What a week we have lived thus far. It began last Sunday, Palm Sunday, followed on Monday with the procession of the Taytacha, the Lord of Temblors. It is a Holy Week of Catholic faith and devotion, the traditions of a fascinating culture in which we breathe in two different worlds.
While the majority of people of Cuzco celebrate Catholic traditions, at the same time Andean people live their experience. They carry out mystical activities and ancestral ceremonies of maintaining and building harmony with an ancestral, Quechua worldview of our Cuzco.
Yesterday, Friday, the ritual ceremony of Willka Nina, the sacred fire, was celebrated in the Sun Temple, the Qoricancha. There on the first Fridays of every month the different ayllus come together in what is called the Hatun Ayllu Qorikancha.
This Hatun Ayllu Qoricancha Paqarina is conformed by the Ayllu Inkanato, Ayllu Paukartambo, Ayllu P’oquen Kancha, Aylly Tawa Inti Suyo, etc. Those of us who belong to it are responsible for carrying out the rituals from Andean roots.
These ceremonies are carried out on the great esplanade of the Qoricancha, the Sun Temple, with the objective of maintaining the spiritual essence of our ancestral Andean worldview and in this way marking a difference from performed stagings of so-called Inca ways.
We live in two worlds that are fascinating because of the mysteries that each religion lives. The capital of the great Empire, the Tawantinsuyo, breathes the syncretism of separation and fusion of two worlds.
