THE GODS OF THE ANCIENT PERU The Andean gods have survived the Conquest. Neither the fury nor the zeal of those determinated to stamp out idolatry, nor the patient and tolerant missionary work that followed were able to wipe the ancient deities from living memory. Countenances flashing fearsome feline fangs or falcon eyes stare out from museum glass cases. They are nameless figures, although the sinuous snake forms and bolts of lighting they emit suggest they wielded exceptional powers, worthy of a Pachacamac, Inti or Wiracocha. Even today, the crosses rose on top of the highest peaks in the highlands, the coast or cloud forest point to the favorite spots of the ancient gods. The offerings to the earth goddess, called pagapus (quechua for payment to the gods) and various rites from patron saint festivals are often dedicated to them under the names of Christian saints. Against this backdrop, then, it is surprising that the elemental questions about the identity and characteristics of the gods in pre-Hispanic Peru should be difficult to answer for all and sundry -from historians, anthropologists and archeologists to students and tourists how many supreme gods were there in the Andes; one or several? Was there or was there not an Andean creator? How were the pantheons ranked? Was the Chimu religion similar to that of the Incas? THE MAKER, THE SUN AND WIRACOCHA As opposed to Mexico and the area under Mayan influence, no relatively objective history or testimony of the indigenous religions in Peru has endured intact until today. The vast majority of surviving chronicles were written with a concrete political or religious purpose. The works of Indian or mixed-blood writers underscored the wish to revindicate the Andean society's place amongst Christian nations, while most of the Spanish writings from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries functioned as guidebooks, dictionaries or instructions for Catholic priests. In Quechua, Aymara or Yunga for the central concepts of Christianity was much more important than the faithful and the impartial documentation of the indigenous cosmic vision. The stereotyped list of the temples of the Tawantinsuyo, copied down with few variations by several chroniclers, includes five names of supreme divinities with the Maker (Wiracocha Pachayachachi) at the head. Four of them are male and just one, the moon (Pasamama Quilla), was female. Recently, researches have agreed that the concept of the maker was added to the Cusco pantheon by the Catholic missionaries, who were driven on by the determination to prove that the belief in the True God and the Holy Trinity was present in Inca beliefs before the arrival of the Spaniards. In any case, there is a common link between the four supreme beings in Inca mythology that offers a clue to rediscovering the original essence of Quechua religious thinking . The Gods of the Sun (Apu Punchao), Water (Ticci Wiracocha), Thunder (Huanacauri), were portrayed on Earth in two incarnations with opposite natures. THE COSMOS FROM CUSCO'S POINT OF VIEW Why these gods were doubled up stems from the way that the Incas imagined the animated cosmos was organized. We are so used to the image of a round planet that we do not even begin to suspect to what degree the conclusion of the Greek writers was completely abstract for the inhabitants of the Peruvian highlands at the time of the Spanish Conquest. The metaphor of the disc floating above the ocean, or that of a globe surrounded by heavenly bodies could convince a nation of seafarers and astronomers living on the plains, but would be hard to assimilate by farmers and Andean shepherds. The world seen from Cusco's point of view is different: to the North and to the South, the highland landscape creates craggy horizons that unfold one after another into an unknown distance. To the East lies a green sea of jungle, and particularly in the rain season, a sea of clouds; to the West lies the infinite ocean, but it practically never rains there, and banks of fog shroud the coast during the dry season. So the Incas, the Earth appeared to be a square piece of land that floated between the sea and the sky. The Quechua-speaking peasants of Q'ero, in the upper reaches of Cusco, still use this metaphor and even craft the image into the decoration of their ceremonial weavings. The time that has been lived, each day, is also organized according to the dual logic of complementary opposing concepts; night follows day, the rains come after the dry season, harvest follows planting. A drawing by seventeenth century indigenous chronicler Guaman Poma de Ayala illustrates the fact these concepts still lived on well into colonial times. The Pontifical World takes the shape of a rectangle split into two. Above the highland landscape of Peru in upper Spain is lit up by the sun. Below, the artist imagined Castille as a plain wrapped in darkness; the sun would creep down to these lower reaches by the time the moon had risen over the ancient capital of the Tawantinsuyo. Cusco and Madrid lie in the middle of four walled cities that symbolize the principle of dividing territory into sections or suyus. CREATORS OR ANIMATORS? On the basis of readings of texts and images presented here, it is possible to try to separate the Andean cosmic vision and principles of Christian doctrine. There is no room in the Andean system for the figure of the transcendental god and the creation of the world from nothing. The sun, in its role as the supreme god of the Incas, is one of the two tangible manifestations for common mortals, and rules together with the three other deities in a cosmos that it did not create, as it is a substance like the cosmos itself. The gods were probably born along with the universe as essential elements. On the other hand, the power of each divinities is limited and even its ability to give life is restricted to a determined space and time and depends on the other divine forces of nature. The destiny of life depends equally on the amount of Illapa (rainfall), the water underground (Wiracocha) and the earth (Huanacauri) as well as the sun (Punchao). This life-giving energy, stored and controlled by each huaca or temple (the receptacle and material representation of a numen) in proportions according to rank, was called camak in Quechua. The camak appears to have been conceived according to the instinct of the Andean farmers as a unit of different interacting and necessary elements for life to reproduce. Consequently the nature of each of the supreme gods is complementary to the rest. One divinity may be understood as an aspect of another within the limits between powers and personalities cannot be clearly seen. The missionaries were helped in their task, as all they had to do was work along the lines of the Andean pseudo-trinity as a result of doubling up, and personify the source of the camak, identifying it with the Wiracocha.