Pachacuti: cycles of creation and destruction of the world in the Andean tradition

di Marco Maculotti
cover: Paracas culture textiles (coastal Peru)

A central concept in the Andean cosmogonic tradition is the belief in regular cycles of creation and destruction that would initiate and end the various cosmic eras. Time was conceived in a circular way; according to this doctrine, it had only two dimensions: the present (Kay Pasha) which at its end leads to the "ancient time"(Nawpa Pacha), from which we will return again to the present time [Carmona Cruz p.28].

This doctrine, comparable to that of the Indian Yuga and to the Hesiodic one of the ages, is based on a principle of cyclicality that would govern everything in the cosmos and which is called by the Andean tradition pachacuti, literally "a revolution, a procession of space and time". With this term, in the myths, a series of catastrophic events are described that foresee the general destruction of the humanity of the sky and its subsequent replacement with a new humanity - see the myths of origin of Lake Titicaca, in which it is said that Viracocha exterminated a previous race of giants with the flood or with a rain of fire to then create a subsequent humanity, the current one [cf. Viracocha and the myths of the origins: creation of the world, anthropogenesis, foundation myths].

This idea of necessary renewal of the cosmos it is found everywhere in myth and in religions: we continually witness the extermination by the uranic-creator divinity (the "God the Father") of the humanity of the cycle which has come to its conclusion and then proceed to the creation of humanity of the next cycle. The ancient Greeks said that the cosmos "regenerates itself from time to time"—Or from aeon to aeon—"plunging into the fire". When the earth appears tired and humanity is now irremediably diverted from its original golden condition, everywhere we find this common idea: the cosmos must rejuvenate, and with him the Earth and, ultimately, man himself.

The cycles of the world according to Guaman Poma

One of the most complete descriptions of the aforementioned subdivision in world history is that of the seventeenth-century chronicler Guaman Poma, from whose reading it is clear that, generally, the cosmhistory of the Andean tradition is divided into five cosmic eras, each of which is - similarly to the conception Mexicans of the tonatiuh"Named" (year of) the Sun "(intip watan) or "Great Year" (capable watan) and lasts a thousand years (although it is probable that this figure should be understood in a symbolic sense, as if the phrase with which the Spanish chroniclers have translated as "a thousand years" were equivalent, in Quechua, to the concept of "an entire era" ).

Each "Great Year" includes two minor cycles (which the chroniclers measured, consequently, in five hundred years each), called in turn pachakuti ("Reversal of the world and of time"), because great cataclysms occur at the end of each cycle (both complete and partial). Each era a sun died and another was born; the same happened with the lineages that populate the earth [Polia p.71]. According to Guaman Poma [Urton p.41]:

1. The first age of the world ("First Sun") dates back to "time of primeval darkness”In which lived a named proto-humanity Wari Wiracocharuna, who knew only a rudimentary technology and covered themselves with fronds and leaves. This epoch ends in a mysterious way. Some sources consider the men of this first epoch not endowed with a properly physical body as the present humanity, the full one crystallization of the material envelope occurring only with the advent of the Second Sun.

2. The humanity of the "Second Sun", Wari rune, was more advanced: they wore animal skins, practiced rudimentary agriculture and lived peacefully, without wars. They worshiped Viracocha and recognized him as a creator. Their era ended in a deluge.

3. The era of the "Third Sun" was that of the Purun rune ("Savage men"), a curious name since in reality in that era there is an increasingly complex technology, in agriculture as in worn clothing (wool) as in more advanced arts such as metallurgy and the creation of jewelry. However, the population increases dramatically and this leads to the emergence of territorial conflicts. Each inhabited center is ruled by a sovereign. People adore Pachacamac as the creator of the Universe. It is not known how this age ended but, it can be hypothesized, its end seems to be related to the corpus of myths concerning the extinction of a previous humanity by means of rains of fire from heaven. In the Codex Chimalpopoca, a document nahua of Mesoamerica, the era of the "Third Sun" is also called Here Tonatiuh ("Rainy Sun") "because in this era a rain of fire fell that burned everything that existed (...) The rocks boiled in the tumult, and rose from it to vermilion color"[Donnelly p.104-5].

