Viracocha

Viracocha America
The supreme being of the Incas: a storm god and a sun god. Of great importance in Peru even before the rise of the Inca Empire, Viracocha was represented with the sun for a crown, thunderbolts in his hands, and tears descending from his eyes as rain. He was Illa, ‘light’; Tici, ‘the beginning of things’; while Viracocha itself may have meant ‘the lake of creation’. Lake Titicaca, according to one tradition, was the site of the creation of the sun, moon, and stars. Yet in his legendary wanderings on earth, he assumed the form of a beggar. The ragged and reviled mendicant was probably connected with the unique feature of Viracocha, his cosmic tears. The living waters were the tears of the creator deity, who knew the sufferings of his creatures and still felt obliged to sustain their lives.

Viracocha made the earth, the stars, the sky, and mankind. But this first creation did not please him, so he swept the world in a deluge,...

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