As to the Sun’s descent, the wise men of the Incas learned
from their predecessors that he was made by The Ancient Cause,
The First Beginning, The Maker of All Created Things, The
Supreme Deity, Illa Tici Uira Cocha--the four ultimate,
visible forms of the Infinite, to quote the _Peruvian
Star-chart_ of Salcamayhua. There is in Quichua a word to express
“the-essence-of-being-in-general-as-existent-in-humanity.” Sometimes
the name is given as Con Tici Uiracocha, an identification with the
supreme god, Con, the center of another group of legends of belief.
The mystery surrounding this great, invisible god, generally called
Uiracocha, is as complete now as it was to the Sun-worshipping Incas, a
sort of dim background for the glittering splendor of Sun-ritual.
Uiracocha has many identities: Uiracocha, the Supreme God; Uiracocha,
the hero-god, the white and bearded man in long robes, who with a
strange animal in his hand, appeared to that Inca afterwards called by
his name, tending the flocks of the Sun among the tops of the Andes;
Uiracocha, who raised up an army for the Inca on the Field of Blood
out of stones that he set on fire from a sling of gold; he who changed
the revelers of Tiahuanacu to stone in wrath. (However misty the
connection between Uiracocha, stones, and human beings, it is certain
that Peruvians held stones in great awe. The temple to Uiracocha, the
war-god, is at the foot of an extinct volcano whence a lava stream
had issued. It is paved with black and made of carved and polished
stone. The interior was obscure, with an altar for human sacrifices.)
Uiracocha who, as Betanzos relates, came out of a lake when all was
dark, lord of light and lord of wind, who, as dawn appeared, spread his
mantle over the waves of the lake and was wafted away into the rays of
morning light. The curling waves followed his evanescent passage, and
so he was called Uiracocha, the Foam of the Sea. He gave his wand to
the chief in the House of the Dawn. It afterwards became the golden
staff of Manco Ccapac, his son.
Uiracocha was the universal god of the Quichua-speaking people. The Sun
was peculiar to the Incas.
The hazy red deity Con was the personification of subterranean fire.
“He is light as air, has neither arms nor legs, nor muscles nor bones,
nor joints nor nerves nor flesh, but runs very fast in all directions.”
He came from the sea and flattened the hills and filled up the valleys,
and by his simple word gave life to man. Viciously he converted the
race of men he had created into black cats and other horrible animals,
devastated the earth, deprived it of rain, and--retreated into the sea.
His first temple was a volcano.