by Hope MacLean
Michael Harner (1980) proposes that the shamanic state of consciousness (SSC) is a biophysical capacity of the human body. Alternate states of consciousness may be entered through techniques such as fasting or rhythmic percussion (drumming or rattling). Then a person may experience entry into another world or communicate with power animals or other spirit beings.
Members of many cultures enter SSCs through ingesting hallucinogenic plants such as mushrooms (Psilocybe), various species of Datura, or ayahuasca (Banisteriopsis, with additives made from other plants such as Psychotria [Kensinger 1973, 10]). Color visions seem to be part of the experience associated with SSCs, particularly when using hallucinogens.
For example, ayahuasca seems to generate powerful color visions. The ethnobotanist Wade Davis (1998, 159) described seeing brilliant colors, snakes, the sky opening, and rivers unfolding as though blossoming. A series of paintings by the artist Pablo Amaringo (Luna 1990) shows the rainbow-colored wavy and jagged lines associated with taking ayahuasca. A drawing by a Jĺvaro shaman shows similar jagged lines representing a golden halo around the head of a person (Harner 1980, 29).
Many people who eat peyote report seeing brilliant colors and vibrating patterns, often in geometric or lattice-like shapes (Cordy-Collins 1989, 41–43). Their experience resembles seeing the shifting geometric shapes and colors in a kaleidoscope, as Ramón Mata Torres (n.d., 107; my translation) describes:
[I see] a marvelous world of color in which everything changes into a fountain of forms and colors. . . . The colors are alive and breathing, like the stained-glass windows of Gothic cathedrals. . . . The conviction grows that all the colors can combine themselves, that no color excludes another. All can mix together without appearing ugly. But the way the color gradually shades is important, even decisive. Greens with violet, magentas with greens, dark blues with greens, yellows with lime green, reds with blues or oranges, which move from the softest to the strongest shades. . . . There are in front of me shapes of rhomboids, squares, stars, triangles. . . . It is a world of architectural shapes that seems more logical than the world we usually see and more geometric than the world we know.
Geometric color imagery is only one type of peyote-induced experience. The Huichol say that it is only a beginning. Some people never see any more than this. However, a person who develops shamanic abilities goes beyond color imagery and feels himself or herself to be entering into direct communication with gods, spirits, or sacred places. The images that a shaman sees are meaningful on a more important level, not just pretty designs.
I should make clear here my own experience as a researcher. I have participated in ceremonies, including the pilgrimage to Wirikuta. During some ceremonies, I have eaten peyote and experienced several types of visionary phenomena, including seeing spirits such as deer and hearing voices speak to me. I have not seen the type of colorful, shifting, kaleidoscopic imagery described by Mata Torres. Nor have I experienced the phenomenon described by Eligio of colors that can be understood as language.
My interviews with Eligio brought out another dimension of shamanic visionary experience. This is the idea that color itself is the means used by the gods to communicate with a shaman. A shaman hears and understands by means of color. These colors are not words or symbols in a linguistic sense—that is, they do not function as a symbolic language in which color x means one thing, and color y another. Rather, the colors themselves seem to be comprehended in a multisensory way that is meaningful to the shaman. According to Eligio, colors are words, and at the same time, they are songs. He also proposed that colors could speak to one another.
ELIGIO: The colors are words, and they are magical songs. The colors are songs. They are words, and they understand each other.
HOPE: Are they a language of the gods, the colors?
ELIGIO: Yes, colors are the voice or the words of the gods. They come from the gods, and they arrive with you and [you have to say them].
The word-colors come from the gods directly in the form of songs.
HOPE: Do they come from the gods when the gods sing? And those songs come out from them?
ELIGIO: It is exactly the same for the gods as it is with us. That is exactly how the gods talk. Just like us. In those moments when the shaman is in communication with them, so he can translate their words, the gods are speaking. As though they were chatting in conversation. But who knows how far they are able to see? From here, the shamans make contact as though by telephone. And then the shaman sees also, sees the gods. For a moment. The vision is just a period of light. Then when the shaman stops singing to have a rest, the vision also withdraws. In that moment. And when the shaman begins again, the gods make contact again.
The words of the gods arrive at the shaman’s body, particularly to his or her mouth. No one teaches the shaman to understand them. The ability to comprehend and translate the word-colors is part of becoming a shaman.
HOPE: When the gods speak to you by colors, does anyone teach you to understand? Who taught you to understand them?
ELIGIO: [laughing and shaking his head] No, those ones [the gods and the shamans] understand each other. With colors, they understand each other. Because it is the image that speaks. Almost you speak to it, because wherever you are, the god can reach that place through the image. That is how it speaks to you with an image. And that is how you speak to it: with the image that is opening up your mouth, the image that is coming to your body.
HOPE: Is it an image like a dream?
ELIGIO: It is . . . how can I tell you? . . . It is like a picture.
HOPE: Like a yarn painting?
ELIGIO: That is how it will reach you, like a picture. It will come to your mouth. You are eating it . . . almost [makes a gesture with his hand of stuffing something into his mouth and eating the words or colors]. You are seeing, chatting.
