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76-557: In Mapuche mythology , Ngen or " Ngen-ko " are spirits of nature of the Mapuche beliefs. In Mapudungun , the word nge n means "owner". The Ngen are those that manage, govern and arrange the different features of nature; but also those that nature takes care of and protects. The Ngen were created by the Pu-am (the representation of the universal soul ), who wanted the Ngen to assure

152-409: A coin where they have taken cuttings of plants. A funeral is called an awn . Members of the reservation often feel obliged to attend the funeral, with non-attendance casting suspicion that they may have had a hand in the individual's death. The funeral ceremony is designed to rid the living both of the deceased person's spirit and other malevolent spirits that may be lurking around at that time; if

228-508: A deity-carrying vessel. Spiritual leaders in a community would use prayer and offerings to communicate with a wak'a for advice or assistance. Human sacrifice was part of Incan rituals in which they usually sacrificed a child ( qhapaq hucha ) or a slave. The Incan people thought it was an honor to die as an offering. Archaeological remains confirm such human sacrificial practices, according to Reinhard and Ceruti: "Archaeological evidence found on distant mountain summits has established that

304-403: A highly complicated and organized calendar controlled the state religion's festivals and holy days. This calendar was responsible for almost all of the religious ceremonies that took place throughout the empire. Within the city of Cusco, there were also over three hundred and twenty eight huacas or sacred objects. Huacas were located throughout the empire with most of them happening to be around

380-426: A painted cross, representing the meli witran mapu , or fourfold division of the world. The whole community takes part in the ngillatun rituals, which occur within a consecrated space. These involve prayers and animal sacrifices and are believed to maintain balance among cosmic forces and avoid catastrophe. The ngillatun ritual is designed to ensure cosmic wholeness, and is often performed both before and after

456-530: A pantheon of gods and goddesses. The Meli Küyen are the four moon spirits; the Meli Wangülen are the four spirits of the stars. The wenu püllüam are ancestral spirits in the sky. Ngünechen is also known as Chaw Dios (Old Man God) and Ñuke Dios (Old Woman God). Ngünechen first appeared in Mapuche religion during the 19th century; it has been argued that the introduction of this deity was a response to

532-732: A paqarisqa. These locals worshiped their gods through pilgrimages, offerings, and other rites that allowed them to keep true to tradition while still providing necessary sacrifices and offerings to the Sun god. Religious traditions in the Andes tended to vary among different ayllus. While the Inca generally allowed or even incorporated local deities and heroes of the ayllus they conquered, they did bring their gods to those peoples by incorporating them in law such as required sacrifice. The Inca attempted to combine their deities with conquered ones in ways that raised

608-435: A shallow drum called a kultrun . This consists of a laurel or oak bowl with goatskin stretched across it, and is often conceptualised as a womb. Often, four items are placed inside the drum; two of these are regarded as male and may include darts, bullets, foye leaves, charcoal or volcanic rocks, while the other two are regarded as female and can include maize, seeds, wool, or kopiwe flowers. The goatskin will be decorated with

684-507: A specific name. Mapuche mythology Mapuche theology incorporates a range of deities and spirits. One of the most prominent deities is Ngünechen, sometimes equated with the Christian God . Communal prayer ceremonies are termed ngillatun and involve the provision of offerings and animal sacrifice . Ritual specialists, called machi , are responsible for contacting the spirits and overseeing healing rituals. These myths tell of

760-430: Is also associated with volcanic eruptions, whirlwinds, and cemeteries, as well as the colors bright red and opaque black. It is in munche mapu that the wekufe spirits live. Mapuche traditional religion teaches that humans, other animals, and natural phenomena all have a trata, or body, as well as a distinct spiritual essence. The living soul is called a püllü, while humans also have a soul that survives bodily death,

836-511: Is also known as Apu Qun Tiqsi Wiraqutra and is considered the creator of civilization. He is one of the most, if not the most, powerful gods in Incan mythology. The sacrifices to Virachoa represent how much the Incans relied on outside forces to explain events in their daily lives. The sacrifices to Thunder represent the handling of transitions in life and society. The sacrifices to Earth and Moon show

