Huichols follow strict rules when they pilgrimage to collect the sacred plant in the high desert nearly 400 kilometers northeast of their homeland. They publicly confess their sexual transgressions and abstain from sex and salt. They testify that the Creator was destined to take the form of deer and Peyote. Because Peyote embodies the spirit, and is the heart of Deer-Person, they must hunt him with arrows. When they eat his heart, incarnated in the Peyote actus, they eat it raw, honoring the precedent set by their elder brothers, the immortal wolves.
Peyote grows in clusters which resemble the shape of a deer.
Huichol religion parallels Christianity in that the Creator, out of compassion for his people, subjects himself to the limitations of this world. The Aztec are the cultural cousins of the Huichol, and their word peyotl or peyutl denotes the pericardium, the envelope or covering of the heart. This corresponds strictly to the Huichol belief that Peyote embodies the Creator's heart From the very beginning, immigrants to the New World have misunderstood the Native American adoration of peyote. In 1620, sixty years after the sacramental use of peyote was first reported by the Franciscan Friar Sahagun, the Spanish Inquisition denounced it as diabolic and made its use illegal. Inquisitional persecution of Mexican Indian peyotists included torture and death.