The Wisdom of the Mallku Jaqe (Condor Man)

by the Colca Specialist

One day I had the oportunity of traveling with Guillermo Rendón which is not just a very famous mountainbiker but a well-known keeper of the old inca traditions. Grandson of a Qoqakawaq (One who sees through the Sacred Coca Leaves) Guillermo has inherited a vast knowledge about the inca traditions and ceremonials.Knowledge that put into practice turned him into one of the most famous sportsmen of the country.

Andean cosmovision according to him is a "way of life" not a trend,not a show, not a way to make money but a way to live life consciously in this world,a knowledge that is not provided in the schools.Neither in the universities.The knowledge they provide is just to make money but not to live life- Says Guillermo.

There are many people nowadays that speak a lot about the inca spirituality but they are far from the Truth. Those "teachers" or "Spiritual guides"are specialized just in the art of speaking and cheating people.

They repeat truths of others that never were put into practice. When you do that you become a liar- says Guillermo. The Condor is the master of Silence. Facts are more important than words. That is one of the most important teachings of this sacred totem.

Inca spirituality has become a trend specially in tourism. Tour guides from all Peru specially from Arequipa, Cusco and Puno have given themselves exagerated titles such as inca grandmasters among other titles that never existed in our tradition before. These titles are used skillfully by these fake inca masters in order to impress foreign girls to have sex, money and pleasure.You find them specially in discoteques or travel agencies.

They are not just the only ones because there are many spiritual inca masters from other countries specialized in the art of making money organizing trips to the spiritual sacred places and exploiting the locals too.With the money obtained from donations for the poor children, they built expensive hotels while the communas they work with are starving. That is the crude reality of this fake incas show.

Guillermo´s words are direct and sharp as knives but they were very clear. So the following article is a compilation of his words. I hope you like this article much. I really enjoyed transcribing this article which I know it is going to be very useful for all the spiritual seekers interested in the wisdom of the Incas.

The Colca Specialist

Everything is interconected,interrelationed and interdependant

The proposal and the practice of the Good Living come from the Andean cosmovision and they offer benefits to all Mankind.

We are going to share here our pacha (land),our time and space and all the knowledge from these torrent of waters and from the knowledge torrents of our grandmothers and grandparents.The wisdom of our grandparents is not only rational, it has the force provided by the experience,the clarity of the mind and the heart.

Modernity,development,humanism,anthropocentrism, the deterioration of our life and our life ways have taken all of us to new conditions of life. Now, more than ever stands up vigorously the voice of the ancient inca wisdom.We have to go towards something, towards anywhere. In Aymara we say Taki, the sacred way. Undoubtessly there appears the Allin Kawsay (quechua) or the Sumaq Qamaña (Aymara), The Good Living (english). That horizon allow us to reconstruct our force, our vitality, to know who we are, to know how do we live,to know which forces and who are coming with us.

Armony and Balance

To live good make us to reflection that we should live in armony and in balance. In balance with Mother Earth. Pachamama is not a planet, it is not the environment, it is our Mother Earth. To live in balance means to live in order with the cosmos, because the cosmos has cycles, rythms, living in armony with history means that we are in the Pachakuti or the reordering period, a period of the revitalization of the natural forces affected by the anti-natural occidental behavior Living good means to live in armony with all life cycles, to know that everything is interconnected, interrelationed and that everything is interdependent. Living good is to know that the deterioration of a species is the deterioration of the whole .The thoughts and the wisdom of our grandparents give us the clarity to see where our ways are taking us now. This Living Good wisdom doesn´t look for just the reconstruction of the political, social, economical powers but the reconstruction of life and the re- encountering with ourselves.

We are all Pachamama

We are Pachamama. We are children of the Mother Earth, we are children of the cosmos,by the way there is no dicotomy human-nature, we are nature, we are Pachamama, we are pachacamac, we are life.
By the way we are responsable too as farmers or breeders of Life. In this new conditions, to reconstruct our identity means to come back to basic conventional principles, not human but natural. We have to take the nature´s ways. It is necessary to recover our wisdom, to come back to our ancestors, to retake the sacred way again. It doesn´t mean to comeback but to reconstruct us in the principles and values that have no time, no space.

