Inca religion

The Inca civilization built many temples to their deities. The best-known Inca temples include the Sun Temple in Cusco, the temple at Vilcashuaman, the temple at Aconcagua (the highest mountain in South America) and the Temple of the Sun at Titicaca Island. The Inca built the Sun Temple in Cuzco from exquisitely matched and joined stones. It had a circumference of over 1200 feet, and housed a great image of the sun. One part of the temple, the Coricancha ("Golden Enclosure"), held gold models of cornstalks, llamas and lumps of earth. Portions of the Incas' land were allotted to the sun and administered for the priests.

Pantheon

see Inca mythology

Sacred sites

Huacas, or sacred sites, were widespread around the Inca Empire. Huacas were deific entities that resided in natural objects such as mountains, boulders or streams. Spiritual leaders in a community would use prayer and offerings to communicate with a huaca for advice or assistance.

Priesthood

Priests lived at all of the important shrines and temples. They functioned as diviners of the lungs and as sorcerers, confessors and healers. The chief priest in Cuzco held the title Willaq uma, and wielded power over all shrines and temples and could appoint and remove priests.

Young girls of the nobility or of exceptional beauty had the option of becoming acllas who spent four years in the provincial capitals brewing chicha or weaving textiles used by the Inca and the priests. Some learned these skills at Aqllawasis (feminine schools). They then had the privilege of becoming mamaconas, dedicated to a life of chastity serving the sun god, or of becoming the wives of Inca nobles.

Divination

The Inca civilization relied on divination to inform all important events in society. The Incas used divination to diagnose illnesses, predict battle outcomes, and to drive out demons. Divination would also determine what sacrifices should be made and to which god. The Inca believed that unseen powers controlled life, and they appealed to these powers in their rites of divination.

Inca priests practiced divination by watching spiders move, by looking at the arrangement that coca leaves took in a shallow dish, and by examining the lungs of sacrificed white llamas. The lungs of the llama were inflated by blowing into the dissected trachea, and then were removed by priests, who minutely studied the veins. They also drank ayahuasca, a hallucinatory drug that affects the central nervous system. The Inca believed this practice put the imbiber in touch with supernatural powers.

Sacrifice

Animal sacrifices accompanied many important Inca occasions. Each day witnessed many sacrifices to celebrate the sun's appearance.

Festivals

The Inca calendar had months of 30 days, with each month having its own festival.