The name of Sun-temples in Peru was Intihuatana, the binding of the
Sun, the place where the eternal light or fire was held fast. Though
there were many such throughout the kingdom, the Holy of Holies was
at Cuzco, the Place of Gold, Inti-cancha, oriented to the sunrise,
golden crown gleaming, sheltering walls and cornices lined with gold
plates under its roof of straw. There flamed the great golden image
of the Sun, glistening with emeralds and other precious stones,
completely covering one side of the temple opposite the eastern portal.
The mummies of all former kings, perfect replicas of themselves, sat
staring as in more active days from their thrones of gold along the
walls, the eyes shining with a mixture of gold. “And so light were
these bodies that an Indian could easily carry one of them in his arms
to the houses of Spanish gentlemen who desired to see them.”
Beyond, twinkled the temple of the Moon, the Sun’s _coya_. The queens,
her descendants, were also called _coya_, “not being worthy a title so
truly magnificent as Inca.” This was the Place of Silver, surrounded by
the dark shadow of night, receiving the silent homage of the queens,
the sister-wives of the Incas, reposing on silver thrones. At full moon
the festival of the deities of water was held here.
A white cross of crystalline jasper hung from a silver chain in a
secret place. The white light in it increased and decreased with the
moon. It was beneficent and associated with the morning light, whose
compartment came next, sacred to the Dawn with the Morning Star,
_chasca coyllur_, ragged with earth mist, he of the long curling locks,
the page of the Sun. The royal runners were named for him, messengers
of the Inca as he of the Sun. All the other stars, companions of the
Moon, which vanish at the coming of the Sun, glittered each in its
proper magnitude from a starry ceiling.
The temple belonging to Thunder, Lightning, and the
Thunderbolt--servants of the Sun, but messengers of an angry god--shone
with tiles of gold, but was without symbol. As the arms of the
Inca, the dread liquid fire which darted from heaven like a golden
serpent with quick spring and mortal bite, surrounded the Rainbow,
beautiful _cuychi_, whose image spanned one wall of the room beyond,
a multi-colored ray of the Sun, flickering over the showery hillside,
announcing his gracious reappearance after the tempest and promising
peace. The all-powerful Sun could subdue the dark cloud and draw from
its depths the shining rainbow, whose fragile arch widens as the Sun
sinks. He lives in the clouds, and the rainbow is the hem of his
garment. Is it strange that the Incas should have held it in such
veneration that when they saw it in the air they shut their mouths and
clapped their hands before it? Is it not stranger that they only should
have worshipped the rainbow and placed it on their banners as an emblem
of God?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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