Transcendental Visions in Wixárika Art, The Nierika

Edited by Aaron Michael Ullrey.

The following Research Reflection, by Osiris Gonzalez Romero, Postdoctoral Fellow, is part of an ongoing series spotlighting the academic study of religions.

For centuries, residents of the Western Mexican mountains, the Wixárika people, who also go by the name Huichol, have made annual pilgrimages to the sacred desert of Wirikuta, considered the site of the world’s creation. Upon returning, Wixárika pilgrims perform ceremonies that include sacramental ingestion of the psychedelic cactus hikuri (Lophophora williamsii), peyote. 

In the Wixárika worldview, the sacred desert of Wirikuta is where hikuri grows, but it is also the site of creation—the “Sun” was born there—and it is where ancestor spirits dwell.  The Wirikuta desert is inhabited by Tatewari, “Fire Grandfather,” the first mara´kame, meaning “The One(s) who Sings” or “Shaman,” who led the first pilgrimage to the sacred desert. That pilgrimage was a hunt for the mythical Blue Deer (Kauyumari). Dried-up hikuri “buttons” are thought to resemble the paths of the Blue Deer running from hunters. The Wirikuta desert is where humans first encounter the circular nierika.

A nierika is an important and complicated thing, necessarily hard to describe because its meaning and uses are vast. The nierika represents the visionary gift accessed through hikuri; it can be a disk-like physical object, or it can be an image of a disk in artwork, or it can refer to that visionary “gift of seeing” itself, or it can be the hikuri cactus itself. The nierika is recognized by its circular shape, an orifice at its center, sometimes surrounded by symbolic figures representing ancestors, as depicted below in José Benitez Sánchez’s (1938-2009) Wixárika visionary art. 

The hole at the center of the nierika circle is a two-way viewer. It is a threshold and a mirror. Through one direction, ancestors can see the human world, and through the other direction, mara'akate ritual specialists can communicate with ancestor spirits and see into the sacred desert of Wirikuta, where the gift of sight is acquired. Through the nierika, visionaries see pilgrims who leave offerings, the illnesses of people, if someone is doing evil or anything else the visionary may want to see. 

Sánchez’s image illustrates the Wixárika cosmogony in which gods come to the Earth, emerging from the underworld. Kayaumari, the Blue Deer, “Our Old Brother Deer,” found the nierika gateway, and Kauyumari's nierika, at the top of the image, unifies the spirit of beings and worlds. Beings come to life through the nierika. Below the nierika, “Our Mother Eagle” opens her wings and bows her head to listen to Kauyumari, sitting, below right, on a rock. His words descend on a thread and into a vessel, transforming his words into vital energy depicted as a white flower. Above Kauyumari, the spirit of “Rain,” in the form of a serpent with deer horns, gives life to the gods who stretch around these images as they spread across the earth.

Sánchez’s “The Transcendental Vision of Tatutsi Xuweri Timaiweme” depicts another cosmogonic scene. Here, the memories held by Tatutsi Xuweri Timaiweme, whose name means “Our Great Grandfather Who Knows Everything,” gave existence to all beings and things. 

The upper level of the painting corresponds to the Wirikuta desert, the celestial region of the East where “Our Father the Sun” is revealed. The soul originates in this upper space. The central level corresponds to the earthly world, where “Our Great Grandfather” is the head in the center and rises from the underworld. The center-left depicts a large disk, rotating clockwise, a nierika that is Our Great Grandfather’s vision of the underworld, and with his vision, he penetrates the darkness, the past, and all matter. The center-right depicts another nierika, rotating counterclockwise, that reflects the celestial world, the purified soul. A Blue Deer is depicted beside this nierika. Both disks symbolize the wide vision of Tatutsi Xuweri Timaiweme, encompassing the earthly and celestial world but only seen by deities and ritual specialists (mara´akáte) and about which the life of the world evolves. The lowest level to the left symbolizes the primordial world and the eternal past. “Our Father the Sun” is a bright object on the head of the man on top of a house in the terrestrial world.  On the left bottom is the blue sea and “Our Mother”; above it is a large bird. 

The nierika is the gift of seeing transcendental visions, a gateway or threshold to spiritual realms and ancestors’ worlds. It is not solely an altered state of consciousness but a profound driver of personal, relational, and societal maintenance and change. The nierika is a vision, an experience, the hikuri, the means of discovering hikuri, the capability for visionary experience, the gateway to creation, and so much more. Wixárika visionary art displays synergy between creative, artistic, and sacramental uses of peyote, a synergy that allows a broad understanding about the different uses of psychedelics or entheogens in society and culture.