The Incas’ troops led by Tupaq Inca Yapanki, who took his name from Pachacutec Inca Yupanki, forced a culture that inherited more than3000 years of history through precious contributions from ancient civilizations like Chavin Paracas, Mochica,Tahuanaco, Nesca, Wari, Chimu and Lambayeque. The military victory upon the Chancas in 1438 will start and important spread and transformation of the spiritual thinking. Cuzco will turn into the heart of the world and, through an organization called Tahuantinsuyo, The government of the four regions will spread out a cultural current with its’ language called Runa Simi. The ruling elite will establish a huge state that will be remembered one of the greatest empires of the history of humanity.

It was thanks to the cult of the sun, of which the Inca was the sacred representative because his name was “son of the sun”, that the leadership of the Inca was restored. The Pachamama’s religion was resistant to four centuries and half of evangelization and hasn’t lost his value. In the Pachamama religion, every element of nature and men use symbolic expressions, attitudes and movements thanks to which, they come into contact with natural and supernatural beings.

Coca leaves

The important mean of communication between men and nature was the use of coca leaves, also used as food, medicine and as spiritual way of communication. The Andeans use Coca leaves to cure more than sixty two healthy problems. Coca leaves, apart from anything else, they contribute to oppose to hypoglycemia (low concentration of sugar in the blood), they are also rich with vitamins B1, B2 C and trace elements and are extremely important to use for the physiological adaptation of heights. They are also e very important element in the Andes’ region because they can overcome problems of undernourishment. For generations, chewing coca’s leaves was like a ritual and was often crowned by ceremonies that would place the individual in a spatial, social and spiritual context.

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The priest

The Amauta was a priest, a wise man. Today this name is no longer used.
Those days it is the “Paqo”, who teaches spirituality and communicates to new generations. There are three ways of proceeding along this path:

The first one it is the oral transmission from a teacher to his pupil.
The second one is to foresee the transmission of the medicine’s knowledge by following the teachings of the curanderos who live in the villages of medicine.
The third one is to foresees that the future Paqo, chosen by nature, thanks to various phenomena like wind, earth and thunder, would come into contact with spiritual brotherhood called “Qhapaqkuna”.

“Let her rest. If she is not better in three days then we will have to look for a curandero, or perhaps the lightning has chosen her on purpose to make her a curandera herself” said one of the present elderly people. (From the “Curandera’s Prophecy)

“In the city, people used to call Alto Misayoc whoever, that after having being stoke by lightning, they would become healing priests. According to the tradition they would be struck three times: the first one it would kill them, the second one it would disintegrate their bodies into small particles and the third one it would reassemble them in the original way. When they came to, they would always find themselves rather far from the place where they had been hit and they always carried a wound of a shape of a cross. Next to them there was a stone of a very odd shape with red stripes: the Quqya mesa. Every stripe represented the protection of a spirit of light. The one who had been selected by 10 Apu Kuna, was considered particularly powerful…” (from the “Curandera’s Prophesy”)

“Kantu’ asked: “Mommy, I would like you to take me to the Anselmo and that you would ask him to give an offer to Pachamama so that the marriage will be a happy one.“ The Pachamama’s ritual belongs to the Andean religion. On the Andes, in the ancient times, there was a type of religion that was mainly dedicated to women: It was the religion of Mother Nature, of the Cosmic Mother. For millenniums, the Andeans followed those believes and they let themselves be lead by the principals of this religion. Pachamama means Cosmic Mother, Celestial Mother, Mother Nature, the one who understands everything. It is her entity that enables people to be part of a huge cosmic mechanism, of a universal plan that included everything that has been created. Pachamama is some sort of recognition that men do on nature, it is also the union between men and nature… A man who communicates with nature, is a man who knows the truth, a man who understands and that lives with greater simplicity. Far from concepts, from philosophical disquisitions and from reasoning, Nature is clear but simple and complex at the same time. On the occasion of particularly important events, the Andeans consult the Pachamama for advice since she is the only point of contact with reality…(from the Curandera’s Prophecy)

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The organization of the Pachamama

There is a religion within the Pachamama’s religion. The "Qhapaqkuna" were the holders of sacred knowledge. They established an esoteric group, a well hidden, spiritual brotherhood, that would act secretly. The sanctuaries were spread out along the Andes’ mountains, but mainly on lake Titicaca, on Illimani’s, Illampu’s and Augusante mountains.
All the people who had taken part of this group, had followed a path called the "Qhapaqñan", the path of the immortals of the enlightened, the path of the 33 steps of light. The Qhapaqkuna’s teachings, according to the tradition, they would be passed on from mouth to mouth but, only during times of spiritual crisis, they could use the written word in order to pass on their knowledge. Those teachings were kept secret and they would be passed on only to people who deserved them.

