Note 43 — THE ETHNOLOGY OF PEYOTISM

Bits of deer meat, corn-tamales and strung peyote-plants are treated with exactly equivalent ritual. In the peyote dance serpent-sticks are thrust into the air (like prayer sticks, praying for rain?), and small whisks made of materials brought from the hikuli-country represent deer-tails. In the origin legend, peyote first arose in the tracks of a gigantic deer; indeed, when the gods first used peyote they ground deer-antlers on a metate with water to make an intoxicant, just as peyote is ground to make “tea” and corn to make tesvino. The fire is built in a special way suggesting deer-antlers or the god-chairs. Arrows as definitely symbolize prayer as the prayer sticks of the Southwest. The poker or fire-arrow of Grandfather Fire is smeared with blood and decorated with plumes; it is his “pillow” and the rest of the sticks are his “chair.” (One “appearance” of the god is a heart, modelled of the paste of the sacred wáve seed toasted and ground like corn, and renewed in the god-house every five years.) Facial paintings of the Huichol are called úra, “spark,” being made of a yellow root dug in the peyote country when the hikuli is gathered; yellow particularly symbolizes the fire gods, of whom there are two. Tatévali, “Grandfather Fire,” is the god of prophesying and curing shamans whose birds are the macao, royal eagle, cardinal bird, etc. The other, Tatótsi Mára Kwári, “Greatgrandfather Deer-tail,” is the god of singing-shamans, whose bird is the white-tailed hawk. Their relationship is peculiar: Greatgrandfather Deer-tail, the symbol of fertility, is the son of Grandfather Fire, from whose plumes he sprang. Lumholtz (Symbolism of the Huichol, 10-11) explains the difficulty by indicating that the former represents a spark, the latter a fire fed by wood.