The Canon · No. 065
Inca Religion
Tawantinsuyu state religion
c.1200 – 1572 CE · Indigenous American · Living · Andes — Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador, Chile, Argentina
V. THE MEDIEVAL WORLD — c.500 – 1500 CE
How many
The state cult is gone. Andean practice survives, thoroughly fused with Catholicism; offerings to Pachamama are made routinely across Peru and Bolivia today, including by government officials.
Who began it
No founder. The Inca state cult was imposed on much older Andean religion.
What it is for
To maintain reciprocity (ayni) with the earth, the mountains and the ancestors, and to legitimate the empire — the Sapa Inca ruled as the son of the sun.
What it worships
Inti, the sun, dynastic patron. Viracocha, the creator who made the world at Lake Titicaca and then walked away. Pachamama, the earth mother, still actively worshipped. Mama Killa (moon), Illapa (thunder). Apus — mountain spirits, each peak a being with a name and a temperament. Huacas — any object or place charged with sacred power, of which there were hundreds around Cusco alone, organised on ceque lines radiating from the Coricancha temple.
What it holds
The cosmos has three levels: hanan pacha (above), kay pacha (this world), uku pacha (below). Everything is reciprocal — you give to the mountain and the mountain gives water. Duality and complementary pairing structure everything: male and female, upper and lower moieties, right and left. The ancestors remain participating members of the community.
What it does
Mummification of rulers. Dead emperors were not buried but kept as mallquis, dressed, fed, consulted, carried to festivals and given estates and servants — they continued to own property and hold opinions, which is one reason each new Inca had to conquer new land. Offerings of coca, chicha beer, textiles and llamas. Capacocha — the sacrifice of selected children, exceptionally healthy and beautiful, fattened, given coca and alcohol, and left on high mountain summits, where the cold has preserved several as some of the best-preserved human remains ever found, including the Llullaillaco maiden. It was rare, reserved for major crises and imperial occasions. Inti Raymi, the winter solstice festival, still performed at Cusco.
After death
The dead continue in the community rather than departing. Good people were said to go to the warm world of the sun; others to a cold, hungry underworld — though the Spanish sources reporting this were actively looking for something resembling heaven and hell and may have found what they were looking for. The Andean position is better described as the dead remaining present and requiring maintenance.
Its texts
None — the Inca had no writing. They kept records on quipu, knotted cord devices, whose numerical function is understood and whose possible narrative function is still being investigated. Everything else comes from Spanish chroniclers, above all Guaman Poma de Ayala, an indigenous Andean whose 1,189-page illustrated letter to the King of Spain (c.1615) is the single most important source, and Garcilaso de la Vega, son of an Inca princess and a conquistador.
Its branches
Regional Andean traditions (Aymara, Quechua); modern Andean Catholicism; Q'ero and paqo ritual specialists.
Of note
Machu Picchu was never lost and was never a lost city. Local people knew exactly where it was and were farming near it when Bingham arrived.
Its timeline
- c.1200 CE Manco Capac; the Cusco kingdom founded.
- 1438 CE Pachacuti begins the imperial expansion; Coricancha rebuilt and sheathed in gold.
- c.1450 CE Machu Picchu built as a royal estate.
- 1527–1532 CE Smallpox, arriving ahead of the Spanish, kills the emperor Huayna Capac and his heir; civil war follows.
- <strong>1532 CE</strong> Pizarro captures Atahualpa at Cajamarca with fewer than 200 men, against an empire of perhaps ten million. Disease and civil war had already broken it.
- 1533 CE Atahualpa executed after the ransom room is filled with gold.
- 1536–1572 CE The Neo-Inca State at Vilcabamba resists; Túpac Amaru is executed in 1572.
- 1559–1660s CE Extirpation of idolatry campaigns systematically destroy huacas and mummies.
- 1560s CE Taki Onqoy, the dancing sickness — a revitalisation movement teaching that the huacas would defeat the Christian God and expel the Spanish. Suppressed.
- 1780–82 CE Túpac Amaru II's rebellion.
- 1911 CE Hiram Bingham publicises Machu Picchu.
- Present Andean Catholicism is a genuine synthesis: mountain apus and Christian saints occupy the same ritual landscape, and Pachamama offerings are ordinary public practice.
Sources
Not yet checked against named sources. This entry is the house's reading; until it is checked, treat each claim as unverified. Correct it, with a source.