by Alberto Villoldo: The Inka were born on the Island of the Sun at Lake Titicaca, at the beginning of time itself…
The first father was named Inkari. He was a being with supernatural powers. He could change the course of rivers with his hand, he could flatten hills with his feet, and his breath was as powerful and terrifying as the winds that blow over the lake on top of the world, Titicaca.
Inkari was a flesh-and-blood human with a heavenly father, the Sun. His mother was the dark
void of space, the cosmic womb in which the stars are born. Shortly after his birth, Inkari set out to search for a fertile valley where he was to be the founder of a new civilization. The Sun had given him a golden staff to test the soil. The staff would sink into the soft fertile earth only on “the navel of the Earth,” the future city of Cusco.
The first time Inkari threw his staff, it landed in the Andean highlands, but the soil was too hard
and would never bear much fruit. Yet the landscape was so beautiful that Inkari made this the home of the Q’ero people and delegated to them the task of protecting the wisdom and the rites of initiation. The Q’ero would be the ones who remembered the story of creation and the prophecy that Inkari would return to found a second empire based on wisdom and not on military might.
The next time Inkari hurled his staff it landed in the fertile Sacred Valley of Cusco (the word
qosco means navel), and he determined to establish the Empire of the Children of the Light there. Inkari longed for his partner, so he traveled back to Lake Titicaca to find Collari, the first mother, with whom to cofound the Inka kingdom.
This is the malady that we inherited from our father, Inkari, a man must travel a rough road through the mountains to find the woman with whom he can discover happiness. Man cannot find his reason for being by himself, and he hates to be alone. On the other hand, a woman must discover her nature by herself. If she waits for a man to discover her, she will find herself through his reflection only, and will never be happy. A woman is a whole being without a man, but a man is only half a person without a woman.
I wondered how Don Manuel had reached these fantastic conclusions about men and women.
It certainly seemed applicable to me, as all my life I had looked for the right partner to accompany me on the next leg of my journey, and many of my male friends were lost and floundering without a partner.
But is there a deeper meaning to this myth? Sit for a moment and contemplate how this myth affects you on a deep level. Is this myth casting a spell affecting how you view the world? Is it time to release the spell of this myth to the fire and create a new mythology?