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912-1076: Is called kalkutun or, in Spanish, brujeria . The witch or sorcerer themselves are called a kalku . Mapuche society does not contain self-acknowledged kalku . In the Mapuche traditional worldview, the kalku and the machi play a role in balancing the conflicting forces in the cosmos. The religion holds that the most powerful kalku are machi who succumbed to those evil spirits they were fighting. Those machi who transgress social norms or acquire significant wealth and prestige are sometimes accused of being kalku . Non-Mapuche, or wingka , or often assumed to be kalku , as they are perceived as being wealthier than most Mapuche and as valuing individual gain above communal well-being. Various traditional health practitioners exist in Mapuche society, including machis , meicas (traditional healers), yerbateras (herbalists), hueseros (bonesetters), and suerferos (diviners). Their practices are often religiously syncretic, reflecting Christian influence. The machi' s task

988-506: Is especially important in Andean worldview. Asymmetrical dualism is the idea that reality is built by forces that are different and compromised but need each other to be complete. Additionally, one force is slightly larger or more powerful than the other, leading to a disparity between beings and forces. This disparity is the foundation of reality and which causes things to happen. Throughout Andean thought, this asymmetrical dualism can be seen in

1064-412: Is located inside the ngillatun fields, which are deemed sacred and left uncultivated. If the ngillatuwe is destroyed it is believed that catastrophe will befall both the person responsible and the community to whom it belongs. Until the early 20th century, the ngillatun was often led by male community elders known as ngenpin (orators). By the 21st century, the ngenpin were still officiating in

1140-608: Is not institutional. In Latin America, traditional religions are rarely pure, unadulterated continuations from the traditions that existed prior to European contact. In order to describe the beliefs of the Mapuche people, it is important to note that there are no written records about their ancient legends and myths from before the Spanish arrival , since their religious beliefs were passed down orally . Their beliefs are not necessarily homogenous; among different ethnic groups , and

1216-442: Is thought difficult for a person to resist them, although some people do. Through visions and dreams, the spirits reveal the use of herbs to the prospective machi and then give them their ritual tools for healing, such as the drum and their spirit animals. Machis may experience their initiation through various ways. They may inherit their machi spirit from a deceased machi from their material family; experience direct initiation in

1292-427: Is to diagnose the cause of an illness. To do this they will look into their patient's eyes, examine urine samples, drum over their worn clothes, or conduct the uluntun, a diagnostic ritual involving prayers, massages, and rattles. They will determine which deity, kalku , or wekufe is responsible for the ailment and how to treat it. Some evil spirits are then dispersed from the person they are harming and sent back to

1368-669: The Wari , the Chavin and the Nazca . With the combination of all three of these ancestral societies’ religions, the Incas were able to create a religious system that dominated almost every aspect of life in the empire. The Incas were profoundly religious, and so it makes sense that their religious structure was very complicated. The religion was centralized in the capital city of Cusco . Within Cusco,

1444-649: The evangelization done by Spanish missionaries . This happened chiefly through the syncretism of these beliefs and also through misinterpretation or adaptation within both Chilean and Argentine societies. This syncretism has brought about several variations and differences of these core beliefs as they have become assimilated within Chilean , Argentine and even Mapuche culture. Today, these cultural values, beliefs and practices are still taught in some places with an aim to preserve different aspects of this indigenous Mapuche culture. Mapuche traditional religion features

1520-414: The filew from evil spirits. It is on this pole that the machi travels to other worlds while in a trance state; during rituals, the machis ascend the steps on the rewe to inform their audience that they have entered their visionary flight. Some machis put a llang llang , a rainbow-shaped arch made from vines, above the rewe ; it represents their connection with forest spirits. The machi uses

1596-486: The machi are usually in their native Mapudungu language, although rituals and other situations will often see them use both Mapudungu and Spanish. There are often taboos on photographing traditional rituals. A key ritual specialist in Mapuche traditional religion is the machi ; various anthropologists describe the machi as shamans . The machi are believed to obtain their powers from various natural and ancestral spirits, as well as from Ngünechen. They also draw on

