The Legend of Viracocha

In the high plains of the Andes mountains, where the air is cold and the land is dry, there is a great lake. The waters are so large that they stretch as far as the eye can see, as if you are standing before an ocean. This lake is what gives life to all around it, sending water into the ground and up to all the plants and animals that need it. It is called Titicaca.

Before the days of the Inca, there were no men on the earth. It was a cold and foreboding land, where only wild, savage creatures roamed, in constant conflict, killing and eating each other and the weaker things of the land. It was always dark, for the sun and the moon had not yet been created. No stars shone in the eternal night, and low clouds hung near to the wasteland that covered the plains.

From the unknown depths of Titicaca, there arose a great being. The waters churned and boiled, and great winds whipped up large waves that crashed over the land. From the midst of this turbulence, Viracocha emerged from the frigid waters and stepped onto the earth. He was twice as tall as any man and was powerfully built. He had pure white skin and a great beard made of water-rushes. Every creature on the earth trembled at his sight, and the terrible monsters that roamed the face of the land fled forever from his sight. He stretched forth his mighty arm, not built of skin or flesh, but stronger than rock. Raising his fist to the sky, a great light exploded into view, its bright rays burning through the choking clouds and illuminating the barren landscape. Thus Viracocha created the sun.

With a wave of his hand, he sent the sun tumbling out of the sky, towards the horizon, and the land began to grow dark once again. With his other hand outstretched, he punched the sky, and created the moon, which glowed more softly than the sun. This too he waved away, and he sent the lunar orb to chase the sun back into the sky. Now today we see how the moon is always chasing the sun through the sky. Sometimes it gets very close, and every so often it even catches it.

Viracocha next turned his attention to the ground on which he stood and grabbed a handful of sand and pebbles. He looked back at the sky and threw the sand as hard as he could. Each little grain moved so swiftly through the air that it tore a hole in the night, and tiny pinpricks of light shone through every time the sun fell back down. So he created the stars.

Looking around, Viracocha grew dissatisfied with the emptiness of the land, and so he resolved to populate it with men. He gathered the largest stones that he could and brought them to a place called Huayllay. There he spent days diligently carving all manner of men and animals from the stones. At first, his creations were not perfect, so he left some as rocks without giving them life. These you can see today.

After carving for many days and creating many men, he bid them to follow him to a land that he had prepared already for the race of humans. It was called Cusco, where the sun meets the earth. He organized the men into families, and created one man, Allca Vica, to rule over them all. Viracocha then returned to Lake Titicaca, where he resides today, giving life to all the land and watching over the men he created. Allca Vica and his people had many children, and these became the Inca that ruled over the land for thousands of years.

Author’s Note: This story originally comes from The Mythologies of Ancient Mexico and Peru, compiled by Lewis Spence. The Inca had a number of different and often conflicting mythologies, including this one. My previous story focused on the origin of the Inca as having descended directly from sun gods, but not all Inca believed or practiced the same religion. In this story, the sun is only a creation of Viracocha, a more ancient and powerful deity than what is portrayed in my earlier stories. Due to the nature of the Spanish conquest, it is very difficult to ascertain what the “real” Incans actually believed. Only stories like this are left over and it is impossible to know how widespread or accepted it really was.

The original version of this tale was only a short paragraph, so I added in some additional details. I liked the idea of the moon chasing the sun and even catching it for a bit with the eclipses, so although I do not know how the Incans actually viewed that phenomena, I included it anyway. We do know that Viracocha was white and had a large beard, but nearly nothing else is recorded because apparently, he spent too much time at the bottom of Lake Titicaca. Lake Titicaca is the highest navigable lake in the world, and is also the largest in South America and one of the largest in the world. It is easy to ascribe many mythological features to it, especially its depth, which was not known until later in the 19^th century.

I have been to Huayllay, a large rock formation, and was impressed by the uniform nature of the rocks and the shapes they formed. I included it as the site for his carving of the human race, although there was no location specified, but it was an amazing location and certainly inspired the imagination.

Image Note: A picture I took from Huayllay. It is a large formation that covers several miles, with hundreds of tall rock spires jutting out and covering the land. It does truly look like a giant of some kind deposited the rocks there after carving something.