In Mexico one of my main hopes was to be a part of an indigenous ceremony with one of the sacred plant teachers. But even with my contacts through the yaje community I could not make it happen. It’s just not that easy. Understandably, they are not that open to allowing just anyone into their sacred ceremonies, especially westerners.
Instead I found an article online that told of a Huichol tribe that would be performing a Peyote ceremony at the local mall. At first I thought this was just too weird and how could any true shaman want a part of this but as I read on it made perfect sense.
They had come down from the mountains, where many of them had always lived and never ventured from, to big city Puerto Vallarta, to educate the public about how important the sacred plant medicine, Peyote, is to their culture. They had risked so much in leaving their home. They were unfamiliar with our ways and laws and while they were there, their head shaman got arrested for swimming in the river. They were selling their art to help pay for his release and to pay for the cost of bringing the tribe there.
The Huichols use peyote as medicine for healing and connecting with spirit. It has been used by them in a sacred way for eons and they are legally the only ones allowed to possess the plant. They are truly brilliant artisans and much of their artwork is designed from the elaborate visions they receive from working with peyote.
Ever since peyote was discovered by outsiders, as a psychotropic plant, it has been harvested in mass, from the land in Mexico for recreational use and has become much harder for the Huichols to obtain. And with so much land ownership, it is very hard for them to even get to the land that it grows on due to property lines and fences that exist today.
So I went to the mall to learn more about these beautiful people and their sacred traditions and also to see how a peyote ceremony in the mall would play out. It was very fascinating. I fell in love with the art and jewelry and bought a ton of it from them.
The whole tribe was there and they sang and danced the traditional songs around the medicine men as their head shaman prayed to the medicine and then cut up and ate the peyote. I could’nt believe I was watching this, right by a McDonald’s, but it was clear to me that this really was not a show but for our education.
I believe that even more than for our education, they were there for the healing of us. Bringing their work through the peyote medicine to give us the healing that we need to be able to respect and connect with nature, spirit, peyote and all of the sacred plant teachers again in a way that we have forgotten.
Photo description: My cousin snapped one picture of the head shaman holding a baby and from the look in his eyes the medicine was at work.