The man who started walking on the sacred path (Qhapaqnan) was called Kausaypuriq. Who ever was following this path was aware of the fact that he was following a spiritual one where he had to reach his destination while going beyond human limits and give himself completely in order to use his energy and travel trough time and space. The practitioners, Wamaqkuna, had to spend long periods of time in solitude between meditation, teachings, deprivations and physical strains that would force them to push themselves beyond human limits. They were taught to strengthen their spirit and their character and they had to understand that the physical world was made out of two faces and that, if they went beyond the material and physical world, they would find a much bigger world to which only few would manage to get to, while getting over obstacles and great difficulties.
This spiritual knowledge, that vanished in front of the profane people, it continues to live in the Andes’ secret and it is here where the guardians of cognition and of learning live. They appear when someone reaches a specific level of knowledge: “when the pupil is ready, the teacher comes…”

The people who were part of the Qhapaqkuna were placed in different circles: There were brothers in the outer circles like the ones in the inner circles. The Qhapaqkuna, in the outer circles, formed the Andean elite, what we know as "inca". Inca means the one who carries light. Inca were believed to be the light carriers and this is why they had the great task to civilize, and improve society and, thanks to their spiritual teachings, during a period of 100 years, they turned a small population into the most extensive empire of America, the Tawantisuyo.
The collaboration between man and women in the outer circles played a fundamental role. This collaboration was achieved through two institutions where they taught part of this knowledge:
Yachaywasi, or house of knowledge for men
Akllawasi, or house of knowledge for women.

In those two institutions, where people learnt science, education and technology at a high level, they formed future leaders.
Within the brotherhood of the Qhapaqkuna, in the outer circle, there was a group of people who followed the Kallpay’s path, the path of power of the inner energy that was inside every human being: The famous Amaru Runakuna, men and women snakes. Those characters had to overcome several tests where they would have to demonstrate that they had won against fear and anger and also that they had acquired powers of observations they had dared and risked while able to do exhausting exercises. The famous Qhapaqkuna (enlightened) lived in the inner circles, far from the material world, in the depth of the earth, in caves or on high Andean mountain tops, where prayers mingled up with silence and meditation. Those that, had come to the end of Qhapaqnan, could travel through time and space and do anything, they could have an influence on the minds and the spirituality of people. Far from the worldly noise, they were actors and spectators of the rising and growing of communities, of population that reached their maximum splendor, who would become old and destroy themselves and were carrying part of that light of knowledge to the populations that were about to be born.

The Qhapakriy is the Qhapaq’s path, but it is also an historical cyclic phase of high spirituality. The pillars of the Andean spirituality are the following three:
-The principal of love towards one’s self and towards all living things
-The search for truth and therefore for cognition, that was the main element that would allow the creation and transformation.
-Respect for all living things on the Earth.

The main teachings were Khuyay, love and compassion; Muchay, respect and recognition; Cheqay, truth, certainty and the wisdom; Yachay, cognition and wisdom.

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Myths

There is a story that has been passed on from ancestors to nephews and it is the one of Wiraqocha, who at times looks like a God and sometimes is a spiritual guide. When we try to comprehend this story we find difficult it to understand what the storytellers meant. The myth is a form of communication that is imaginary. In a fantastic myth they try to pass on information about something that might have happened, they also try to hand down the past till our present times. A myth hides something and apparently it seems illogical, but is was also done this way in order to trigger the following questions: How and when and why? The answers to those questions will contribute to clear up the history of a population.

The first myth of Wiraqocha, the one that makes him appear like a God, it talks about a dull time, where human beings just created, lived and shared room with the Giants.

