Semana Santa Day 3, Part III

A walk outside Cusco in five parts: Temple of the Moon


After we took our fill of pictures, ate our picnic lunch, and bought a doll from a young street vendor we caught a cab to another near by Inca waca, or temple: Salumpunku, the temple of the moon. This is a natural rock out cropping that was carved and chiseled into a temple. Inside one of the natural caves is a polished stone alter alleged to be bathed in moonlight at midnight on the full moon closest to the winter solstice. But the entrance of the cave has the most interest to us. Carved in the stone in three dimensional reliefs are the distinct shapes of snakes, a puma, and a condor. A local man, willing to help with history, explained to us the importance of the Incan trilogy.

The Incans believed in three layers of earth, the under earth where our body rests when we die (represented by the snake), the surface earth where we spend our life (represented by the puma), and the heavens where the spirit goes when you die (represented by the condor). The Incans represented this trilogy in a three layer cross that also mimicked the Southern Cross, the most important constellation used by the Incas. After the animals were pointed out to us and the symbology explained, we were finding these three animals, also joined by the image of a llama (the most useful animal in their daily lives) in every Incan ruin we visited.