| The batten, upalau
, is associated with a range of mountains surrounding a
lake near the city of Tepic in the state of Nayarit.
This
place, called Hakuepa, is where Huichols go to ask for
health, luck with their cattle, a plentiful corn crop,
and so forth. The bottom beam,
kuaterai ,
is Haramara, where the goddess of the Pacific ocean
resides. Heere during the time of creation, certain gods
were formed from the sea. This is also the last place on
the sun's path before it sets and follows its nightly
journey into the underworld. Furst and Anguiano
(1976:176) write that one of the important duties of the
Huichol shaman is "to see to it 'with his power'
that the Sun father is properly reborn each dawn and
makes his customary celestial journey across the
sky". In accordance deceased shamans also travel
with the sun in the form of celestial rock crystals. I
observed that my weaving teacher, herself a shaman,
preferred to begin a curing session as the sun was
setting, every little while glancing at the sun and
speaking to it as it went down. In the night she would
dream the cause of the illness and at sunrise continue
once again with the curing session. During ceremonies when the shaman sings, the singing begins well after sunset and lasts the entire night. As he sings he communicates with the gods underground by way of a sacred hole situated next to the singer. One Huichol woman explains that the gods "know everything that is happening during the night, everything down below. Below (the sun) is walking and all the mara'kame (shamans) when they are performing a ceremony, when they sing they know everything that is happening. . .below the earth. When the "sun" is rising they sing a very beautiful song. When it has made five passes under the ground to reach Rau Unar, sometimes the mara'kame sees it, Kauyumarie sees it as if it were a sunflower that closes and afterward when (the sun) rises, the flower awakens and opens up. When it opens up this means that the sun is awake to travel once again to the ocean." As previously mentioned, the warp on the loom is circular and represents the sun's journey. The warp yarns in front on the loom are seen as the path of the sun during the day. The unwoven part of the warp which circles behind the back of the loom is considered to be the sun's nightly path through the underworld. like the rotation of the sun around the earth, as the weaving progresses, this part of the warp yarns will be pulled so that they pass over and down the top beam, to follow in the same manner as the warp which has already been woven. |