Autor: > Javier Lajo

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Autor: > Javier Lajo 

Elementos para una Teoría del Derecho Indígena [2009-07-16] 

El socialismo andino-amazónico [2009-07-02] 

El wamán, el puma y el amaru [2008-07-15] 

Sobre las cumbres, “Correita” y el Estado plurinacional [2008-05-21] 

La escuela indígena de la “Qhapaq Kuna” [2007-01-26] 

Descolonizar la mente [2006-12-11] 

Yanantinkuy y Ch’ekkalluwa [2006-11-16] 

RegionAndina: Solari: la filosofía mestiza aculturada [2006-10-25] 

Peru: Pachatússan: vínculo o “viga maestra” de la existencia [2006-10-24] 

Peru: Mi patria abierta de piernas [2006-07-28] 

Peru: El triunfo de Alan García [2006-06-13] 

La estrategia "cocalera" de EEUU [2005-10-10] 

El resurgimiento indígena es invencible [2005-04-18] 

Una visión indígena de la violencia occidental [2004-12-01] 

Tilali, Ayo, Ayo Ilave: Fronteras de Civilización [2004-08-23] 

Qhapaq Ñan es el camino [2004-06-30] 

Bolivia,Ecuador,Peru: "Conflictos étnicos" son la base de los problemas de 

gobernabilidad en Ecuador, Bolivia y Perú [2004-06-11] 

Peru: El racismo estructural peruano [2004-05-17] 

Peru: ILLAWI: Entre el Tiranicidio y la Revolución Nacional [2004-04-28] 

Peru: Cuántos somos y cómo estamos? [2004-04-05] 

Qhapaq Ñan: La Ruta Inka de Sabiduría [2004-03-30] 

La independencia traicionada: la lucha continua [2004-01-27] 

Peru: La “invisibilidad indígena” en el Perú y la acción disociadora del antropologismo- 

USA [2003-10-17] 

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Quienes somos | Área Mujeres | Minga Informativa de Movimientos Sociales 

- Fuente: http://alainet.org/active/show_author.phtml?autor_apellido=Lajo&autor_nombre=Javier

Javier Lajo 

El Waman, el Puma y el Amaru 

Recuperemos el sumac kausay -el vivir bien-, por un "Orden Andino" 

En anteriores artículos nos hemos referido a la Ruta Inka o Qhapaq Ñan, como el "Camino de los Justos", o 

escuela de sabiduría andina, en su profundidad ontológica, es decir trataba de explicar su contenido, claro, 

desde la visión de los Puquina que es mi pueblo, y solo en el artículo titulado: ¿Imaninantataq Sumaq 

Kawsay?, o ¿Qué es pues, el Vivir Bien?, he intentado explicar sus múltiples relaciones con otros aspectos 

de la cultura andina, como es el caso del "sumac kausay", que tal como lo están usando en los debates 

constitucionales 1 en Bolivia y Ecuador, solo en planos de la economía, o de la política, o de la ética, no 

debiera ser reducido a ninguno de estos planos, pues abarca, como lo vamos a comentar, el conjunto de los 

temas de la sabiduría de nuestros pueblos andinos. Y también porque para el éxito de nuestros pueblos en 

las luchas actuales, no bastará que agitemos solamente el Sumac Kausay en forma aislada, sino dentro de 

la recuperación del "equilibrio h'ampi" o re-emprendimiento del camino de los Qhapaq o "camino de los 

justos", método general o programa para recuperar el equilibrio del mundo, u "Orden Andino", pues el 

Sumac Kausay esta complementado por el Allin Munay, el Allin Yachay y el Allin Ruway que 

componen el camino del Waman, el Puma y el Amaru. 

La escuela indígena del Qhapaq Ñan 

Por: Javier Lajo 

IMANINANTATAQ SUMAQ KAWSAY? 

En su propuesta del 2 de octubre del 2006, el hermano Evo Morales, Presidente de todos 

los indígenas del continente, hablando sobre el ‘Sumaq Kausay’, dice: Construyamos una 

verdadera comunidad de naciones sudamericana para ‘vivir bien’; y luego define: “Vivir 

bien, es pensar no sólo en términos de ingreso per-cápita sino de identidad cultural, de 

comunidad, de armonía entre nosotros y con nuestra madre tierra”. Y en otra parte 

remacha: “Nosotros -los indígenas- no creemos en la línea del progreso y el desarrollo 

ilimitado a costa del Otro y de la naturaleza... tenemos que complementarnos... Debemos 

compartir”. Esto para muchos que subestiman la grandeza y potencia de nuestra cultura 

andina puede parecer..., ¿Poesía indígena?, ¿Romanticismo?, ¿Buenos deseos?...


Principios de sabiduría indígena - (I Parte) 

PACHATÚSSAN: VÍNCULO O “VIGA MAESTRA” DE LA EXISTENCIA 

Dejamos a los lectores que abunden y profundicen sobre la construcción u obtención 

simple de la Cruz del Tiwanaku, en el libro “Qhapaq Ñan, la Ruta Inka de Sabiduría”, solo 

reafirmaremos acá que nuestro símbolo principal de la cultura andina o “Tawa Paqa” 

(conocida vulgarmente como “Chakana”), es producto de “las relaciones de 

complementación y proporcionalidad entre el círculo y el cuadrado que representan los 

símbolos de la paridad cósmica primordial: Pachamama y Pachatata, respectivamente...”. 

Principios de sabiduría indígena (II Parte) 

Y A N A N T I N K U Y Y C H ´ E K K A L L U W A 


En el libro “Qhapaq Kuna, mas allá de la civilización” (J. Lajo, Cusco 2002) hemos explicado que 

en el mundo andino el origen de todo lo existente es una “Paridad”, es decir en el principio 

cosmogónico hay dos elementos o esencias diferentes, y allí citamos al Inka Garcilaso cuando 

escribe sobre el primer diálogo intercultural del Inka Atahualpa con Valverde. El Inka quiere 

entender la lógica o “razón” de los “wiracochas”; y fuerza el traslado a su lógica tetramétrica 

cuando dice: “...el Dios tres y uno, que son cuatro... por ventura ¿No es el mismo que nosotros 

llamamos Pachacamac y Viracocha?”, claramente el Inka hacia alusión a su “Madre y Padre” 

cosmogónicos. Esto ratifica nuestra hipótesis inicial: En el mundo indígena todo es par o se da por 

parejas, lo que se presenta como impar (o “ch’ulla en Puquina) existe solo en apariencia y 

transitoriamente. Pero como se ha cuestionado tanto la idoneidad de Garcilaso de la Vega, para 

hablar de nuestra cultura andina, debemos apoyarnos en otros recursos idiomáticos para apoyar 

nuestra tesis. 


Principios de sabiduría indígena - (III Parte) 

EL DIOS “I” DE LOS PUQUINAS Y LOS PACHAKUTIS 

“...los pueblos amerindios tienen un mejor conocimiento de 

los cambios y cataclismos de la tierra desde el comienzo de 

los tiempos.” 

Vine Deloria Jr. < 

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En el mundo andino esta aun vigente la “aspiración” de re-ligarse con la Pachamama a 

través de re-equilibrar al mundo a partir del equilibrio de la pareja humana (expresado en 

el “ídolo” Puquina de Illawi), y de esta con la comunidad-sociedad y finalmente con la

naturaleza, es decir la sociedad Inka y la cultura andina en general, no sólo habrían 

querido “monitorear” el ángulo de incidencia de los rayos solares sobre la tierra, a través 

del sistema de “Intiwatanas” construidos a lo largo del Qhapaq Ñan, como línea recta 

geodésica, cual “sistema radiestésico” hemisférico; sino que queda registro de haber 

habido la “intención” de controlar [1] o re-establecer el ángulo óptimo del eje terrestre, a 

través de lo que llamaremos el “vínculo privilegiado” del ser humano con la naturaleza. 

Esta forma cuasi-mística y particular de “re-ligare”, de nuestra cultura andina, es la que 

explicaría la presencia y características de un “fundador” paradigmático, “el maestro 

inconforme”: Tunupa Wiracocha, el “Hacedor y criador” del mundo, aquel que “... por 

(eso) su actuar en el pasado se ofrece imperfecto o defectuoso, y sólo en cuanto rectifica 

y perfecciona... su obra, es que adquiere la nota esencial más importante que es la de 

poder y mando de todo lo existente” [2] (Rivara, 2000: I: 114). 

Principios de sabiduría indígena - Epílogo 

LA CRUZ DE TIWANAKU Y “EL HOMBRE DE VITRUBIO” 


La sabiduría occidental como la riqueza principal de sus pueblos y culturas, ha sido como toda 

riqueza, “patrimonializada” por sociedades secretas, para administrarla insanamente como arma de 

dominación y depredación de ciertos humanos sobre la humanidad, su filosofía, que es su forma 

vulgarizada de “hacer y enseñar sabiduría” es “comida para cerdos” en comparación con lo que 

guardan “ciertas sectas” pervertidas, que no imparten este conocimiento o “sabiduría”, (creemos 

que) mas por una incapacidad “didáctica”, que por mezquindad humana. Daremos a manera de 

epílogo de nuestra serie de artículos sobre los principios de sabiduría indígena, un ejemplo de cómo 

“se vincula” nuestra sabiduría ancestral de los andes, con algunos de los símbolos que en Occidente 

distinguen este manejo “esotérico” de la sabiduría ancestral de la humanidad. 

Comunidad Internacional de las Naciones Originarias 

A W I Y A L A 

Acceder Actividad reciente del sitio 

- Fuente: http://sites.google.com/site/machaqmara/javierlajo 

Qhapaq Ñan: The Inka Path of Wisdom 

Javier Lajo, 2007007

This is a book whose apparent focus on the past and past times should not confuse us. By speaking 

to us of Andean culture and thought, it situates these and their peoples in a time when there is no 

defeated, nor has been a conquered. Its aim is to turn our subjectivity upside down, liberating it 

from the influence of negative and positive valuations with which the Andean has been reduced to a 

ruined, decrepit place of the archaic, preferring the domination of the other and the foreign above 

what is its own and what is genuine. 




