The Shaman's Mirror

by Hope MacLean

  Purposes of Sacred Paintings

  I began by asking Eligio what the sacred yarn paintings are used for. He replied that the yarn paintings are taken to particular sacred sites, such as caves, depending on the vows petitioners have made and what they have asked for. In his case, he asked for the ability to make yarn paintings. The result was that over the course of five years, he developed the ability to dream and see images.

  ELIGIO: Those yarn paintings that they make are original [traditional], which are taken to the sacred caves. They take them; that is to say, it is according to the promise that a person makes, the bargain that one is asking for. . . . For example, I did not know how to paint before. I didn’t know anything. And then I asked at the sacred cave, that is to say, at Wirikuta. There I asked the place to focus me so that I would know how to paint everything well, to know how to lay on the colors, everything. And that’s what I asked for.

  And then, between that time and five years later, I began to dream. I saw a lot of designs, colors, things like that. Designs in the rocks that they [the gods or spirits] showed me . . . everything. And that’s how I began to dream, but I was seeing [envisioning]. And then, for that reason, when someone makes a request, takes away designs, paintings, [it is] because you have asked for it at that place.

  A person who asks the gods for help must pay the gods for their gifts. The offering is made as a kind of payment in advance. Eligio refers here to a belief that if the gods are not paid, they may make the person ill or strike his family or his animals with sickness or misfortune. In effect, a relationship with the gods is a form of contract.

  ELIGIO: You have to take [an offering] to it [the sacred place], because they [gods] are also charging us. The gods charge a person. If you are just selling [your artwork] and eating [buying food with the money you get, then the deity says,] “Well, I want something too.” And for that reason, we take [the yarn painting] to those places. And it’s very expensive too [that is, costly to make the pilgrimages and offerings]. For that reason, it almost doesn’t seem appropriate to sell that painting, but nonetheless we sell them. We are selling them. But you have to complete, just by going every year. I always do it like that. Every year, and then I take money because they [the gods] are charging us also. And furthermore, they can punish me.

  I questioned his use of money, but he reiterated that he paid the gods with both a yarn painting and money. This may be because he sells his commercial work and gets money for it; therefore, he gives the gods their share. Nonetheless, even on other family offerings I have seen, the Huichol often include a coin as a way to ask for good financial fortune.

  HOPE: You take money to the sacred sites?

  ELIGIO: Yes, I take that.

  HOPE: To pay for a part of that?

  ELIGIO: Yes, I take it. There it stays. That way, they don’t punish us. And it is the same thing, it’s also bad, if you don’t pay, if you don’t leave anything. And you have to make a nierika, that kind, and take it there also. To that place. That is everything a person does.

  A yarn painting is an appropriate offering to any god. There is no restriction on which particular god to give a painting to.

  HOPE: Can you offer these to any god? Or are there certain gods that want yarn paintings?

  ELIGIO: All the gods.

  HOPE: All?

  ELIGIO: All, all.

  HOPE: At whatever place?

  ELIGIO: At any place. That one, to take a design, off you go with it, it’s a gift.

  I asked Eligio whether he was required to use specific designs for an offering or whether he could make up the designs. He replied that the gods showed him what designs to make. In this he may be exceptional, since he already has the power to dream and envision. A person just starting out may be confined to more conventional sources of imagery, such as repeating commonly used designs.

  HOPE: And do you make up the yarn painting [design], or are there traditional designs that a person should put into the yarn painting?

  ELIGIO: Well there are designs, and . . . how can I tell you? Well, they [the gods] tell them to me. And I see them [the designs]. What I am making. And that is why I say, before [in the past] I was asleep [mentally], I did not know anything. I couldn’t paint, I didn’t know how to. I wasn’t focused, to paint or do anything else. But now, no. And when I am about to make a painting, it is as though that one comes to me like this. [makes a “shhh” noise and gestures from behind his head] And [it is] all ready to paint. And sometimes I dream. When I am sleeping, they are teaching me everything. The images come on their own.

