Wirikuta
sacred site to the Huichol, in Mexico
Wirikuta is a desert, sacred to the Wixárika (Huichol) people high in the mountains of central Mexico, between the Sierra Madre Oriental and the Zacatecas ranges, near Real de Catorce. In Wixárika cosmology, the world is believed to have been created in Wirikuta.
Wirikuta is the focus of a yearly pilgrimage in which community members, led by maraka'ames (shamans), travel approximately 250 miles (400 kilometers) from Jalisco to San Luis Potosí. The area in which the pilgrimage occurs is protected as a UNESCO Natural Sacred Area, but is at risk for exploitation and environmental damage by the foreign mining company First Majestic Silver.
Sacred places
The sun made its first appearance in Wirikuta, and it is the sacred land of the Wixárikas (Huichol's) deified ancestors. They have sacred places on each of the cardinal directions and center.
Teakata (Santa Catarina, Jalisco), Center
Huaxamanaka (Cerro Gordo, Durango), North
Haramara (San Blas, Nayarit), West
Xapawleyeta (Isla de los Alacranes del Lago Chapala, Jalisco), South.
Wirikuta, East.
Huichols carry out yearly pilgrimages to Wirikuta or Huiricuta. Between October and March, they follow the journey of their deities from Haramara's sea to the place where the Sun appeared (Reunax), the Cerro Quemado (Leunaxü).
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 26, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q8026952. Authority coordinates are 23.703, -100.847. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Wirikuta” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.