Ojo De Dios
A God's eye (in Spanish, Ojo de Dios) is a spiritual and votive object made by weaving a design out of yarn upon a wooden cross. Often several colors are used. They are commonly found in Mexican, Peruvian people and Latin American communities, among both Indigenous and Catholic peoples.
The Ojo de Dios or God's eye is a ritual tool that was believed to protect those while they pray, a magical object, and an ancient cultural symbol evoking the weaving motif and its spiritual associations for the Huichol and Tepehuan Americans of western Mexico. The Huichol or Wixaritari call their God's Eyes Tsikuri, which means "the power to see and understand things unknown."
One time they are made is when a child is born, the father weaves the central eye, then one color is added for every year of the child's life until the child reaches the age of five. Original Tepehuan Crosses are extremely rare to come by. Many are made for the tourist market, but they do not carry the same traditional and spiritual significance.
There is many opinions about what the color mean one source says that the colors of a Ojo de Dios represent specific things: RED symbolized life ..... YELLOW symbolized the sun, the moon, and the stars ..... BLUE symbolized the heavens and the bodies of water ..... BROWN symbolized the earth, the soil ..... GREEN symbolized vegetation ..... and BLACK symbolized death.
Another site says that the original 5 colors in each Eye of God/Ojo de Dios are blue, black, white, red and purple…
Blue represents the sacred lagoon of Chapala and Rapawiyene, the god of rain and water.
Black represents the Pacific ocean…which makes sense because Jalisco and Nayarit are both on the Pacific. It also represents Tatei Armana, the Mother of the Sea. And finally it represents (rather counterintuitively) life. Seems like a lot to represent, but hey.
White represents the wind and clouds, but on the downside it can also be associated with death (again, super counterintuitive).
Red represents Parietekúa, which is the peyote god.
Purple is all encompassing and represents the Huichol as a society.
In the traditional Huichol ranchos, the nieli'ka or nierika is an important ritual artifact. Negrín states that one of the principal meanings of "nierika" is that of "a metaphysical vision, an aspect of a god or a collective ancestor,
The Huichol or Wixárika[1] are an indigenous people of Mexico and the United States living in the Sierra Madre Occidental range in the states of Nayarit, Jalisco, Zacatecas, and Durango, as well as in the United States in the states of California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas. They are best known to the larger world as the Huichol, although they refer to themselves as Wixáritari ("the people") in their native Huichol language. The adjectival form of Wixáritari and name for their own language is Wixárika.
Our Project
Students will create a hanging consisting of at least 2 ojas de dias and 2 pom poms. Each ojas must have at least 3 colors. We will be practicing knots, and looking at