  Eligio has told me that designs and colors come to him directly in a visionary communication from sacred sites. He describes colors as a language the gods use to talk with. The colors come to him in a type of synesthetic communication that can be understood by shamans. He makes a gesture with his hands from behind his head to the board in front of him, and a noise that is almost like wind. He seems to say that the images and colors come like a wind and seat themselves in his painting.

  He went on to say that a person is not restricted to a single design. A person may make a painting that expresses his or her own thoughts, according to what is in their heart and soul (iyari).

  HOPE: When it is a nierika to take to a sacred site, do you always have to make the same design, or different ones?

  ELIGIO: No, different ones.

  HOPE: Whatever you want?

  ELIGIO: Whatever a person likes. According to your heart, that is the one that is guiding you. That one is guiding everything. Whatever idea you have, [if you think,] “Oh, I want to make that one!” [then] make it.

  Eligio is typically flexible and open about how to proceed in sacred matters. He does not usually say there is only one right way that a person must follow exactly. With the same flexibility, he asserted that a person was not required to go to just one sacred site. There are many sites, all of which have power.

  HOPE: Are there special places where you take yarn paintings? Or any place?

  ELIGIO: Any place. Any place. As long as it’s a sacred place.

  The painting can be taken to any sacred site, such as one of the sacred caves in the Sierra. The real temples are the sacred caves, and that is where the painting should be left. The artist should bless or empower the painting with sacred water taken from a sacred site. The painting cannot be kept permanently; it must be offered. Otherwise, it will lose its power. Moreover, a painting should be handled correctly. It is not kept in the artist’s house. It may be stored temporarily in a xiriki, or god house, which is an appropriate place to keep nierikate (or any sacred object.)

  HOPE: And do you put it in a xiriki or a calihuey also?

  ELIGIO: Well, to be exact, over there—in the Sierra, that’s where the calihueys are [that is, the caves and sacred sites of the Sierra are the real temples or calihuey]. I take it over there and leave it. All you have to do is take some sacred water, bless it, and take it. . . .

  HOPE: And you don’t keep it in your god house [xiriki] here? Or your temple [tuki] here?

  ELIGIO: Yes, I have it here.

  HOPE: Oh, also. Or do you have another one here?

  ELIGIO: They are all kept safe, those things, the nierikate, all of them, the arrows and everything. Then, after a year, I take them to the sacred site. Or before a year is up, whenever I can go, I take them. That’s where I leave them.

  HOPE: You don’t have to keep it forever here in your tuki?

  ELIGIO: No, that [the power] withdraws itself. No, you have to take it to those places.

  I asked what powers the sacred paintings have. He used a commercial painting of a deer to illustrate the relationship between image and sacred power. The painting shows a grey and blue deer surrounded by red with blue dots, then a blue and green circle with golden rays radiating from the circle, and small peyote buttons in the cardinal directions.

  HOPE: What power does a sacred yarn painting have?

  ELIGIO: Well, it depends on the painting that you m
ight make. For example, this one contains the power of Kauyumari [the deer god]. It is as though he is a peyote. But at the same time, he turns into this [a deer]. And he transforms into a nierika. He transforms into nothingness and into pure light. That is the power it [the yarn painting] contains . . . It is [Kauyumari] who makes all those images, who creates that image, that peyote.

  Fig. 5.1. Eligio Carrillo Vicente, a yarn painting showing the sacred colors and powers carried by Tamatsi Kauyumari, 2000. 12” x 12” (30 x 30 cm). Photo credit: Adrienne Herron.

  Eligio refers here to the Huichol idea that the spirit of the deer can transform into corn and peyote. He adds the information that the deer god can transform into pure light or nothingness. Even though this painting was made for sale, he asserted that it had all the powers of a sacred painting because the powers are carried in the image itself. This is because the design is one also used in sacred paintings, and it is complete. The colors are also significant: the deer god wants these colors to be used.

  ELIGIO: The peyote . . . and the colors that he wants, all the colors come out.

  HOPE: Then this yarn painting carries the power of peyote and of the deer.