Qhapaq Ñan:The Inka Path of Wisdom 

Prologue 


Javier Lajo, 2007 

Those who cannot understand will die.. 

Those who can understand will live. 

Manuscript from the Chilam Balam 

Prologue 

José Mendívil Nina 

Investigator of the Institute 

of Science and Technology 

This is a book whose apparent focus on the past and past times should not confuse us. By 

speaking to us of Andean culture and thought, it situates these and their peoples in a time 

when there is no defeated, nor has been a conquered. Its aim is to turn our subjectivity 

upside down, liberating it from the influence of negative and positive valuations with 

which the Andean has been reduced to a ruined, decrepit place of the archaic, preferring 

the domination of the other and the foreign above what is its own and what is genuine. 

It is quite difficult to find predecessors to this book that similarly subscribe in the sense of its reflections.

Outside the Andean world, very few Peruvian writers have insinuated the importance of Andean culture in 

solving long-held structural problems of the nation and the identity of the Peruvian people. But in their 

sympathies, they do not leave out expressing their own prejudices and doubts about its affinity with the west. 

The Qhapaq Ñan does not doubt – it bursts with relevance in the now, taking the place of books like: Perú: 

Problema y Posibilidad by Jorge Basadre, Buscando un Inca: Identidad y Utopía en Los Andes by Alberto 

Flores Galindo, or El Nacimiento de una Utopía by Manuel Burga. And more still, it makes us feel the void 

left by J.C. Mariategui in his «Siete Ensayos» on what is the Indian? What is his culture? Is he just a 

problem? 

Perú: Problema y Posibilidad served to help us realize the limits of indigenism, that vindicating the Indian 

does not lead to true liberation from the internal colonialism that oppresses him, and is not possible without 

a precise understanding of Andean culture. Buscando un Inca and El Nacimiento de una Utopia propose to 

liberate us from the influence of indigenism, yet admit that they still cannot give us definitions of what are 

Andean and Andean culture, one just as important as Greek and Roman for its contributions to human 

civilization. Flores Galindo’s objective is not what his title suggests, given that he confirms it is not an Inka he 

seeks. Rather, he tries to open up the national imagination to a different order, one that motivates the rebirth 

of the Peruvian nation and its identity – beginning with a reappraisal of the Andean utopia. This order 

distinguishes itself from the western European and the North American, instead serving the realization of the 

Peruvian, its own utopia, and our own modernity set free from the negation of the Andean. 

These are books of an ambiguous subjectivity that waver between loyalty to the western and sympathy for the 

Andean, but that relate Andean insurgencies from Juan Santos Atahualpa and Tupac Amaru to Jose María 

Arguedas. This surreptitiously aims to break us from false idols of criolism, especially those most decrepit 

that preach the integration, civilization, and ‘inclusion’ of the vindicated Indian. These books displace the 

ideal creole and Lima resident from the center of the national imagination in a republic with few to no 

Indians. And they succeed in putting the Andean at the center of nation and identity, asking all Peruvians: 

What is Andean? But they have no answers. They know that the answers are not found in history or 

anthropology. They know the answers will come only from what is genuinely Andean. 

Qhapaq Ñan is a book with coherent and systematic answers to this question. It is a bridging book that 

extends outwards from the Andean world. And it does not do so by proposing we attain a common space of 

«encounter,» that of tinkuy andino, of mutual benefit between what we have of Andean and western, which 

until now has been preferred by essentialized spirits, divided, and ambiguous. It suggests we reconstruct our 

subjectivity to end the ambiguity that perverts it, and also to dispossess ourselves of the influence of that 

great lie that made us believe we, too, would be westerners and not Andean. 

Qhapaq Nan develops a succinct and unexpected critique radically distinct from western philosophy – as 

much from the west’s manifested sense as from its cleverly-masked non-sense. It takes advantage of the 

uncertainty given to us by the modernity radicalized by Habermas, Ralws, or Sen, and the postmodern 

disenchantment of western society that guises itself with spells and fables on difference according to the 

ideas of Lyotard, Vattimu, or Zizek. The book teaches us the forms of Andean thought, like complementary 

parity or yanantin, proportional confrontation or tinkuy, interconnectedness or the tawa-chacana Andean 

cosmovision, and the support beam of existence or Pachatússan. Through these teachings – and what it 

baptizes balanced thought – it acts as if to con us into believing that by showing the forms of Andean thought 

returning to pure cultural forms, the Andean past would be reborn and the Andean present would cease to 

be. 

Qhapaq Ñan bears the arms of the Qhapaq Kuna, the Andean School, of the pre-Inka lineage of the just and 

wise, of the upright, virtuous, and noble; and the resounding echoes reach us provoking the almost 

inexorable return of the will of the Andean man who has learned to endure and wait over time. These are 

arms of knowledge belonging to the amautas who knew the secret of life and of walking with uprightness 

along the line of truth – something so contrary to our governments today – achieving h’ampi balance and its 

conservation. This is the wisdom of the runas of Andean culture who knew how to tie down the angle of 

occurrence of the sun over the earth, how to fasten the solar star to the line that guards and powers life 

throughout the Earth.

The archaic images are meant to give us a fairer understanding of Andean culture and of balanced thought to 

differentiate it from western logos. The Andean iconography in the book captures our attention, altering our 

perceptions and in them our intimacy with the pre-Inka and Inka. They bring a subversive presence into our 

self-consciousness, a presence we believed dead, submissive, and inert – like museum relics that hint of a 

glorious past but have been cast away and are satisfactory only to another’s glance. The iconography incites 

recovery of a culture that has not exhausted its vitality to reassert itself within the nation from the origin its 

cultural differences. 

These images alter our subjectivity from a place of wisdom and the tongues of the ancient Andean peoples: 

Puquinas, Quechuas, and Aymaras – master architects of the Qhapaq Ñan, name and mythological road with 

an allegorical significance that speaks to what is real and meaningful in the origins of our culture. This 

culture has not failed to be contemporary, and in its daily efforts, in touch with its origins, holds the power to 

pronounce a different present in which the Andean and western concur in the concert of a new Andean 

order. 

Its name announces that the Amaru Runa, the myth of the anaconda men in the imagination of the Quichwa 

peoples of Putumayo, have come back to travel the path of Andean wisdom and gain understanding of the 

status of the world’s h’ampi balance; and, as indicated in the epigraph beside the book’s name, they intend to 

spread the distinction of a wise and just civilization, capable of offering an order distinct from the western 

civilization in which we live with anguish and uncertainty. Qhapaq Ñan holds the power of the ancient 

Andean symbology in the hopeful presence of the altiplano idol of Illawi, the same icon as the Pachacama of 

the coast, idols that represent the singularity of this culture and of its origins in a pair of entities, 

complementary beings that occur in the uniqueness of their reproductive parity, of human life, and nature, in 

the act of continually giving birth to life. 

Qhapaq Ñan tells us that the Andean being is the human pair, that of existential parity, existing as a being 

neither divided nor inclined to let itself submit to the existential anguishes that belong to western modernity; 

parity that holds life fastened or tied down by mythological serpents that protectively envelop the existential 

pair submerged in the ecstasy of their union, that shelter the mythological pair in the creative moment of life 

and culture, in the act of creating life, giving and reproducing it. This is a couple that look with eyes turned 

toward us in the continuous act of the reproduction of life, from the absolute place of origins and of culture. 

Their eyes incite us to internalize their contemplation, to share the enjoyment of ecstasy complete in life, 

twisting our subjectivity accustomed to look with disdain on the Andean past, altering our perception of the 

Andean, as though the face that looks from the past depresses us without wanting to. Now that their eyes are 

our eyes, the eyes of a different outlook and introspection, it is as if in this inward glance there exists neither 

time nor space for negative spirits, for the pain, the death, and the grief; this new look comes solely from the 

place of union of the original pair, an origin common in all cultural myths. 

This look radiates amazement for the act itself, which is pleasurable for the flight of the mythological couple 

who go creating life throughout the world – as serpents seem to come forth from the man’s head and the 

woman’s hair resembles the wings of the condor. She sits with her hands inside those of the man symbolizing 

the creative act of the culture from the same center of life and nature, in a place that chooses the Andean 

culture, and that has as its only limit the pleasant outlook of its origins, that of our outlook. 

The balanced thought or qhapaq thought bursts forth overcoming the vulgar place imposed by anthropology 

and ethnography that in studying the Andean man in his habitat considered his cultural emblem to be the 

good use of natural resources. What is Andean balanced thought? And the answers return from our cultural 

origins surrounded with the textual colorfulness of terms like yanan-tinkuy, tawaphaqa, pachatussán, 

ch’ekkalluwa, Illawi and Pachakamac that come like phantoms to repossess us and occupy their rightful 

place, that insinuate an existential superiority or of life before the Baconian subject, the modern subject 

divided between the res cogitans and the res extensa; a subject separated from the world that he has made 

spectral and that – to survive – knows he must return and view the earth through the look of the Andean 

man, of the mythological and the current to save himself and save his civilization from the foreseen climatic 

catastrophe, that will knock at our door when death takes the instrumental man before he wants, is able to,

or manages to abandon the lordly honors and prestige of old and tired mathematical reason and paralyzed 

modern rationality. Postmodern ideas seem useless in the ephemeral nature of differing opinions crushed 

under the dominance of the one, now arrogant in the most developed of economy, culture, and technology. 

