A N G E L A E D O A N D PA U L I N A FA B A

The act of knowing and the

indeterminacy of the known in Huichol
contexts (Mexico)

In the Huichol localities of Jalisco and Nayarit, the act of knowing is described as a transformational
experience in which conceptions of truth and values circulate in interactions between human and non-
human agents. By analysing critical notions, ritual experiences and assemblages of things, this paper examines
Huichol forms of knowledge through four phenomena: the anticipation of experience, the indeterminacy of
the known, the presence of visual indexes of agency and becoming, and the shifting of subjectivities. Using
the insights gained from this ethnographic study, the paper ends by arguing that the ways in which ritual
actions, narratives and visual elements are entangled create relational fields, which need to be examined in
order to understand the experiences of knowledge in Huichol contexts.

Key words knowledge, ritual experience, indeterminacy, relational fields, Huichol Indians

What does the action of knowing mean? How do entanglements between lived
landscapes and things orient forms of knowledge? For the Huichol (Wixaritari) of
western Mexico, questions like these would be meaningless if they were not framed
by pragmatic considerations that take into account the identity and intentions of the
actors involved.
During 16 months of fieldwork (between 1998 and 2003) in four Huichol localities
of Jalisco and Nayarit (San Miguel Huaixtita, San Andrs Cohamiata, Colorado de la
Mora and El Ciruelar), we gradually became aware of the importance of entanglements
of things and images in producing subjective and collective experiences of knowledge.1
What is remembered as a true experience, in Huichol terms, is a transformative
process of subjectivities in the context of their relationship between what is done
and what is undergone (Dewey 1934).
Actions such as knowing, thinking and reflection, as Dewey argued, are not
faculties but rather denote inquiries or the results of inquiries, and that inquiry occupies
an intermediate and mediating place in the development of an experience (1916: 1). By
taking this perspective, this paper seeks precisely to distance itself from exoticising
visions of cultural difference in order to situate the study of Huichol knowledge within
the wider framework concerning the pragmatic basis of human knowledge. Naturally,
the act of recognising the mistakes of the anthropological construction of cultural
fetishes (Pietz 1985; Taussig 1993; Morris 2000) does not remove the emergence of

1 This research is based on participant observation and informal interviews. The authors conducted
extensive intermittent fieldwork together between 1998 and 2003. During these visits, they
participated in the Wirikuta pilgrimage and in various religious ceremonies, neixa as well as the
rituals of the Catholic calendar. The fieldwork data were registered in field-note diaries and on a
tape recorder.

190 Social Anthropology/Anthropologie Sociale (2017) 25, 2 190205. 2017 European Association of Social Anthropologists.
doi:10.1111/1469-8676.12415
 T H E A C T O F K N OW I N G A N D T H E I N D E T E R M I N A C Y O F T H E K N OW N 191

radical worlds that endure in the shadow of global capital (Povinelli 2001); nor does it
explain the singular ways in which human groups perform universal acts, which are
mediated culturally, such as knowing or giving meaning to something.
The purpose of this exploration is both ethnographic and theoretical, because it
seeks to deepen the analysis of certain relational fields that give meaning to the act of
knowing among the Huichol, as well as to shed light on theoretical issues of agency
and intentionality within metapragmatic processes (Silverstein 1993; Urban 2001) of
knowledge creation. Arguably, the importance of this last aspect lies in its particular
focus, namely the study of metapragmatic dimensions of Huichol chants and ritual
objects. On the basis of Michael Silversteins (1993) critical distinction between
metasemantic and metapragmatic, we do not focus on phenomena of
semantic/symbolic order, which constitute a research field relatively well studied in
the context of the peoples of Mesoamerican tradition (Broda and Good 2004;
Flix-Baez 2006; Galinier 1999; Lopez-Austin 1994; Neurath 2002; Pitarch 2012).2
Rather, this work focuses on exploring how the indeterminate nature of the indexical
and iconic signs is involved in experiences of ritual knowing. Through this approach,
we see that establishing a context structured by cultural dimensions made relevant to
the act of knowing is an ongoing process of the metapragmatic arrangement of such
phenomena, which some scholars have described as the site of real-time negotiation,
struggle and cooperation (Bauman and Briggs 1990; Wilf 2014).
We take Deweys question on how one finds different ways of being in and of the
movement of things (1993: 4) as a heuristic approach to studying certain Huichol ritual
experiences. It is not a matter of how a belief system or a worldview operates in the
minds of people to know or represent an experience, but rather to explore how an
experience takes shape in the movement of events. This is a phenomenon that, contrary
to the reification of ontological differences produced by neoprimitivist scholars (see,
for a critique, Bessire 2014), reveals the power of the ritual experience, not because of
what that experience tells us in terms of cosmological representation, but rather because
of its potential to transform the world of those involved in it. Such a pragmatic quality,
far from being an inherent property of an imaginary cultural difference, is strongly
significant because it makes experience in its broadest sense an experiment. From
this perspective, ritual knowledge appears as an ongoing process of testing and
interacting within a shifting field of connections, which in its vital form, as Dewey
observes, is an effort to change the given. It [the experimental dimension of experience]
is characterised by projection, by reaching forward into the unknown; connection with
a future is its salient trait (John Dewey quoted by McCormack 2010: 205).
Starting from the idea that knowledge is something that affects people by
providing them with materials for reflection and premises for action (Barth 2002),
we explore the various ways in which the act of knowing involves entanglements of
intentionalities with the potential to engage things and beings. Anthropological
research on the study of religion and thought (Astuti and Bloch 2015; Berliner and
Sarr 2008; Severi 2002, 2014) demonstrates that learning and transmission often
happen in contexts of social interaction and not only depend on the cognitive capacities
of the human mind. From this perspective, the study of performed dimensions of

2 Semantics refers to the explicit meanings of words, deriving, as per Ferdinand de Saussure, from
their systematic relations to other words as part of grammatically formed language the realm of
which Peirce called symbols (Urban 2006: 90).