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1672-412: The miyaya or chamico , although other machis are critical of this practice. At their home, machis will have a timber pole called a rewe ("the purest"), alternatively referred to as the foye or canelo . This usually consists of the trunk of a laurel or oak tree, into which steps have been notched. Branches of klon, triwe, foye, or coligüe will often be tied to the side. The rewe represents

1748-413: The 1990s, various Mapuche began commodifying aspects of their traditional religion for ethnotourism , for instance performing ceremonies for tourist audiences, arguing that this commodification was acceptable so long as machi benefitted. Tensions within Mapuche communities over these commodifications often involved accusations and counter-accusations of witchcraft, as well as claims that machi commodifying

1824-665: The Chilean national hierarchies. The root of this divinity's name, genche , first appeared in 1601 to describe a Spanish landowner. Many Mapuche equate Ngünechen with the Christian God, although other Mapuche traditionalists stress they are different. The ngen are nature spirits. They populate the earth and are in turn prayed to by other spirits. These ngen are the owners of particular environments and can capture, possess, and punish those who enter their realms without permission. The foki spirits are intermediaries between

1900-458: The Earth. These groups of nobility made up the uppermost tier of society, and they were highly revered and respected throughout the empire. These fives gods or entities that received the majority of sacrifices in Cusco represent the most vital aspects of Incan life. The Sun God represented the institutional organization of the society because everything in Incan life revolved around the Sun. Virachoa

1976-588: The Mapuche have parallels among the Central Andean peoples and the Inca religion . Indeed, in among Mapuches as well as Central Andean peoples the moon ( Mama Killa , Cuyen in Mapudungun) and the sun ( Inti , Antu in Mapudungun) are spouses. Mapuche , Quechua and Aymara words for the sun and the moon appear to be a borrowing from Puquina language . Thus the parallels in cosmology may be traced back to

2052-408: The Mapuche religion. Libations of wine or chicha are regularly poured for the ancestors. In traditional Mapuche culture, the transgression of social norms or the failure to fulfil commitments to kin, ancestors, and gods, can result in individual and social illness as well as social chaos. Rural Mapuche women often place great emphasis on modesty. Prayers are called ngillatunes . The prayers of

2128-466: The Pewenche and Williche areas but machi were instead doing so in the areas of the south-central valleys and the Andean foothills. The ngillatun ritual can take over two days to complete. Those participating will typically wear Mapuche traditional clothing and may have their faces painted. During the ceremony, prayers are offered to Ngünechen, with offerings of maize, beans, and muday placed at

2204-522: The Qhapag Raymi, the Inti Raymi focused on celebrating the Sun god, with day-long chanting that escalated at noon and diminished till sunset. The festival lasted eight or nine days and was filled with offerings of chicha , coca, and other items that venerated the Sun god. At the end of the festival, the Inca ruler was the first to plow the earth, signaling the beginning of the plowing season. In

2280-405: The am. According to the traditional belief, Mapuche people fear that their spirit can be captured and manipulated by a wekufe spirit or a witch; spirits of the dead can for instance be captured and polluted by witches unless they are appropriately dispatched to the afterlife. The spirits of the dead can reside in an eternal shadow realm. The continuing relationship of mutual dependence between

2356-422: The axis mundi of the world, a nexus between the human and spirit worlds, and is positioned to face east. The filew is believed to live in the rewe ; kopiwe flowers, food, drink, and herbal remedies, all things regarded as female, are placed on or around the rewe to feed the rewe , while knives, volcanic rocks, and chueca sticks, all things thought male, are places atop the rewe and on its steps to protect

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2432-490: The bodies of the kings and become more secretive with their worship, as stated by Juan de Betanzos . After being appointed, Polo do Ondegardo and his men found most of the mummified kings and took their bodies along with other ritualistic items such as their huaques , or their statues. A popular thought is that Ondegardo had the bodies buried in or around Cuzco in secret so that they would not be uncovered and worshipped again. Garcilaso de la Vega visited Ondegardo's house and

2508-496: The border of the former Inca Empire . A hypothesis claim an older origin in Tiwanaku for these religious commonalities. In 1883 they were defeated by the army of Chile, a newly independent country established by former Spanish settlers. The Chilean government moved the Mapuche into reservations and launched missions to convert them to Roman Catholicism. The colonial context impacted Mapuche views of divinity. The 1990s saw