Those last ones understood the animal language and had other powers that today’s human beings don’t have. The population of men lived with the one of Giants for a long period of time. As time was passing by the Giants disappeared while the humans kept on living.
Men honored Wiraqocha, they would all live in peace amongst themselves and, while helping each other, they tried their best to live in harmony with everyone else. They grew in number very quickly until the day when food and all elements that contributed to wellness suddenly went missing. As the bare necessities increased, people did no longer respect rules until all commandments given by Wiraqocha were broken.

At this point God, offended, decided to punish those humans and made them disappear from the face of the earth: and so a food arrived, in our stories, called the UNOPACHACUTI.

Some human couples managed to run and survived from such destruction. They has understood what the animals had already learnt from the God Wiraqocha’s thoughts.
This already appeared clear in the glittering light of starts in that night! The story between peasants and Indian shepherds is still being passed on and it goes like the following:

One month before the flood, the lamas, shepherd’s favorite animals, expressed their sadness by declining the food and attentively observe the stars during the night. Their shepherd, knowing there was something wrong, they asked the animals for the reasons. They answered that the stars in conjunction were indicating that the earth would have been buried by water. After this statement, he asked for the opinion of his family, who agreed to the gathering of as much food as possible and loaded it on the lamas’ backs to finally go to one of the highest mountains tops, called Ancasmharca. When the shepherd and his family reached the mountain, they found other animals like a condor, a fox, a puma, a dear, the bear and other animals that were waiting for the food. In fact it didn’t make them wait that long because the waters from the sky fell on the earth and, in no time, it covered the surface of the earth except from that mountain because, as the level of water was rising, the mountain would drift further up. When the rain stopped and the water begun to subside, the mountain went back to the original dimension. The few survivors could populate the earth again and promised to Wiraqocha to always respect his laws.
There are other variations of this myth but I will avoid writing about them in order not to become a prolix speaker.

As far as the Wiraqocha’s myth is concerned, as a demigod, he lived along the shore of lake Tticaca, that is at 4000 m. (at the border between Peru’ and Bolivia), and is considered to be the highest navigable lake in the world. After the flood, Wiraqocha left with two demigods for an island called Titicaca and begun to rebuild what had been destroyed during the flood. They gathered the survivors who had been hiding in caves and people who had hidden at the very tops of the mountains. Those teachers, with their words made people understand that such destruction had occurred because men had disobeyed the divine laws. As soon as they finished teaching about spirituality, therefore finished their original task, they traveled towards the Pacific Ocean. They moved away from the earth while walking on the sea waters, heading for the North. This myth hides a subtle teaching that is tied to the Fish Age, that according to our population, it is considered as the Era of Darkness. According to our chronology, Wiraqocha’ pilgrimage goes back to 1500. Wiraqocha, before he left, he promised to come back after 500 years. He also told that, before his return, others would have given themselves out as him, the Wiraqocha. 50 years later the Spanish arrived and expected everyone to call them Wiraqocha even if they weren’t the real Wiraqocha. The Indians are still waiting for his return although we know that he came during 1996, time during which the Fishes’ Era ended and the one of the aquarium started. Now, in the stars’ language it appears that the time of light has just started because Wiraqocha will follow a path towards a different direction, starting from North-East to South-West. This transit will have to occur between 1996 till 2013.

There is also a third story of this myth that makes Wiraqocha appear like a beggar: Wiraqocha arrived at a village where everyone had food and drinks and great amounts of clothes. The inhabitants of the village were attending to a great party and he asked for a little food to calm his hunger down but nobody wanted to help him. He waited for several hours until a working woman felt pity for the man and gave him food and drinks. Wiraqocha warned the woman to run from the village because in a few minutes he would have burnt it down to the ground…This third myth is linked to the XX century, todays’ world. This Wiraqocha represents the hungry countries that ask the rich ones to help them ease their hunger but on the contrary it will all be destroyed… Those myths reveal three teachings:

1 - Love, the sacred hospitability that men has to offer to mankind.

2 - There is a truth in the eyes of the ones, who want to see. The blind, who don’t want to see this light, won’t see this truth.

3 - Nature has to be respected in all the laws or we would all run the risk to be destroyed.

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