2017 European Association of Social Anthropologists.

192 A N G E L A E D O A N D PA U L I N A FA B A

human behaviour (Bauman 2012; Goffman 1981) opens a way of understanding how
knowledge experiences could constitute relational fields of actions and embodiment
(Bateson 1936; Houseman and Severi 1998).
This paper focuses the analysis on two Huichol ritual contexts that are relevant to
the study of experiences of knowledge: the annual periodical celebrations called neixa
and the pilgrimages to the Wirikuta desert located in San Luis Potos. In these contexts,
we analyse the circulation of values, emotions and criteria (Cavell 1999) through
relational fields shaped by Huichol entities such as Peyote and Kieri. When the first
letter in the names of Peyote and Kieri is capitalised, we seek to emphasise the potential
of these forces to become agents capable of reason and will. In contrast, when kieri and
peyote are written in lower case and italicised, we refer to their main botanical form,
namely the liana Solandra brevicalyx (kieri) and the cactus Lophophora williamsii
(peyote) (Aedo 2011; Knab 1977).
Ritual objects and images also play an important role in Huichol knowledge
processes. Visual elements often appear as indexes of the agency of human and non-
human entities. Through their entanglement with ritual actions and other objects,
images engraved on artefacts such as the stone discs teparite deploy a performative
character. In fact, many of their figurative and abstract motifs disclose the role of visual
expressions as intrinsic acts (Bredekamp 2015). This means that images recurrently
develop presences that lend them the ability to be more than lifeless matter. Form,
iconography, colour and support reveal the autonomy of images, which interlace with
human actions and discourse.
The paper is structured into four parts. First, we argue that knowledge involves the
anticipation of experience in Huichol rituals. Second, we discuss the critical role played
by the indeterminacy of the known and knowable through the case of Peyote and Kieri.
The third part explores how ritual visual indexes, such as the stone discs teparite, operate
as forms of agency and becoming. Finally, we analyse the notion of nierika (vision) and
the shifting of intentionalities as entanglements of knowledge and experience.3

Knowledge as an anticipatory experience

Losing ones way back home is a theme that generally haunts participants comments in
Tatei Neixa (the Dance of Our Mother). During this ceremony, Eugenio, a shaman from
San Miguel Huaixtita, and his two assistants/apprentices sing and dramatise an epic
journey in which the children of the community, considered as the first fruits, have a vivid
imaginary travel to the home of Peyote in Wirikuta on the wings of a fabulous giant being
(described by our hosts as the incandescent eagle Tatei Wierika Wimari). They are
provided with the opportunity to share a strong anticipatory experience, creating new
forms of relatedness with the Peyote spirit through the imagination of its homeland
and the beings that live there. As Eugenio sometimes relates through his chants and
gestures, this trip is not without its dangers, because a child can fall during the ritual flight.
A real voyage, by itself, lacks the necessary force to be reflected in the imagination,
argued the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze. For this author, the imaginary voyage,
by itself, does not have the force [] to be verified in the real. This is why the
imaginary and the real must be, rather, like two juxtaposable or superimposable parts
3 The etymology of the word nierika (vision) comes from the verb nieriya, to see (McIntosh and
Grimes 1954).

2017 European Association of Social Anthropologists.

 T H E A C T O F K N OW I N G A N D T H E I N D E T E R M I N A C Y O F T H E K N OW N 193

of a single trajectory, two faces that ceaselessly interchange with one another, a mobile
mirror (1998: 623). The power of the Tatei Neixa experience lies in the childrens
displacement from Huichol localities to a place that appears, paradoxically, both
unknown and familiar to them. More than a journey that is merely represented, this
ritual acts as a virtual image that is interfused with a real place: Wirikuta the land of
Peyote. Sooner rather than later, the children of the community will have to undertake
a physical pilgrimage to this sacred place.
The sense of disorientation pervades the experience of this ritual, which takes place
at the end of the rainy season. It is in this context that the search for rules of action, in
the sense of what Ludwig Wittgenstein (1986) meant by criteria, becomes a need for
participants. In everyday life, the criteria by which we attune ourselves to the actions
and expectations of others are usually tacit and undefined. In fact, as Stanley Cavell
(1999: 34) notes, we appeal to criteria when we dont know our way about, when
we are lost with respect to our words and to the world they anticipate. In such
situations, Huichol rituals involving Peyote, such as Tatei Neixa and Hikuri Neixa,
not only deal with religious representations, they also counteract an ethical and
political arena with other forms of life, such as that embodied by Kieri (which we will
discuss in the next section). Thus, the way of being guided by Peyote is underpinned by
criteria rooted in the high value of self-sacrifice, in the practice of reciprocity, in the
dignity of ritual asceticism, and in the wisdom and prestige of the elders/ancestors.
Various ethnographic studies (Furst 1972; Gutirrez del ngel 2002; Myerhoff 1974;
Schaefer 2005) have referred to the important role played by Peyote in the socialisation of
Huichol people. Peyote is at the centre of a whole agricultural ritual cycle called neixa,
which is articulated around the rain ceremony Hikuri Neixa (the ritual of Peyote). Peyote
plays a pivotal role in the Catholic ritual cycle recreated by the Huichol, particularly
when peyote pilgrims (hikuritamete) during the Holy Week consume this sacred cactus.
Because of its medicinal and hallucinogenic properties, the peyote also plays a major role
in healing and ritual practices. As Abundio and several other inhabitants of San Andrs
Cohamiata explained to us, this entity is also seen as manifesting its own thoughts and
volition. In this latter dimension it is referred to by different names, including Paritsika
(numen of the dawn), Tamatsi Kauyumari (Our Elder Brother the Deer, a cultural hero
who gave his life to give birth to the peyote cactus) and Parikuta Muyeka (the one who
walks at dawn).4 The different manifestations of Peyote have in common the fact of
being crucial actors in healing processes. In this sense, we can say that Peyote is not
simply a spirit-helper of the shaman, because Peyote can act as a shaman in itself. This
phenomenon is manifested in two different planes of action: in the fight led by the spirit
of Peyote against pathogenic agents in a parallel plane of reality, and through Peyotes
embodiment in a ritual singer (maraakame), who enables (in his or her union with
Peyote) the engendering of a new and exceptional shamanic being that synthesises
several presences, giving rise to what Carlo Severi (2014), in his proposal for an
anthropology of thought, describes as complex beings.5

4 The heroic life of Tamatsi Kauyumari, a deified ancestor who is a manifestation of Peyote, teaches
the high value of self-sacrifice. The practice of reciprocity is an emblematic relational mode in
Peyote rituals and myths, and dignified ritual asceticism is a paradigmatic behaviour of the peyote
pilgrims. Finally, the wisdom and prestige of the elders/ancestors are indexed in the expression
our elder brother, by which the Peyote spirit is often described.
5 The Huichol usually refer to maraakame (shaman) by the Spanish term cantador (singer). Yet not
all maraakate are cantadores (singers); some are curanderos (curers) or diviners.