2584-452: The burden too much and cease to be machi . The machi has to periodically renew their powers through the ngeykurewen rituals or they will become ill. After the ngeykurewen , many machis place their old rewe into a river to decay, replacing it with a new one; other machis believe that their rewe should only be deposited in a river after their deaths. Some machi use hallucinogens during their rituals, namely palo de bruja or seeds of

2660-959: The burial of offerings was a common practice among the Incas and that human sacrifice took place at several of the sites. The excellent preservation of the bodies and other material in the cold and dry environment of the high Andes provides revealing details about the rituals that were performed at these ceremonial complexes." Inca deities occupied the three realms: In addition to the communally worshiped deities, Incan families sometimes worshiped household gods via their representation as miniature figurines most commonly referred to as chancas or conopas . Conopa were often natural or carved stone objects that resembled crops or livestock, such as zarap conopa for maize , papap conopa for potatoes and caullama for llamas . The Incas had an immense number of origin stories that historians and scholars have trouble deciphering and sorting out. These stories often contradict themselves, seeming to retell

2736-450: The capital city. Within the capital city there was also a quipa. The quipa described all the sacred places and how they are to be used during ceremonies and sacrifices. Each sacred place or huaca was organized into forty-one different directions called ceques. These ceques started from the central temple of the Sun called Coricancha or "the golden enclosure". There were ten groups of Incan nobility that were in charge of being priests within

2812-491: The city of Cuzco . These ten groups of nobility were called panacas. The panacas had a vital role to Incan society in Cusco because they were in charge of worship for the deities. All of the religious aspects that took place around the city were organized and arranged by this special group of nobility. The members of these ten groups were said to have a first royal ancestor that had conquered the valley. The panacas were decided through mother's rank, fraternal succession, choice, and

2888-402: The creation of the world and the various deities and spirits that reside in it. In 1883 the Chilean military defeated the Mapuche and began to restrict them to reservations. Chilean efforts were then made to convert the Mapuche to Roman Catholicism . From the 1990s, Mapuche religion underwent a revitalisation, with greater visibility and efforts to use it to encourage tourism. Mapuche religion

2964-474: The days of the Tiwanaku Empire in which Puquina is thought to have been an important language. In Mapuche traditional belief, the cosmos consists of three vertical planes, each of which comprises a different force that remains in conflict with the other two. The upper realm is termed the wenu mapu and is associated with goodness, purity, and the forces of creation. Located in the sky and containing

3040-562: The deities and spirits can punish people with illness, scarcity, or infertility. Various wekufe spirits kill humans. The sumpall is a blond mermaid who seduces men into the river, where it kills them and steals their soul. The witranalwe takes the form of a thin Spaniard on a horse; his wife is the small, luminescent añchümalleñ , who sucks people's blood. The Punkure and Punfüta are spouses who seduce their victims in their dreams to drain their life energy. Sun and moon worship among

3116-472: The deities of the sun, moon, stars, rainbow, and lightning while ukhu pacha and urin pacha were the realms of Pachamama, the earth mother, and the ancestors and heroes of the Inca or other ayllus. Kay pacha , the realm of the outer earth, where humans resided was viewed as an intermediary realm between hanan pacha and ukhu pacha . The realms were represented by the condor (upper world), puma (outer earth) and snake (inner earth). Asymmetrical dualism

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3192-412: The descendants eventually thought that by staying in his own house, a mummy could be better served and watched over. The mummies played such an important role in politics that there are instances of mummies being married. One such story is that Washkar had his mother marry his father's mummy in order for him to receive a legitimate ruling claim. Upon the arrival of the Spanish, the Inca started to hide

3268-417: The dispersion of life force or vitality throughout the land. Camac is the life force that inhabits everything in reality. It does not distinguish between living and dead and inhabits things in different quantities. This life force permeating different places at different times gives recognition to certain places or objects. These places and objects were regarded as holding special energy and were collected under

3344-445: The families, villages, and territorial groups within those ethnic groups, there are variations and differences and discrepancies in these beliefs. Likewise, it is important to understand that many of the Mapuche beliefs have been integrated into the myths and legends of Chilean folklore , and to a lesser extent, folklore in some areas of Argentina . Many of these beliefs have been altered and influenced by Christianity , due largely to

