CHAPTER 4

OF THE FIRST SORT OF IDOLATRY, THAT OF NATURAL AND UNIVERSAL THINGS

After the Viracocha, or supreme god, the sun was and is the entity that the heathen chiefly venerate and worship, and after the sun those other things prominent in celestial or elemental nature, such as moon, morning star, sea, and earth. After Viracocha and the sun, the Inca lords of Peru placed thunder in the third huaca, or temple, and gave it three names: Chuquiilla, Catuilla, and Intiillapa. They imagine that it is a man in the sky with a sling and a club and that he has power over rain and sleet and thunder and everything else pertaining to the region of the air, where clouds are formed. This huaca (for that is what they call their temples), was common to all the Indians of Peru, and they offered different sacrifices to this god. And in Cuzco, which was the court and capital, children were also sacrificed to him, just as they were to the sun. They adored these three that I have named, Viracocha, Sun, and Thunder, in a different way from all the other gods, as Polo writes that he has ascertained, placing a gauntlet or glove on their hands when they raised them to worship these gods. They also worshiped Earth, which they called Pachamama, just as the ancients celebrated the goddess Tellus, and the sea, which they called Mamacocha, just as the ancients called it Thetis or Neptune. They also worshiped the rainbow, and it was the arms or insignia of the Inca, with two serpents stretched along its sides. Among the stars that all of them commonly worshiped was the group they called Collca, which we call the Pleiades. They attributed different functions to different stars, and worship - those whose favor they needed, just as the shepherds adored and sacrificed to a star that they called Urcuchillay, which they say is a sheep of many colors that is skilled in the preservation of their flocks and is apparently the one the astronomers call Lyra. And the same Indians adore two other stars near it, which they call Catuchillay and Urcuchillay, which they fancy to be a ewe with a lamb. Others worshiped a star that they call Machacuay, which has charge of serpents and snakes, to prevent their harming them, just as another star called Chuquichinchay, which means tiger, is responsible for tigers, bears, and lions. And generally speaking they believed that for each of the animals and birds on earth there was a similar one in the heavens, responsible for that animal's procreation and increase; and so they assigned meanings to certain stars, like the one they call Chacana, and Topatorca and Mamana, and Mirco and Miquiquiray, and others, to the point that in some sense they approached the tenets of Plato's ideas.

In almost the same way, after the supreme god the Mexicans worshiped the sun, and so they called Hernán Cortés (as he states in a letter to the Emperor Charles V) son of the sun because of the speed and energy with which he encompassed the land. But they offered their greatest worship to the idol called Huitzilopochtli, whom that whole nation called the Almighty and lord of creation; and as such the Mexicans built him the largest and loftiest temple, and the most beautiful and sumptuous building, whose position and massive strength can be guessed from the ruins of it that remain in the center of the City of Mexico. But in this respect the idolatry of the Mexicans was more grievously in error and more pernicious than that of the Incas, as will become clear later; for the greater part of their worship and idolatry was given to idols and not to natural phenomena in themselves, although they attributed these natural effects such as rain and flocks and war and procreation to the idols, just as the Greeks and Romans also set up idols to Phoebus and Mercury and Jupiter and Minerva and Mars, etcetera.

Finally, whoever looks carefully at all this will discover that the devil's method of deceiving the Indians is the same as that with which he deceived the Greeks and Romans and other ancient unbelievers, by making them believe that these noble creations-sun, moon, stars, elements - had power and authority of their own to do good or evil to men. And, although God has created these things for the service of man, man has been so unsuccessful in ruling and governing them that on the one hand he has tried to raise himself to be God and on the other has recognized and subjected himself to creatures lower than he, by worshiping and invoking these works and ceasing to worship and invoke the Creator, as the sage so well expresses it in these words: "But all men are vain, in whom there is not the knowledge of God." and who by these good things that are seen could not understand him that is, neither by attending to the works have acknowledged who was the workman. But have imagined, either the fire, or the wind, or the swift air, or the circle of the stars, or the great water, or the sun and moon, to be the gods that rule the world. With whose beauty, if they, being delighted, took them to be gods: let them know how much the Lord of them is more beautiful than they. For the first author of beauty made all those things. Or if they admired their power and their effects, let them understand by them, that he that made them is mightier than they. For by the greatness of the beauty, and of the creature, the creator of them may be seen, so as to be known thereby." Thus far the words of the Book of Wisdom, from which very wonderful and effective arguments can be taken to convince the idolatrous heathen of their great error, for they would rather serve and revere the creature than the Creator, as the Apostle so rightly argues But because this does not fall within my present intent, and is sufficiently expressed in the sermons that have been written against the Indians' errors, for the moment it will suffice to say that the Indians worshiped the supreme God in the same way that they worshiped those vain and lying gods. For the way of praying to Viracocha and to the sun, and to the stars and the other huacas or idols, was to open their hands and make a certain sound with their lips like someone kissing, and to request what each one wanted, and to offer sacrifice to the god. There was, however, a difference in the words when they spoke to the great Ticciviracocha, to whom they chiefly attributed the power to rule over all things, and to the others as gods or private lords, each one in his house, who were intercessors with the great Ticciviracocha. This way of worshiping by opening the hands and making a kissing gesture is in some sense like the one that the holy Job abominates as proper to idolaters, saying, "If I beheld the sun when it shone, and the moon going in brightness: and my heart in secret hath rejoiced, and I have kissed my hand with my mouth (which is a very great iniquity, and a denial against the most high God)."