2017 European Association of Social Anthropologists.

194 A N G E L A E D O A N D PA U L I N A FA B A

In this field of collective experiences, entanglements with Peyote shape moral

subjectivities (Fassin 2012) through a particular ethics of self-care (Foucault 2012),
which, among other practices, is deployed through the observance of rigorous rules
of abstinence, ritually forced wakefulness (sleeping during neixa ceremonies and during
the pilgrimage to Wirikuta is seen as a grave misconduct or even a kind of disease),
prolonged physical effort, and the adoption of a strict diet without salt, consisting
mainly of corn tortillas and beans.
Peyotes forces of transformation offer fundamental instances where an individual
can become an accomplished person (tewi). The Huichol of San Andrs Cohamiata
and San Miguel Huaixtita localities in Jalisco, and the inhabitants of Colorado de la
Mora and El Ciruelar in Nayarit, interact with Peyote at critical stages of their
biological and moral development. Deer have a complex symbiosis with Peyote
ontology, because both are figuration forms (Descola 2010) of the protean being
Tamatsi Kauyumari. The ritual hunting of deer and the first pilgrimage to the desert
plateau Wirikuta are experiences that mark significant stages in Huichol life and forms
of knowledge.6

Kieri and the indeterminacy of the known

What is known usually appears as indeterminate and ambivalent in Huichol ritual

contexts. Two semantic and practical frameworks, configured by notions of kieri and
peyote, offer a way to investigate the crucial role of the indeterminacy of the known
in Huichol experiences of knowledge. These two entities have the power to assemble
heterogeneous elements and phenomena through which they express different aspects
of their constitutive multidimensionality.
Through Peyote and Kieri operate a sort of government of things (Lemke 2015),
which enables entanglements and interrelatedness of humans and objects, the physical
and the moral, the natural and the artificial. In Peirces terms, these forces trigger
unending semiosis (193158). Their changing assemblages and fluctuating
intentionalities are crystallised in indexes that appear in concrete encounters with the
power to create real experiences in the social, intellectual or moral life.
While the hikuri cactus, popularly known as peyote, grows in the sacred
Wirikuta desert, on the eastern edge of the Huichol territory, the kieri liana inhabits
cliffs and lowlands in the west, beyond which lies a humid subtropical landscape.
These zones are so distant from each other that they embody the antipodes of
Huichol ritual geography. Despite their morphological and ecological differences,
kieri and peyote share the feature of containing alkaloids that can produce
psychotropic effects in humans. The forces of transformation embodied in Peyote
and Kieri have the ability to live in an almost infinite variety of bodies: whether
organic or inorganic, vegetal or animal, human or non-human, meteorological or
astronomical.
The phenomena associated with Kieri constitute for the Huichol a radical
expression of the ambivalent forces emanating from the underworld. Like Peyote, Kieri
becomes visible through multiple forms and events in the sensible world. Examining
Kieri provides a unique and perhaps radical way to explore an assemblage of

6 The pilgrimage to the Wirikuta desert is also seen by the Huichol as a form of Peyote hunting.

2017 European Association of Social Anthropologists.

 T H E A C T O F K N OW I N G A N D T H E I N D E T E R M I N A C Y O F T H E K N OW N 195

knowledge, values and practices that are markedly different from the entanglements
with the Peyote spirit that we discussed previously.
When we questioned the Huichol about Kieri (at public gatherings, parties,
lunches, meetings and so forth), peoples comments seemed to indicate that Kieri does
not exist. Frequently, observations about this entity were ignored or mocked.
However, during the stillness of the night and in solitude, there seemed to emerge a
secret speech in which fleeting references to Kieri, death and ancestral giant beings
(hewiixi) were woven.
When, after much searching, we were fortunate enough to find someone willing to
talk about Kieri, we began to glimpse something like a general plot linking stories that
once seemed unconnected. In our discussions with the inhabitants of Huichol localities,
particularly when someone referred to topics related to death, the conversation often
turned to mariachi music (a musical genre through which Kieri speaks) and later to
other issues associated with Kieri. Similarly, when our interlocutors said something
about Kieri, there frequently appeared topics connected to witchcraft, madness and
erotic dreams, as well as narratives about the fabulous bestiary that inhabits the bottom
of the Pacific Ocean and the farms of the United States. It is possible to observe
something similar in ethnographic sources that refer, within a broader context, to Kieri.
When Bentez (2013), Benzi (1972), Furst and Myerhof (1966), Negrn (1986), Schaefer
(1996) and Yasumoto (1996), among other ethnographers, make reference to Kieri, they
tend to mention a number of other topics, such as madness, moral disorders, sorcery,
drunkenness, violent accidents, death, eclipses, unusual behaviour in wild animals
and sudden phenomena such as whirlwinds. Human and non-human actors are thus
intertwined in contexts of situated relationships in the form of language games
(Wittgenstein 1986) which are regulated by the pragmatic conditions in which they
emerge.
The off-centre position that characterises Kieri experiences in contrast to Peyote
its eternal rival and emblem of cultural order serves as a heuristic device to inquire (by
way of comparison) into the coexistence of two relational forms present in both the
oral tradition and the current ritual practices of the Huichol. Indeed, the figure of Kieri
condenses forms of relationship that could be seen (from the perspective of Peyote) as
antithetical hence its tendency to undermine social and cosmological orders. Kieri is
not only a complex notion that can be mobilised to describe very diverse phenomena, it
is also an entity with the power to morph into a multitude of creatures, artefacts and
deities (Aedo 2011).
Kieri is a delicate, secret and dangerous force, being unpredictable, furtive and
uncontrollable by most Huichol. It is no coincidence, then, that is commonly
manifested in the wind and other such capricious phenomena. Kieri is both a lethal
and a vital potency; it has the dual ability to generate goods and virtues as well as to
deceive and destroy. Its ominous character is frequently emphasised; Huichol people
often refer to this force as the Devil or, more specifically, as Mara, an inhabitant from
El Ciruelar, described to us, as the devils ass. It is interesting to observe that this name
also makes reference to a place at the foot of the Picachos hill where musicians,
merchants, craftsmen and sorcerers perform nightly worship. Its pride, ambition and
lust drive its actions and support its transgression. Kieri masterfully handles the art
of transformation; its forms of figuration reveal its tastes, its relational scope, and its
flexible assembly of elements and phenomena. Chalo, an important shaman from
San Andrs Cohamiata, once explained that Kieri can be found dwelling in the bodies

