One of the most central traditions of the Wixarika people involves the sacred, spineless cactus known as Peyote, which they call Hikuri.
According to their legend, the Wixaritari people were once starving. A group of hunters, each representing a natural element, was sent to find food. After a long and fruitless journey, a magnificent Blue Deer (Kauyumare) appeared. It led the exhausted hunters on a chase to the sacred land of Wirikuta.
There, the Blue Deer leaped into “the place where the spirit of Earth lives.” As it jumped, a hunter shot an arrow. When they looked, the arrow was not in a deer, but stuck in a family of cactus that shone like emeralds and had the shape of a deer. Understanding this was a divine gift, the hunters brought the cacti back to their village. The elders declared it a sacred gift from nature, and since that day, the Wixarika have never starved again..
The legend of the Blue Deer is the foundational myth and establishes the Wixarika’s most sacred rite: the annual Pilgrimage to Wirikuta. This journey is not a reenactment but a spiritual return to the very moment of divine revelation.
Wirikuta, a desert region in San Luis Potosí, is considered the “heart of the world,” the place where the spiritual and physical realms intersect. The pilgrimage is a profound act of devotion, a journey to the place where Kauyumare (the God Blue Deer) sacrificed his earthly form to become the Hikuri (peyote), the sacred cactus that allows communication with the divine.
For the Wixaritari, peyote is not a drug for recreation; it is a sacrament and a teacher. Its psychoactive properties are understood as its capacity to open the “door of perception,” allowing the participants to “see” into the spiritual realm, to heal, and to receive guidance. During the pilgrimage, the first peyote cactus found is treated with reverence due to the Blue Deer itself. It is a communal ceremony where the boundaries between the individual, the community, and the gods dissolve, reaffirming the interconnected web of life. This ritual is the ultimate expression of Nierika a direct seeing and speaking from the heart with the ancestral world.