Ritual Practice
Inca ritual promoted complex flows of sacred power between Cuzco and local sacred landscapes. The Quechua word waka refers to multiple levels of supernatural power, ranging from places containing sacred forces capable of creation or cataclysm, to portable objects possessing their own ritual powers.
Inca rulers promoted themselves as generous patrons of regional pilgrimages and local cults, and they fashioned their own portable wak'a objects and ordered that provincial populations send theirs to the capital on an annual basis. Recognizing local sacred power and summoning it to the ruler has more than one interpretation— whereas Inca informants stated that they held provincial wak'as as hostages in Cuzco and beat them in the central plaza during times of rebellion, provincial groups such as the Yauyos believed that the empire could not conquer without
Figure 25.8. Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala's depiction of the Inca ruler Topa Inca Yupanqui summoning provincial wakas, under the gaze of Huanacaure, the Inca sacred mountain.
Illustration from Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala's 1615 chronicle.
the aid of their waka, describing Inca patronage as reciprocity willingly given to a higher power.[1813] Cuzco was a repository of sacred objects, as well as a location for ritual transformation, and the Colonial documents describe numerous imperial rituals where sacrifices—including humans and domesticated animals— were selected in the provinces and sent to the capital to be sanctified by the ruler (Figure 25.8).
More on the topic Ritual Practice:
- Identity, tradition, change and continuity: ritual practice and understanding
- Blakely S. (ed.). Gods, Objects, and Ritual Practice. Lockwood Press,2017. — 371 p., 2017
- Sandra Blakely Object, Image, and Text: Materiality and Ritual Practice in the Ancient Mediterranean
- RITUAL
- RELIGIOUS RITUAL
- Ritual, Text, Discourse
- The Substitute King Ritual
- Ritual Instruments Used by Female Priestly Attendants
- The practice of religion
- Ritual Practices
- RITUAL AND MYTH
- The Ritual of Battle
- RITUAL OBJECTS
- Transatlantic Ritual Combat
- Ritual Instruments Used by the Vestal Virgins
- THE SCIENCE OF SACRED RITUAL
- The ways of theoretical practice