HOPE: You are almost eating the colors?
ELIGIO: Yes, the colors. They come to your body.
HOPE: Then no one taught you to understand them. It is only possible if someone has the capacity.
ELIGIO: Yes, they come to your body.
HOPE: It seems to me that I am almost at the end of what I can ask you because we are going very deeply into the knowledge of the shamans, right? And I lack the words, or I lack the understanding. I want to ask about the colors, but I almost don’t know how to ask the questions.
ELIGIO: No, well, the colors, you would have to learn about them. You would have to experience them. For example, if we were holding a ceremony and you were using peyote. That would allow you to do something to concentrate or focus yourself so that you could see the colors, could hear the colors. You would know what the colors are, what it takes to understand them, what you need to hear them. That is where you can begin to comprehend the colors.
Eligio seems to be describing a phenomenon whereby colors and visual pictures are perceived by means of multiple senses, by the mouth and the ears as well as by the eyes. I have not been able to clarify this ambiguity further. Eligio usually uses language precisely to express his meaning. Hence, the ambiguity is not due to the confusion of someone who has difficulty expressing himself in a second language. The limitation is mine because I have not experienced this phenomenon, and therefore, I find it difficult to describe.
Eligio’s explanation of colors as language and song is difficult to understand from the point of view of Western thought. Westerners usually express perceptions as separate and independent sense experiences. For example, we see colors or images and hear words or songs. It is difficult to imagine the two happening simultaneously. However, there are cases of people who can combine sensory perception, in a phenomenon known as synesthesia.
Barron-Cohen (1996) defines synesthesia as the mixing of two (or more) senses so that sensation in one modality is triggered by sensation in another. One example of synesthesia is hearing music as colors. I once heard a radio program in which a musician described how certain instruments might cause him to see a cascade of silver, blue, o
r some other color.1 Barron-Cohen describes a case of a woman who heard sounds when she saw colors; however, he notes that she was so overwhelmed that she was obliged to withdraw from society. Barron-Cohen hypothesizes that synesthesia may be a natural state among newborn children and that only later do the senses become differentiated. When Eligio describes seeing colors that turn into magical songs, he may be describing synesthesia or a similar phenomenon.
Eligio’s experience may be compared to Gebhart-Sayer’s (1985) description of a Shipibo shamanic ceremony in Peru. The Shipibo shaman sees designs float down during the ceremony. When the designs reach the shaman’s lips, he sings them into songs. When the songs come into contact with the patient, the songs turn back into designs, which penetrate the patient’s body and heal the illness. The shaman also states that the songs have a fragrance, which itself is powerful. There is a striking similarity to Eligio’s description of the visual image that reaches the shaman’s mouth, where it turns into song. One wonders whether this experience characterizes other shamans’ experiences as well.
Possibly, colors are specifically associated with trance experiences or altered states of consciousness, and not with everyday consciousness. In a follow-up interview, I asked Eligio whether he saw colors when he heard music played on the radio or during a party. He said that he did not. He only saw colors when communicating with the gods during a ceremony. Then he qualified this statement slightly by saying he did see something when the ceremonial violin or guitar was played. What he saw was more like a kind of wind or transparent wave coming out of the instruments. These statements indicate that his experience is something other than ordinary synesthesia, which is always triggered by a particular stimulus.
To clarify these concepts, I asked him who can see these colors. Are they available to anyone, or are they limited to the shamans?
HOPE: Do the gods speak to people like us [that is, to non-shamans] with colors also?
ELIGIO: Yes, well, only this way. The colors come to some people. But they come with more enthusiasm [Sp.: más gana] to a person who wants to know [about shamanism]. Not to everyone either. It’s only some people.
The anthropologist Charles Laughlin (personal communication) points out that only some people are synesthetic. Eligio seems to be saying the same thing.
To see the colors, a person has to fast and fulfill the requirements of becoming a shaman. Abstaining from salt and sexual intercourse is a basic requirement for participation in many Huichol ceremonies. At times, one may also be required to abstain from food and water for part of the day. Both shamans and non-shamans may observe these proscriptions, depending on the ceremony and the degree of their participation in it.
ELIGIO: You have to fast to learn. To fast from salt, water, food, to be able to hear this . . . If you do it with peyote, it will come with even more force. And by that means [of peyote], a lot of words from the gods will come to you. But they are colors that come.
HOPE: They come as colors?
ELIGIO: That’s how they come.
Is this means of perception unique to Eligio, or is it shared? I asked him whether other Huichol know about the colors as words. He affirmed that shamans, at least, know about it and perceive this way.
HOPE: Do the other Huichol know what you told me about the colors and the magical winds?
ELIGIO: Yes, the shamans do. The shamans know. Because all the shamans work with these, translate [the communication from the gods] with colors.
HOPE: And it is by means of colors? It isn’t by means of sounds or words?
ELIGIO: By means of colors. They are words that originate as colors.
HOPE: You are almost at the end of what I can understand, I think. If I had experienced this, I could grasp it, but right now I can’t grasp the idea very well, of a color that is a word.