This is an occurrence infinitely certain and that in a certain way are the other face of the literary and 

cinemagraphic dystopias that range from the spectral vision of science personified in Mary Shelley’s monster 

to the cybernetic nightmare of The Matrix, which represents the loss of the human body in the implacable 

network of technology. 

What dispute is this between the one and the pair that returns with Qhapaq Ñan? It is an old philosophical 

problem begun by the Greeks that has taxed modernity as much in politics as in culture and philosophy. It 

transcends the parmenidian problem of the one and the multiple; transcends Platonism and Neoplatonism 

prisoners of universal permanents; and, transcends Aristotelian thought from the natural differences that 

distinguish privileged citizens from the barbaric. The idea of complementary and proportional parity, of 

yanan-tinkuy marked over the territory of Qhapaq Ñan and its millenary temples in almost all of the 

southern hemisphere, offers us a distinct possibility to think and to take action. But no longer in essentialities 

or substances of being or metaphysics, that lead to hopeless contradictions of rationality in western 

philosophy regarding existence and its differences, the future of society, and utility of humanism. These 

contradictions ramble and find no exit in communicative rationality, in intercultural philosophy, or in the 

dissolute, demasked aesthetic of the differences freed of the panoptic and sanatoriums for the «notnormalized,» 

the demented, iconoclasts, and liberated spirits that appear to be the uncertain path of the 

implacable self-critics of the one and of absolute reason who find in Nietzsche the fountain of muddy water to 

drink. Qhapaq Ñan, as an Andean school, questions in this way the same bases of Greek and western 

philosophy offering us an alternative that is pleasingly ours. 

The ideas of the I and its other appear subverted in the idea that the human functions, and ensures 

satisfaction in its parity, represented by the idol of Illawi. This idol symbolizes the absolute pair functional 

only within itself, and tells us that everything functions in its complementality – and not in relations of 

distinction of the one – which is identified with reason and truth, with logos and eidos and simulation and 

the other, which equates with the mythic and the cosmic vision of the world and life. Illawi is a cultural 

manifestation open in its totality, whereas the male figure in Leonardo da Vinci’s Canon of Proportions, 

achieves the center of life and its occurrence in the Renaissance, leaving out woman who appears to be 

denied behind man the master of everything – including her, who can only try to appear hidden in his 

flowing mane or in his uplifted arms and open legs with which he means to occupy all the plain of existence. 

This image expresses the Judeo-Christian influence that places the complementary pair in doubt, having 

expelled Adam from heaven – at the fault of Eve. 

While modernity seeks to get around its impasse, recognizing values in other and accusing the voluntary 

forgetfulness of reason that denies what it does not understand, the Qhapaq Ñan tells us of the 

interconnectedness in the juncture of mutual obligations of the yanapakuy Quechua, of reciprocal 

cooperation, of the helping and working at the service of the other. The interconnectedness of the Tawa- 

Chacana is not an idea, it pre-exists all human relation, it is the obligatory form of existence and co-existence 

of humans with nature. 

The proportionality that creates congruence and balance in the pairs or Pachatussan of life also preexists 

good and reality, because it implies a coexistence-with and an always optimal use of nature. This 

proportionality denies, rejecting natures domination and enslavement. We exist as subsidiaries to the world 

order, to set right climatic imbalances caused by our same human culture. We must correct what we do and 

prevent the world from suffering a total inversion of its equilibrium when the time of pachakuti arrives, so 

that life is not destroyed and stung suddenly by the inexorable fatality now threatening us; in the event that 

the west does not halt the pollution, global warming, and the excesses of its consumption society. 

In the idea of proportion or Tinkuy between a thing and its pair, between the one and the other, and in its 

plurality or multiplicity, there exists no opposition or contradiction, it pre-exists the proportionality that 

permits the balance of parts in its multiplicity and of the one and the plural with the world and life. 

So we are astutely placed before the brilliant occurrence of our cultural origins, in the absence of which we 

believed that we could be westerners in full, avoiding the anguish we felt in denying our Andean side. 

Unsatisfied with what we have done and who we are, we reclaimed a return to our roots to become something

more defined and less uncertain, and without finding answers we asked: What is Andean culture? What is 

Andean? All the while wanting to put an end to our cultural deficiencies to imagine ourselves as Peruvians. 

And now that the explanations have resulted useless, the Qhapaq Ñan appears giving answers to questions 

we did not know how or could not answer. 

We are thus confronted with the astuteness of the Andean Foxes that happily return crossing by the Pacha- 

Chaka of the Deep Rivers conquering the death of our native culture, they return to speak to us of their 

existential forms of understanding life and the cosmos. They bring back from the Beyond, from the Anti, 

from the Andean world answers to the questions we have asked without knowing how to respond to them. 

We are then before the magic of the foxes from above, those of the mountain, the Foxes of the Anti. 

Presentation 






Presentation 

Maria Luisa Rivara de Tuesta 

Professor Emeritus of the Greater National University of San Marcos 

Lima, 25 january, 2007 

The work before us constitutes a contribution to the study of pre-Hispanic thought whose creative 

character presents an authentic, genuine, and original source of reflection. It weighs in counter to 

the imposition of western culture achieved by the conquest and evangelization that has been 

transmitted from generation to generation as a sui-generis concept regarding the cosmos, the world, 

and humankind, and that still holds force in our native peoples. 

The author, Javier Lajo, is of the Puquina people and member of the Pocsi community located in the 

heights of Arequipa. He was my student in the Problems of Peruvian and Latin American Thought 

class in the Philosophy Post-Graduate course of the Greater National University of San Marcos in 

Lima. 

Motivated by his initiatives in class –as promoter of the Peruvian Indigenous Movement and 

organizer, among other events, of the First Congress of Peruvian Indigenous Peoples in November 

1997 in Cuzco– I suggested that he write about the traditions of the Puquina people concentrating 

on their thought and ancestral wisdom. In this way, he would be contributing to the scholarly 

knowledge of this singular pre-Inka culture. 

As a result of this challenge, it is now possible to present this important and meaningful study 

entitled: Qhapaq Ñan: The Inka Path to Wisdom, which unites the oral narration and emotion of 

paternal tradition with the knowledge acquired in the Masters of Philosophy. With regard to the 

interpretation of an expression of original thought authentically ours, Qhapaq Nan also informs us 

about a theory of the indigenous resistance beginning with fundamental contrasts with western 

philosophy. This theory is worth describing, expounding, and debating – justly, and in reason with 

its differences with the west – by studying the multiple thoughts and reflections postulated before 

the arrival of westerners on this southern part of the American continent. 

The content of this work is made up of studies carried out by Javier Lajo, the first chapter entitled 

“Qhapaq Ñan: The Inka Path to Wisdom,” and the second “Qhapaq Kuna: Beyond Civilization.”

Dr. Mary Scholten de D’Ébneth in “The Route of Wiracocha,” a conference given in 1977, refers to 

the knowledge of math and astronomy in the ancient populations of South America, especially those 

of Peru. This knowledge is demonstrated, she maintains, in their Human Geography: the rigorously 

mathematical system of the distribution and location of important sites such as temples and other 

structures – even cities – also found in works of art such as textiles, sculptures, etc. 

She also refers to the fact that Dr. Valcárcel in his article “On the Origin of Cuzco” spoke of the 

intimate relation between Cusco and Titicaca and of the Route of Wiracocha. But she had already 

found in her research on textiles, sculpture, and horizontal building plans a rare coincidence with 

respect to the relationships of measurements – that the length of a piece with respect to its width 

and height, always repeats from 7 to 8 derivations. Her research, therefore, centered on finding a 

common factor with actual measurements in the sizing of such varied objects. 

What Dr. Scholten found was the equivalent of 3.34 units in our metric system. In other words, 3.34 

cm was used as a unit of measurement on the small scale, such as in fabrics and sculptures; 3.34 m 

was used in buildings; and, up to 3.34 km was used in their Human Geography. Mathematically, 

the formula is expressed as 3.34 X 10ⁿ and she adds that she was not surprised when, Mrs. Mary 

Reiche, after many years of research, discovered the existence of a unit of measurement used in 

some desert drawings in the plains of Nazca – one that coincided with the measurement Scholten 

had found. 

Following accounts of Wiracocha made by annalists Juan de Betanzos and Cristóbal de Molina and 

examining the route of Wiracocha, we find after verifying the geographic positions that Cajamarca 

is located on precisely the extension of the same line connecting Tiahuanaco and Cusco and fits the 

same system of 7-to-8 relation and its derivations. Betaznos says that Wiracocha of Cajamarca: 

“Went onward to Puerto Viejo and entered the sea.” 

For Dr. Scholten: the actual road, the Capac Ñan, follows a straight line from Tiahuanaco to 

Cajamarca. This line’s direction is the diagonal between the emissaries east-west and south-north. 

She adds, finally, that diagonal in Quechua is ch’ekkalluwa while the word ch’ekka means truth. 

The diagonal, therefore, could have meant something like the way of truth for the inventors and 

executors of this great South American geodesic system. For which reason she concludes: I want to 

end with the question: Imataq ch’ekkari? 

This long explanation was necessary for two reasons. The first is that Wiracocha is the entity that 

only as soon as he rectifies and perfects his creation does it acquire the most essential note, which 

is the power and command of all existence. The second reason is that Javier Lajo refers to Mary 

Scholten as the discoverer of a straight alignment of Inka and pre-Inka cities geographically located 

along the length of a diagonal that has a 45º angle to the north-south axis. 

