Abstract

NEURATH, Johannes. An approximation to the huicholes' cosmovision. Desacatos [online]. 2000, n.5, pp.57-77. ISSN 2448-5144.

In the mythical origins of all things, plants, animals and human beings, all belonged to an undifferentiated unit, coexisting without rules and communication problems, because they all spoke and understood each other. Then order was established based on different categories, exchange-rules (ie. the taboo of incest) and alternating rhythms of segments of time (night and day, dry and raining seasons). For different circumstances an ancestor became one thing and another became something else. But all animated beings of the universe -a very large category- descend from the same group of ancestors turned into gods. This means that human beings, animals, plants and natural elements can communicate although with great difficulty -learning to communicate requires a chamanic initiation. Therefore the separation between nature and society refers to the mythical time, not to the present time.