To live in balance with who? With all the forms of existence. Everything is alive we say in Aymara and in Quechua. The mountains, the rivers, the insects, the trees, the rocks, everything is alive and those elements are part of the perfect balance of life. In order top reconstruct the Living Good we have to live in balance with all forms of existence and not just with the elements we see but with those we cannot see too like our ancestors and grandparents because they are with us too.

Naturalization process

It means to come out from the monocultural and uninational , to come out from the mental monocultivation. The same way monocultivation has deteriorated the vitality and the fertility of Mother Earth, we should come out from the mental monocultivation that has damaged our natural capacity that each one of us has. We are coming out in the shape of plurinational states and leaving behind the colonial and the republican states that have sunken us in an individualist humanist way of living.

When we speak about the Living Good Way we are speaking about a naturalization process and not just about humanization, because in Occident Humanization means that the Human Being is the Ruler of Nature and Creation, and all the living beings are seen as objects.
Living Good means to enter in that process of naturalization, it means to come back to our nature knowing that evrytjing is alive,interconnected and that everything is interindependant.

It means also to leave the occidental premise which considers that winning is all and that provokes and disloyal and dishonest competition between Human Beings and not only with other human beings but with all types of existence. Living Good means to understand that if one wins or loses, we all have won or we all have lost. Living Good means to check the horizon we are taking and to realize that the human life is not the only parameter ,rationalism is not the only way of understanding life. In aymara we say without losing our head let´s walk the sacred way of the heart. Opening ourselves to life means that life has the tools to reconstruct life itself.We have to have faith in life. We have to trust that in Life´s natural ways are the solution to our deteriorated way of living.

Reconstructing our Identity

The humanist, individualist,clasist,equalizer and predator is the one we are speaking about. It has its origins in a specific cosmovision that is machist, individualist and man-centered.In order to reconstruct the culture of Life in the Horizon of the Living Good we have to reconstruct our original cosmovision and that measn to recover our lost identity. It means to make ourselves the fundamental questions: who are we? What kind of heart do we really have? Who were our ancestors and which force they used to walk? This is the time of the Pachacuti or the Reordering Period we spoke about before.
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There is a difference between The living Good and The Well living. The second option the Well Living means to win the others all the time, to live like a parasite on expenses of the others, to accumulate all the time without restrictions and to have power to control and rule over the others.

The Living Good is just the opposite. It means to recover the balance and the equilibrium, it is the sacred armony of life.If we walk the way of the Living Good our lives will have a meaning, a direction, Our lifes in that moment become sacred and our lives turn into blessings. All the living elements live in Ayni or reciprocity.Ayni or reciprocity is the consciousness of life, is the conscioussnesss that everything is interrelated and nobody lives for itself. The tree doesn´t live for itself neither the bees, the ants or the mountains.They are complements of others and they live in a permanent reciprocity and that is call Ayni in quechua language.

Time for the Pachakuti

The question is What do we live for? According to the occidental vision we turned into a virus that is killing life in its whole without knowing that the deterioration of any type of species,big or little means the deterioration of all of us and life too.
Nowadays our generation awakens to the call of a generational duty, we have to know that we are just individuals, we are the eyes of our ancestors, we are the voice of our grandparents and we are the action and the hope of them too. We are the seed of those that will come after us, the seed that will contribute in order to make the life culture stronger. In this movement when the anti natural ways are dominating, the natural forces become stronger and revitalized. That the time we are living, the Pachakuti or the re-ordering of Life.

