Pre-Hispanic societies handled a vast range of plants, some of which had important religious uses. Shamans used sacred plants like tobacco, coca, yagé, yopo and many more to help immerse themselves in the spiritual dimension of reality and visit other levels of the cosmos. Consuming these plants, coupled to fasting, sound and light effects and repeated body movements, induced a state of trance that taught the secrets and powers of the universe and in which the invisible was made visible.

Shamans and priests were experts in processing and consuming sacred plants, in the cultural uses of these, and in recognising the different spirits they encountered in their trances. Candidates for the priesthood were trained by wise men and elderly masters. They spent years locked up in temples and caves, where they never saw the light of day and where they were subjected to diets without salt or chilis and to many other restrictions.
When the shaman was under the effects of plants that gave him power, he connected the various worlds. He journeyed through the middle, upper and lower worlds, linking all their beings.

Coca was used in prediction rituals, curing the sick, and offerings. Sacred plants, as food for the spirit, had to be offered up by men to their gods. Coca novogranatense, or Colombian coca, was grown in the Andean Region. To optimise the stimulating effect, the dry leaves were mixed in the mouth with lime, which was kept in a poporo.

Yopo, a powerful hallucinogen that was extracted from the Anadenanthera tree, came from the Eastern Plains. It was inhaled using a small spoon or bird bone from trays with animals depicted on them that conjured up images of the transformations that were experienced.

A wide variety of bowls, spoons, inhalers and trays was used when the different preparations of tobacco, yagé, yopo and other plants of the gods were being consumed.

st_mitos.gifStories of the origin of the universe and of the culture in the remote past were told in myths. These explained the genesis of the world, the stars, people and animals, and how the different social groups had obtained their land, tools, musical instruments and marriage rules. Rituals recreated this mythology. Dancers, with their masks and sumptuous attire, transformed into the creators or ancestors, and they revived heroic exploits of ancient times during the dances, bringing the primordial past into the present.
According to an ancient tradition, the primitive couple were transformed into two snakes and returned to the lake where they had had their origin. This going back to the setting and circumstances of the very beginning is a common feature of myths. The snake with a head at each end appears associated with the sun, as a symbol of its eternal movement to and fro between two opposite points on the horizon. It was from this movement that life originated.

Mythology conjured up images of strange creatures, such as snakes with several heads or beings made from various species: deer, snake, feline and human. They were polymorphic ancestors, transformed shamans, or age-old heroes.

Vessels depicting scenes of dancers wearing hair-raising masks showing prominent fangs and enormous jaws represented temples transformed into primordial micro-cosmoses.

Time was conceived as being cyclical or like a spiral, inspired by events repeated in nature, such as the movements of the stars, animals reproducing, and women's periods.

The metamorphosis that occurred in certain animals, such as insects and batrachians, represented the never-ending cycle of life, death and rebirth that all beings were subjected to.

Flutes, maracas and whistles reproduced the sounds of animals or the creators or ancestors. At rituals, music created an atmosphere that was conducive to getting immersed in mythical time.

Amerindian peoples also gave meanings to materials, tools and the techniques associated with their technologies, and attributed goldsmiths and others who transformed matter with having special powers. Materials were viewed as primary sources of life or as beings in formation, which artisans and craftsman helped transform or mature through their work and instruments and the use of fire, like demigods. Furnaces and crucibles were like uteruses and other places where dangerous transformations occurred; it was in them that offerings were made and rituals performed in order to guarantee the processes.

Mirrors and other objects made of obsidian, pyrite, quartz and metals were magical, divinatory, prophetic instruments. Because of their reflective qualities, they were believed to communicate with supernatural worlds and beings. Symmetry and balance in the shapes and designs of objects were an expression of the concern to find equilibrium in the properties and forces of the cosmos.

A sacred philosophy associated with shine gave meaning to glossy cultural objects and to luminous phenomena in nature. It led to a particular form of aesthetics by favouring certain materials and finishes. During ceremonies, the hanging plates on ornaments twinkled in the light and gave off metallic sounds which helped transform those present and enabled them to communicate more easily with the gods.

Reddish tones were often associated with blood, heat, transformation and female matters, greens with regeneration, flowering and vegetation, and whites and yellows with semen and the sun.

Silver and copper, whose colours and surfaces were vulnerable to the passing of time, were thought to be in harmony with the moon, the human embryo, and other changing, cyclical bodies in nature. When miners and goldsmiths extracted, processed, combined and worked metals, they controlled and manipulated the material and spiritual properties of those metals at one and the same time. As creators and transformers, they were associated with gods.

Pre-Hispanic peoples projected their images of the universe in caves and lakes, on hills, in the human body, and in houses, vessels and other artefacts. Temples and chieftains' enclosures were thought of as sacred replicas of the cosmos; their floors and roofs were identified with superimposed worlds, as were the doors with the channels that linked them together, while the posts represented supports for the cosmos and the axis. Inside, priests and rulers recorded the movements of the stars so they could arrange collective activities and hold ceremonies to avert chaos and destruction.

The enclosures or homes of the chieftains, which were surrounded by palisades, were thought of as a living organism. The door was its mouth, the central post its skeleton, and the ceremonial path its stomach.

Images of the Cosmos

Offerings and Sacrifices to the Immortals

Plants of Knowledge