Beginning with this consideration, he postulates that “qhapaq ñan” means path or way of the just, of 

the fair, or of the nobles and saints, given that in the Puquina language, which is ancestor to 

Quechua and Aymara, Khapak means saint or noble (Aguilo F. 2000). To complement this 

hypothesis, Lajo emphasizes: with good reason the discoverer of the Qhapaq Ñan (Mary Scholten, 

1980) asks “imataq ch’ekkari,” meaning: what is truth? In other words: Why is this diagonal the 

line or way of truth in our Andean culture? And here – he says – is the fundamental question of this 

text: Is the Qhapaq Ñan the “great road” that shows us the “path to wisdom” and understanding of 

the Andean culture in America? Is the Qhapaq Kuna the school of the Inka? 

To respond to such important concerns, Lajo develops two chapters. We have now uncovered the 

principle grounding of the first chapter, first subheading entitled: “On the Trail of the Qhapaq … 

Following the Prints.” In trying to answer Dr. Scholten’s question, Lajo says: we can begin with the 

concept now recognized by many authors and researchers of our Andean culture that for the 

Andean person all things real or conceptual have their pair. This is the principal paradigm of the 

Andean man: that all things, including all of us, have been paired, meaning that the origin of our 

cosmos and cosmovision is not the unity of the west – rather a parity. 

The second subheading brings us to “Complementary Duality” and El Yanantin, first law of 

Andean thought. (Yanantin yanantillan. Two things made compatible. Yanantin Ñawi. In a shared 

glance.)

The legend of Manco Capac and Mama Occllo rising together from Lake Titicaca as Pakarina (the 

birthplace of life) is representative of this concept of parity that still maintains a presence today on 

Amantaní Island in the circular plazas of Pachamama and the square plazas of Pachatata, which 

must have been used formerly as observatories. These plazas expressed the Andean cosmogonic 

dichotomy and served for astronomic observation, the making of calendars, and the 

conceptualization and control of time; they are always found in paired forms, complementing the 

two parts that make up the indigenous cosmovision. 

Of the evolution and perfection of artifacts and their symbology, we find tracks all along the 

Qhapaq Ñan; for example: in their construction methods, architecture, and functional mechanic. 

The square and circular forms found side-by-side in temples and sacred places are proof of the 

complementality and proportionality that Lajo has attributed to the Qhapaq Kuna or Andean school. 

The same square and circular forms are found in pre-Inka and Inka temples. In Cusco: the Hanan 

Qosqo temple, El Muyucmark, in Sacsayhuaman whose locks function in a complex system of 

reflective mirrors of the night sky, complements the Urin Qosqo or Koricancha Temple, whose 

symbolic form is a square fountain of black stone dominating the main patio. El Urin and El Hanan 

gave religious and political support to the two family systems (Panacas and Ayllus) and the Inkas 

Kuyas couples – governing “heads” in the Tahuantinsuyo confederation. 

According to Lajo, the presence of squared and circulars pairs seen in the temples and sites of 

worship of ancient Peruvian archeological sites – aside from their practical astronomic use – help us 

to understand their relational symbolism. Together they make up the complex symbolic system of 

the square cross of Tiwanacu, which in its structural functionality represents the most important of 

the Andean mentality: to know how human parity or illawi functions. (Illawi is an allegory for the 

wisdom of the human pair and the parity of human-nature.) One of the common denominators 

relating the squared and circular is the diagonal of the square inscribed within the circle. This 

diagonal is both the line of proportionality between the sides of the square and at the same time the 

diameter of the circle, which is its only element of proportionality. 

The third subheading of this first chapter is the “El Tinkuy: the Second Law of Andean Thought: the 

Proportional Square and Circle.” 

Returning to Dr. Scholten’s question: What is truth? Lajo responds indicating the question’s doublemeaning 

in ch’ekka as truth, and ch’ekalluwa as line of truth or diagonal. In this way, he suggests, 

we may have drawn Dr. Scholten a possible geometric answer taking account of our two symbols 

the square and the circle and following the Qhapaq Ñan diagonal route. The resulting square cross 

represents – in Lajo’s interpretation – proportionality and complementality between the circle and 

square, yanan-tinkuy of the primordial pair, the symbolic relation between Pachatata and 

Pachamama, and the Andean cross as the chacana that arises from yanan-tinkuy. 

Lajo concludes articulating the following law: Truth is life as the product of this yanan-tinkuy of the 

two cosmos, which produces consciousness of existence. 

The fourth subheading describes the interconnectedness, or the method of the Andean cosmovision 

as seen through lines and geometric drawings. La ch’ekkelluwa or great diagonal, is the line of truth 

or the line of life; el yanan-tinkuy or ch’ekkalluwa is the way of truth; and, the concept of the three 

pachas in Puquina: qato pacha (in Quechua ukhu pacha), qa pacha (in Quechua kay pacha), and 

hanigo pacha (in Quechua hanan pacha). 

Finally, in the fifth subheading with the support of many arguments, Lajo draws a parallel 

between the angle of the great diagonal of the square cross, which is at 22º 30’ – similar to the angle 

of the Earth’s axis. He hypothesizes that the Inka used the qhapaq nan to study changes in the angle 

of the Earth’s axis by way of the “intiwatanas” (bindings of the sun). 

It would result quite lengthy to continue analyzing the many reflections elaborated by Javier 

Lajo in response to Dr. Scholten based on the hypothesis that the Qhapaq Ñan, the Inka path so 

slow and arduous to physically traverse would be at the same time symbolic of the way to human 

wisdom, equally slow and arduous and more difficult to achieve in the course of human life. 

The second chapter of the work I present, entitled “Qhapaq Kuna: The Andean School … Beyond 

Civilization” was transcribed from a conference and now revised as a reflective essay on western

philosophy and the indigenous wisdom belonging to our native peoples, which is carried on by their 

descendents from generation to generation and still alive in our Aymara and Quechua populations. 

It is, in summary, a contrast between the philosophic schools of the western culture and the 

indigenous wisdom that cultivates the intrinsic relations found in the cosmos, the world, nature, and 

humankind; a humankind that is a communal being, in search of its balance complementary with all 

existence. 

From an essentially critical and philosophical perspective, this work shows the contrast 

between the individualism, subjectivism, and eurocentrism of western philosophy compared to 

indigenous thought, which is essentially communal and in singular and intimate connection with the 

cosmos, the world, nature, and the life of humankind. 

NOTES OF THE PRESENTATION 

* The Qhapaqñan text: the route Inka path of wisdom, refers to the road that unites cities located 

longitudinally along the length of the Andes mountains. 

1. Scholten de D’Ebneth F.R.A.I. “The Route of Wiracocha”. Conference given at the ANEA held 

in honor of Dr. Luis E. Valcárcel upon being given the Award culture. Lima, June of 1977, p.7. 

2. Valcárcel, Luis E. On the Origin of Cusco. In Magazine of the National Museum. Lima, 1939, 

Volume VIII, Nº 2, p. 190. 

3. Scholten. Conf. cit.p.7. 

4. Ibid.p.9. 

5. Betanzos, Juan. “Summary and Narration of the Incas”. In Peruvian Chronicles of Indigenous 

interest. Madrid, Ed. Atlas, 1969, p. 9-11 (BAE, Nº 209) 

6. Molina, Cristóbal de Rites and Fables of the Incas. Lima, Future Ed., 1959, pp. 9-17 

7. Betanzos, Ob. cit.p. 11 (anot. us). 

8. Scholten. Conf. cit.p.16. 

9. Loc. cit. 

10. And what is truth?. Loc. Cit. 

11. Rivara de Tuesta, Maria Luisa. God, World and Man in the _Inka culture. In spanish and 

translated to Quechua. History of Ideas Magazine Ecuador, House Ecuadorian Culture, center for 

Latin American studies of the Pontifical Catholic University of Ecuador, 1984-1995, Nºs. 5-6, p. 19. 

12. Lajo. Ob. cit.p.1. 

13. Ibid. p.3. 

14. Loc. cit. 

15. Ídolo Puquina de Ilave, P. Federico Aguiló, S. I. The Language of the Puquina people. Edit. 

Runacunapac Collection, 2000. Quito. p. 69. (see Drawing 17) 

Prologo Mendivil 



First Edition in Spanish 

Amaru Runa-CENES, Lima, June 22, 2005 

Second Edition in Spanish 

Edit. Abya-Yala and School of Government and Public 

Politics of Ecuador; Quito, Ecuador, March 2006 

First Edition in English 

Amaru Runa-CENES, Lima, June 22, 2007

PRÓLOGO 

Por: José Mendívil Nina 

Los que no puedan entender morirán... 

Aquellos que entiendan vivirán. 


Este es un libro cuya intencionalidad aparentemente pasadista no debe confundirnos. Al 

hablarnos de la cultura y el pensamiento andino quiere que acontezca ésta y sus pueblos en un 

tiempo en que el derrotado no es, ni ha sido un vencido. Su propósito es trastornar nuestra 

subjetividad emancipándola, liberándola de la influencia de valoraciones negativas y positivas con 

las que se ha reducido lo andino al lugar de lo vetusto y estropeado, de lo arcaico, y se ha preferido 

la dominación de lo ajeno y extraño sobre lo propio y genuino. 

Es bastante difícil tratar de encontrarle antecedentes que se inscriban en el sentido de sus 

reflexiones. Lo que es evidente es que desde fuera del mundo andino muy pocos escritores peruanos 

han insinuado la importancia que la cultura andina tiene en la solución de antiguos problemas 

estructurales de la nación y la identidad de los peruanos. Pero en sus simpatías, no dejan de expresar 

prejuicios y dudas propias de su afinidad con occidente. El Qhapaq Ñan no duda, irrumpe con 

actualidad ocupando el lugar de libros como Perú: problema y posibilidad, de Jorge Basadre, 

Buscando un inca: Identidad y utopía en los andes, de Alberto Flores Galindo, o El nacimiento de 

una utopía, de Manuel Burga. Y más aún, nos hace sentir el vacío que deja J.C. Mariategui en sus 

«Siete Ensayos» sobre ¿Qué es el indio?, ¿Qué es su cultura?, ¿Es solo ‘un problema’?. 