3420-462: The fertility of the Earth and nature. All ten groups of nobilities had the responsibility to explain and account for all the occurrences of the natural world in and outside of the Incan empire. The Inca calendar had 12 months of 30 days, with each month having its own festival, and a five-day feast at the end, before the new year began. The Incan year started in December, and began with Qhapaq Raymi,

3496-433: The foot of the ngillatuwe . An animal such as a sheep would then be sacrificed. If the community is in danger and needs important messages, machi will go into a trance at the ngillatun but this does not always happen. Those assembled will dance both in rows and in a circle around the ngillatuwe . Men on horseback perform the awün , circling the dances in imitation of the sun. In Mapuche society, harmful witchcraft

3572-409: The forest and humanity, connecting the two through the rainbow. Like humans, the foki engage in prayer. Both the deities and other spirits are thought to have both good and bad sides. The gods and spirits can grant wealth, good harvests, and fertility if propitiated with offerings. If people fail to provide offerings, or if they transgress norms called admapu, Machuche traditionalists believe that

3648-530: The former Inca Empire into the lands of the Mapuches and Huilliches in southern Chile , which has raised the hypothesis whether there is a prior dissemination of Andean religion from Tiwanaku . A theme in Inca mythology is the duality of the Cosmos. The realms were separated into the upper and lower realms, the hanan pacha and the ukhu pacha and urin pacha . Hanan pacha , the upper world, consisted of

3724-581: The growing influence of indigenous movements across Latin America. In 1990, Chile became a democracy and in 1993 the Indigenous Law was passed, although the Mapuche remained socioeconomically marginalised. In 2002, the scholar Cristián Parker Gumucio argued that a greater number of Mapuche were willing to admit practicing their traditional religion than in prior decades, part of a "new climate of respect and recognition". Traditional rites were continued by many Mapuche who had moved to Chilean cities. In

3800-472: The harvest. The ngillatuwe is the collective altar; it is also called la cruza (the cross). It takes the form of a pole with the face and arms of either Ngünechen or an ancestor carved on it; it will face east and is thought to protect the community. A Roman Catholic priest will often bless it after it has been erected. White and blue crosses, representing the powers of the sky, are often planted beside it. The ngillatuwe represents an axis mundi, It

3876-406: The individual believed to have originally sent them. The patient will pay the machi for this service; some machis have set fees, while others leave the payment to their client's discretion. Mapuche traditionalists believe that all plants have sacred powers, and they are often collected for use in healing. Some plants are thought to have the fourfold qualities of Ngünechen. Machi may place

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3952-407: The living and their ancestors is an important facet of Mapuche traditional religion. Propitiating these ancestors is thus a key ritual among Mapuche traditionalists. If ancestral spirits do not feel they are being acknowledged they may return to the land of the living to remind their descendants of their obligations. There are differing views among scholars if ancestors play a significant role in

4028-409: The magnificent festival. The Qhapaq Raymi was the first and biggest festival of the year. During this festival, Inca boys went through their puberty rites as they entered adulthood. Additionally, public events of drinking, dancing, and eating llama blood cakes occurred to venerate the Sun god. Inti Raymi, perhaps the second most important festival, occurred during the month with June's solstice. Like

4104-521: The midst of a powerful natural event like an earthquake or lightning; or they may experience a vision called the perimontum in which a spirit appears before them. Those who have gained initiation through the latter two methods are considered more powerful although also more morally ambiguous. During possession, the spirit mounts the machi' s head, a process called the longkoluupan . Machi may have sexual relationships or remain celibate; in Chilean culture they are stereotyped as homosexuals. Some find

4180-510: The month of Qoya Raymi the Situa, a ceremony of purification, was performed that started in Cuzco and expanded out in the four directions. Performed in the rainy season, due to a higher number of illnesses, residents of Cuzco beat each other with torches and shook clothing outside to rid themselves of disease. Then four groups of 100 people left with sacrificial ashes along the four roads out of Cuzco,

