peyote with a plumed wand, or muviéri, and then distributes the peyote to the
pilgrims seated about the fire:
Everyone eats his or her peyote and the mara’akáme begins the chanting that
will continue through the entire night. While the mara’akáme carries the
souls of the pilgrims along the journey of his song, Nauxa makes certain that
the pilgrims are in the physical and mental states that facilitate their out-of-
body travel along this path. Five times during the night, when the pilgrims
circle the fire after a cycle is completed in the mara’akáme’s song, Nauxa
places the same amount of peyote as originally consumed in front of each
pilgrim.
(Schaefer 1996:152)During the course of the night the peyote visions unfold. Initially these visions tend
to consist of brilliantly coloured fast-moving geometric forms (ibid.). After a few
hours the visions start to take the forms of more complex scenarios (ibid.; Valadez
and Valadez 1992):
Upon completing this ritual, and having spent the night consuming peyote at
regular intervals, the pilgrims had reached the state in which they were
journeying inwards, caught up in their own visions, their own
communications with the divine Huichol entities.
(Schaefer 1996:149–50)Peyote visions are a culmination of a long process of de-differentiating the profane,
flawed, time-conditioned self from the sacred, perfect, timeless Huichol divinities
(Myerhoff 1974). The process of coming home to Wirikúta and dwelling there for a
short time is a temporary repossession of ‘innocence, godhood, and prehuman bliss’
(ibid.: 244 ). The visions are engrossing and intensely personal, there is little verbal
communication during the visions and attention is largely directed inwards (ibid.).
Nonetheless, this is also a deeply shared undertaking:
In Wirikuta, the hikuritámete are in a state of intense communion with each
other, where the social self is shed and men stand beside each other as
totalities, in spontaneous, joyous vulnerability, without the protection or
requirements of social structure. This state of fusion of the individual with the
group is antithetical to everyday life. Indeed, it is anathema to the allocation of
roles and resources, the division of labor, the organizational, restrained,
rational considerations which are the inevitable accompaniments of providing
the daily dole of bread. This concern cannot be suspended for long.
(Myerhoff 1974:246)Indeed, Victor Turner (1974) suggests that the climax of the Huichol pilgrimage is
a kind of cosmic anti-structure and communitas:
126 DES TRAMACCHI