Don’t Know Much About® Mythology (66 page)

Tlazolteotl
Certainly one of the least appealing deities in any pantheon, Tlazolteotl is called “eater of the excrement” and is aptly know as the filth goddess. Associated with the consequences of lust and licentiousness, she is depicted squatting in a traditional birthing position. She is also linked with confession, purification, and penitence.

Xipe Totec
The god of agriculture and penitential torture, Xipe Totec is “the flayed lord.” According to myth, the flayed lord undergoes self-torture, which the Aztecs imitate by lacerating their bodies with cactus thorns and sharp-edged reeds. There may have been a connection between this ritual and corn, which loses its skin when the shoots begin to burst through. Or the link between new skin and spring growth. Xipe Totec also may have been sacrificing himself to placate the Lady of the Serpent Skirt goddess, Coatlicue, because the world and the soil need to be replenished with regular sacrifice.
One Aztec form of sacrifice involved flaying. Priests sometimes donned the skins that had been stripped from their victims, perhaps in homage to the “flayed lord.”
And you thought
The Silence of the Lambs
was creepy.

Xochiquetzal
The goddess of flowers and fruits, Xochiquetzal, or Feather Flower, is the mother of Quetzalcoatl. With her twin brother,
Xochipilli
, the flower prince, she rules over beauty, love, female sexuality, happiness, and youth. When Quetzalcoatl departs the empire, she takes less interest in the affairs of humans. Very much akin to the Mesopotamian Inanna and other Near Eastern love goddesses, she protects lovers and prostitutes in her role as moon goddess. Symbolized by flowers, Xochiquetzal also protects marriage and is a fertility goddess who may have committed incest with her brother, Xochipilli, the flower prince and god of lust. In Aztec myth, Xochipilli is the guardian of the spirits of brave warriors who die and become richly plumed birds.

THE MYTHS OF THE INCAS

Rulers of one of the largest and richest empires in the Americas, the Incas began their rise about 1200 CE and began to expand into an empire in the 1400s, until they dominated a vast region that centered on the capital, Cuzco. The empire extended more than 2,500 miles along the western coast of South America until the Incas—reeling from an epidemic that led to civil war—fell to Spanish forces soon after their arrival in 1532. But their cultural heritage is still evident today in the highlands of Peru, where descendants of the Incas still speak Quechua, the Incan language, and perform traditional healing ceremonies.

Was the “lost city” of Machu Picchu really a “sacred place”?

Sure, “lost city” sounds a lot more intriguing than “summer house” or “weekend getaway.” But, contrary to conventional wisdom, Machu Picchu may not have been a sacred place. New archaeological evidence shows that when the Incas went to Machu Picchu, they probably kicked back, drank some
chicha
(fermented corn or berry beer), and enjoyed themselves.

For most of the nearly hundred years since Hiram Bingham, an explorer with no archaeological training, stumbled upon the ruins of Machu Picchu in 1911, the idea of a secret, sacred “lost city” has captivated imaginations. Elevated in the snow-clad Andean peaks, Machu Picchu (“old peak”) has been the impetus for many a New Age odyssey to Peru in hopes of attaining enlightenment at this high, Andean “energy vortex.” On the Richter scale of the world’s “mystical places,” Machu Picchu ranks right up there with Stonehenge and the pyramids. A walled compound large enough to accommodate upwards of 1,000 people, it is divided into two sections: an agricultural area with terraced fields, canals to bring water, and massive stone retaining walls; and an “urban” area that included more than a hundred residences, warehouses, baths, fountains, and two temples, one of which had a window that allowed the sun to shine through on the summer solstice.

Machu Picchu and the Incas who built it are fascinating, but a lot less exotic than the stories and theories that grew up around this fabled “lost city.” As
New York Times
science correspondent John Noble Wilford recently wrote, “Bingham, a historian at Yale, advanced three hypotheses—all of them dead wrong…. The spectacular site was not, as Bingham supposed, the traditional birthplace of the Inca people or the final stronghold of the Incas in their losing struggle against Spanish conquest in the 16th century. Nor was it a sacred spiritual center occupied by chosen women, the ‘virgins of the sun,’ and presided over by priests who worshiped the sun god. Instead, Machu Picchu was one of many private estates of the emperor and, in particular, the favored country retreat for the royal family and Inca nobility. It was, archaeologists say, the Inca equivalent of Camp David, albeit on a much grander scale.”