By the way ,all this Living Good wisdom it has to turn into our new horizon, our new way of living and it is showing to all of us the greatness of our ancestors, now reflected in the hope of this new generation. Living Good to give us back to ourselves the balance and the armony,it is to understand that the Mother Earth has cycles so we have to learn when to put the seeds and when we have to crop, it means to abandon the mental monocultivation that has damaged our lives the same way it has damaged the fertility of Mother Earth and this will allow us to see the diversity of Life

Scientists uncover Inca Children´s countdown to sacrifice

Craig Brierley

Hair samples from naturally preserved child mummies discovered at the world's highest archaeological site in the Andes have provided a startling insight into the lives of the children chosen for sacrifice. Researchers funded by the Wellcome Trust used DNA and stable isotope analysis to show how children as young as 6-years old were "fattened up" and taken on a pilgrimage to their death.

A team of scientists led by Dr Andrew Wilson at the University of Bradford analysed hair samples taken from the heads and from small accompanying bags of four mummies found in the Andes. These included the 15-year old "Llullaillaco Maiden" and the 7-year old "Llullaillaco Boy" whose frozen remains were found in 1999 at a shrine 25m from the summit of Mount Llullaillaco, a 6,739m volcano on the border of Argentina and Chile. The Maiden, described as a "perfect mummy" went on display for the first time last month in Salta, northwest Argentina.

Dr Wilson and colleagues studied DNA and stable light isotopes from the hair samples to offer insight into the lives of these children. Unlike samples of bone collagen and dental enamel, which give an average reading over time, hair growth allows scientists to capture a unique snapshot at different intervals over time, helping build up a picture of how the children were prepared for sacrifice over a period of months. The results are published today in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA.

"By examining hair samples from these unfortunate children, a chilling story has started to emerge of how the children were 'fattened up' for sacrifice," says Dr Wilson, a Wellcome Trust Bioarchaeology Fellow.

It is believed that sons and daughters of local rulers and local communities were chosen for sacrifice, possibly as a way for the ruling Incas to use fear to govern their people. Some girls, know as acllas, were selected from around the age of four and placed under the guardianship of priestesses; some would later be offered as wives to local nobles, others consecrated as priestesses and others offered as human sacrifices.

By analysing stable isotopes found in the hair samples, Dr Wilson and colleagues were able to see that for much of the time prior to sacrifice, the children were fed a diet of vegetables such as potato, suggesting that they came from a peasant background. Stable isotopes of carbon, nitrogen, oxygen and hydrogen from an individual's diet are deposited in their hair where they can remain unchanged over thousands of years.

However, in the twelve months prior to sacrifice, the isotopic evidence shows that the Maiden’s diet changed markedly to one that was enriched with plants such as maize, considered an "elite" food, and protein, likely to have come from charki (dried llama meat).

"Given the surprising change in their diets and the symbolic cutting of their hair, it appears that various events were staged in which the status of the children was raised" says Dr Wilson. "In effect, their countdown to sacrifice had begun some considerable time prior to death."

Changes in the isotopes in the hair sample in the final 3-4 months suggest that the children then began their pilgrimage to the mountains, likely from Cuzco, the Inca capital. Whilst scientists cannot be certain how the children died, it is believed that they were first given maize beer (chicha) and coca leaves, possibly to alleviate the symptoms of altitude sickness and also to inure them to their fate. This theory is supported by evidence of coca metabolites that the researchers found in the victims' hair, and in particularly high concentrations in the Maiden's.

"It looks to us as though the children were led up to the summit shrine in the culmination of a year-long rite, drugged and then left to succumb to exposure," says co-author Dr Timothy Taylor, also of the University of Bradford. "Although some may wish to view these grim deaths within the context of indigenous belief systems, we should not forget that the Inca were imperialists too, and the treatment of such peasant children may have served to instil fear and facilitate social control over remote mountain areas.”

Previous research has shown that Llullaillaco Boy appears to have met a particularly horrific end. His clothes were covered in vomit and diarrhoea, features indicative of a state of terror. The vomit was stained red by the hallucinogenic drug achiote, traces of which were also found in his stomach and faeces. However, his death was likely caused by suffocation, his body apparently having been crushed by his textile wrapping having been drawn so tight that his ribs were crushed and his pelvis dislocated.