  ELIGIO: Exactly. Sacred. It is a nierika, this one. Because it is complete [that is, it has all the sacred elements]. Because [Kauyumari] is the one who guides everything. He appears and [then disappears]. He turns into pure designs.

  A yarn painting has the power of the deity or sacred place depicted in it. It is the power of the kakauyari, the divine ancestors. I checked whether it was the personal power of the human artist, but Eligio insisted that once the artist painted the painting, the power of the god entered it.

  HOPE: Then the nierika contains . . . the power of the god it depicts?

  ELIGIO: That’s it. . . .

  HOPE: It doesn’t contain the force of the person who is the artist?

  ELIGIO: No, it is the power of the kakauyari, those ones. The person just makes the design itself.

  HOPE: And those ones [gods] put the power in? When someone makes the design, . . . it is like a spirit that it contains? It seats itself in the nierika?

  ELIGIO: That’s it.

  HOPE: Have you seen it happen? When the power comes?

  ELIGIO: Yes, when . . . all of a sudden, it comes this way. And then I begin to paint it. And I carry them here. The designs are all ready. That is what it is, that is what it contains.

  How Sacred Paintings Are Made

  I continued on with questions about how the paintings are made. Eligio said that in the past, the sacred yarn paintings did not have many colors. He remembered making paintings with just the natural colors of sheep’s wool—white, black, and brown. It was also possible to use a native white cotton. He did not know what the Huichol used before sheep. (Since sheep arrived with the Spanish 500 years ago, it is possible that the Huichol have been using wool for almost that long.)

  Eligio’s references to two, or three, or four reflect a Huichol figure of speech translated into Spanish. It is quite common for Huichol to say the preceding numbers when referring to a number. For example, they might say, “There are one, two, three ways to do something. Four ways of doing it.”

  HOPE: And in the time long ago, they didn’t have so many colors, right? Yarn of many colors. How did they make [the paintings]?

  ELIGIO: How did they make them? They made them with only about three or four colors, and that was it. [Or] with two colors, no more. They always had in those times white and black, and a medium brown, like this. Just three colors. And with those, they were making them, nothing more. With white and black and mid-brown. No more than three colors.

  HOPE: And many years ago, they didn’t have yarn, right? Or sheep’s wool?

  ELIGIO: Yes, they just made them with sheep’s wool.

  HOPE: Of wool?

  ELIGIO: White and black. There are some sheep that are medium brown, nothing more. With that yarn they made designs. But out of pure wool.

  HOPE: And did they use other things? Like cotton or other?

  ELIGIO: Well, with cotton also. Because it is white also, to make that.

  I probed to see whether the Huichol ever used other materials. I was speculating that Huichol yarn paintings might be related to sacred paintings used by other Uto-Aztecans, and wondered whether the use of other materials was part of a broad Uto-Aztecan pattern. Jane Hill (1992) has described a widespread Uto-Aztecan complex of flower symbolism that is related to a spiritual “Flowery World.” For example, the Hopi of the Southwest used sand paintings with flower symbols on their altars (Voth 1901, cited in Hill 1992, 129), as well as flowers as decorations on ceremonial clothing. The Navajo may have learned sand painting from Puebloan peoples, and Sandner (1979) records that the Navajo sometimes use flower petals in place of sand in dry paintings. Nonetheless, Eligio asserted that the Huichol had never used either flowers or sand in yarn paintings.

  HOPE: They never made them with flowers?

  ELIGIO: No, not with flowers. Just with pure wool, and cotton.

  HOPE: Not with earths, like sand or anything like that?

  ELIGIO: No.

  HOPE: Always just with thread?

  ELIGIO: Yes, they made it with that. They twisted it, the wool. They twisted [spun] it, and with that they made the designs.

