Tales from the Island of Serendip 4 4

[Flex Mentallo]

The equally remarkable site at Ollantaytambo serves an astronomical purpose.

 

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It is laid out in the shape of a llama with the head to the left, and high up on the mountain, a stone enclosure called the "eye of the llama" is precisely situated to catch the first rays of the solstice sun.

 

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At Ollantaytambo too is a massive carved profile of a human face. The Viracochan image, which is 500 feet tall, is on the side of the mountain directly across from the large network of agricultural terraces.

 

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Viracocha created the universe, sun, moon, and stars, time (by commanding the sun to move over the sky) and civilization itself. Viracocha was worshipped as god of the sun and of storms. He was represented as wearing the sun for a crown, with thunderbolts in his hands, and tears descending from his eyes as rain.

 

[Flex Mentallo]

Accustomed to the concept of monumental physical structures from Antiquity, it is natural to respond with skepticism to the idea that the Inca consciously manipulated the natural formations of the landscape of the sacred valley to create virtual structures that were not even meant to be seen except by the initiates - and even then only from a specific angle.

 

 

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Perhaps the most astonishing of all these virtual structures is the pyramid of dawn.

 

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At sunrise on the June solstice the rising sun precisely illuminates the "window" at the "base". (Remember, these are in reality flat terraces!)

 

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From there it illuminates a path straight up the mountain to a sacred temple.

 

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And at the winter solstice, the opposite corner is illumined. The structure exists to capture these moments. And this was because the rays of the sun were the bridge that lead the souls of the dead to the Milky Way, from which they would be reincarnated following their journey. What is captured is therefore by nature evanescent.

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

 

 

Well, Hollywood's capacity to distort the innate truths of other cultures is a fair reflection of Western Society's assumptions about them:that the Inca hoarded gold and sacrificed their children to achieve power on Earth.

 

The truth could hardly be more different. In 1432 the Inca priest astronomers could see that a predictable precessional event loomed in the future, only this time it was the gates to the land of the dead which were about to slam shut. It was this predictable event which gave rise to prophecy. Since the foundations of Andean religion rested upon ritual interchange with the ancestors at December solstice, the closing of the "gate," if taken literally, would indeed bode the end of everything.

 

According to Dr William Sullivan, the Inca Empire was conceived and formed for the sole purpose of stopping this event from happening.

[Flex Mentallo]

"The Inca Empire was an experiment in sympathetic magic, designed to stop time in the sense of precessional motion. The primary means for achieving this end were the ritual uses of warfare and of human sacrifice. Since each tribe in the Empire had from the most ancient times considered itself descended from a particular star or constellation, the Incas offered a yearly sacrifice of a child from every tribe in order to send emissaries back to the stars with a single message: "May the earth not turn over, may the sun and moon stay young, may there be peace." a plea to the creator to keep open the bridgehead to tradition that spanned the Milky Way."

Dr William Sullivan

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

About the year 1432 the father of the first Inca Emperor foretold that after five generations of Kings the Empire and its religion would be utterly destroyed. The fifth and last king to rule the Empire unmolested was Huayna Capac, father of Atahuallpa.

 

The empire was less than a century old when it was invaded by a handful of Spanish conquistadors. Within 50 years 5 million Inca were dead.

 

Nothing but the closing scene of a tragedy long since foretold in the stars.

 

 

Edited April 21, 2014 by Flex Mentallo

[Flex Mentallo]

"May the earth not turn over, may the sun and moon stay young, may there be peace."

 

Momia Juanita is the well-preserved frozen body of an Inca girl who was killed as an offering to the Inca gods sometime between 1450 and 1480, at approximately 11–15 years old. She was discovered on Mount Ampato (part of the Andes cordillera) in southern Peru in 1995.Juanita was found frozen and thus her remains and garments were not desiccated like that of mummies found in other parts of the world. Juanita was wrapped in a brightly colored burial tapestry (or "aksu"). Her head was adorned with a cap made from the feathers of a red macaw, and she wore a colorful woolen alpaca shawl fastened with a silver clasp. She was fully clothed in garments resembling the finest textiles from the Inca capital city of Cuzco. This, in addition to evidence of excellent health, suggests that she may have come from a noble Cuzco family. The body caused a sensation in the scientific world due to its well-preserved condition. In 1995, Time magazine chose it as one of the world's top ten discoveries.

[Flex Mentallo]

I have been waiting for another addition to this thread, the only topic I have in my watched topics list.

It's always worth it.

Thank you so much, and Happy Easter back to you.

 

Many thanks!

 

I hope I can continue to sustain your interest.

 

If I were to critique my own thread I'd say one area of dissatisfaction for me so far is that I don't think I've properly addressed the way in which comic books - especially in the Golden Age - are a form of modern myth making.

 

It's easy to make a link between Superman and Greek Mythology - heck, the comics did that themselves.

 

What I am more interested in are the underlying resonances. Mythology is fixed, myth-making is anything but! And that goes way deeper than Star Wars can touch.

 

The active process reflects the collective mindset of the times.

 

At the same time I find I'm irresistibly drawn to eccentric characters - people who tend to stand outside the mainstream and go off in search of deeper truths. Like Maria Reiche. Or Werner Herzog.

 

Or Mulder and Sculley.

 

(There is a very fine line between vision and madness!)

 

 

 

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Alternative Histories

 

 

 

 

 

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Sedentary communities formed when humanity invented crops sometime between the hunter-gatherers of the Cro- Magnon era 20,000 years ago and the founding of cities.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Jericho is often called the first city. Archaeologists have unearthed the remains of more than 20 successive settlements in Jericho the first of which dates back 11,000 years (9000 BC).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

At Çatalhöyük in Northern Turkey, mound like communities over 8000 strong were formed around 7500 BC which seem strange today.

 

 

 

 

 

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There were no roads, and living abodes were accessed from holes in the ceiling.

 

 

 

 

 

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The bodies of deceased family members were buried under the floors of these residential spaces, which may suggest ancestor worship.