2017 European Association of Social Anthropologists.

196 A N G E L A E D O A N D PA U L I N A FA B A

of beautiful foreign women (uka teiwari) and in wild animals such as foxes (kauxai) and
lizards, especially the imukwi (Heloderma horridum), a species closely related to the
better-known Gila monster (Heloderma suspectum). Yet its transformations occur
not only in the realm of the sensible; the greatest threat to human beings is the
bankruptcy of reason engendered by the influence of Kieri. Behavioural disorder and
the bewilderment of things in the world entail a normative rupture, which causes an
altered state of consciousness, understood as a form of drunkenness or madness
(tawet).
A sense of fatality troubles Huichol experiences with Kieri. The west appears as
its privileged region, and the rainy season as the period of its zenith. But Kieri is also
a vital force. Indeed, it is an open secret among the Huichol that every man and
woman has the potential to be initiated into the knowledge and mastery of things
through the powers granted by Kieri. However, the path to becoming a shaman
through Kieri is quite hazardous. During the night, worshipers of Kieri, seeking the
entitys favours, cautiously and sometimes secretly make offerings of candles, coins,
small bottles of a ritual drink (tuchi), cattle figurines and votive arrows at the base
of the plant. Kieri triggers numerous mixed emotions, because, more than any other
entity, it seduces and terrifies, generating around itself the vertigo of ambivalent
feelings.
The forces of Kieri and Peyote are located in enclaves of relational topologies
(Jones 2009), which encourage different experiences and ways of being involved in
indivisible actions of knowing and doing (Gibson 1979). It is not about knowing more,
but about knowing differently (Grimshaw and Ravetz 2015). Kieri and Peyote open a
dynamic challenge to what is already known. The routes of knowledge entangled with
forces of Kieri and Peyote produce relationalities in social, cosmopolitical and ethical
terms.
From a sociological perspective, there is a critical distinction between the relational
forms that characterise Peyote and Kieri. While a Peyote neophyte has the possibility
to gain prestige, his/her Kieri counterpart has the opportunity to obtain economic
power and influence in relations with outside institutions. However, from a
cosmopolitical standpoint, relations with Kieri may lead to experiences of radical
alterity, such as madness (understood as loss of the correct meaning of life), monetary
wealth and new forms of neoliberal subjectification in multicultural contexts. In
contrast, relations with Peyote take shape in cosmopolitical terms through the
experience of a world revealed, that is, by knowing a truth delivered as a gift, the gift
of seeing through Peyote. As Pedro explained during the Hikuri Neixa ceremony,
Peyote makes us take the right path, grasping this light [that of the Peyote], this energy,
[because] he [Peyote as Tamatsi Kauyumari] gives me feathers, the five colours,
saying that it is my strength.
The paths of knowledge engaged in entanglements with Peyote and Kieri also
display forms of relatedness that are subject to a field of ethical and political forces.
These relational forms are manifested through a sort of regime of truth (in the sense
of Foucault 2012; see also Faubion 2011) that shapes the spheres of influence of
Peyote and Kieri. So while the ritual practices associated with Peyote promote
asceticism and fraternal relations, the rituality of Kieri displays a completely different
relational form, emphasising a kind of sovereign/subject relationship that takes place
within a Faustian contract scheme, in the manner of the archetypal sale of the soul to
the devil.

2017 European Association of Social Anthropologists.

 T H E A C T O F K N OW I N G A N D T H E I N D E T E R M I N A C Y O F T H E K N OW N 197

Figure 1 Drawing of Tatei Utanaka sculpture.

Design by the authors based on Lumholtz (1986)

Visual indexes of agency and becoming

What kind of images are involved in the experiences of knowledge? How do they
appear in order to be considered as forms of knowledge (Belting 2011)? Images and
objects, such as the stone discs teparite (plural form of tepari) and the uxa face paintings
of the peyote pilgrims (hikuritamente) can be defined as image acts (Bredekamp
2015), in the sense that they usually appear as forms about to come into being
(Gamboni 2002: 16) and capable of orienting imagination and action.7
An interesting example of the ways in which Huichol images enact entities agency
is the sculpture of the chthonic earth mother Tatei Utanaka registered by the
Norwegian explorer Carl Lumholtz (1986). Represented as a female figure, this
sculpture originally covered a stone disc tepari. The sculpture exhibits a number of
distributed designs (ears of corn, cows, snakes and red-feathered hawk tail) that do
not describe the body of Tatei Utanaka herself, but rather the agency that she exerts
in a given space and situation. The feminine body seems to hold corncobs in her arms,
as many Huichol women do when they carry offerings during rituals and pilgrimages.
At the same time, the body of Tatei Utanaka is presented as a territory, an
environment that is inhabited by snakes, cornfields, cows and insects that appear in
the rainy season. Two sticks engraved on the sculpture emphasise Tatei Utanakas
agency, one under her right arm and another on her back, which in Huichol narratives
constitute the main instruments used by Tatei Utanaka to grow.
The teparite, which measure between 80 and 100 centimetres in diameter, are
usually situated underground covering a hole (mawatirsawa, see Zingg 1982, I: 334)
filled with offerings such as candles, arrows and decorated gourds, among other
objects. In accordance with the notion of rooting (nanayari), these artefacts are located
strategically in different sites, such as the agricultural fields (milpas), residential areas

7 The term uxa refers to the yellow root of the plant Mahonia trifoliolata, which grows in the
Wirikuta desert. From this root the wixaritari obtain the paint for the face designs of the pilgrims
(hikuritamete).