4256-705: The mummies in the Hospital of San Andrés in Lima because he was “a major benefactor of it”. Since the hospital was solely for the Spanish residents, they were likely on display for the citizens to view, away from the natives. Because of their immediate defeat at the hands of the Spanish, much information surrounding Incan religion has been lost. Many historians rely on the religious customs of conquered Incan subjects to gather information about Incan beliefs. The Incans adopted most if not all of their religious beliefs from three main groups that lived around Peru. These groups were

4332-554: The order and the laws of admapu (rules of the Mapuche tradition); and they prevent commotion such as the one caused by the battle of the pillan before the beginning of time. The Ngen receive orders of the Pu-am and of A nt ü (the most powerful pillan spirit). If a Mapuche needs to obtain something from nature, they must respect and give an offering to the specific Ngen spirit. The Ngen take on forms that are based on humans, animals, and plants. Each type of Ngen spirit receives

4408-480: The origin stories of other pre-Incan Andean peoples. There are vastly more versions and stories that predate and play into the Incan stories. Inca origin and religion draws from many local and ancestral traditions. The official tradition of the Inca Empire was the cult of the Sun, but the Incas allowed locals to worship their existing beings. Many people thought that their founding ancestor arose from an exact spot,

4484-415: The people of every nation, from every mountain, crevice, cave and lake before walking over the water into the west. The origin stories of the Incas reflect an attitude of change, where the past could be changed to better situate the present. This allowed for the possibility of new peoples and lands being discovered having been present from the very beginning. The origins of the Incas however do not represent

4560-409: The power of special locations, such as waterfalls, lakes, volcanoes, and the rock. They embody and travel with a spirit called a machi püllü as well as having an ancestral spirit of all the machi , the filew . Mapuche traditionalists believe that the machi are capable of using their powers for either good or evil, thus existing on a spectrum of good to bad. Mapuche traditionalists believe that

4636-468: The public to pay their respects. In the other parts of the year, the mummies were returned to the Cuzco palaces and were worshipped privately by groups of visitors. Francisco Pizarro stated that “It was customary for the dead to visit one another, and they held great dances and debaucheries, and sometimes the dead went to the house of the living, and sometimes the living came to the house of the dead”. The kings were thought to have been able to speak back to

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4712-782: The religion were punished by their spirits. A 2001 survey of 352 Mapuche people from Chol-Chol and San Juan de la Costa found that 8 percent described themselves as followers of Mapuche traditional religion, while an additional 3.1 percent described following both traditional religion and Roman Catholicism. The largest religion among Mapuche people surveyed was Roman Catholicism, at 40.9 percent, followed by Evangelical Protestantism at 23.6 percent, and then Seventh-day Adventism , at 9.7 percent. Evangelical and Pentecostal Christian groups have often gone among Mapuche communities and denounced traditional religious practices as witchcraft and superstition, claiming that they involve interaction with demons . Inca religion The Inca religion

4788-654: The spirit lingers among the living after death it is at risk of being captured by a witch and used for malevolent ends. During the ceremony, the ancestors are invoked and called on to protect the spirit of the recently deceased individual. The Mapuche resisted being conquered by both the Inca Empire and the Spanish Empire . It has been noted that some symbols and aspects of the Andean religion are present among Mapuches and Huilliche whose lands lay well beyond

4864-427: The spirits call certain individuals to become machi , sending them dreams ( pewma ) and visions ( perimontum ). The spirits may inflict an illness on the person, the machikutran , which can include boils, fever, foaming at the mouth, insomnia, partial blindness, and partial paralysis. The machikutran is only alleviated by their initiation as a machi through the machiluwün ritual. As the spirits are insistent, it

4940-495: The status of their own. One example of this is Pachamama, the goddess of Earth, who was worshiped long before the rise of the Inca. In the Inca mythology Pachamama having been integrated was placed below the Moon who the Inca believed ruled over all female gods. The Incas also used divination . Divination was used to inform people in the city of social events, predict battle outcomes, and ask for metaphysical intervention. Divination

5016-473: The stone or sea. The Creator then summoned a great flood to destroy the land and all life on it except for three men, who would later help create humans again. At a later point at Lake Titicaca, the Creator made the sun, moon, and stars. The moon shone brighter than the sun, and being filled with jealousy, the sun threw ashes in her face to dim her shine. The Creator then spread out with two servants to call forth

