e religion of the Tara

humara t

Contact:here are other holidays
, just as here we have Easter, the Feast
of the Ascension,

the Feast of the Assumption, and the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, but they do not all involve Peyote, and the Great Feast of Ciguri takes place, I believe, only once a year. It is then that it is taken according to all the age-old traditional rites. Peyote is

also taken on the other holidays but only as an occasional adjuvant and with no attention to graduating its for, and DoDce or effects. When I say that Peyote is taken I ought rather to say that it was taken, because the Mexican government is doing everything in its power to take Peyote away from the Tarahumara and to prevent their coming under its influence, and soldiers sent by the government into the mountains have received orders to prevent its cultivation. On my arrival in the mountains I found the Tarahumara desperate because of

the recent destruction of a field of Peyote by the soldiers of Mexico C

• ity. I had a long conversation on this subject with the director of t
  he native school where I stayed. This conversation was heated, difficult, and sometimes repugnant. The mestizo director of the Tarahumara native school was much more pre
• occupied with his sex, which enabled him each night to p
  ossess the schoolmistress, a mestizo like himself, than with culture or religion. But the government of Mexico had based i
• ts program on a return to Indian culture and in spite of
  everything the man was reluctant to shed Indian blood. "CIGURI," I told him, "is not a plant, it is a man whom you have castrated by blowing up the Peyote field. And for this red and mutilated member which sings—green, white, lilac—the people want to call you to account. And they see it." I notic
• ed as I passed through several Tarahumar
  a villages that a wind of revolt was blowing over the tribe at the appearance of the red member. The director of the native school was not unaware of this, but he was undecided about what method to use to restore calm among the Indians. "The only method," I told him, "is to succee
• d in winning their hear
  ts. They will never forgive you for this destruction, but you can show them by an opposite action that you are not an enemy of God. You are only a handful here and if they decided to revolt you would have to make war on them, and even with your weapons you could not hold out. Besides, the Priests of Ciguri have hiding places where you will never be able to go. "
• And what would become of the return of Mexico to Indian culture in the face of c
  ivil war? You must authorize this Festival at once if you want to have any Tarahumara left, and you must also provide the tribes with facilities for gathering, so that they will feel that you are sympathetic to them." "The trouble is that when they have taken Peyote, they no longer obey us." "It is the same with Peyote as it is with everything human. It is a marvelous magnetic and alchemical principle, provided one knows how t
• o take it—that is to say, in
  the proper doses and according to the proper gradations. And above all, provided one does not take it at the wrong time or in the wrong place. If after taking Peyote the Indians seem to go mad, it is because they are abusing it in order to reach that point of disorderly int
• oxication in which the soul is no
  longer subject to anything. In so doing, it is not you whom they are disobeying but Ciguri itself, for Ciguri is the God of the Prescience of the just, of equilibrium and of self-control. He who has truly
• imbEMRTCibed Ciguri, the true meter and measure of Ciguri, MAN and not indeterminate PHANTOM, knows how things are made and he can no longer lose his reason, because it is God who is in his nerves and who gu

ides them. "But to drink C

• iguri is by definition not to exceed the dose, for Ciguri is the Infinite,
• and the mystery of the therapeutic action of remedies is related t
• o the proportion in which our organi
• sm takes them. To
• X-ray Diffraction
• Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometer
• exceed what is necessary is to VIOLATE that action. "According to the sacerdotal traditions of the Tarahu

mara, God disappears immediately when one has taken too much and in his place it is the Evil Spirit who comes." 'Tomorrow evening you will make the acquaintance of a family of Priests of Ciguri," said the director of the native school. 'Tell them what you just told me and I am sure that this time again and perhaps more than the last few times we shall succeed in keeping the absorption of Peyote within bounds. Tell them also that this Feast will be

authorized and that we will do everything in our power to make the gathering possible and that to this end we shall I provide them with whatever horses and supplies they may need." I in the late afternoon of the next day I arrived at the li