2017 European Association of Social Anthropologists.

198 A N G E L A E D O A N D PA U L I N A FA B A

(ranches), institutional buildings (schools and headquarters of civil government) and

ceremonial temples (tukite).8,9
These objects are often carved with spirals, concentric circles, serpents, deer, corn
and eagles, which put in relation some of the fundamental figures of Huichol
mythology and thought. As Lupe, a resident of Colorado de la Mora explained, the
teparite iconography describes the traces of the ancestors (Faba 2015), which are
considered as being half seen and half present. These images usually come to life
through the shamans singing of the emergence of the ancestors from the underworld.
For instance, the spirals with rays that are found in these artefacts enact the everyday
movement of the sun in his voyage through the underworld.
During the Hikuri Neixa ritual of San Miguel Huaixtita, the shamans singing
enables participants to see the images of the teparite, which reveal the active presence
of a web of entities. In one of the songs (kawitu) that we recorded in San Andrs
Cohamiata community, Eugenio referred to the entities depicted on the stone disc as
describing the appearance of the divinity Tamatsi Kauyumari: The blue deer is
emerging, he is coming, he is appearing. He is a tiny little deer, look he is emerging,
look at him, the little blue deer is emerging. By way of ritual words, the shaman
anticipates the agency of Huichol entities in the here and now of humans. Thus, acts
of knowing through images become possible in a performative context where the
visibilisation, differentiation and relation of things and beings take place. As Webb
Keane notes the forms of ritual speech are affected by the actions it mediates and the
assumptions about language and the beings that inhabit the world that underlie them
(1995: 117).

The shifting of intentionalities

Ramn from San Miguel Huaixtita explained that through the effects of peyote, images
and sounds manifest as the intentionalities of diverse entities, not immediately
perceivable and audible in the landscape. According to his testimony, through the
peyote visions, entities such as Tatei Naariwame appeared as images that enacted
messages from the divinities, inviting him to engage with them. After this experience,
Ramn started to be initiated in the knowledge of ritual practices, and suffered a self-
transformation highly valued by his family and his community.
Dreams and psychedelic synaesthesia are crucial experiences in Huichol life. They
constitute a form of relation with images that implies a constant shifting of points of
view between the knower and the known. Interestingly, Marilyn Strathern has
observed a similar phenomenon in Papua New Guinea, where, according to the
anthropologist, to see yourself in the view of the other may be to comprehend both
views at the same time. The simultaneous view may anticipate their differentiation
(2013: 121). In Huichol contexts, learning to see through, for instance, ones
8 The term mawatirsawa could be a garbled transcription of mawarixa (sacrifice or offering).
9 Paul Liffman (2005) has noted that the Huichol notion of rooting nanayari (from nana, creeper or
climbing plant) is intimately associated with the category of kiekari (world), a term that emphasises
the bonds and trajectories that articulate a lived space and a historical territory, frequently marked
by the teparite discs. The kie sphere defines, in fact, a sense of belonging that articulates the ties
between the Huichol nuclear families, the xirikite family-temples (sing. Xiriki), and the
community-temples tukite (sing. Tukipa) where Huichol communities congregate to celebrate
the annual rituals.

2017 European Association of Social Anthropologists.

 T H E A C T O F K N OW I N G A N D T H E I N D E T E R M I N A C Y O F T H E K N OW N 199

Figure 2 Tepari of Colonia Zitakua, Tepic, Nayarit.

Photo by the authors [Colour figure can be viewed at wileyonlinelibrary.com]

relation with Peyote implies the mutual recognition of the entities involved in
a relation. Images have the capacity of making and mobilising relationships, where a
constant shifting between what I see and what is seen is possible. The experience
of Ascencin, a maraakame (Huichol shaman) from San Miguel Huaixtita, constitutes
an interesting example of how visions engage forms of inter-subjectivity that lead to
knowledge through a relation of sameness and differentiation. Almost 45 years ago,
Ascencin started to dream repeatedly in nature, as an eagle, as a snake. When he
visited Wirikuta for the first time, he dreamed of many animals like eagles and snakes.
I walked over thousands of snakes, it was not the earth, but snakes. Suddenly, many
deer with yellow horns appeared. They looked at me and asked what I was doing in
Wirikuta. I explained to them that I took the medicine (peyote) and that I was visiting
the place to carry on the costumbre with my family. They welcomed me, and one big
blue deer, I think it was Kauyumari, said: I give you my medicine, I give you my
feather, it is my strength, I give you my heart, it is my light. From that moment on they
began to know me. In this testimony, it is interesting to note that images manifested
first as the fusion of points of view, as Ascencin was having the visions as if he was
nature, eagles, snakes. When he travelled to Wirikuta, similar entities appeared, but
differentiation took place as a necessary process for recognition and knowledge.
Because it was his first time at Wirikuta, the deer, snakes and peyote were addressing
him not as belonging to the place. In this context, images function as artefacts that
travel from the fusion of points of view to differentiation and mutual recognition.
In this respect, the facial paintings not only are the manifestation of entities
agency, but they also constitute a sort of iconographic register of identity that captures
the Wirikuta experience. Catarinillo, a resident of San Andrs Cohamiata, explained
that facial paintings could be defined as credentials that every pilgrim must exhibit
when moving through the ritual landscape. What Catarinillo tried to emphasise was

