God's eye

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.

[1] During Spanish colonial times in New Mexico from the 16th to the 19th centuries, Ojos de Dios (God's Eye) were placed where people worked, or where they walked along a trail.

[2] In other parts of the Americas, artisans weave complicated or variegated versions of the traditional Ojos de Dios, selling them as decorations or religious objects.

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.

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,"[4] and is the same term the Tepehuán people use to refer to deities.

Negrín states the elaborate interwoven nierika that Lumholtz called namma (which is close to the pronunciation of Namkha) from which originated the detailed and now prized yarn paintings of the commercial art world, are now rarely if ever seen.