But nobody’s is making pilgrimages to the presidential getaway to absorb its psychic energies.

The people who constructed the architectural marvel of Machu Picchu also built what was the greatest and largest civilization in the Americas before Columbus arrived (or “pre-Columbian,” as the textbooks like to call it). Based in the capital of Cuzco (also spelled Cusco),
*
in the 12th century CE, the Incas began to expand their land holdings until they occupied a vast region. With a brilliantly engineered system of terraced agriculture and linked by a magnificent road system, this empire stretched more than 2,500 miles (4,020 kilometers) along the west coast of South America, from present-day Colombia, through parts of Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Chile, and Argentina. With an estimated 10 million subjects, according to
National Geographic
, this empire was really a loose confederation of tribes ruled by a single group, the Incas. It was a theocracy to a degree greater than any other American civilization—very much in line with the empires of the ancient Near East. The ruler or the “Inca” was considered divine and a direct descendant of the sun god. Below him were his family, a large ruling aristocracy, and an elaborate priesthood that practiced both human sacrifice and mummification. A great deal of recent archaeology has added considerably to the understanding of the Incas, especially in the discovery of numbers of mummified children who had been sacrificed.

But with their highly centralized government, the Incas at their height were easy pickings for the Spanish. When Francisco Pizarro landed on the South American coast, the Incas were already divided by an internal war and a leadership crisis, and weakened by a smallpox epidemic that had arrived from the north. In 1532, Pizarro—described by historians as “an illiterate pig breeder”—marched about 160 men into the mountains, kidnapped the Inca ruler, Atahualpa, briefly held him hostage, then executed him despite the ransom that had been paid, said to be history’s largest, a substantial roomful of gold. (Pizarro later became involved in a series of intrigues and was himself beheaded by rival Spaniards in 1541. Maybe there is some “rough justice.”)

While Incan insurrections and rebellions flared for nearly thirty years afterwards, the handwriting was clearly on the wall. In the end, “guns, germs and steel” were again brutally effective. But the Spanish cannons, swords, and vicious mastiff war dogs did not kill most of those Incas. Smallpox did.
*

In
Plagues and Peoples
, a compelling account of the role of disease in history, William H. McNeill points out that this onset of deadly sickness had more than just the practical effect of killing large numbers of natives throughout Central and South America. As McNeill writes, “First, Spaniards and Indians readily agreed that epidemic disease was a particularly dreadful and unambiguous form of divine punishment…. Secondly, the Spaniards were nearly immune from the terrible disease that raged so mercilessly among the Indians…. The gods of the [Indians] as much as the God of the Christians seemed to agree that the white newcomers had divine approval for all they did…. From the Amerindian point of view, stunned acquiescence in Spanish superiority was the only possible response.”

Shrouded in legends, the Inca empire that Pizarro decimated so efficiently had begun in earnest about 1438, when Pachacuti, the ninth Inca ruler, put down an invasion by the neighboring Chanca confederacy. Called the “Alexander the Great” of the Incas, Pachacuti was a military leader and an effective administrator who conquered the regions south of Cuzco and rebuilt the city as the center of the empire and a monument to Inca power. Later looked upon as a Creator god, he began the construction of Machu Picchu around 1450.

From Spanish documents, recovered pottery, and other archaeological clues, scholars estimate that Machu Picchu was largely abandoned after only eighty years. Plague, brought by the Spaniards, had left the rest of the empire in turmoil by then. But, at an elevation of 6,750 feet, remote Machu Picchu was relatively untouched—and never even seen by the Spanish. Though called a “lost city,” it was really not a city at all. Just a splendid hideaway.