2017 European Association of Social Anthropologists.

200 A N G E L A E D O A N D PA U L I N A FA B A

the fact that the uxa face painting operates as a form of identification. However, these
images enact identity in a very different way than a common credential does. Face
paintings do not perform identification through the reflection of the physical
appearance, but rather they enable recognition by the embodiment of dreams and
visions as forms knowledge and experience.
During pilgrimage it is said the designs of these paintings transform into living
beings functioning as a dynamic form of mutual recognition. Jos, one of the Wirikuta
pilgrims from Tateikie, explains: As I see you is as you see me, and it is my knowledge,
[located in] the crown of my head [kpuri]. In this respect, facial paintings as well as
objects like the stone discs tepari and nierika could be considered expressive images
(Dewey 1934). That is, as elements that restore and reproduce, through visual
expression, different experiences of knowledge (Jelinek 2016). In a ritual song (kawitu)
registered by Denis Lemaistre (2012: 315), performed during the pilgrimage and the
hunting of the Peyote in Wirikuta, the intertwinement and shifting of subjectivities
relate to a constellation of images:
hriwari mutatsunaxa He jumped behind the hill
hriwari manekakeni He lurks behind the hill
maxa yuawi manekakeni The blue deer
mana mana mukaruanax There their hooves creaked
uxaipari mekanekahini printing their tracks:
Paritsika xemukamane It is you, Paritsika
anaanaari xarim Now it really is your face
xenierika himakamane It is your face
wawiuxa himakamane It is your painting, your message
enaena neteikahka Here I am attentive
wawiuxa neteikahka To the message of the song
tutu nierika nete ikahka To the face of the peyote ower
Paritsika xemuyeyeika In your walking, Paritsika
netutsima m xenierika It is in your face, my great-grandfathers
xeuxari nepekanini I am going to pick up your messages

(Lemaistre 2012: 315)

In this excerpt, the numen Paritsika is presented as a multiple person. The shaman
addresses Paritsika using the second-person plural pronoun xe instead of the singular
pe. During the chant, the tone of the shamans voice becomes acute, enacting what
seems to be the voice of Paritsika. Later on, in the interlacement between the chant,
the ritual actions and the images of the tepari, what initially constituted the presence
of Paritsika as a multiple person, finally become the enactment of a relational field
where other entities appear to affect each other. What happened to be the presence of
Paritsika finally becomes a peyote, then a flower and then a group of deer called
Paritsika maxa mateawa, which are in charge of announcing the arrival of the big blue
deer. In this respect, it is interesting to note that the constellation of images developed
by this chant builds a landscape in which different points of view are displayed between
certainty and uncertainty.
Referring to a yarn painting that shows Tamatsi Kauyumari in the form of a deer,
surrounded by a circle, with multiple rays, and four figures of the peyote, Eligio

2017 European Association of Social Anthropologists.

 T H E A C T O F K N OW I N G A N D T H E I N D E T E R M I N A C Y O F T H E K N OW N 201

Carrillo noted that this image contained the power of Kauyumari (the deer god). It is
as though he is a peyote. But at the same time he turns into this (a deer). And he
transforms into a nierika. He transforms into nothingness and into pure light
(MacLean 2012: 62). Eligios interpretation shows how images are multi-dimensional
entities that put in relation levels of experience.
How images appear (Belting 2011) is linked not only with the particular
configuration of the image itself but also, and mainly, with the embodiment and
anticipation of experience. As Humphrey and Laidlaw (1994) and more recently Severi
have argued, reflexivity means that rituals are Not to be seen as the static illustration of
a traditional truth, but rather as the result of a number of particular inferences, of
individual acts of interpretation involving doubt, disbelief and uncertainty (2002: 27).

Conclusion

The main contribution of this paper has been to explore Huichol forms of knowledge
through four phenomena: the anticipation of experience, the indeterminacy of the
known, the presence of visual indexes of agency and becoming, and the shifting of
subjectivities. First, we examined the Tatei Neixa ritual as a form of anticipatory
experience where ambiguity plays a central role. In this context, the intertwining of
images through chant allows a virtual journey to Wirikuta, the land of Peyote. In this
ritual, the interrelatedness of images, words and actions shows that a series of practices
can constitute the context that guides inference and at the time the persistent schema
that influences evocation (Severi 2015: 15). The paper also explored how uncertainty
emerges as a feeling that keeps the dramatic tension of the ritual experience. We focused
on the way in which the discovery or the encounter with deified ancestors puzzles its
participants and, thereby, creates the conditions by which ritual experiences can
become memorable events. The analysis unveiled a significant relationship between
the feeling of losing the way back home, which is widely produced by the ritual of
Tatei Neixa, and the embodiment especially in children of a particular kind of ritual
knowledge, consisting of criteria to act in the world to come.
The exploration of the entanglement of things, actions and notions showed that
modes of subjectification and agency are deployed through criteria historically rooted
in Huichol forms of interaction, and also of intra-action, which means in contrast to
the usual interaction the mutual constitution of entangled agencies (Barad 2011). In
this regard, Huichol artefacts and images appear as key agents for the constitution of
presences and forms of engagement with the world. In this context, images and objects
operate as visual indexes of agency, orienting interpretation and the experience of
knowledge. As Webb Keane remarks: we need to recognize how the materiality of
signification is not just a factor for the sign interpreter but gives rise to and transforms
modalities of action and subjectivity (2003: 413).
As a final point, we examined how in ritual contexts visual phenomena involve
the entanglement of a plurality of visual and non-visual dimensions. As we noted, the
phenomenon related to the gift of seeing (nierika) consists of performative acts that
describe knowledge as a shifting of subjectivities, mainly between the knower and
the known. This decentring of points of view, so important for Huichol subjective
experiences, implies the configuration of a relational field that this paper has
contributed to understanding.

