Don David’s Lineages

Axihuatakame: The Spirit-Speaking Person

The primal elemental force of Fire is present as a divine energy in all ancestral traditions. Fire has been our benefactor, warming us, cooking our food, and giving us light for many millennia. We also know it as the energy of our hearts, holding our pure spiritual knowing and wisdom. It connects us to each other and to the Divine, providing the medium for transformation. In ancestral traditions, Fire is a living presence, providing guidance and help. In the tradition of the Huichols of northwest Mexico, they call the God of Fire Tatewarí, or Grandfather Fire.

In some indigenous cultures when the special participation of Spirit or deity is needed for ceremonies, teachings or guidance, and particularly when guidance is urgently needed, Spirit arranges for someone from that culture to manifest the voice of a guiding deity so that it can be heard clearly, without confusion, for the benefit of the people. There are many names for these types of unions or expressions: in Nahuatl they are called teotlixiptla (tay-oh-tlee-sheep-tla, god-image), in Tibetan they are called kuten (koo-ten, physical basis of spirit, as in the Nechung Oracle of the Dali Lama) and in Huichol they are called axihuatakame (ah-rreee-oo-aht-a-kame, god speaker man). Usually these capacities are passed down in lineages within these traditional cultures.

On this planet today there are said to be six people who allow this great elemental energy of Fire to speak through them in order to help the people of their tradition re-connect to their purpose and open their hearts. There is one each in India, Tibet and Indonesia, and two in the Amazon.

In keeping with this time of great change and need, in a rare occurrence David Wiley received this calling by Fire while living in Mexico to be the conduit for the voice of Grandfather Fire (Huichol: Tatewarí, Nahuatl: Xiuhtecuhtli). This is the first time that the person selected to serve in this role has been someone from outside the cultural area.

In this role, David travels around the world holding several public Grandfather Fires events each year. See the sidebar to the right for information on upcoming Grandfather Fire events.

The Huichols

The Huichols are an indigenous group living in the Sierra Madre mountains of Mexico. They are known for being one of the few indigenous groups that have maintained their pre-Columbian traditions, practicing their shamanic ritual and healing work for many hundreds of years. Huichol (pronounced Wee-tchol), is a Spanish corruption of Virarika, the word the Huichols call themselves. Virarika means doctor or healer, an appropriate name given the large number of Huichol men and women who become marakate (plural of marakame).

The Huichols celebrate a continuous cycle of rituals, pilgrimages and devotional practices in their life to help them stay connected to their ancestral ways and the various gods that exist as living presences in their daily experience. Some of their more prominent gods are Tatewarí (Grandfather Fire), Kauyumari (the Blue Deer), Tatei Haramara (Grandmother Ocean), Takutsi Nakawé (Grandmother Growth), and Tatei Urianaka (Mother Earth).

The Huichols are well known for their annual pilgrimages to sacred sites where deities have taken the form of geographical features such as mountains, lakes, deserts and springs. Here the Huichol shamans petition the gods of these special locations for shamanic capacities, wisdom, vision and help for their people.

The Path of a Marakame

In the Huichol tradition, the training of a shamanic healer begins by a calling through dreams and other experiences, which after being verified by the elders of the tradition, is followed by a rigorous 6-year apprenticeship involving pilgrimages to sacred sites, receiving instructions and intensive personal change. This culminates in the apprentice’s initiation into the tradition. At that time the apprentice receives the title of marakame, and is authorized and encouraged to begin their practice of healing. After 6 more years of proving their ability as a healer, the marakamemay be called to further their practice and become an elder shaman, or tsaurirrikame (singer of the song). As a tsaurirrikame, the individual takes on the further responsibilities of acting as a ceremonial leader for the community, and guiding others in their shamanic apprenticeships and pilgrimages.

The Nahua

The central highlands of Mexico are home to the largest population of the indigenous peoples known as the Nahua. Concentrated in small villages scattered throughout the mountains and valleys of this land, the Nahua have practiced their time-honored traditions that see the natural world as alive and sacred. After the Spanish Conquest and a period of colonization in the early to late 1500’s, the Nahua learned to protect their traditions through hiding and blending their views, ceremonies and processes with Catholic symbolism and approaches (syncretism). For instance, many of their annual cyclic ceremonies are masked behind Catholic saint celebrations. These ceremonies are performed in order to maintain the natural order and ask for blessings and support from a variety of divine expressions. They believe that sickness can be the result of a disruption of the natural order and are known for their use of shamans, often called tepahtiani or curanderos, where they employ rituals, herbs, cleanings (limpias) and ritual sweat baths, called temezcallis to treat a wide variety of illnesses.

The Path of a Granicero

In the days before and during the arrival of Europeans these people were known in the Nahua villages as a quiatlzques, or someone who makes “watery” arrive or a quiapaquiz,someone that makes moisture rise up and inundates the land. Today, in Spanish they are more likely to be called trabajadores del tiempio (“workers of the rain-time”, or tiemperos for short), graniceros (“one who works with hail and storms”) or pedidores de agua(“petitioners for water”). In the common use of English they are simply called “weather workers.”

Being called to this path begins with a clear sign that a person is being asked to act as an emissary between the weather gods and the people. This can come from surviving a lightening strike, special dreams or unusual illnesses. Once the calling is authenticated by an elder granicero sometimes called a caporal mayoror a temachtian, the tiempero will undergo a process of initiation and learning in order to bring rains or intervene when strong storms arrive.