Though the most important of their fiestas, Huichol peyotism is a
seasonal matter, the hikuli seldom being eaten outside the ceremonial
period in January. In October a preliminary trip lasting fifteen days
each way is made to Real Catorce (San Luis Potosí) to obtain the plants.
The eight or twelve pilgrims bathe and sleep in the temple with their
wives the night before leaving, not washing again until the feast
some four months later. After receiving new names for the trip, the
next morning they pray around a fire, wearing squirrel tails tied to
their hats, and sacrifice five tortillas[27] to the fire. Then, after
sprinkling their heads with a deer-tail dipped in water steeped with
certain herbs, all weep as each man puts his right hand on his wife’s
left shoulder and bids her farewell.[28]
Their route is full of religious associations, since formerly the gods
went out to seek peyote and now are met with in the shape of mountains,
stones and springs; their dreams en route are also important in deciding
religious arrangements for the coming year (who is to sacrifice cattle
for rain, who is to be fire-maker, etc.). The pilgrims carry sacred
hour-glass shaped gourds and the leader also carries the yákwai, a ball
of native-grown tobacco called macuchi, which is solemnly distributed
after they pass Puerta de Cerda. In the afternoon they place ceremonial
arrows toward the four corners of the world, and sit around a fire until
midnight. Tobacco belongs to the personified fire; after much praying the
leader touches the tobacco-ball with his plumes and wraps small portions
in corn husks[29] “so that they look like diminutive tamales,” and each
man puts one in a special tobacco-gourd tied to his quiver. This act
symbolizes the birth of tobacco and henceforth they must preserve ritual
order on the march, and only cease to be the “prisoner” of Grandfather
Fire when the sacred bundles are given back to him, i.e., burned.
On the fourth afternoon the women at home gather to confess their sins to
Grandfather Fire; they knot palm-leaves lest they forget the name of even
a single lover and the men consequently find no hikuli. After this public
confession each woman throws her leaf into the fire and becomes ritually
clean. The men make a similar confession “to the five winds” a little
beyond Zacatecas and burn their tallies in the fire. The hikuli-seekers
are henceforth gods and the leaders fast (save for eating stray plants)
until they reach the peyote country.[30]
Arrived, they line up, each man with an arrow on his bow-string which
he points successively to the six regions of the world without letting
it fly. As they march toward the mesa-“altar” where the leader has seen
hikuli as a “deer,” each man shoots two arrows each over five hikuli
plants, crossing over their tops that they may be taken “alive.” They
make a ceremonial circuit of the mesa, but the “deer” assumes the form
of a whirlwind and disappears, leaving two hikuli in his tracks; there
they sacrifice votive bowls, arrows, paper flowers, beads, etc., and
pray. After this they return to get their five hikuli, and eat and gather
others. The whole ceremony is of hunting deer, and after five days they
reverse the logs of their fireplace and return home with gourds of holy
water, wood for the shaman’s rasp, sotol for the “godseats,” yellow paint
material and the hikuli they have gathered. Their tobacco-gourds and
faces are painted yellow, the color of the God of Fire. The face-painting
represents the faces or masks of the gods, and expresses prayers for
rain, luck in deer-hunting and good crops, symbolized as corn field,
cloud, ear of corn, “rain-serpent,” squash-vine and -flower designs.[31]
Approaching home, they must hunt deer until they have enough for the
feast, before being freed from the ritual restrictions of continence,
fasting, and non-use of salt, meanwhile being sustained by slices of
green hikuli eaten from time to time. The deer meat is cooked and
then cut into small cubes which are strung (precisely as peyote is)
on cords.[32] The deer-killing is to obtain rain for the next growing
season.[33] The hunting period over, men and women bathe for the first
time since the beginning of the hikuli-pilgrimage.