2017 European Association of Social Anthropologists.

202 A N G E L A E D O A N D PA U L I N A FA B A

Acknowledgements

Our gratitude goes to our long-time Wixarika friends who had the generosity to open
their homes on numerous occasions, offering us much more than we could have
imagined. We would like to extend special thanks to Arturo Gutierrez, Marie-Areti
Hers, Francesca Merlan, Alan Rumsey and Carlo Severi for their constructive insights
and suggestions on the topics discussed in this paper. This article was written during a
visiting scholarship at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton. Research for this
article was made possible by the Center for Intercultural and Indigenous Research
(CONICYT/FONDAP/15110006), the Institute for Advanced Study, the
Vicerrectora de Investigacin de la Ponticia Universidad Catlica de Chile,
CONICYT-Fondecyt (project 1160445) and the Universidad Alberto Hurtado.
Finally, great credit must go to the Social Anthropology editorial board, especially
Patrick Laviolette, and its anonymous reviewers for such insightful suggestions for
revision.

Angel Aedo
Department of Anthropology
Pontificia Universidad Catlica de Chile
Santiago 7820436
Chile
jaedog@uc.cl

Paulina Faba
Department of Anthropology
Universidad Alberto Hurtado
Santiago 8340575
Chile
pfabazul@gmail.com

References
Aedo, A. 2011. La dimensin ms oscura de la existencia. Indagaciones en torno al Kieri de los huicholes.
Mxico DF: Instituto de Investigaciones Antropolgicas, UNAM.
Astuti, R. and M. Bloch 2015. The causal cognition of wrong doing: incest, intentionality, and
morality, Frontiers in Psychology 6(136): 1 7.
Barad, K. 2011. Erasers and erasures. Punchs unfortunate uncertain principle, Social Studies of Science
20: 112.
Barth, F. 2002. An anthropology of knowledge. Sidney Mintz Lecture for 2000, Current Anthropology
43: 1 18.
Bateson, G. 1936. Naven. A survey of the problems suggested by a composite picture of the culture
of a New Guinea tribe drawn from three points of view. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Bauman, R. 2012. Performance, in R. Bendix and G. Hasan-Rokem (eds.), A companion to folklore,
94 118. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.
Bauman, R. and C. Briggs 1990. Poetics and performance as critical perspectives on language and social
life, Annual Review of Anthropology 19: 59 88.
Belting, H. 2011. An anthropology of images: picture, medium, body. Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press.
Bentez, F. 2013 [1968]. En la tierra mgica del peyote. Mxico DF: Ediciones Era.

2017 European Association of Social Anthropologists.

 T H E A C T O F K N OW I N G A N D T H E I N D E T E R M I N A C Y O F T H E K N OW N 203

Benzi, M. 1972. Les Derniers adorateurs du peyotl. Paris: Gallimard.

Berliner, D. and R. Sarr 2008. On learning religion: an introduction, in D. Berliner and R.
Sarr (eds.), Learning religion: anthropological approaches, 1 19. New York: Berghahn
Books.
Bessire, L. 2014. Behold the black caiman: a chronicle of Ayoreo life. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago
Press.
Bredekamp, H. 2015. Thorie de lacte dimage. Paris: ditions La Dcouverte.
Broda, J. and C. Good 2004. Historia y vida ceremonial en las comunidades mesoamericanas: los ritos
agrcola. Mxico DF: UNAM.
Cavell, S. 1999 [1979]. The claim of reason: Wittgenstein, skepticism, morality and tragedy. Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
Deleuze, G. 1998. Essays critical and clinical. London: Verso.
Descola, P. 2010. La fabrique des images. Visions du monde et formes de la reprsentation. Paris:
Somogy-Muse du quai Branly.
Dewey, J. 1916. Essays in experimental logic. New York: Dover.
Dewey, J. 1934. Art as experience. New York: Putnam.
Dewey, J. 1993. The need for a recovery of philosophy, in D. Morris and I. Shapiro (eds.), The political
writings/John Dewey, 19. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company.
Faba, P. 2015. Arte y presencia entre los Huicholes (wixaritari) del Occidente de Mxico, Revista de
Teora del Arte 1(26): 43 54.
Fassin, D. 2012. Introduction. Toward a critical moral anthropology, in D. Fassin (ed.), A companion to
moral anthropology, 118. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.
Faubion, J. 2011. An anthropology of ethics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Flix-Baez, J. 2006. Olor de santidad: San Rafael Guzar y Valencia: articulaciones histricas, polticas y
simblicas de una devocin popularan. Veracruz: Universidad Veracruzana.
Foucault, M. 2012. Du gouvernement des vivants. Cours au Collge de France 19791980. Paris:
EHESS-Seuil-Gallimard.
Furst, P. 1972. To nd our life: Peyote among the Huichol Indians of Mexico, in P. Furst (ed.), Flesh of
the gods: the ritual use of hallucinogens. New York: Praeger.
Furst, P. and B. Myerhof 1966. Myth as history. The Jimsonweed cycle of the Huichols of Mexico,
Antropolgica 17: 339.
Galinier, J. 1999. Lentendement msoamricain: catgories et objets du monde, LHomme 151:
10121.
Gamboni, D. 2002. Potential images: ambiguity and indeterminacy in modern art. London: Reaktion
Books.
Gibson, J. 1979. The ecological approach to visual perception. Boston: Houghton Mifin.
Goffman, E. 1981. Forms of talk. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Grimshaw, A. and A. Ravetz 2015. The ethnographic turn and after: a critical approach towards the
realignment of art and anthropology, Social Anthropology 23: 41835.
Gutirrez del ngel, A. 2002. La peregrinacin a Wirikuta: el gran rito de paso de los huicholes. Mxico
DF: Instituto Nacional de Antropologa e Historia.
Houseman, M. and C. Severi 1998. Naven or the other self. A relational approach to ritual action.
Leiden: Brill.
Humphrey, C. and J. Laidlaw 1994. The archetypal actions of ritual: an essay on ritual action as action
illustrated by the Jain rite of worship. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Jelinek, A. 2016. An artists response to an anthropological perspective (Grimshaw and Ravetz), Social
Anthropology 24: 5039.
Jones, M. 2009. Phase space: geography, relational thinking, and beyond, Progress in Human
Geography 33: 487506.
Keane, W. 1995. The spoken house. Text, act and object in eastern Indonesia, American Ethnologist
22: 10224.
Keane, W. 2003. Semiotics and the social analysis of material things, Language and Communication
23: 40925.
Knab, T. 1977. Notes concerning use of Solandra among the Huichol, Economic Botany 31:
806.