ELIGIO: Yes, it is very difficult. Well, it is for you. For me, it is easy.
The understanding of colors as words is shared among shamans, so if one shaman depicts a visionary experience in a yarn painting, another shaman can comprehend it.
HOPE: And when a person makes a yarn painting, can another shaman understand it through the colors you use?
ELIGIO: Yes, of course. [Others can tell] by seeing it, and then the shaman says what it is [that is, others can also know if the shaman gives a verbal explanation]. A person who has this knowledge. A person who doesn’t know [is not a shaman], doesn’t understand anything. As for me, I can just look at the painting, if someone makes a design, and I can tell whether he is a shaman and, therefore, whether he knows. And moreover, if he hasn’t completed [shamanic training], he isn’t a shaman.
Eligio felt that most of the Huichol artists used these concepts, whether they were shamans or not. The depiction of colors is therefore at the heart of Huichol yarn painting.
HOPE: Of the Huichol artists that you know, such as [José] Benĺtez or [Mariano] Valadez or others, who are the ones that you think are using the colors in the manner of the shamans?
ELIGIO: All of us who work on yarn paintings are using this, the colors, with the help of Kauyumari and the gods. We also make designs with the help of the sacred fire, which is called Tatewari. He produces colors also. Colors are born from the fire as well. Kauyumari hears him. They understand each other, they speak to each other. And by means of this, of colors, they translate [relay communications to the shaman] from the sacred places [sacred caves and other geographic locations]. For this reason, all of us who make yarn paintings base ourselves in the colors from these places, from the sacred fire and Kauyumari, in order to make a [yarn painting] design using the colors of the gods. From the sacred fire and everything. Such as Benĺtez, myself, Valadez, Santos, and various others who are informing themselves. By this means, they make their designs. Of those who listen to the places of the gods, they make designs. They dream, they see, and they make their designs on the basis of these songs of the gods.
HOPE: And does one see the same process in beadwork, such as the beaded masks?
ELIGIO: Yes it is the same. It is entirely the same. In the beadwork, it is the same. One can draw what one sees through dreams.
Besides the professional artists, some women also use the sacred colors as part of their work in textiles, such as embroidery or weaving.
HOPE: Do you see this also in the clothes [made by] the women, the colors that they put in the clothes?
ELIGIO: Of the women? Well, some women, not all of them either. But as I say, if a person doesn’t know this study [of shamanism], one can use it, but no more [that is, depict the colors but not originate them]. If the person is a shaman, then yes.
HOPE: The clothes that the Huichol have are always very decorated with many colors.
ELIGIO: Well, when the person [the maker of the clothes] is translating, yes. [Eligio uses “translating” to mean that a shaman is communicating with and interpreting the words of the gods]. When she is translating. And when she is not translating, it is not. When the person is translating, yes, because that is directly guided by the place from where the person is translating.
HOPE: The gods send the colors to the clothes?
ELIGIO: You have to arrive at the sacred place.
Eligio affirms that the colors that a female shaman uses in textiles will be guided by the gods of a particular sacred place. However, the woman must have made pilgrimages to that sacred place in order to receive colors from it. Women who are not shamans will be able to copy shamanic designs and colors, but not originate them. Thus, Eligio confirms the opinion of the anthropologist Stacy Schaefer (1990, 245), who cautioned that not all women are capable of using information from dreams or visions in their designs. Schaefer felt that it was mainly those women who were most mature in a religious career who were able to use this source of information.
Which Colors Are Sacred
In addition to the question of who perceives colors, other logical questions are, Which colors is Eligio talking about? Do the gods use all colors, or are there only cert
ain colors they use? How many colors do the gods use? Are the sacred colors shown in yarn paintings or other Huichol arts?
To bring this discussion down to basics, I gave Eligio my set of Pantone color swatches and asked him whether he could identify which colors the gods use to communicate. Eligio used the series on shiny, coated stock to make his selection.
I was surprised that he chose comparatively few colors—16 out of a possible 777. All were selected in pairs of adjacent colors on a swatch. The pairs were different shades of a single color. Hence, only about eight distinct groups of colors are represented. I asked him several times whether he wanted to add any more colors, but he insisted that his list was complete with those sixteen.
Fig. 10.1. Pantone colors (marked with dots) that Eligio Carrillo selected as representing the sacred colors he sees in communications from the gods, 2010. Photo credit: Adrienne Herron.
Table 10.1. Pantone Colors Identified as Sacred Colors by Eligio Carrillo
Huichol term
Pantone color
Tarauye
150C + 151C, slightly brownish oranges
Tarauye Kwima tarauye
809C + 810C, fluorescent greenish yellow and fluorescent orange yellow (like the Day-Glo colors on psychedelic posters of the 1960s)
Talauye
231C + 232C, strong bluish pinks (close to rhodamine red)
Yutsi kimauye Kwima yutsi kimauye
258C + 259C, purple
Muye yuawi
265C + 266C, violet
Kwima yuawi Kwini mieme mu yuawi
300C + 301C, blue (shading between process blue and reflex blue with black)