Huichol Quotes

When anesthesia was developed, it was for many decades routinely withheld from women giving birth, since women were "supposed" to suffer. One of the few societies to take a contrary view was the Huichol tribe in Mexico. The Huichol believed that the pain of childbirth should be shared, so the mother would hold on to a string tied to her husband's testicles. With each painful contraction, she would give the string a yank so that the man could share the burden. Surely if such a mechanism were more widespread, injuries in childbirth would garner more attention.

The fact is, that for the Huichol, and for all those who refuse, who are in flight, words and things are precisely what language does not speak about. Language is a natural act which implies belonging. He who exists, speaks. He who does not speak, does not exist. He has no place in the world. The Huichol language is Huichol to the same degree as the Huichol earth, the Huichol sky, religion, tattooing, dress, the peyoteros' hat. It is not enough to pronounce the syllables of the Huichol language to be Huichol. That is obvious.

Those men have never done anything in their lives except stare at the clouds and the stars. The Indians take them food and tobacco, and on certain evenings gather around the fire as they tell their tribesmen all the strange thoughts and dreams which they have had. Huicholes believe that men cannot have pure thoughts if they are required to participate in the daily tasks of life.

The Huicholes were dangerous because they were not tainted by the fear of death. They accepted life as something caught between the sun and the earth in which man could only participate briefly. No amount of defeat could make them regard themselves as inferior. They had none of the fear of losing their beliefs that drives modern man to devise fantastic schemes. Above all else, the Huicholes were dangerous because they believed that their hour of triumph had not yet arrived. In the celebration that would follow, centuries of occupation would disappear, like dust scattered by the wind.

If we recognize the power of entheogenic substances to open us to the universal truth and full dimension of human experience, and if we accept the role of the shaman as hierophant and psychopomp into this realm, as enacted for example by the Huichol mara'akame, we have to conclude that today in Western society we are deprived of two key resources for complete human growth. Young people, in their hunger for meaning, will still gravitate toward entheogens. The more experienced among us may try to ease their journey, but in the absence of qualified guides not all will benefit from their experience.

The Huichol believed that the pain of childbirth should be shared, so the mother would hold on to a string tied to her husband’s testicles. With each painful contraction, she would give the string a yank so that the man could share the burden. Surely if such a mechanism were more widespread, injuries in childbirth would garner more attention.

Le escuché por primera vez este término a un marakame huichol o wirrarika. Los wirrarikas son parte de los pueblos originarios de México, orgullosos por conservar costumbres muy antiguas y justamente son los marakames quienes cumplen el rol de ser guardianes de la cultura. Al preguntarle cómo llegó a ser marakame, me respondió: «Me enseñé viendo a mi padre».

You labor to untangle the pre-Hispanic from the Catholic Spanish from the contemporary. This occupies you for a long time in Mexico. Finally you realize it's like trying to separate the different parts of a plant (a “burning flower,” the desert Huichol people call life's origins). Apostate from the cult of tomorrow, you begin to see that the future has already passed, many times, and around you lie the ruins of old futures dreamed. You arrive, with a bump, back in the layered, resonant Mexican present, your eyes open, your reality wider.

Perhaps the most bizarre couvade ritual I’ve come across is one that enabled dads-to-be to literally share the pain of childbirth. Apparently, the Huichol people of Mexico used to position the dad in a tree or on the roof above his laboring wife. Ropes were tied around his testicles and with each contraction she could yank on the ropes and give her husband a taste of what she was going through. Seems a little much to me, but I’m sure there are plenty of women who would disagree.