An Incan Trail
Just outside Sucre, I hired a guide and a driver to take me out to an ancient trail that the Incas used to use. I imagined what it would have been like to live in Incan society during those times.
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The trail led up through the mountains and to a waterfall with a cave behind it. The air was fresh, and the Andes mountains were absolutely beautiful. On the way back, driving past a church, some wildlife appeared.
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My interest in philosophy led me to read the book Incan Anatomy of the Soul, by Marc Torra. This was an interesting introduction to both the worldview and spirituality of the Andean people, albeit one that has been influenced by postmodern thinking and archetypal psychology.
Copacabana
While in Bolivia, I also took a short excursion to the Bolivian town of Copacabana, situated on Lake Titicaca. According to Incan legends, this was the birthplace of humankind. I had read that it was a highly spiritual place; however, when I explored the area and talked to people, I sensed that was mostly no longer true. Tourism (and perhaps the local overindulgence in chewing coca leaves) has changed the feel of this once sacred lake.
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The legend of Viracocha described how people emerged from Lake Titicaca and proceded in the direction exactly 45-degrees NW from the lake, eventually reaching Cusco, Peru, which is where the Incans established the seat of their empire. Andean tribes descended from and related to the Incans include the Quechua, the Aymara, and the Jalq'a.
The Jalq'a Tapestry
The most powerful experience I had happened at an obscure museum in Sucre that didn’t appear on any map. The museum contained indigenous artwork of all kinds, including tapestries made by the indigenous Jalq'a people. I found a video containing some of the other artwork at this museum on YouTube and linked it below:
Among the tapestries, there was one that caught my eye. It was far superior to the rest because it contained not just a random assortment of images but an entire philosophy made up of motifs that interconnected. This tapestry, woven in the 1970's, contained the sacred ancient wisdom of the Jalq'a people of the Andes. It used at least 12 different colors and was absolutely beautiful. I immediately fell in love with the tapestry, and the longer I studied it, the more insights it seemed to reveal. I felt that photographing it would be disrespectful, so instead I will describe some of what I saw.
The Jalq'a tapestry was about 3'x4' and depicted a blue river winding back and forth through a forest of black, green, and red trees. In the river were images of plants, animals, fish, snakes, and people on boats. Some of the animals had sharp teeth and were fighting each, other while others were inside the bellies of other animals. Some animals were fish simply swimming in the river, and one was a llama standing on the side of the river, smiling. In fact, all the animals and all the people were smiling! It was as if all the people and the animals shown knew the sacred meaning of nature.
At the bottom of the tapestry was a tiny green sprouting plant, which I imagined was a symbol for the origin of life on earth. The river flowed upward from there and grew larger as it neared the top segment of the tapestry, which showed a village of people dressed in traditional Andean clothing, smiling even more brilliantly than the animals in the river. And these people were dancing! Above the people were the moon and stars. Eventually I also noticed that near the center of the tapestry, beside the winding river, sat a solid red person playing a blue flute. And smiling!
The Jalq'a tapestry was about 3'x4' and depicted a blue river winding back and forth through a forest of black, green, and red trees. In the river were images of plants, animals, fish, snakes, and people on boats. Some of the animals had sharp teeth and were fighting each, other while others were inside the bellies of other animals. Some animals were fish simply swimming in the river, and one was a llama standing on the side of the river, smiling. In fact, all the animals and all the people were smiling! It was as if all the people and the animals shown knew the sacred meaning of nature.
At the bottom of the tapestry was a tiny green sprouting plant, which I imagined was a symbol for the origin of life on earth. The river flowed upward from there and grew larger as it neared the top segment of the tapestry, which showed a village of people dressed in traditional Andean clothing, smiling even more brilliantly than the animals in the river. And these people were dancing! Above the people were the moon and stars. Eventually I also noticed that near the center of the tapestry, beside the winding river, sat a solid red person playing a blue flute. And smiling!
The more deeply I gazed into the Jalq'a tapestry, the more I understood--this was the river of life! It was a river like the one in my favorite novel, Siddhartha, which one could listen to and observe and thereby experience all the wisdom of the cosmos. This river was the ultimate symbol for the human experience and our connection with nature. In terms of Andean culture, I discovered the Jalq'a tapestry to be an ingenious map of mystical symbolism for who we are, where we are going, and why we are here. Indeed, this tapestry was the ultimate expression of wisdom and genius of the indigenous people.
In utter rapture, I stood and studied this tapestry for nearly two hours. I did not take a photograph. Everything I had learned in college about indigenism made perfect sense. There was a hidden truth to nature, a certain divinity to the human experience that one could feel by learning to listen to nature and coexist with all elements of creation. There was much more to learn about the Andean cosmovision; it was a wisdom that led to a world beyond the world I knew and into the spiritual realm.
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At the time, encountering the Jalq'a tapestry and viewing (by means of art) the River of Life was one of the most profound experiences in my life. It inspired me to learn more about the indigenous peoples of the world and understand how other groups might capture this same level of spirituality and wisdom through their own cultural expressions. So, for my 2014 study abroad trip, I decided to venture to a land with an equally rich indigenous presence, whose genius and living traditions have been preserved since the beginning of time (or at least, since the beginning of their infamous calendar)...