For the hikuli feast the men deck their hats lavishly with brilliant
macao and hawk feathers, and wear supernumerary girdle-pouches; the women
wear strings of yellow and red plumes across the back. A temple fire,
another at the east of the patio to “guard” the dancers, and a third
at the north for visitors from the underworld are built in a special
fashion: the shaman carefully brings an eighteen-inch billet of green
wood, offers it to five directions and finally to the sixth by placing it
on the ground, after which others place sticks pointing east and west on
this molitáli or “pillow” of Grandfather Fire.[34]
Then the shaman and hikuli-seekers ceremonially circle the freshly
white-plastered “god-house of the Sun,” enter, pray aloud and give a
long account of their journey until late at night. The temple fire place
(áro) is a circular clay basin in the center with a slightly raised rim;
the poker is the “arrow” of the God of Fire. The niches at the west of
the temple behind the shaman are filled with god-images; the others
sit on either side of him in a semi-circle on sotol or century-plant
stools. Their wives, flower-garlanded and painted, sit farther back
in the temple, while the pilgrims smoke and sing all night about
Greatgrandfather Deer-Tail, the Morning Star and all the other gods who,
long ago, went out to seek hikuli. The next morning all wash their faces,
heads and hands in water from the hikuli-country, and salute the rising
sun with a bowl of burning incense, sprinkling water to the four corners
of the world with a flower and praying for life and for luck in hunting
deer.[35]
Meanwhile the patio has been prepared for dancing. Beside the fire are
jars of holy water and tesvino, a stuffed fetish-skunk tied to a stick,
and a stuffed grey squirrel decorated with dark green beetle wing-covers,
small clay birds, feathers and a crucifix.[36] The shaman, sitting west
of the main fire (behind the usual ceremonial arrows, plumes, tamales,
and a pot of hikuli-liquor) sacrifices water to the six regions with
a stick; then, with assistants on either side who take turns helping
him, the shaman sings the mythological songs, unaccompanied by a drum,
and the long dance begins.[37] Both sexes take part in the dance, “a
quick, jumping walk with frequent jerky turns of the body,” in a circle
counter-clockwise around the shaman and the fire—though the circle tends
to an ellipse as they approach the fetish-animals at the northwest.[38]
At sunrise of the third and last day comes the corn-roasting ceremony
which gives its name to the entire festival, Rarikira (from raki,
“toasted corn”).[39] The shaman fastens a plume with a ribbon in the
hair of the woman who is to do the toasting and gives her a coarse straw
whisk to stir the corn on her comal, supported on three stones over the
fire. The hikuli-seekers appear with large varicolored ears of corn in
their pouches, and after ceremonial circuits they shell it, sacrificing
five grains to the fire. The woman then prepares the esquite, and all eat
this, together with deer meat and broth, thus ending the festivities.[40]
The Huichol ritual paraphernalia is heavily symbolized. With his eagle
and hawk plumes the singing shaman can see and hear everything anywhere,
cure the sick, transform the dead, and even call down the sun; they
symbolize the antlers of deer, and deer-antlers in turn symbolize peyote
and the “chair” of Grandfather Fire. Peyote itself symbolizes both corn
and deer, while the flames of the greatest shaman of all, Grandfather
Fire, are his plumes (the brilliantly-colored macao is his particular
bird). Deer-antlers, furthermore, for the Huichol symbolize arrows,[41]
arrows being the symbol _par excellence_ of prayer. Again, arrows
symbolize a bird flying with outstretched neck, the feathered portion
representing the heart. The peyote plant, finally, is considered the
drinking-bowl of the god of fire and wind.[42]
This intricate symbolic complex (corn = peyote = drinking-bowl of
Grandfather Fire = god of wind = whirlwind = deer = deer-tracks = peyote
= deer-antlers = shaman’s plumes = deer antlers = chair of Grandfather
Fire = flames of fire = brilliant bird [macao] plumes = flying bird =
arrow = prayer for rain, corn and deer-hunting, etc.) is deeply rooted
in Huichol religion, and each one of the symbolic equations has a ritual
reflex.[43]