Ask any Western American how one might “jinx” something, and they will list any number of things that might cause a person, place or thing to be jinxed. You and someone else could say the same thing at the same time, bringing a bit of bad luck into your morning coffee. You could walk under a ladder, break a mirror, or admit success or security, to which you might knock on wood to save yourself any bad luck. Bad luck, of course, is an absurd misconception of how reality works. If you break a mirror, there is no one around–including any god–who will actually dedicate the time and attention it would require to make you feel “unlucky” for the next seven years, and knocking on wood won’t save you from cancer, or from having some horrible accident. Depending on where you live, how you live, and your health, your life will carry with it its shares of woes and triumphs–if you are a naturally bitchy person, you may think your luck is worse than others. It’s probably not: it’s just how you view things. How you view things won’t necessarily change your “luck,” but you may keep your friends longer, and generally have a better experience in this, the only life you will live.
I traveled to Peru this 09 summer. It was a beautiful, astonishing country, and the people there were kind. They seemed interested and caring enough to humor a US traveler’s terrible Spanish, and most Peruvians I met were proud of their country. I wrote about my experiences in Peru. It is an inspiring country. But I came away with an experience of religion that I thought worth sharing here, away from my other writing.
As for the religious climate in Peru, I encountered nothing especially fierce. I noted a reverence for the Inca from many people I met there–people who were willing to look past the terribly misguided priests and kings who ruled during the height of the Inca to the astonishing accomplishments of this people.
The Inca were savage murderers–we must be careful to note this as we admire them. At any Inca site of religious importance that I visited, it was noted to me that virginal women, children, and young men were often found mummified in nearby caves, or buried on site. The same goes for livestock. The noted illustrator and writer Guaman Poma writes how alpacas were sacrificed based on their color and gender–the differences usually relating to the specific ritual being performed. Imagine staring out at the sunset, where it cuts through the towering white caps of the Andes in the distance, while fifteen virginal women are made silly drunk, then stoned or skulled, followed by a hundred alpacas, then some infants for good measure, and thrown from a cliff into the valley–all in the name of securing fortune and abundance for the coming season.
I sometimes put myself in the shoes of the villagers who watched the priests making these sacrifices in the name of, well, luck. The purpose of knocking on wood and that of killing a baby is very similar in religion–avoiding bad luck. Of course, the Inca often sacrificed a great many livestock in order to ensure this good luck–they were destroying their stores of livestock in order to get more livestock. Another reason why the god-kings and warrior-kings and priest-kings may have sacrificed of all of this livestock was to show control over the people’s resources. No matter the full reasoning, these sacrifices were horrible, and to the Inca they appeared to work, because the Inca were a wealthy people who lived in abundance, and lived like this for a long while. It is believed that many of these Incans truly believed that these sacrificial events were working.
They also believed that celestial events were the gods themselves on the move, and they believed their rulers could speak with these gods. Now, the priests and the kings and the rulers, they may have been a bit more cynical about their religion. It is clear, after all, that they could predict celestial events with great accuracy. So if they could predict the events, why did they need to kill livestock and claim that these sacrifices were all that could change these events? They may have known that the killings had no effect, or been so indoctrinated as not to see beyond the veil. But I believe that the Incan people may not have believed, either. In fact, I think that some of the destruction of livestock and virgins may have horrified these people, but they saw it as an inevitable event, one that could only grow worse if they resisted. But again, these sacrifices mostly seemed to work, and work they did, for hundreds of years.
The Mayans had no such luck. Their collapse is attributed to many factors. It takes more than one disease to dissolve an entire nation, more than one war. But some believe that, while the god-kings and warrior-priests all went on slaughtering virgins, the luck had stopped coming–the virgin-killing wasn’t working. Yes, it is postulated that when the Mayan people stopped believing, when they lost their faith in their religious leaders, they simply walked back into the jungle, assuming a smaller, less brutal rural life.
Some believe that the great Macchu Picchu in Peru–a site of such majestic beauty that’s inspired me to return to the Andes as soon as possible–was not abandoned for the sake of the Spanish, or the collapse of that nation, but because nothing they were doing, no prayer, sacrifice, or quarantine, was stopping the spread of malaria. Indeed, one mass grave was found with un-mummified bodies all dead of malaria, most of them women. It can be difficult to sacrifice a virgin when she is already dying of malaria. The vigor and dynamism of life is gone, and so there is no poetry in the slaughter.
But humans are humans: we go on destroying and building and rising and falling, and have done since the dawn of our time. So as much as I am disappointed by the religion of the Incas, I am far more impressed by the beauty of their lasting architectural and cultural achievements. I do not for a moment forgive them their foolish murderousness, but I admire their greatness.
I also admire the Quetchua people–of whom I met a few on my trip. They again were very proud of their heritage and their country. And I found this not only in the porters and the guides tasked with handling a big sickly American like me, but the middle class who sought out their national treasures on special weekends, and delighted in the quality of their homes, careers, and animals (from guinea pigs to dogs to llamas).
I heard superstitious talk from our guide in the Andes, Jose. This was an intelligent man, an intellectual, about my age. He had lived in Cuzco but also spent time in the mountains with his father, farmed, taught himself English and Spanish (his native language is Quetchua). He did not merely recite card-like explanations of the sites. Rather, he maintained relationships with the excavators on the sites, read widely and continued to read on the developments historians were making on the Inca. He maintained a diplomatic tone when speaking of the thieves at Yale who hold hundreds if not thousands of Inca artifacts hostage in one of their dreary history departments, in the US, and was willing to share his views on politics and his people after getting to know us a bit better.
He also explained that his dreams were clairvoyant, that he could read them as absolute predictions of certain events, and that depending on how one passed a dish at dinner they either attracted friendship from their fellow diner or a new nemesis. And so much of these superstitions could be life or death–it seemed. I can not remember the specifics, but I remember him saying that in a dream he saw a dog, and afterword became sick with a cold. He surmised that the dog was a sign of illness. It is also bad luck to sell a guinea pig. Each Quetchua acts on their superstitions, but most probably break the rules–Surprise! Like any good religion, the majority of the congregation are the real sinners. Jose used to sell guinea pigs when he was younger for money, and though it was considered very bad mojo to remarry, he had done it himself. Just like, sometimes, when we talk about how well we’re doing, we knock on formica instead of wood, and say, “Oh, that’ll do. It’s the thought that counts.”
Some westerners might be mortified by the superstitions of the Quetchua, but they are actually quite similar to ours…only different. I wish, however, that Jose did not have to feel bad for selling a few guinea pigs in the bad old days, just as none of us should feel too bad about walking under that ladder yesterday. Bad things happen to good people.
Observing superstition as an outsider, I certainly enjoyed a more objective perspective. Where I find superstitious USers to be some of the most annoying people I’ve met, I liked and respected Jose, and found his superstition endearing and much more imaginative and feature-rich than our dull rabbits’ feet. So long as he didn’t read the bones in order to decide which path we’d go down on the mountains, instead of using his years of experience, I would have followed him anywhere.
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