Art, Nature, and Religion in the Central Andes: Themes and Variations from Prehistory to the Present

Chapter 2. Andean Thinking

This chapter presents some aspects of the way Andeans think by using their own art or approximations of the images in their minds with regard to nature and religion. For this reason, attention to the illustrations is just as important as the verbal text in this chapter. The Inca religious belief system and how it finds expression visually is still alive in the minds of Huamanguino artists today. Inca ideas, in turn, came from an amalgam of traditions previous to their reign and from the peoples they conquered.The first part of this chapter describes and explains as much as possible pan-Andean ideas about origins, space, and time as these concepts relate to the structure and function of the cosmos,divinities, life after death, and the sacred in nature.The second part gives some background on a selection of nature symbols on which this book concentrates. Origins Inca religious beliefs include a number of origin myths gathered as the empire expanded. Other concepts important to the Inca system of sacred thought have roots in the natural spaces and time cycles of the Andean region. The Incas’ penchant for abstraction reduced many concepts to mathematical and geometric mental models they employed,like many other of the world’s peoples, to contemplate the cosmos. Though supernatural, this cosmos anchored itself in the empirically observable world of nature. Chapter 2 Andean Thinking 059-094 strong_CH2.indd 59 2/6/12 11:10:50 AM 60 Themes Science and religion were one and the same for the Incas. This mode of religious thought applied to the empire as a whole, but each local community had its own personal version based on its unique experience of nature in the immediate environmental context. Thus a particular village had its own sacred mountains, hills, waterfalls, springs, lakes, and rivers and made observations relevant to the agricultural cycle within the local geography.Villagers would observe the movements of astral bodies with respect to landmarks within their own particular valley and imbue these with sacred and practical significance. Myths of origin and sacred beings multiplied as the empire grew and accreted the beliefs of conquered peoples. However, it was vital to the justification of their hegemony that Incas’ beliefs be focused on their own capital of Cuzco (Brundage 1975).There are a number of traditional origin myths, each tied to a distinct geography.Two of the most important of these are the LakeTiticaca myth and the Hermanos Ayar myth. The civilization ofTiahuanacu, on the southern shore of LakeTiticaca, predated the Incas by four hundred years.When the Inca empire was in place, the ruins of Tiahuanacu spoke of a past glory that impressed the rulers of the new regime.The Incas therefore incorporated some aspects of the Tiahuanacu origin myth and religious ideas into their own but gave precedence to their preferred story of origin,which was strongly linked to the geography of Cuzco and its surroundings. According to the Lake Titicaca myth, it was at Tiahuanacu that the great godViracocha first displayed the created heavens and earth.There is a very sacred island in the southern part of the lake called Rock of the Cat. It was here that, according to pre-Inca mythic tradition, the first light shone out of eternal darkness (note 1). 1. A related story about light and darkness, perhaps from the Inca tradition,recounts howViracocha’s son and child of lightTawapaca,later called Supay, inverted his father’s huaca (sacred power). Supay would later become responsible for disharmony in the world and come to live in and operate from the dark World of Inside.The Rock of the Cat featured in theTiahuanacu myth of origin as the place where light first came out of the darkness may gloss with the Pumapunku (Quechua for “door of the puma”), a structure in the ruins of Tiahuanacu that may represent a doorway, or ushnu, between two or more of the three Andean vertical cosmic levels. 059-094 strong_CH2.indd 60 2/6/12 11:10:50 AM Andean Thinking 61 When Topa Inca conquered this region, he took pains to worship at the famous shrine of Tiahuanacu. However, it was in Topa Inca’s interest to increase the power centered in his own contemporary capital at Cuzco no matter what historical interest the Titicaca sites might have.Thus, he needed to reinterpret history such that the cosmic events connected with the sacred place...