Perú: problema y posibilidad, sirvió para que nos diéramos cuenta de los límites del 

indigenismo, que al reivindicar al indio no podía prever que su verdadera liberación del 

colonialismo interno que lo oprime no sería posible sin una comprensión cabal de la cultura andina. 

Buscando un inca, y El nacimiento de una utopía, se proponen librarnos de la influencia del 

indigenismo y admiten que aún no pueden darnos definiciones de lo que es lo andino y la cultura 

andina, tan importante como la griega y romana por sus aportes a la civilización humana. El 

propósito de Flores Galindo, no es el que anuncia su libro en el título, ya que como afirma, no está a 

la búsqueda de un Inka, sino más bien, su intento intelectual es abrir, a partir de una revaloración de 

la utopía andina, el imaginario nacional hacia un orden diferente, imaginario que motive el 

acontecimiento de la nación peruana y de su identidad, en un orden que distinguiéndose del 

occidental europeo o norteamericano sirva a la realización de la peruanidad, a la utopía de lo propio, 

o lo que es lo mismo, a nuestra propia modernidad liberada de la negación de lo andino. 

Son libros de una subjetividad ambigua que oscila entre la lealtad a lo occidental y su 

simpatía por lo andino, pero que muestran el acontecimiento insurgente de lo andino desde Juan 

Santos Atahualpa y Tupac Amaru, hasta José María Arguedas; que en forma subrepticia proponen 

deshacernos de los falsos ídolos del criollismo, sobre todo de su más vetusto, aquel que predicara la 

integración, civilización o ‘inclusión’ del indio reivindicado. Desplazan del centro del imaginario 

nacional el ideal criollo y limeño de la República sin indios o con menos indios. Logran colocar en 

el centro de la nación y la identidad a lo andino, haciendo una pregunta a todos los peruanos, ¿qué 

es lo andino? No tienen respuestas, saben que éstas no están en la historiografía ni en la 

antropología, que ellos no tienen las respuestas, que éstas vendrán desde lo genuinamente andino. 

El Qhapaq Ñan, es un libro con respuestas coherentes y sistemáticas a esta pregunta, es un 

libro puente que se escribe desde el mundo andino y no desde el lugar que hasta ahora han preferido 

espíritus esencializados, escindidos o ambiguos; que nos propone lograr un espacio común o de 

‘encuentro’, el del Tinkuy andino, de beneficios mutuos para lo que tenemos de andinos y 

occidentales. Nos sugiere rehacer nuestra subjetividad para terminar con la ambigüedad que la 

pervierte, y también despojarnos de la influencia de esa gran mentira que nos hizo creer que 

también nosotros seríamos occidentales y no andinos. 

Desarrolla una crítica inesperada y suscinta, pero radical de la filosofía occidental, tanto de

su sentido manifiesto como de su sin-sentido oculto. Aprovecha la oportunidad que nos da la 

incertidumbre de la modernidad radicalizada por Habermas, Ralws o Sen, y el desencanto 

posmoderno de la sociedad occidental que se cubre la piel y el rostro con encantamientos y fábulas 

sobre la diferencia siguiendo las ideas de Lyotard, Vattimo o Zizek. Al hablarnos de las formas del 

pensamiento andino actúa como si quisiera engatuzarnos, y como si al mostrar las formas del 

pensamiento andino recurriendo a formas culturales puras como son la paridad complementaria o 

Yanantin, la confrontación proporcional o Tinkuy, la vincularidad o cosmovisión andina de la Tawa- 

Chacana, y el vínculo o soporte de la existencia o Pachatússan, aconteciera otra vez el pasado, y no 

aconteciera lo andino en el presente en lo que bautiza como el pensamiento paritario. 

Muestra las armas de los Qhapaq Kuna, de la ‘escuela andina’, de la estirpe pre-inka de los 

justos y sabios, de los correctos, virtuosos y nobles; y en sus ecos que resuenan llegan hasta 

nosotros provocando el retorno casi inexorable de la voluntad del hombre andino que supo aguardar 

y esperar a través de tiempo, estas armas del saber de los Amautas que conocían el secreto de la 

vida, del caminar con rectitud –algo tan opuesto y contrastado con lo que pasa hoy en día con 

nuestros gobernantes- por la línea de la verdad con la que se logra el ‘equilibrio h’ampi’ y su 

conservación; la sabiduría de los runas de la cultura andina que sabían como ‘amarrar’ el ángulo de 

incidencia del sol sobre la tierra, amarrar al astro Sol a la línea que guarda y potencia la vida sobre 

el planeta. 

El arcaísmo de sus imágenes tiene el propósito de darnos una comprensión más cabal de la 

cultura andina y de lo que llama el pensamiento paritario, para diferenciarlo del logos occidental. 

La iconografía andina del libro secuestra nuestra mirada, altera nuestras percepciones recobrando en 

ellas nuestra intimidad con lo pre-inka e Inka. Traen consigo una presencia subvertidora de nuestra 

autoconciencia, una presencia que creímos muerta, sumisa, e inerte como sus restos puestos en 

museos cual muestras de un pasado glorioso pero relegado y satisfactorio sólo a la mirada ajena. 

Iconografía que incita el acontecimiento de una cultura que no ha agotado su vitalidad para 

desplazarse en la nación desde el origen de sus diferencias culturales. 

Alteran nuestra subjetividad desde el lugar de la sabiduría y las lenguas de los antiguos 

pueblos andinos Puquinas, Quechuas y Aymaras, alarifes del Qhapaq Ñan, nombre y camino 

mitológico que tiene un significado alegórico que habla de lo que es sustancial en el imaginario de 

ésta nuestra cultura que no ha dejado de sernos contemporánea, y que en su trato cotidiano y 

existencial con sus orígenes conserva el poder de anunciarnos un presente diferente en el que 

acontezcan lo andino y lo occidental en el concierto de un ‘nuevo orden andino’. 

Su nombre anuncia que los Amaro Runa, el mito de los hombres-anaconda en el imaginario 

de los pueblos Quichwas del Putumayo, han vuelto para recorrer la ruta de la sabiduría andina y el 

re-conocimiento del estado de situación del equilibrio H’ampi del mundo, que en el epígrafe que va 

unido al nombre del libro, tiene la intención de diseminar la distinción de una civilización sabia y 

justa, capaz de ofrecer un orden distinto al de la civilización occidental que vivimos con angustia e 

incertidumbre. Tiene el poder de la antigua simbología andina en la presencia esperanzadora del 

ídolo de Illawi altiplánico, que es el mismo ícono del Pachacamac costeño, «ídolos» que 

simbolizan la singularidad de ésta cultura, de sus orígenes en el par de entes o seres 

complementarios que acontecen en la peculiaridad de su paridad reproductiva de la vida humana y 

la naturaleza, en el acaecer del acto de parir continuamente la vida. 

Nos dice que el ser andino es el par humano, el de la paridad existencial, en el existir de un 

ser no escindido o proclive a dejarse someter por angustias existenciales que son propias de la 

modernidad occidental; paridad que pare la vida ‘amarrada’ o ‘atada’ por sierpes mitológicas que 

envuelven en actitud protectora al par existencial sumido en el éxtasis de su unión, que abrigan a la 

pareja mitológica en la escena del origen de la vida y la cultura, en el acontecimiento del animar la 

vida, dar y reproducirla; pareja que en el acto continuo de la reproducción de la vida, desde el lugar 

absoluto de los orígenes, el de su cultura, nos miran con ojos vueltos hacia nosotros y que nos 

incitan a interiorizar su contemplación, a compartir el disfrute del éxtasis completo de la vida, 

trastocando antes nuestra subjetividad acostumbrada a mirar con desdén el pasado andino, alterando 

también nuestra percepción de lo andino, como si la mirada que mira desde el pasado sin querer

agobiarnos nos agobiara, y como si en este mirarnos todos no existiera ni tiempo ni espacio para los 

espíritus negativos, para el dolor, la muerte y la pesadumbre, ya que esos ojos son nuestros ojos, los 

ojos de una mirada diferente si se da sólo desde el lugar de la unión del par original, origen que es 

común en todos los mitos culturales. 

Esta mirada exterioriza asombro por el acto en sí mismo, que es placentero por el vuelo de la 

pareja mitológica que va procreando vida por el mundo, con sierpes que parecen salir de la cabeza 

del hombre, y confundir las alas del cóndor con el cabello de la mujer que está sentada y con sus 

manos entre las del hombre, simbolizando así el acto creador de la cultura desde el mismo centro de 

la vida y la naturaleza, lugar que elige la cultura andina que tiene como su único límite la mirada 

placentera de sus orígenes, el de nuestra mirada. 

El pensamiento paritario o pensamiento ‘qhapaq’ irrumpe de esta forma superando el lugar 

impuesto por su vulgarización provocada sobre todo por la antropología y la etnografía, que al 

estudiar al hombre andino en su habitat consideraron como su distintivo cultural a su racionalidad 

en el buen uso de los recursos de la naturaleza. ¿Qué es el pensamiento paritario andino?, y que 

retorna desde sus orígenes culturales rodeándose de la vistosidad textual de vocablos como 

Yanantinkuy, Tawaphaqa, Pachatussán, Ch’ekkalluwa, Illawi y Pachakamac que como fantasmas 

llegan para re-posesionarse y ocupar el lugar que les corresponde, que insinúan una superioridad 

existencial o de vida ante el sujeto baconiano, el moderno sujeto escindido entre la res cogitans y la 

res extensa, sujeto separado del mundo que se ha hecho espectral y que para sobrevivir sabe que 

debe volverse y mirar a la tierra a través de la mirada del hombre andino, del mitológico y el actual 

para salvarse y salvar su civilización de la catástrofe climática que ha sido anunciada y que tocará a 

nuestra puerta cuando la muerte se enseñoree antes de que el hombre instrumental quiera, pueda y 

logre abandonar los honores y el prestigio señorial de la vieja y cansada razón matemática y la 

esclerotizada racionalidad moderna. Las ideas posmodernas parecen inútiles por lo efímero del 

acontecer pervertido de las diferencias no libradas del dominio de lo uno, ahora soberbio en lo más 

desarrollado de la economía, cultura y tecnología, es decir, en un acontecer sin fines ciertos y que 

en cierta forma son la otra cara de las anti-utopías literarias y cinematográficas que van desde la 

visión espectral de la ciencia que nos provocó el monstruo de Mary Shelly hasta la pesadilla 

cibernética de «Matrix», que representa la pérdida del cuerpo humano en la red implacable de la 

tecnología. 

