Huichol Mythology

Best known for their ritual use of peyote, the Huichol people of west-central Mexico carried much of their original belief system into the twentieth century unadulterated by the influence of Christian missionaries. Among the Huichol, reciting myths and performing rituals pleases the ancestors and helps maintain a world in which abundant subsistence and good health are assured. This volume is a collection of myths recorded by Robert Zingg in 1934 in the village of Tuxpan and is the most comprehensive record of Huichol mythology ever published. Zingg was the first professional anthropologist to study the Huichol, and his generosity toward them and political advocacy on their behalf allowed him to overcome tribal sanctions against divulging secrets to outsiders. He is fondly remembered today by some Huichols who were children when he lived among them. Zingg recognized that the alternation between dry and wet seasons pervades Huichol myth and ritual as it does their subsistence activities, and his arrangement of the texts sheds much light on Huichol tradition. The volume contains both aboriginal myths that attest to the abiding Huichol obligation to serve ancestors who control nature and its processes, and Christian-inspired myths that document the traumatic effect that silver mining and Franciscan missions had on Huichol society. First published in 1998 in a Spanish-language edition, Huichol Mythology is presented here for the first time in English, with more than 40 original photographs by Zingg accompanying the text. For this volume, the editors provide a meticulous historical account of Huichol society from about 200 A.D. through the colonial era, enabling readers to fully grasp the significance of the myths free of the sensationalized interpretations found in popular accounts of the Huichol. Zingg’s compilation is a landmark work, indispensable to the study of mythology, Mexican Indians, and comparative religion.

The book not only provides an overview of the Huichol and the plight of Mesoamerican Indians but also sheds light on traditional religion, indigenous Catholicism, messianic cults, urbanization, and indigenous conflicts with the modern Mexican state."--BOOK JACKET.

The brilliant visionary yarn paintings of the shaman-artist Jose Benitez Sanchez emerge transformed into two-dimensional form from fleeting, sublime visionary experiences triggered by the complex chemistry of the divine peyote cactus. Benitez's visions are of the Huichol universe in Mexico's rugged Sierra Madre Occidental, as that world came into being in the First Times of creation and transformation and in the ongoing magic of a natural environment that is alive and without firm boundaries between the here and now and the ancestral past. Modern yarn paintings—more than 30 in the University of Pennsylvania Museum's collection are illustrated here—have their roots in the sacred art of communication with numberless male and female ancestors and native deities, related in the two remarkable Huichol origin myths also presented here to shed some light on Native American culture and provide some understanding of the religious experience that informs it.

The Huichols (or Wixárika) of western Mexico are among the most resilient and iconic indigenous groups in Mexico today. In the Lands of Fire and Sun examines the Huichol Indians as they have struggled to maintain their independence over two centuries. From the days of the Aztec Empire, the history of west-central Mesoamerica has been one of isolation and a fiercely independent spirit, and one group that maintained its autonomy into the days of Spanish colonization was the Huichol tribe. Rather than assimilating into the Hispanic fold, as did so many other indigenous peoples, the Huichols sustained their distinct identity even as the Spanish Crown sought to integrate them. In confronting first the Spanish colonial government, then the Mexican state, the Huichols displayed resilience and cunning as they selectively adapted their culture, land, and society to the challenges of multiple new eras. By incorporating elements of archaeology, anthropology, cultural geography, and history, Michele McArdle Stephens fills the gaps in the historical documentation, teasing out the indigenous voices from travel accounts, Spanish legal sources, and European ethnographic reports. The result is a thorough examination of one of the most vibrant, visible societies in Latin America.

The first substantial study of a Mexican Indian society that more than any other has preserved much of its ancient way of life and religion.