5092-440: The story at a later point to include information and events that had occurred. Many of the origin stories of the Incas had life begin at Lake Titicaca. The story has the Creator god Wiraqocha Pachayachachic form giants to see if humans would work well at that size. When he found that they did not, he made them of his own size. These humans were hubristic and greedy, and thus were turned to stone or other forms and some were engulfed by

5168-544: The success and honor of the individual on the battlefield. These ten groups were then divided into two smaller groups, one representing Hanan who lived north of the valley river and also Hurin who lived south of the valley river. The Hanan and Hurin each consisted of five groups of nobility. It is known that the first group of each of the Panacas dedicated all their sacrifices to the sun. The remaining four were in charge of dedicating their sacrifices to Moon, Thunder, Virachoa, and

5244-416: The sun and the moon, it is the home of the gods and the ancestral spirits. It is associated with the colors white, yellow, and blue. The earth is called mapu and it is here that the struggle between good and evil takes place. Mapu is associated with the colors green and blood red. The underworld beneath mapu is termed munche mapu , a realm associated with evil, death, destruction, and pollution. It

5320-406: The title of wak’a . Sacred sites or things named wak'a were spread around the Inca Empire. In Andean mythology a wak'a was a deific entity which resided in natural objects such as mountains, boulders, streams, battle fields, other meeting places, and any type of place that was connected with past Incan rulers. A wak'a could also be an inanimate object such as pottery which was believed to be

5396-562: The worship of sacred mountains and the bringing retribution against enemies were important ritual practices. Rulers in Peru, such as the Inca ruler Huayna Capac , were often mummified upon the time of their death, allowing for their bodies to be worshipped within the palaces. These worshipping events were intercepted by the Spaniards under Polo de Ondegardo , who was newly appointed as Corregidor (Chief Magistrate) of Cuzco in 1559, when it

5472-760: The worshippers through the use of oracles, and even gave advice to the protection and ruling of the land. The ruling Inca was expected to seek advice from the mummies of his ancestors for important issues. Not all Inca mummies were glorified, however, as in one case Topa Inca Yupanqui's mummified body was torched and his bloodline all killed as they sided with Huascar in the civil war. Inca mummies were seen as possessing agency, not really alive nor dead, more of an animated death. Terence D'Altroy said that, “royal mummies ate, drank, visited one another, sat at council, and judged weighty questions.” Mummies participated in ceremonial roles that allowed them to be consulted as advisors in times of distress. Originally kept on royal estates,

5548-470: Was a group of beliefs and rites that were related to a mythological system evolving from pre-Inca times to Inca Empire . Faith in the Tawantinsuyu was manifested in every aspect of his life, work, festivities, ceremonies, etc. They were polytheists and there were local, regional and pan-regional divinities . It has been noted that aspects of the Andean religion extend well beyond the border of

5624-454: Was essential before taking any action. Nearly every religious rite was accompanied by sacrifices. These were usually maize beer, food or llamas, but were occasionally of virgins or children. Divination was an important part of Inca religion, as reflected in the following quote: The native elements are more obvious in the case of the sunrise divination. Apachetas, coca and the sun were major elements in pre-Conquest religion, and divination,

5700-504: Was shown an assembly of embalmed kings and attested to the degree of their preservation: “The bodies were perfectly preserved without the loss of hair of the head or brow or an eyelash. They were dressed as if they had been in life, with Ilautus (royal headbands) on their heads... their hands were crossed across their breast.”. The mummies were afterwards sent to the viceroy for him to see them and then afterwards they were brought back to Cuzco and thought to be secretly buried. The viceroy stored

5776-527: Was under Spanish control. Ondegardo conducted a massive effort to prevent the Inca from committing their “ idolatrous sins”, mainly by locating the mummified bodies of late Inca kings and sending them to the viceroy in Lima . They remained in a hospital for around 80 years before their whereabouts became unknown. The Inca used to mummify their kings and several times a year they would be aligned in accordance to when they chronologically ruled in Cuzco's plaza for

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