  The Huichol do share other Uto-Aztecans’ beliefs in the spiritual properties of flowers and pollen. Paper flowers (Hui.: xuturi) are attached to the horns of a bull about to be sacrificed. Modern offering bowls sometimes include flowers made from tissue paper. Zingg collected a myth that prescribes the appropriate offerings for Stuluwĺakame, a rain-mother goddess of Tatei Matinieri. Her offerings include “votive bowls, itali [yarn paintings] . . . and other paraphernalia ornamented with flowers of all kinds, so she would be pleased with their fragrance” (2004, 128). These could be either actual flowers or flower designs.

  I also asked whether the Huichol had used colored yarns in the past. Eligio said that the Huichol had begun to use multiple colors of yarn only after these colors were available commercially. He referred here to the use of acrylic yarns, dyed with aniline dyes, which are now widely available in Mexican stores.

  HOPE: And when they began to sell these threads with many colors, the Huichol began to use many colors in the yarn paintings?

  ELIGIO: Well, afterward, when these began to come out, already dyed. Then they began to put on more colors, because there were more colors. . . .

  HOPE: And before, they couldn’t put them on?

  ELIGIO: No, they couldn’t put them on. No, there weren’t any. . . .

  HOPE: Before, did they have colors to dye the threads? Like colors made of plants?

  ELIGIO: Yes, that also. Also, the Indians dyed that, the wool of sheep. There are dyes to dye that. With that, they dyed them. With that, they made designs, bags of that kind [points to bag with shoulder strap (Hui.: kütsiuri)], embroidered suits, and of pure wool, just spun, just woven. With that, they made embroidery.

  I asked whether he knew any dyes for wool. He knew of two trees used for dyeing, both of which give shades of red and pink. One he called brasil, or brazilwood, which is probably Haematoxylon brasiletto, a tree widely used for dyeing in Mexico (Sayer 1985, 136). The other is a tree he called cuachalala in Spanish (probably Amphipterygium adstringens, in the family Julianiaceae). Zingg (1938, 149; 2004, 141) refers to this tree as culiakai in Huichol, or kuacha-lala in Spanish, and records a myth that its bark is spotted because it absorbed smallpox from a curing. Eligio’s repetition of “cooking” suggests that the dyes are simmered and stirred for a long time.

  HOPE: Do you know how they made the colors to dye the wool for yarn? Do you know what plants they used?

  ELIGIO: Plants from around here . . . They are trees that are called brasil. And the other is called cuachalala. It is a tree that gives red bark. And the other, the [brazil] tree gives cherry red [Sp.: guindo], the dye. With that they colored them. They cooked it, and stirred it, cooking, cooking. That way the dye
was fixed.

  Nevertheless, Eligio did not remember the Huichol using these red dyes for yarn painting. Eligio grew up during the 1940s and 1950s in the Santiago River region. His information may reflect the experience of Huichol living in that region at that time. His statements were confirmed by Guadalupe de la Cruz Rĺos, who grew up in the same region about twenty years earlier, that is, during the 1920s and 1930s. She also told me that she mainly remembered working in the natural sheep colors. The anthropologist Stacy Schaefer is currently collecting information on Huichol natural dyes used in the Sierra; her research may expand our knowledge of changes in Huichol color use over time.

  As with design, the choice of which colors to use is up to the artist and his or her perception of the gods. There are no particular rules for which colors to use or how to combine them.

  HOPE: Are there rules that you should put one color with another? For example, always black with blue, or red with green? Are there rules like this when one is painting?

  ELIGIO: Well, when you make contact, many colors come forth. Many colors come.

  HOPE: It doesn’t matter?

  ELIGIO: No, it doesn’t matter.

  HOPE: No one teaches you that you should put this [color] with this?

  ELIGIO: No, not that.

  His reference to many colors coming forth when he makes contact means the sacred colors he receives in communication with the gods. In effect, he said that visionary experience guides the choice of colors, not rules made by humans. This concept is explained in more detail in Chapter 10.

  I wondered whether use of yarn paintings was gendered, that is, whether it was particular to either men or women. Eligio replied that both men and women can make sacred yarn paintings. Eligio said that women sometimes made them as a petition to learn to sew.

  HOPE: Is it only men who make yarn paintings as offerings? Or can women?