Qué disputa es ésta entre lo uno y lo par que retorna con el Qhapaq Ñan? Es la de un 

antiguo problema filosófico iniciado por los griegos, y que ha cobrado actualidad, tanto en la 

política, como en la cultura y la filosofía. Trasciende al problema parmenideano de lo uno y lo 

múltiple, al platonismo y neoplatonismo prisioneros de los universales permanentes, al aristotelismo 

de las diferencias por naturaleza que distinguen a los privilegiados ciudadanos de los bárbaros. La 

idea de la paridad complementaria y proporcional del Yanan-tinkuy marcada sobre el territorio 

del Qhapaq Ñan y sus templos milenarios, sobre casi todo el hemisferio sur, nos ofrece una 

posibilidad distinta de pensarnos y sobre todo de actuar, no ya en las esencialidades o las sustancias 

del ser o de la metafísica, que llevarían a las aporías insalvables de la filosofía occidental respecto a 

la existencia y sus diferencias, el porvenir de la sociedad y la utilidad del humanismo, y que por las 

ramas no encuentran salida en la racionalidad comunicativa, en la filosofía de la interculturalidad, y 

en la estética disoluta y desfachatada de las diferencias libradas del panóptico y sanatorios para los 

no normalizados, los dementes, iconoclastas y espíritus libérrimos, que parece ser la senda incierta 

de los implacables autocríticos de lo uno y de la razón absoluta, que encuentran en Nietzche, la 

fuente de agua turbia para beber. El Qhapaq Ñan como escuela andina, cuestiona así, las bases 

mismas de la filosofía griega y occidental, ofreciéndonos una alternativa felizmente nuestra. 

Las ideas del yo y su alter aparecen subvertidas en la idea de que lo humano funciona, es 

decir, asegura satisfacción en su paridad representada por el ídolo de Illawi, que simboliza el par 

absoluto funcional sólo en sí mismo, ídolo que simbólicamente nos estaría diciendo que todo 

funciona en su complementariedad, y no en relaciones de distinción de lo uno que se identifica con

la razón y la verdad, con el logos y el eidos y la simulación, y lo otro, que se iguala a lo mítico y a 

la visión cosmogónica del mundo y la vida. Illawi es una manifestación cultural abierta en su 

totalidad, mientras que el hombre de Vitrubio de Leonardo da Vinci, que simboliza el canon de las 

proporciones, que gana el centro de la vida y su acontecer en el renacimiento, extraviando a la 

mujer que parece estar negada detrás del hombre dueño del todo, incluso de aquella, que solo puede 

intentar aparecer oculta en la frondosa melena, o en los brazos alzados y piernas abiertas, con los 

que pretende ocupar todo el plano de la existencia, imagen que expresa la influencia judeo-cristiana 

que pone en duda el par complementario, al haber expulsado a Adan y –por culpa de- Eva del 

paraíso. 

Mientras que la modernidad acusando los olvidos voluntarios de la razón que niega lo que 

no comprende busca salvar sus impases reconociendo valores en los otros, el Qhapaq Ñan nos habla 

de la vincularidad en la juntura de obligaciones mutuas del ‘yanapakuy’ quechua, de la cooperación 

recíproca, de la acción de ayudar y trabajar con otro y a sus ordenes. La vincularidad de la Tawa- 

Chacana no es una idea, pre-existe a toda relación humana, es su forma obligatoria de existencia y 

con-vivencia de los humanos con la naturaleza. 

La proporcionalidad que crea la congruencia o el equilibrio de los pares o ‘Pachatussan’ de 

la vida, también pre-existe al bien y la realidad, porque implica una con-vivencia-con, o uso 

siempre óptimo de la naturaleza, y niega, rechazando su dominación, su servilismo, es decir, 

existimos subsidiarios al orden del mundo, para corregir desordenes climáticos provocados por la 

misma cultura del hombre, para corregir lo que hacemos y evitar que el mundo sufra una inversión 

total de su equilibrio cuando llegue el tiempo del Pachakuti, para que éste no destruya la vida y 

sobrevenga la inexorable fatalidad que ya nos amenaza ahora; si acaso occidente no frena la 

polución, el calentamiento global y los excesos de la sociedad de consumo. 

En la idea de ‘la proporcionalidad’ o del Tinkuy entre una cosa y ‘su par’, entre lo uno y lo 

otro, y en su pluralidad o multiplicidad, no hay oposición o contradicción, pre-existe la 

proporcionalidad que permite mantener el equilibrio de las partes en su multiplicidad y de lo uno y 

lo plural con el mundo y la vida. 

Somos así puestos astutamente ante el acontecimiento genuino de nuestros orígenes 

culturales, que en ausencia de ellos, creímos que podríamos ser occidentales con toda la plenitud 

evitando la angustia que nos provocaba el negar nuestra parte andina. Insatisfechos con lo que 

hemos hecho y somos, reclamamos el retorno a nuestras raíces para ser algo más definido y menos 

incierto, y sin encontrar respuestas hemos preguntado ¿qué es la cultura andina? ¿qué es lo andino?, 

queriendo ponerle fin a nuestras carencias culturales para imaginarnos como peruanos; y ahora que 

las explicaciones que nos dimos nos resultan ya inútiles, aparece el Qhapaq Ñan dando las 

respuestas a preguntas que no supimos o no pudimos responder. 

Estamos así pues enfrentados y expuestos a la astucia de los zorros andinos que alegres, 

retornan de vuelta cruzando por el «Pacha-Chaka» de los Ríos Profundos venciendo la muerte de 

nuestra cultura originaria, regresan para hablarnos de sus formas existenciales de comprender la 

vida y el cosmos. Traen del mas allá, del Anti, del mundo andino respuestas para las preguntas que 

nos hemos hecho sin saber responderlas. Estamos pues ante la magia de los zorros de arriba, los de 

la sierra, los zorros de los Antis. 

First Chapter - V 

José Mendívil Nina






First Chapter - V 

PACHATÚSSAN 

THE LINK AND 

SUPPORT OF EXISTENCE 

Finally, we have traced a line from one of the eight points where the hanigo paqas crosses 

with the hanigo pacha, and connected it with its opposite to create the ch’ekkalluwa or great 

diagonal, which is a slant at 22° 30’ between the vertical and the Qhapaq Ñan of 45°. In Runa Simi, 

this great diagonal means the «line of truth» and according to our arguments regarding its 

representation of and conceptual coincidence with the Earth’s axis, it is also the path of life, the 

foundation, support, or master beam of existence. This is the Pachatússan. 

This representation of interconnectedness and theoretical tool is a variable proportion of 

measurement whose origin is in the proportionality between the circle and the square. Examples of 

similar instruments include the Tupu and Papacancha (Earls, 1984) in the case of proportional 

agricultural measurements. 

The ch’ekkalluwa diagonal line with its angle of 22 degrees and 30 minutes in relation 

to the north-south axis of the Earth – by the power of its influence – is the optimal angle for the 

rotation of the Earth’s axis. Its balanced inclination or yanan-tinkuy makes the Earth rotate before 

the sun in the most intelligent way, giving complement and proportion to all climates of the 

hemisphere and establishing shifts in each latitude for the seasonal cycles. The axis and its angle are 

responsible for life and bio-diversity, maintaining the normality of the seasons and climates in all 

latitudes – because this angle is the relation between square and circle, and the zone of intersection, 

balance, and yanan-tinkuy between the hanigo paqas and the hanigo pacha, the two essences that 

make up existence. 

There is an evident identity and coincidence between this conclusion about the Earth’s 

rotational axis and the proto-Andean religiousness of the Puquina god «I» as we will verify later. In 

fact, we cannot overlook the information given by Frederico Aguilo in his book The Language of 

the Puquina People throughout which he refers to that flowing quasi-pantheistic god «I,» the pan- 

Andean god of light, brilliance, reflection, etc, and the great abundance of words that begin with I 

in the four Andean languages: Quechua, Aymara, Puquina, and Kallawaya. He considers these 

words: the trail of that religiousness transmitted from generation to generation and that still today 

has its popular expression, though in a subconscious way – but no less real – because it seals the 

Andean, Quechua, Aymara, and Puquina idiosyncrasies. 

According to Aguilo: In remote times, the Puquinas shared equally with the Aymaras, 

Quechuas, Urus, Kallawayas, and many other groups throughout the Andes – thus, their belief is 

reflected in the development of the languages, because the toponymy of the god «I» is ubiquitous in 

the Andes. The most overwhelming demonstration is that all the development of our Andean culture 

culminated in the I-N-K-A confederation, whose center formed about the divinity I-N-TIN (see 

chapter I.; 37-40 with regard to the morphological analysis of the yana-n-tin), which according to

Aguilo means: The Centralized Globalization of the God I. 

