Book Reviews

MacLean, Hope (2012) The Shaman’s Mirror: Visionary Art of the Huichol, Universityof Texas Press (Austin, TX), xii + 284 pp. $50.00 hbk.

Through the doors of perception (Huxley, 2011: 1) with Sacred Deer. Every year num-bers of Mexico’s Huichol Indians make an arduous pilgrimage to the desert of Wirikuta,travelling approximately 400 miles to collect their sacred plant, the hikuri, or peyote.Peter T. Furst (2003, ix) says: ‘The pilgrims reenact a mythological ancestral hunt for aSacred Deer that, when it fell dead from their arrows, gave birth to the sacred cactus.’Wirikuta is the principal sacred place of the ritual ceremonies surrounding the sacredmountain, Cerro Quemado, where the Huichol, or Wixáritari, make a connection withtheir gods, ancestors and nature through rituals going back more than a thousand years.

During ceremonies guided by mara’akate (shamans), they re-create the world, con-sume peyote, sing songs, pray and make religious offerings. Hunting for the peyote andthe experience of the drug are fundamental to the Huichol view of the world and cos-mos, the pilgrimage itself being a sacrifice which they make in order for the world tocontinue. Yarn paintings are offered as visual prayers to the gods. For the Canadiananthropologist, Hope MacLean, ‘Huichol art is not only a visual prayer… but also ademonstration that vision exists. The ideal artist has the obligation to explain to othershis or her vision. The yarn painting is one way of doing this’ (p. 213).

MacLean’s The Shaman’s Mirror is a comprehensive and in-depth analysis of Hui-chol sacred yarn paintings and a significant contribution to the study of Huichol cul-ture. Containing fascinating colour examples and photographs, it also explains the his-tory and chronology of the development of the medium, and how a sacred art formchanges when it becomes commercialised and commodified in a global cultural marketplace.

The Shaman’s Mirror adds to the understanding and knowledge of Huichol aestheticstructures, the role of language and the description and use of colour and its meaning.MacLean argues that yarn paintings are guided by visionary experience and manifest adeep aesthetic value structure and philosophy that is distinctly Huichol. These visionsform a constant source of information about Huichol ways of thinking. She distinguishesbetween art on shamanic subjects, visionary art and shamanic ritual art.

Since her encounter with a Huichol family in 1988, MacLean has spent many yearsstudying their art. She approached her research as an observer–participant, doing exten-sive fieldwork. She gained entry to the Huichol community and became a close friendof the originators of yarn painting, Guadalupe de la Cruz Ríos, Ramón Medina Silva,Eligio Carrillo Vicente, and other artists, who became her consultants.

By spending long periods of time in their communities, going on pilgrimages toWirikuta, participating in ceremonies, taking peyote and making yarn paintings, she has

© 2014 The Author. Bulletin of Latin American Research © 2014 Society for Latin American Studies530 Bulletin of Latin American Research Vol. 33, No. 4

Book Reviews

been able to get as close as possible to Huichol culture. The contributions of a numberof innovators with great impact on the development of this medium and their cultureare recorded. One can feel in the tone of MacLean’s writing her love for the peopleand the long relationship which she has established. Nor does she ‘paint with a broadbrush’; there is no received wisdom in any of her analysis or stereotypical categorisation;she does not take as granted what others have done before her. As a result, there is abalance in her objective scholarship and her relationship with the Huichol friends andcollaborators.

The Huichol speak a language in the Uto-Aztecan family. MacLean’s commitment tounderstanding the language is especially important – throughout her study she delvesinto and describes essential linguistic differences. She makes a very significant contribu-tion by investigating deeply the meaning of key Huichol words, reflecting their uniqueperception and cosmology. In her conversations with Eligio, MacLean became awarethat he defined colours differently and had a culturally unique way of perceiving them.One day, Eligio told her ‘the colours speak’ (p. 165), and it was then that she realisedthat colour was a language used by the gods and spirits to communicate. MacLean is ofthe opinion that ‘If we are to understand what the Huichol are talking about, then weneed to listen to them with attention’ (p. 13). She asked and she was willing to listen.Can we ourselves perhaps also hear them now? Wirikuta, the site of the sacred pilgrim-age and source of the sacred peyote, is in great danger of total destruction at the handsof multinational mining corporations. In this fine book we learn how the Huichol feel‘personally responsible for the ongoing survival of the world’. Will we allow the doorto close on the survival of their culture?

Marcela Montoya OrtegaUniversity of the Arts London

References

Furst, P. T. (2003) Visions of a Huichol Shaman. University of Pennsylvania Museum ofArchaelogy and Anthropology: Philadelphia.

Huxley, A. (2011) The Doors of Perception: Heaven and Hell. Thinking Ink Limited: London,New York and Sydney.

© 2014 The Author. Bulletin of Latin American Research © 2014 Society for Latin American StudiesBulletin of Latin American Research Vol. 33, No. 4 531