Ordinances of the Temple of Wiraqocha in Raqch’i, Perú

By Van C. Evans, PhD
Indiana University – Purdue University Indianapolis
June 24, 2017

Abstract: This article investigates the rituals and ordinances of the Temple of Wiraqocha in Raqch’i, Perú during the Incan period in a manner relevant to members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS). It introduces the legend of the pre-Colombian white bearded god, Wiraqocha, and why they built a temple to him. Based on ethnographic and phenomenological interviews, it briefly examines the meaning of the ordinances performed in the temple during the Incan period, some of which are still practiced in some form today. While the temples were destroyed during the conquest, Spanish chroniclers have preserved in the oral tradition insights of the importance of temple building and worship in the Inca empire.

Introduction
One hundred kilometers southeast of Cusco, Peru, at the base of a volcano called Kinsach’ata and just above the floodplain of the Vilcanota river, lies the small village of Raqch’i (pronounced ROCK – chee). Home to some 150 families, at over 11,400 feet MSL, Raqch’i is the remnant of a key religious center and pilgrimage site built by the Incas that boasts the only known two-story Inca temple structure in the empire—The Temple of Wiraqocha.1 Who was this Wiraqocha, why did they build a temple to him, and what was the purpose of this temple?
When the bearded conquistador Francisco Pizzaro arrived on Peruvian shores in 1532, the native populations mistook him for a white bearded god who had anciently lived among them for a time and who had promised to return. What records do we have of this god? The Incas did not keep written historical records on plates or papyri, or if they did, they were hidden by locals or destroyed by the Spanish as part of the conquest. As such, we have no historical records of Peru that pre-date the  arrival of the Spanish.

There are two ways to pass down knowledge for posterity without the use of words. One way is numbers, and the Incas used a numeric system of knots in ropes called khipu that kept track of economic, political, and perhaps astronomical and semasiographic systems (Adams, 2011). There are approximately 600 known surviving khipu in the world.2 Another way to encode information is through pictures or images that can weather the elements over time. The pre-Colombian Andean cultures were prolific in their engravings in stone, metallic artifacts, weaving images in cloth, and painting on pottery. One example of interest to Latter-day Saints is the giant block of andesite carved into the Door of the Sun at the Temple of Qalasaya in Tiahuanacu, Bolivia. Although most of the temple grounds lie in ruins, the entrance remains standing and there is a rich iconographic representation of Wiraqocha engraved over the doorway. Spencer W. Kimball translated in detail the complete representation while visiting the site in 1979.3

A third way to pass down knowledge is the oral tradition—that of telling stories from one generation to another, seeing to it that they are memorized exactly as intended. In this case, we can ask whether the Incas narrated a true representation of their past, and did the Spaniards capture these narratives in a way that can be reliably reconstructed? Stories of an Andean Creator God who made the earth in a short period of time and of a universal flood were recorded by the Spanish through the lens of their own Christian beliefs. Despite these difficulties, Julien (2009) found that the Incas did indeed “develop their own forms of recording and transmitting representations of their past,” with a sufficiently detectable “native historical consciousness” despite sometimes unreliable chroniclers (pp. 293-302). In addition to relying on early Spanish chronicles, the oral tradition is applied in this article by present day shaman interviews through the lens of a Latter-day Saint scholar.4 I employed a qualitative phenomenological and ethnographical research technique of open-ended questions in the shaman’s native tongue to both describe the temple experience and to seek to understand the meaning the temple held for the subjects.

The Legend of Wiraqocha
An early Spanish chronicler wrote of a legend in Peru where a long time had past without seeing the sun [also see The Book of Mormon 3 Ne 10: 8-9]. The people prayed to the gods and the sun arose. After this happened they say that there “suddenly appeared,” coming from the Lake Titicaca region of Tiahuanacu, “a white man of large stature and authoritative demeanor” [Also see 3 Ne 11:8]. “This man had such great power that he changed the hills into valleys and from the valleys made great hills, causing streams to flow from the living stone. When they saw his power they called him Maker of all things created, and Prince of all things.” It was said that he “gave life to all beings” and “by his hand flowed many benefits…” Further, “they say this man travelled along the highland route northward, working miracles as he went. They say he gave men instructions on how they should live, speaking to them with great love and kindness and admonishing them to be good and to do no damage or injury one to another, but to love one another and show charity to all. In most places they call him Ticci Wiraqocha. In many places they built temples to him” (Cieza de León, [1553], Part II, Chapters 4 and 5).

