The Andean people believe in an existence of an overall supreme power, and that the course of history forms a succession of repetition and renewal. Each age is ruled by a sun and the general course of development is from the more primitive to the sophisticated. Each world is suppose to end by some sort of catastrophic event.
The ancient cultures in the Andes believed heavily in the afterlife and because of that the dead received a lot of care whom they mummified and placed into tombs. Mummification was a way of preserving power, not memorializing it. The relatives of those placed inside stone palaces and atop sacred mountains tombs would bring food and other objects to their resting places in order to keep their incredible power over the living alive and their energy used in their lifetime were maintained in the world of the living until it was no more. This treatment generated a kind of telepathic message able to communicate things through dreams or symbols. The priests interpreted them and communicate to the community the reason of them.
The Western spine of South America is the Earth's natural laboratory for making mummies. The sands of its dry coast, stretching from Peru down to Northern Chile, were made by nature. Then 7,000 years ago, the pre-Incas cultures in the Andes learned to mummify their dead -2,000 years before the ancient Egyptians. They transformed their loved ones into representatives of the community -ambassadors to the natural world who ensured the fertility of their descendants and their resources.
By the time of Inca expansion, the Andean highland peoples were already placing their ancestors in burial towers (chullpas), whose location marked resources and divided territory.
The religion of the Incas were intimately connected with nature and their rulers were the receptors of the power of the sun god, Inti. Religion, then, was closely tied into everyday life of the Inca as well as with their government. They believed that many spirits roamed the universe and inhabited a multitude of places and objects in the natural world. The spirits occupied 3 different realms: the sky or Hanan Pacha; the inner earth or Uku Pacha; and the outer earth or Kay Pacha. They built many beautiful temples to such forces and the most important of them was the Coricancha built in the heart of the City of Cuzco to the sun god, Inti. The walls and floors were covered with sheets of gold, a symbol of its power. Coricancha means "Golden Temple."
The expansion beginning with Pachacutec's rule was the result of the Inca leader's greater emphasis on ancestor worship. He believed strongly in the afterlife. Pachacutec ruled that descendants of Inca rulers would inherit their father's earthly powers, but the father's possessions would be used only to continue glorifying the father by paying homage to and maintaining his mummy, and by recognizing his continued influence. The ruler's son, or successor, would be responsible for making his own conquests and expanding the empire's wealth.
The Inca burial rituals were extremely powerful and revered by most of their followers. The mourning color was black. They used sacred objects and held rituals on sacred locations. Examples of sacred places, areas and objects are: the Vilcanota, the "Sacred River," which is a section of the Urubamba River, the Sacred Valley of the Incas, the Intihuatana Stone, the Golden Sun Disk (a disk-shaped golden object representing the sun). Huacas, then, were their holy places: temples, tombs, bridges, hills, rivers, springs, and caves. Periodically, ceremonies implicating offering of huacas took place during Inca times. Most households contained two or more huacas. They were placed into a wall niches ( in the shape of a rectangle) and offerings were brought to them. The offerings contributed to the balance of the forces of nature and the people working together for the sake of i, influencing their well-being, happiness, and crop production.
The embalming and mummified body of an ancestor was a form of a supernatural object (huaca) and sacred spaces were organized around it. Cuzco is one such space and it is the location of hundreds of huaca (points of sacred energy). These places, because they were visible from great distances, helped to maintain in mind the unity in the vast empire by reminding the individual of they shared beliefs. Their minds did not work promoting individuality, it was the opposite. For this reason, new conquered people were accepted with their own spiritual forces that governed them as long as they submitted themselves to the power of the Inca supreme god, Inti, and that the Inca emperor as its chosen representative.
During holy festivals the dead ancestors were paraded behind the living emperor, their history and achievements were added to those of the living. The Incas believed that spirits looked after their living descendants and the symbolic practice of feeding the dead was an act of honoring one's ancestor. Whether permanently buried or temporarily interred, the mummies remained an a very important way alive -like a dried seed, ready to bloom, with an extraordinary invisible strength.
In the afterlife, it was believed that a member of the Inca royalty returned the power invested in him to the source, and depending on how he used it, the individual obtained a happy existence in communion with the source, or a life beneath the earth, a place of unending cold, pain, and hunger. For the Incas, a virtuous earthly life was achieved by following a simple rule of behavior: "Do not steal power that does not belong to you; do not lie about it; and do not be lazy."
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