We ought to slightly expand on and improve these meanings given by Aguilo in order 

to further unveil our understanding of yana-n-tin. «I,» which is God, receives the suffix «N,» which 

is its complement, and lastly the suffix «TIN,» meaning inseparably joined – all this meaning: God 

and its complement or parity in an eternal tin-kuy. Aguilo also says that INTIN is: an effort for 

unification of the religious phenomenon for strategic control. Later he insists that the topic should 

be taken up by specialists in Andean linguistics until its plain understanding and exhaustive 

verification… For now the god «I» is equally a religious patrimony to the Puquina-Kallawaya, 

Quechua, and Aymara, … Was its origin in Puquina? It appears to be. Why was a clergyman so 

interested in uncovering the linguistic roots of a non-Christian god in indigenous lands? Why so 

much interest in the Puquina people from an order of Christian friars? 

We have found no guiding light in the «open» doctrine of Christianity nor in the 

official theology to answer these questions. Nonetheless, the philosopher René Guénon in his work 

The Interior Adventure (Obelisk Editions. BBAA 1993) relates the following: One last note 

concerning the secret name that The Faithful of Love gave to God…, in the Divine Comedy, Adam 

says that the first name of God was I, which later came to be He (Él). This identity between the 

«first name of God» of Dante Alighieri, and the Andean God «I» – in addition to Dante’s allusion to 

«Earthly Paradise» being in those times located in some unexplored region of the planet – give us 

many clues whose conclusions we give later and, though still partial, we continue to investigate. 

Though there are abundant references in the ancient history of the west that identify the American 

continent as the place of utopias. 

In other words, America is the place of utopias for both the educated and common 

westerner, and not only after Columbus, but above all before him. A study of pre-Colombian 

European utopianism is needed and certainly would be more interesting than the known post- 

Colombian utopianism because it would shed light on the undeniable global relations since time 

immemorial and also on what we have called interconnectedness. This we will show in the 

following analysis, but above all it opens doors to begin to know more accurately the cultural 

influences of the continents from well before the disembarkation, invasion, and occupation of 

America by the western Europeans; those who brought a mission and will so strong that they 

provoke tacit suspicions of various kinds. Can ambition bring out this infinite homicidal passion 

unleashed by the Europeans at their arrival? Can ambition set loose this blind impulse to destroy 

everything – especially all traces of indigenous knowledge? Their instructions were evidently to 

leave no trace. But of what? What was it they wanted to hide or deny by destroying it all? This 

impulse is still noticeable today, though much more undercover and concealed; it is that predatory, 

radical compulsion that seems to say: Nothing is left nor should be left of the indigenous system, 

only remains like ruins, irrelevant for the reconstruction of their own future. All other options are 

impossible and idealistic; the current indigenous world – the remains of what was – have no other 

option than to align themselves behind the west. 

Returning to our reflection on the Axis of the World or the first «God» of all or the 

majority of traditional known cultures that has excited all humanity in varying latitudes and epochs: 

Why? Undoubtedly, it seems to have imprinted all early human consciousness with volcanic fire. 

What we believe in a hypothetical way is that there have occurred cataclysms and catastrophes that 

in our culture we call pachakutis, literally meaning the world turns over, which have left an 

immortally traumatic and atavistic print in the human soul. This God «I» and his place of residence, 

have been called in the west: Center of the World, Heart of the World, Holy Land, Omphalos, 

Chemia, Pure Earth, Land of the Saints, Land or Dwelling of Immortality, Land of the Living, Earth 

without Evil, Paradis, Paradesha, Paradise, Pardes, Tree of Life, etc. What else could be behind 

this myth or primary God that caused such commotion in the human being? What aside from the 

cyclical catastrophe of the pachakutis?

All this symbolism regarding the Axis or Center of the World and the Holy Land has 

two reiterative common ideas: one is the state of Eden that alludes to a primordial state or basic 

state of Eden (which will not be explored in this text). The second theme is the idea of immortality, 

which seems to require we check our reflections from paragraphs 24, 25, and 26 in this text. We will 

leave for later the forms of immortality we qualify as perverse, like in the analysis of the «anxiety 

of immortality» in the west and its relationship with gold. 

In the Andean world there exists and has existed a presiding aspiration to re-balance 

the world beginning with the balance between human society and nature. In the Inka society, and 

Andean culture in general, there was more than a desire to monitor the incidence angle of solar rays 

over the Earth through the system of intiwatanas and the Qhapaq Ñan – there is also a register of 

being a sincere aspiration and intention to control (see footnote 14) or reestablish the optimal angle 

of the Earth’s axis, through what we will call the privileged relation between the human being and 

nature. This particular form of refining, of our Andean culture, is what explains the presence and 

characteristics of our paradigmatic founder: Tunupa Wiracocha, the maker and caretaker of the 

world. It is he that his actions in the past offered himself imperfect and defective, and only in so far 

as he rectifies and perfects …his work, does it acquire the most important essential note which is 

the power and mandate over all existence (Rivara, 2000: I: 114). 

One of the conclusions our text suggests is the pre-existence in the Andean world of 

an interconnectedness between cosmos-human, pacha-runa, el yanan-tinkuy, or intin-pacha-runa 

(Wiracocha-pacha-runa, in Rivara, 2000:I), which achieved in the Inka society would have allowed 

our ancestors to try and control the equilibrium of the Earth’s axis at its optimal angle of rotation – 

and the maintenance of the World Order, given that the greater successive inclination generates a 

collective of climatic disorder getting worse each year. This line of reflection brings us to support 

our hypothesis that with the system of the Qhapaq Ñan (and in general, what we have called 

balanced thought) that served as principle C’eje of the Tawantinsuyu, they tried from human 

society, from their interconnectedness, and from their H’ampi balance (Kreimer, 1999) with nature, 

to maintain this optimal inclination; or, at least to revert, control, and detain the cataclysms called 

pachakuti, which literally means the world turned over (chapter I; paragraph 25). 

These cosmic pachakutis are terrifying planetary catastrophes, periodic and cyclical, 

and the traces of the last one were registered as a «universal flood» or unu pachakuti, with which 

life on Earth returns cyclically to its beginning. These planetary catastrophes reinitiate the cycle of 

life on Earth. Georges Cuvier (1769-1832) in his Discours sur les révolutions du globe argued and 

explained the extinction of fossilized animal species by means of planetary catastrophes that 

periodically destroy the Earth and all living species in each geologic stage. This theory of 

catastrophes, according to which all diverse fauna through time come to be annihilated totally by a 

universal catastrophe followed by the creation of new fauna, was popularized in his work 

Recherches sur les osseents fossiles (1812) dedicated to bone fossils. For Cuvier, the cataclysms 

must have been quick as proved by the disturbed geological stratospheres. The only causes he finds 

for these upheavals are floods or violent raising of the ocean floor. Here George Cuvier is 

undoubtedly speaking of what our indigenous Andean people know as pachakutis. 

We sustain here that the Andean society developed an historic sacred practice and a 

transcendent aspiration (as religion and spirituality are in the west) to prevent the catastrophe of 

cosmic pachakuti by way of a human pachakuti that reverts the angle of inclination to its optimal 

position, thus making the Earth a true dwelling of immortality. In this way, humankind would obtain an 

uninterrupted continuum in their history and biological evolution, and this would be a just prize for the achievement of 

their human equilibrium and interconnectedness with the cosmos. Or, at least this aspiration might serve to preserve 

the maximum possible of what remains of human culture after the cataclysm. This sacred practice also

explains the megalithic architecture and high mountain urbanism – if it can be so called – of the 

constructions of Inka cities and the current Ñaupa Llactas on the summit of the sheer peaks of the 

Andean corridor, in clear preparation for cataclysms and floods that would be provoked by the total 

instability of the Earth’s rotational axis when the time of Pachakuti comes. 

All this vocation and preparation for the cosmic cataclysms would have to do not 

only with the advance of science and technology of the Andean people, but also with the 

improvement of a primitive individual conscience (megalomania, egoism, and imbalance) and the 

conquest of a superior communal conscience, environmental, and cosmic. For the Andean world it 

remains clear that this is not a problem of religion, moral, or of ethic; rather, of levels or states of 

conscience that represent for the Andean those complementary and proportional links of humans 

with the community and with nature. 

In other words, Good and Reality just like Human and Nature in the Andean world 

are not separate concepts, rather joined-in-relation or yanan-tinkuy. The Good, like the Human, is 

realized and flows in Reality and Nature; these represent the one formula for the Good and the 

Human to be viable, exist, and be. This content of wisdom in Puquina is expressed with the term 

qhapaq. What is neither well-done nor made just nor made correctly does not exist or if it does – it 

has an ephemeral existence. If it does exist temporarily for some strange reason, as is the case of 

lies, idleness, or theft – inevitably time and life annul them, making them disappear, and killing 

them – it is only a question of having a little patience. If human beings greatly imbalance life and 

the world, Pachakuti erases them from the face of the Earth and life returns to its beginning like a 

clean slate. But this process has a mechanic that is quite pragmatic and if someone wants to call it 

mystic, alright, but this sacred practice of the Andean people is something of a practical school, the 

school of the Qhapaq Kuna, of which we are giving sufficient, coherent, and consistent evidence in 

this text. 

Therefore, the Andean consciousness is a consciousness linked with and made up of the 

things of the world and the community. It thinks and it is conscious with them; it is not a 

consciousness that looks within at itself, isolated, reverted inwards, primitive, individualistic, and 

solitary. The west is convinced that their access to that which they call their consciousness depends 

only on the individual, on itself in each person – thus, their consciousness is a reflection of the 

Individual God. This is the origin of a great and historic imbalance. But what produced it? 

