n contains a M

yth. But in the Tarahuma

ra Sierra many of the Great Ancient Myths come back to life. The Tarahumara do not believe in God and the word "God" does not exist in their language; but they worship a transcendent principle of Nature which is Male and Female, as it should be. And the

y wear this principle on their heads like Pharaoh Initiates. Yes, this headband with two points which they use to encircle their hair indicates that they still have in their blood the consciousness of a high natural selection; that they feel themselves to be, and that they are, a race connected to those forces, originally both Male and Female, with which Nature did her creative work. Similarly, Chinese who are initiated into the true traditions of their fathers also wear two braids down their backs. And Moses, in his stone statues, has two horns protruding from his forehead, one for the male on the right side, the other for the female on the left; some Tarahumara also wear their hair pulled back like horns. And this recalls, along with the statues of Moses, certain Maya or Totonac statues which have two points or two holes on the forehead, but placed one above the other, like the vestiges of an ocular system that has petrified. Many Tarahumara

Indians, whether because they do not wish to discuss it or because they have forgotten what it means, claim that this arrangement is the result of chance, and that they use the headband simply to hold their hair in place. But I have seen Tarahumara sewing headbands so that the points would hang down; and most importantly, I have seen the Peyote priests at the moment they perform this rite, which is by nature male and female, throw their European hats on the ground and put on the two-pointed headband, as if they wanted to show by this gesture that they were entering the circle of Nature with its two magnetic poles. There is an undeniable initiation in this race; he who is close to the forces of nature participates in its secrets. But this initiation cuts both ways, so to speak. For if the Tarahumara are physically strong like Nature, it is not because they live close to Nature in a material sense, it is because they are made of the same substance as Nature and because, like all authentic manifestations of Nature, they

are born of an original blend. One might say that it is the natural Unconscious which not only repairs in them the damages of fatigue but also corrects those natural perversions of a great principle by which they explain the existence of all infirmities. On the one hand, they show their initiation by the signs which they scatter in haunting profusion on the trees and the rocks, and on the othe

r hand they reveal it by their physical strength, their admirable resistance to fatigue, their contempt for physical pain, injury, or illness. It is false to say that the Tarahumara h