4. The inhabitants of the following age, that of the "Fourth Sun", are warrior populations, Auk Rune, who lived on the mountain peaks in stone houses and named fortresses pucara. The technology became more and more complex, and with it also the disagreements and conflicts increased. During this epoch, the world was divided into four parts [cf. the mythical subdivision of the Tahuantinsuyu by Viracocha]. Guaman Poma does not specify, even in this case, how the destruction of this world took place; however, since probably in this age the one preceding the birth of today's humanity must be recognized, some tend to connect it with the age of giants that Viracocha exterminated with a flood and then dedicated himself to the creation of the next humanity.

5. The final epoch of the "Fifth Sun" is that of the Incas, that is the historical period of the Andean civilization [cf. The enigma of Tiahuanaco, cradle of the Incas and "Island of Creation" in Andean mythology]. After a brief description of the innovations and new institutions introduced by the new sovereigns, Poma attests that they gave themselves up to the cult of guaca bilcas, supernatural beings who, according to the author, would be the "demons of Cusco". To cause the end of this era (or, better to say, the "turning point", the pachakuti) was obviously the invasion of the Spaniards [Urton p.44] [cfr. Secret history of the conquest of Peru: the prophetic dream of the Inca Viracocha and the coming of the Spaniards]. Polia states that with the arrival of the Spaniards the Indian world (ie the world of the "Fifth Sun") overturns and opens the last cycle of the last Sun before the great final cataclysm, the pachakuti definitive, that of the end of the cycle, which "it will put an end to this world and this time"[Polia p.71-2].

A comparison with the Hesiodic ages

As we have already noticed, there is a correspondence between the division into "Suns" of the Andean tradition and the same division into eras or cycles in other ancient cultures. We have already mentioned the Mexican one tonatiuh (which has the same meaning of solar cycles), in which each cycle is called by the name of the element that will destroy the world at its end (catastrophes of fire and water, raging hurricanes or earthquakes).

We have already referred to the Hindu doctrine of the Yuga and to the Greco-Roman age, a gradual decay process along four cycles esoterically called with the name of a metal, as we have seen previously. Other doctrines of this kind were the Iranian one, similar to the Hellenic one - the four ages are here marked by gold, silver, steel and "mixture of iron" - and the Chaldean one, which almost slavishly takes up this division [Evola p.222].

Let's try to make a comparison between the one between these doctrines that we know best, namely the Greco-Roman one as we know it thanks to Hesiod, and that of the Inca tradition, as it came to us through Guaman Poma.

1. Given that, according to the Andean tradition, the era of the "First Sun" was inhabited only by a proto-human race not endowed with a properly physical body, we associate the era of the "Second Sun" —in which men " they wore animal skins, practiced rudimentary agriculture and lived peacefully, without wars; they worshiped Viracocha and recognized him as creator ”—to the Golden Age of the Mediterranean tradition where men lived in peace and abundance and the land yielded abundant crops without the need for cultivation. Evola relates the Golden Age to the symbols of "polarity, sunshine, height, stability, glory, life in the eminent sense" and "truth in the transcendent sense" [Evola p.229]. According to Jünger, the tales about the golden age "agree that it was a 'age of innocence"And for this necessarily"free not only of theology, but also of science”, As well as the alphabet and ideographic writing [Jünger p.133]. As Eliade says, according to the tradition of the Australian aborigines, "the ancestors were free from the manifold inhibitions and frustrations that inevitably plague every living human being in organized communities"[Eliade p.100]. In addition, the man of the first cycle appears in all traditions, from 'dreamy time' of the Australian aborigines to the rest of the world, somehow still undifferentiated compared to the rest of beings, gods, animals, plants and so on. In this state of undifferentiated communion in which he lay, "the undivided man possessed knowledge, not science"and "of stones, plants, animals more than properties he knows the virtues. They speak to him"[Jünger p.133.]. The golden age, also called by the German philosopher "history of the beginnings" (equivalent toillud tempus Eliadian) would not be reduced, therefore, to a simple temporal stage prior to the subsequent ones, being above all substantially different in its innermost being: it is not, as Jünger says, simply "prehistory" and "ethnology", nor is it a "prius on a chronological level ", but rather a"deep layer of man","spiritual strength undivided"[Jünger p.104].