Though it is not the objective of this text to delve further into this point, we shall 

leave some ideas for expansion later on. In the development of western culture, what we can call the 

traumatic ritual or phobic memory of the last cosmic and planetary cataclysm or pachakuti, came 

about with time in the worship of the individual person or Divine Unity. This occurs parallel to the 

historical development of what we have called the primitive individual conscience, and generates a 

perverse form, traumatic and morbid of identifying the world’s axis with the God «I,» the individual 

God, or the Divine Unity. This last entity corresponds to an individual anxiety substituting the sense 

of collective eternity with a relatively eternal object like gold, which comes undone presenting itself 

instead as an extreme or boundless ambition for the temporal accumulation of riches and power 

and a correspondingly extreme terror of death. The memory apparently disappears or is repressed 

by this substitution, as is natural, from the traumatic remembrance of the violent changes of the 

world’s axis, as Guenón senses (note 28). Here, it is necessary to note that the sense of Christian or 

western salvation is lived as a strictly individual and otherworldly aspiration, which makes quite 

evident the nature and vocation of this culture and explains the terror they feel towards the 

individual death and atavistic remembrance, the panic, and the reluctant phobia of the pachakuti; 

still present in our periphery when the rumble of that distant echo remains, the muffled sound, and 

the tremble of katatatay, the telluric movement that is the pulse of Pachakamac. 

Scientist and essayist Carl Sagan, trying to get to the bottom of the content of 

metaphors and biblical myths to think scientifically about the development of human intelligence,

says something that could leave a trail to continue stimulating these reflections: Including in the 

time when the story of Paradise was written, the development of the cognitive faculties was 

associated with the idea of the human loaded with Divine attributes and tremendous 

responsibilities. The God Yahweh said: ‘I have here Man made like one of us, knowledgeable of 

Good and Evil; he shall not reach out his hand to the tree of life, and eating from it, live 

forever’(Genesis 3,22). In this case, man should be expelled from Paradise and God assembled in 

the East of Eden a guard of cherubs with flaming swords to keep the Tree of Life far from man’s 

ambitions. Far, of course, from the western man, because these myths are part of the western protohistory. 

Here we should understand the phrase Tree of Life as Earth’s Axis. 

On the other hand, the official history of the meeting between western man with the 

so-called New World and its discovery results for us each day more unbelievable and false in terms 

of the propaganda it has put out. Each day it becomes more clear that the attempted voyage of 

Columbus to the Indies was neither an expedition of lost people nor something casually arranged by 

the European kings. That the European courts and the Vatican are hiding something is evident; and 

their families, archives, and libraries still exist in full. We must know those secrets of the indigenous 

of America, and we will do it someday, because as the same sacred scriptures of the westerners say: 

Only the truth will set you free… The life and predecessors of the «discoverer» are still covered up 

and kept secret by the impenetrable Vatican, but we do know of the relation of the apprentice 

Christopher Columbus with his teacher René de Anjou (1418-1480). By knowing the master, we 

will know his disciple. 

Rene de Anjou (Baingent, Leigh, and Lincoln, 2004) was master of diverse Christian 

lodges and multifaceted noble of the European courts; an architect and pragmatic leader of the 

Renaissance phenomenon, also great motivator of genius, artists, and even warriors of the old world 

like Joan of Arc. He was helmsmen to the powerful families of his time, like the Sforza of Milán 

and the Medici of Florence, the Este and the Gonzaga of Aragón. This character had great influence 

in almost all the European courts. In his most relevant work, he convinced Cosimo de Medici to 

translate the work of the Platonists, Neoplatonists, Pythagorists, Gnostics, and Hermeans founding 

the first public library of Europe, the St. Mark’s library, and bringing about institutes, academies, 

and laical universities, thus contributing to the rise of the Renaissance of western culture. But 

beyond his public acts, René de Anjou developed a clandestine activity or subterranean current 

known as The Arcadia. 

The relation of Anjou with Christopher Columbus and the mission the former brought 

to America is a clue we must investigate to its final consequences, because we understand that if the 

descendents of the protagonist do not want to tell their truth, the descendents of their victims must 

unveil it until its minutest details and spread it to the furthest stretches. Because if there exists some 

historic project that propagates a mental machinery of second order to which the citizens of the old 

world are subjected, this should not continue as a rule of life and the future in the current 

globalization. We should well investigate that strange mission and compulsion to exterminate that 

possessed the Europeans to effect the deaths of more than 70 million of our ancestors in only 10 

years since 1492. But what is certain is that Columbus traveled guided by the knowledge of the 

lodge of René de Anjou (The Order of the Temple), among whom figured the famous and known 

map of Piri Reis (a very clear map of the American continent), a Turkish navigator who was surely 

member of these secret societies and ancient lodges. In other words, the renowned voyage to the 

west Indies is a total lie, and should be abandoned once and for all. As should also be brought to 

light all the secret documents that the clandestine lodges and those pious monks of the Vatican hide 

with guilt and with shame. 

Our reflection on the God «I» of the Puquina and its similarities with the Earth’s axis 

or Paradise has brought us here. It is interesting to observe how the myths of origin and sacred texts

of western culture associate this loss of the meaning of eternity with their expulsion from some 

region of the Earth, the supreme region where the world’s axis once was, and the land without evil. 

This loss of meaning or the way of immortality should have stayed in western humanity, converted 

in myth (Jorge Nelson Trujillo, 1998) as a primordial lacking, as a divine punishment, or as they say 

in their own terms: trapped in a temporal sphere (René Guenón, 1993: 111). 

Understanding the previous lines makes it easy to explain how patriarchal 

monotheism expelled woman from the zone of the mythic-religious or divine. The Mother God 

disappears, but at the same time, is converted into an anti-myth (the Holy Grail), turned into 

something eternally sought and mysterious, sensual and prohibited, desired with great anxiety to 

precisely recover the meaning of eternity; which is a morbid way of worshiping the counterpart of 

the primordial pair, after having eliminated and excluded her. Once the partner of God has been 

denied (a key absence for understanding the west), there can never again be possibility in the 

western cosmogony to balance the world. 

Returning to Guenón: This Holy Land of excellence is the supreme region…it is 

effectively Earthly Paradise, which is the starting point of all tradition having in its center the 

unique source of the four rivers departing towards the four cardinal directions, and that is also the 

dwelling of immortality. These allusions to the four rivers and the enormous accumulated riches 

bring us a memory of the four «s’ejes» that mark the division of suyus organizing the Inka 

territories. 

We leave these topics planted for their deeper exploration and reflection. But we also 

want to leave a desire to verify if these traces (Figures 8 and 10) located in the west are by chance 

just ancient reflections of the propagation of (important parts of) our Andean culture still visible 

today? Consider these symbols of Andean culture and its science of proportions, of what was our 

Andean proto-history, and other signs now remnants in the terrain of western religion – like the 

anti-myth of the Holy Grail and clandestine cults and even the virginization of the Mother. Are they 

perhaps an early diffusion of our knowledge and wisdom towards the Mediterranean, perhaps by 

occasional messengers, Amauta globetrotters, or Andeanizers? Or, perhaps they were remembrances 

transported beyond the oceans by navigators and visitors who came to our continent long before the 

voyage of Columbus. 

What remains clear, is that in the western middle ages, those traces and symbols that 

identified the Templars as guardians of something, in our evident analysis, can only be explained 

with the satiric figure used by René Guenón: That those who used our symbols in pre-Columbian 

Europe, were like donkeys loaded with relics who lost the blessing (René Guenón; 1993, 50). This 

definitely meant for the Templars their principle weakness, because in the absence of foundations 

and authentic contents, they were defeated, persecuted, and assassinated by their rivals: the kings of 

Europe and the papal Vatican, who they themselves helped to exalt with riches, symbols, and 

knowledge partially known and poorly used. 

As a conclusion to this text, I postulate that our Andean knowledge and wisdom 

(whose system and structure is being reconstructed) was partially transmitted and taught on other 

continents. And for reasons still unknown, after its diffusion in Europe, Asia, and Africa, only pure 

symbols, forms, and mysterious icons remained, secretly guarded by clandestine sects and lodges, 

but devoid of their contents, functions, explanations, and purposes. In the words of an old principle 

from the schools of knowledge: The influence of wisdom always streams down from the center to 

the periphery, from the sacred world to the profane, and never the other way around … just as 

water never returns to the spring. 

Finally, for the skeptics who think that we have abandoned our philosophic reflection 

and detoured into the field of sterile speculation, or worse – of esotericism – I invite them to visit 

the sanctuary of the Lord of Huanca in Cusco, an ancient Inka sanctuary occupied at present by one 

of the Christian sanctuaries that have supplanted the one-time Inka sites of worship. In this case in

Cusco, we refer to the Wanca or Wacca stone that predominated and protected the Inka sacred 

valley. What is interesting to note is that crossing to the exact opposite side of the mountain, the 

imposing Inka sanctuary of Tipón emerges, which has not been occupied by any church or saint of 

Christianity and continues being venerated by those who maintain the ancestral Inka worship. Both 

sanctuaries one on each side, on each opposing slope of the Apu Pachatussan, the sturdy mountain 

sustaining both sanctuaries and serving as a support of existence that tolerates both sides of the 

world: Inka and Christian, obliging and imploring h’ampi balance. 

For contemporary philosophers who research all cultures with tolerance, the concept 

and geometric figure of the tawa-chakana and the concepts that we have here put forth and 

analyzed could be useful as testimonial proofs, reflections, and critiques of the systemized 

indigenous thought, native to these latitudes, which at their base explain that for the Andeans our 

existence is only possible by the crossing of two parallel and combined cosmos. In other words, we 

exist in a pair-verse, or two cosmos that share a link or bridge of interconnection, from which 

existence originates. If we compare this instrumental Andean concept to the western concept of 

universe, we will be able to conclude without a doubt that this concept of universe and its 

cosmogony is the origin of individualism, of egoism, of all exclusive attitude, and of so much war 

and depredation of humans by humans. 

* * * 

- Fuente: http://sites.google.com/site/machaqmara/firstchapterv

Autor: > Javier Lajo

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