pollen path is the pollen from all kinds of beautiful plants. The wind blows the pollen along the trail and you travel on it.” The Navajo sprinkle pollen as a blessing during ceremonies. They use pollen from corn or cattail rushes, or blue “pollen” made from the ground petals of larkspur. Yellow pollen floats on the surface of water and is called water pollen. (In eastern Canada, where I live, the yellow pollen from white pine trees is often found floating on water in early summer. Perhaps this is what the Navajo refer to as water pollen.) Pollen dusted on an animal absorbs its particular life quality. Pollen used to smother an animal for ceremonial purposes absorbs the animal’s life force.
Tso did his own hand trembling, a form of divination, using corn pollen (Sandner 1979, 31–32). He put corn pollen down his arms as an offering to Gila Monster, then prayed and sang. He began to feel a series of shocks running through his fingers, his hand began trembling, and he was able to guess the right answer. Then the hand stopped shaking.
Sandner cites Reichard, who found that associations with pollen are extended to “include glint or sheen as an essential part of an animal, object or person, a quality represented by pollen” (1950, 250–51; emphasis added). The glint can be seen as a haze or sheen around all natural forms. Sandner seems to be referring again to a light like an aura around objects. Reichard (1944, 29ff) derived the Navajo term for pollen, tádĺdĺn, from the word for light, and said it means “it emits light, here and there, everywhere.”
A similar concept of “glint” or “sheen” may be shared by the Huichol. Peter Furst (2003, 36–37) recorded a myth told by Ramón Medina about the birth of the sun. An orphan boy offered himself for sacrifice, saying, “I am painted, my face is shining, it is painted with the yellow face paint of the peyote country” (emphasis added). When the boy rises as the sun, the animal people bet on
which color he would emerge . . . They did not know what his color would be. How he would look. What his face painting would be.
When a ray emerged, one would say, “Ah here he comes, yellow.” Then another ray would break through and that one would say, “Ah, here comes a blue one, he will come out blue.” Thus all were betting there.
Could it be that the reference to a shining face and colored lights are not simply fanciful images in myth, but derive from shamanic experience?
The Huichol idea that shamans have a special light is shared with other cultures. For example, the Inuit believe that shamans acquire a light within the body, which the spirits are attracted to: “Compared with the shining shamans ordinary people are like houses with extinguished lamps: they are dark inside and do not attract the attention of the spirits” (Knut Rasmussen, cited in Blodgett 1978, 38, 48).
Eligio’s description of nierikate as colored lights is remarkably similar to descriptions of colored auras around people’s bodies. There are many accounts of colored auras in popular literature (see, for example, Brennan 1987; Andrews 1991). The colored light is also reminiscent of the Hindu concept of chakras, which are energy centers of the body, each with its own color. Yogis say that these chakras can be seen as rapidly whirling colored lights (Leadbeater 1927, 4–5). Is it possible that Huichol shamans, Western psychics, Navajo singers, and East Indian yogis are all describing the same phenomenon—energy fields around people’s bodies that some people are capable of seeing? Perhaps different cultures describe and interpret these lights in their own ways.
Eligio’s description and the Huichol concept of nierikate add something new: the idea of colored lights that appear on the face as designs or paintings. I have not encountered the idea of auras as designs in Western or East Indian literature, but perhaps other researchers with more esoteric knowledge or personal experience of working with mystics may have heard of this concept.
Evidently, nierika is a complex and multifaceted concept in Huichol thought. Nierika includes the following concepts:
» face
» painting on a face made with a yellow root (uxa)
» colored light or painting on a face bestowed by gods and visible mainly to shamans (also described as a specific form of uxa called Tatei Teima wa urrari)
» an eye
» an object with a hole or an eye depicted at its center
» the eye of a god looking at humans
» a mirror
» an object with a mirror at its center
» a mirror as a tool for seeing into the world of the gods
» a mirror as a tool for divination and healing
» a picture, a visual representation
» a picture of the gods or symbols associated with gods
» a vision (and the content of a vision)
» the power of shamanic vision or seeing
» spiral-shaped images seen while eating peyote
» a circular netted deer snare
» a rock carving, petroglyph, or design made in rock3
» a yarn painting
Clearly, a nierika is linked to the idea of faces and eyes, and the depiction of these features. The mirror reflects the face and eye and is, in a way, a depiction of the face, so it too is a nierika. The hole in an object is a means of seeing through it, and the eye of the seer looks through it. The ability to see can be two-way, since the eye of a god can look at humans, but a human’s eye can also look at a god.
Neither Lumholtz nor Zingg seem to have graspe
d the visionary meanings of nierika. Both saw a nierika mainly as a symbolic object representing either the world of the gods or a prayer for shaman’s vision.
Nierika is a basic aesthetic concept in Huichol art. In a sense, most Huichol art is a nierika, since most art depicts the world of the gods in one way or another. A yarn painting is simply a particular form of nierika. However, nierika is not just a synonym for the Western word “art.” Nierika extends beyond the art object itself to encompass the capacity of the artist to see. It includes both the visionary capacity and the content of the vision itself.
5
sacred yarn paintings
When I did my PhD fieldwork, I was reluctant to focus on the sacred paintings because I was concerned about whether the Huichol would be willing to make this information public. There can be ethical concerns about publishing ceremonial and sacred information belonging to indigenous peoples. Therefore, I did my research on the commercial paintings, which the Huichol are comfortable showing and explaining. I did not ask to photograph or even to look at sacred yarn paintings. I asked my consultants only a few general questions about the use of sacred paintings.
Since then, I have done in-depth research with Eligio Carrillo, and he has assured me that he is telling me information so that it can be recorded and published. He gave me a comprehensive statement on the origins, designs, and uses of the sacred paintings from the point of view of one artist. He discussed much information that has not been published elsewhere, particularly the effect of sacred yarn paintings on the mind and body of the painter, and the paintings’ possible relationship to rock carvings or petroglyphs.
This chapter records that interview. I have added information from other interviews with Eligio and supplemented it with information from the literature. Traditional yarn paintings are still made as offerings to the gods. I use the term “sacred yarn paintings” to distinguish them from commercial paintings.