2. Accepting this starting point, the era of the "Third Sun" (increasingly advanced technology and agriculture, metallurgy, jewelry creation; population increase and the birth of territorial conflicts) would correspond to the Silver Age, in which men they were rich and lived in abundance, “yet they yearned for the innocence and contentment that were the true sources of human happiness in the previous age; and consequently, while living in lust and delights, they became overly overbearing, perennially dissatisfied, and forgot the gods to whom, in their certainty of prosperity and well-being, they denied the veneration due ”[Murray cit. in Donnelly p.205]. Hesiod conceives the age of silver not only as a simple qualitative decrease of the previous era; there is, as happens in all pachakuti, a radical change of being. So if in the golden age (which in the Hindu tradition corresponds to Satya-yuga, "the age of Being”) Men lived with the gods and had the nourishment without having to work the land, vice versa already with the age of Silver the situation changes radically: it seems that the gods, to say it with Jünger [p.132], have "hidden the nourishment and let the work begin, by plowing, writing and building solid dwellings ".

3. If in cosmogony the era of the "Fourth Sun" is described as an era of conflicts and quarrels, in which a population of giants dominates the weak, so is the Bronze Age of the ancient Hellenes (Hesiod says: "the painful works of Ares and the violence were close to their hearts") Was" a period of constant disputes and acts of violence. Instead of cultivated lands, of a life of peaceful occupations and regular habits, there came a day when reason was everywhere of the strongest and men, great and powerful as they were, they became physically exhausted ”[Murray cit. in Donnelly p.205]. According to Hesiod, these "men of bronze", powerful and terrible, devoted themselves solely to war, did not eat bread and their hearts were cold and hard as steel and terrified by their cruelty and physical strength. Their weapons were bronze as well as their houses: they did not know iron. Because of their own violence and arrogance, they perished and were swallowed up by Hades without a trace on this Earth. All these mythemes are nevertheless also found in the Andean narratives on the end of the era of the "Fourth Sun". Even the Nordic tradition recalls this Bronze Age; in the Edda [Volupsa, 46] we read: "Times of the ax and sword, times of the Wind, times of the Wolf, before the world collapses. No man spares the other".

4. The era of the "Fifth Sun", that is to say the historical (post-diluvian) era of the Incas, is finally equivalent to the Iiodean Iron Age (the era of the Preincas could perhaps be framed in this scheme as well as the Hesiodic "Age of Heroes", placed between that of Bronze and Iron), "in which weakened humanity had to toil to earn their bread and, busy earning, did their best to outdo each other ".

Amaru and the end of the cycle

To the same corpus of traditional teachings concerning the pachakuti the myth of the immense snake is also connected Amaru, dwelling in the bowels of the earth: "Amaru sleeps, but when it shakes it produces the earthquake that marks the end of a cycle, then the world returns to primordial darkness and the giants invade it to establish the kingdom of the living dead and the living pass into the regions of the dead, until the new sun rises ”[Polia p.78], with“ Sun ”traditionally meaning, as we have seen, cycle.

Curiously, the same myth is found, identical, on the other side of the world, in India, where, under the seven worlds of the underground kingdom of Patala, it was said to live Shesta, the serpent that supports the world: when it shakes one of its thousand heads, the earth trembles and at the end of every kalpas (ie every 4.320.000.000 years) the serpent writhes convulsively and destroys the world with fire [Kafton-Minkel p.63].

An extremely similar myth is also encountered in the Norse tradition, where it is spoken of Nidhogg, huge dragon that lives below the nine worlds, at the roots of theYggdrasil, which chews continuously. When the roots of the Cosmic Tree are completely cut off, the will come Ragnarokk, equivalent to Pachakuti of the Andean tradition.

Note how in these myths the symbolism of the snake first of all expresses its underground nature, or rather ultra-chthonic: it is always found below the three worlds (uranic, earthly, chthonic), or below the seven and nine realms of Indian and Norse mythologies. This mythical reptile is, in other words, the foundation of the Cosmic Tree: like the Atlas of Hellenic mythology, it is entrusted with the task of carrying the weight of the world on its shoulders.

Furthermore, the snake conveys in its symbolism the vision of the archaic peoples of a continuous transformation of the cosmos and of the world: as the reptile cyclically changes it changes, in the same way the world itself continually renews itself by destroying itself and then recreating itself. Hence the probable reason why three civilizations so distant in time and space such as the Hindu, Norse and Andean ones have resorted to the same symbol to explain what cannot be explained except by symbols.