Nevertheless, Bingham, who found Machu Picchu and was made famous by it, was not completely mistaken about its religious aspects. There were clearly temples there, and sun worship was part of its rituals, probably along with imbibing some
chicha
. This local beer was no doubt made at a thousand-year-old site with twenty brewing vats, which was discovered in the Andes in the summer of 2004. Described by one researcher as “a large-scale state-sponsored institutional” brewery, it could produce several hundred gallons at a time. According to scholar Gary Urton,
chicha
was also brewed in the same field where Mama Huaco, one of the Incan founding ancestral sisters, was mummified and buried.

Did the Incas have a foundation myth?

Since the Incas had no written language, most of what is known of their myths and religion comes from retellings by Spanish conquerors, or Incan accounts told to their Spanish masters. As a result, many of these myths are considered suspect.
*
These include a variety of Incan foundation myths and legends involving a set of siblings called the Ayars, who may be based on historical figures. Anthropologist and Inca expert Gary Urton explains in
Inca Myths
that “Ayar comes from the Quechua word
aya
, ‘corpse,’ establishing a link between the ancestors as mythological characters and the mummified remains of the Inca kings, which were kept in a special room in the Temple of the Sun in Cusco. In addition, this same word ayar was the name of a wild strain of the quinua plant, a high-altitude grain crop of the Andes.”

In one of these foundation myths, we encounter the somewhat common mythic themes of sibling rivalry and incest as four brothers and four sisters in the Ayar family emerge from caves in the mountains and found the Incan empire. Fearing that their powerful troublemaking sibling Ayar Cachi might become dominant, three of the brothers gang up on him and wall him up. Of the remaining brothers, Ayar Oco turns himself into a sacred stone; Ayar Ayca becomes the protector of the fields; and Ayar Manco (later called Manco Capac) seizes Cuzco, the Inca capital city, and marries his sister, Mama Ocllo.

In another version of the legend, the sun god and creator Inti sends his son Manco Capac, and Manco’s daughter and wife Mama Ocllo, to teach civilization to men. Inti gives them a large wedge of gold and tells them to start a city wherever this magical golden block should sink into the ground of its own accord. That proved to be at Cuzco, the Incan capital.

WHO’S WHO OF INCAN GODS

Because the Incas routinely absorbed the local deities of the people they conquered, their pantheon is wide-ranging. The gods below are generally considered the most significant of the deities that have come down through the filter of Spanish colonialism.

Inti
The sun god from whom the Incas trace their descent, Inti is the divine ancestor who sends his children to earth with the arts of civilization. In an Inca foundation myth, Inti’s children found Cuzco and conquer the people of the Andes. Portrayed as a solar disk with a human face, Inti was the central deity worshipped at the great sun temple at Cuzco, whose walls were lined with gold, which the Incas believed was the sweat of the sun. As Incan myth evolved, Inti was said to have three sons—the gods Viracocha, Pachacamac, and Manco Capac.
Inti’s wife and sister is
Mama Kilya
, the moon goddess of fertility and a protector of women. Incan rulers married within their families, as the pharaohs of Egypt did, perhaps to consolidate power.

Manco Capac
Also known as Ayar Manco, Manco Capac is the legendary founder of the Incan royal house, who marries one of his sisters,
Mama Ocllo
. All later rulers of the Inca claim to be descended from Manco Capac.

Pachacamac
An ancient sun god known as “earth maker,” Pachacamac is a brooding character who appears in an early Peruvian Creation myth that is believed to have originated in the coastal areas rather than in the Andes Mountains. After creating the first man and woman, Pachacamac neglects them, and the man starves to death. When the woman complains about the loss of her companion, Pachacamac impregnates her with the rays of the sun and she gives birth to a baby boy. But after four days, Pachacamac grows jealous of the infant, tears him into pieces, and then turns the dismembered body parts into food. The teeth become corn, the ribs and bones become plants, and the boy’s flesh becomes fruits and vegetables. In a final act of desecration, Pachacamac uses the boy’s penis and navel to create another son, but he kills his first child’s mother. Finally, Pachacamac creates a new human couple, who repopulate the land. His wife,
Mama Pacha
, was a dragoness who caused earthquakes and ruled over planting and harvesting the crops.