2017 European Association of Social Anthropologists.

204 A N G E L A E D O A N D PA U L I N A FA B A

Lemaistre, D. 2012. El hilo textil y el hilo sonoro. Dos mundos que se entrelazan, in A. Gutirrez del
ngel (ed.), Hilando al norte. Nudos, redes vestidos, textiles, 30320. San Luis Potosi: Colsan &
Colef.
Lemke, T. 2015. New materialisms: Foucault and the government of things, Theory, Culture and
Society 32(4): 325.
Liffman, P. 2005. Races y fuegos: estructuras cosmolgicas y procesos histricos en la territorialidad
huichol, Relaciones 26(101): 5179.
Lopez-Austin, A. 1994. Tamoanchan y Tlalocan. Mxico DF: FCE.
Lumholtz, C. 1986 [1902]. El arte simblico y decorativo de los huicholes. Mxico DF: INI.
MacLean, H. 2012. The Shamans mirror. Visionary art of the Huichol. Austin, TX: University of Texas
Press.
McCormack, D. 2010. Thinking in transition: the afrmative refrain of experience/experiment, in B.
Anderson and P. Harrison (eds.), Taking-place. Non-representational theories and geography,
201-20. Burlington, VT: Ashgate.
McIntosh, J. B. and J. Grimes 1954. Vocabulario Huichol-Castellano Castellano-Huichol. Mxico DF:
Instituto Lingstico de Verano.
Morris, R. C. 2000. In the place of origins, modernity and its mediums in northern Thailand. Durham,
NC: Duke University Press.
Myerhoff, B. 1974. Peyote hunt. The sacred journey of the Huichol Indians. Ithaca, NY: Cornell
University Press.
Negrn, J. 1986. Nierica: espejo entre dos mundos. Arte contemporneo huichol. Mxico DF: Museo de
Arte Moderno.
Neurath, J. 2002. Las estas de la casa grande: ritual agrcola, iniciacin y cosmovisin en una comunidad
wixarika (T+apurie/Santa Catarina Cuexcomatitn). Mxico DF: INAH.
Peirce, Ch. S. 193158. Collected papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, 8 vols, C. Hartshorne, P. Weiss and
A. W. Burks (eds.). Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
Pietz, W. 1985. The problem of the fetish, Part 1, Res 9: 5-17.
Pitarch, P. 2012. The two Maya bodies: an elementary model of Tzeltal personhood, Ethos 77:
93-114.
Povinelli, E. 2001. Radical worlds: the anthropology of incommensurability and inconceivability,
Annual Review of Anthropology 30: 31934.
Schaefer, S. 1996. The crossing of souls: Peyote perceptions and meanings among the Huichol Indians,
in S. Schaefer and P. Furst (eds.), People of the Peyote. Huichol Indian history, religion and survival,
138 68. Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press.
Schaefer, S. 2005. Plants and healing on the Wixarika (Huichol) Peyote pilgrimage, in J. Dubuish and
M. Winkelman (eds.), Pilgrimage and healing, 179 201. Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona
Press.
Severi, C. 2002. Memory, reexivity and belief. Reections on the ritual use of language, Social
Anthropology 10: 23 40.
Severi, C. 2014. Transmutating beings. A proposal for an anthropology of thought, Hau: Journal of
Ethnographic Theory 4(2): 4171.
Severi, C. 2015. The chimera principle. An anthropology of memory and imagination. Chicago, IL:
Chicago University Press.
Silverstein, M. 1993. Harold Pinter and the language of cultural power. Lewisburg: Bucknel University
Press; London and Toronto: Associated University Presses.
Strathern, M. 2013. Learning to see in Melanesia. Lectures given in the Department of Social
Anthropology, Cambridge University 19932008. Manchester: HAU Master Class Series 2.
Taussig, M. 1993. Malecium: state fetishism, in E. Apter and W. Pietz (eds.), Fetishism as cultural
discourse, 21747. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Urban, G. 2001. Metaculture. How culture moves through the world. Minneapolis, MN: University of
Minnesota Press.
Urban, G. 2006. Metasemiosis and metapragmatics, in K. Brown (ed.), Encyclopaedia of language and
linguistics, 8891. Amsterdam: Elsevier.
Wilf, E. 2014. Semiotic dimensions of creativity, Annual Review of Anthropology 43: 397412.

2017 European Association of Social Anthropologists.

 T H E A C T O F K N OW I N G A N D T H E I N D E T E R M I N A C Y O F T H E K N OW N 205

Wittgenstein, L. 1986 [1958]. Philosophical investigations. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

Yasumoto, M. 1996. The psychotropic Kieri in Huichol culture, in S. Schaefer and P. Furst (eds.), People
of the Peyote. Huichol Indian history, religion and survival, 236 63. Albuquerque, NM:
University of New Mexico Press.
Zingg, R. 1982. Los huicholes. Una tribu de artistas, I. Mxico DF: INI.

Lacte de connatre et lindtermination du

connu dans des contextes huichols (Mexique)
Dans les localits huicholes de Jalisco et de Nayarit, lacte de connatre se dcrit comme une
exprience transformationnelle dans laquelle circulent des conceptions de vrit et de valeurs au
sein des interactions entre les agents humains et non humains. Analysant les notions critiques,
les expriences rituelles et les assemblages de choses, cet article examine les formes de
connaissance huicholes travers quatre phnomnes : lanticipation de lexprience,
lindtermination du connu, la prsence dindices visuels dagence et de devenir et des subjectivits
en volution. partir des rsultats de cette tude ethnographique, larticle conclut en observant
que les manires dont senchevtrent les actions rituelles, les rcits et les lments visuels crent
des champs relationnels importants analyser pour comprendre les expriences de la
connaissance dans des contextes huichols.

Mots-cls connaissances, exprience rituelle, indtermination, champs relationnels, Indiens

huichols

2017 European Association of Social Anthropologists.