Another early chronicler, Juan de Santa Cruz, asked the natives what their tradition had to tell about this Wiraqocha. He wrote, “they told me he was a man of tall stature clothed in a white robe which came down to his feet and which he wore belted at the waist.” When Santa Cruz asked them the name of the person in whose honor the stone was erected they replied, “Con Tiki Wiraqocha Pachacama, which means in their language ‘God of the World’” (Salcamayhua [c.1615] (1873)).
At the ruins of Ollantaytambo in the Sacred Valley, the Incas carved the image of this Wiraqocha into the mountain with a three-pronged crown on his head and a large bundle on his back. That legend states that Wiraqocha carried the burden of the world on his shoulders (Salazar and Salazar, 2013, p. 85).
Cieza de León gave us the source of His name. He tells us this Wiraqocha made his way toward the ocean and established a temple near present-day Lima called Pachacamac. Then “he came to the coast and there, holding his mantle, he went forth amidst the waves of the sea and was seen no more. As he went they gave him the name Wiraqocha, which means ‘foam of the sea’” because he could walk on the water like the sea foam ([1553], Part II, Chapters 4 and 5).5
But it wasn’t just the Inca (AD 1250/1438 – 1533) who worshipped this Wiraqocha figure. Before them, the Mochica (200 BC – AD 700) and the contemporary Tiahuanacu, as well as the earlier Chavin (900/600 BC – 250 BC), all worshipped a white man with a beard (Cotterell, 2001, p. 6).6 Latter-day Saints are not surprised by such stories. They affirm that Jesus Christ visited the Americas after his resurrection (3 Ne), but that he was also known in the Americas “many hundred years before his coming” (The Book of Mormon Jacob 4:4).

The Culture of Temples in the Inca Empire

The Incas built many “solemn temples” (Cieza de León, [1553], cap. LIII, 1922, p. 185) throughout the empire, and ceremonies of fasting, mourning, sacrifices, military strategizing, and worship were held in them (Niles, 1999).
The construction and administration of the temples were directed by the Inca himself, as he held the religious authority in the empire. Betanzos recorded that Inca Pachacuti held a dedication ceremony at the Temple of Koricancha in Cusco ([1551], part I, Chapter II; 1987:50- 53).7 Young married men and 500 young women “were assigned to serve the temple” and “they also anointed the young women” (Julien, 2009, p. 104). Hiram Bingham, who discovered Machu Picchu in 1911, wrote that “Chosen Girls” were selected at 8 or 9 years old, and when they were about 16 years old, they became concubines of the Inca, sacrificed in honor of the sun, or “they could act as temple attendants” (Bingham, 1948, pp. 30-31).8
Cieza, himself a soldier, tells us that on one occasion the army stayed at Vilcas, where Inca Huayna Capac “re-endowed a temple and made sacrifices” ([1553], parte II, cap. LXIV; 1985:185-188). Based on references from Betanzos and Cieza, it is believed that it was this Huayna Capac that built and dedicated the Temple of Wiraqocha in Raqch’i, known then as the land of Cacha (Niles, 1999, p. 239). Balboa wrote that Topa Inca, father of Huayna Capac, wanted to go to the coast to see the famous temple near present-day Lima. Topa Inca took the Huarochiri road and

“he was very pleased with the service at that temple, although it was not administered according to the rules given by his father. He decided to build a new one, and the natives agreed, provided he did not destroy the old one. He built a very large temple to honor Pachacamac (Earth’s creator), and so the valley took its name” (Cabello de Balboa, [1586], p. 144, italics mine).