Friar Bernabe Cobo’s Inca Religion and Customs as Evidence for

Inca Imperial Shamanic Practices

April, 2015

Rebecca R. Stone, Ph.D.

Professor of Art History, Emory University

127 Carlos HallEmory UniversityArt History Department581 South Kilgo CircleAtlanta, Ga. 30322Rebecca.stone@emory.edu

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Abstract:

Friar Bernabe Cobo’s Inca Religion and Customs (1653) provides

strong evidence that the main elements of core shamanism

characterized the imperial religion of the Inca Empire.

Cobo’s account can be seen to describe cross-culturally

familiar shamanic roles, practices, and beliefs:

practitioners’ belief in the supernatural origin of their

vocation, their gender balance, the key role of divination

and visionary experience, and a variety of curing

specialties such as bone-setting and midwifery. He

establishes that shamanic roles existed at all levels of the

Inca hierarchy, from royal diviners to local herbal curers.

His detailed descriptions even provide the Quechua names for

most roles and outlining rituals, thus allowing for deeper

interpretation. Interestingly, Cobo also reports that

certain shamans outside official imperial control were

respected for their trance journeying and shape-shifting,

the most prestigious and extreme manifestations of the

shamanic belief system. The ubiquity of official and

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‘outsider’ shamans helps explain how shamanism persisted

beyond the downfall of the Inca Empire and Spanish efforts

at extirpation. In addition, while many scholars assume

shamanic religious orientation necessarily falls away by the

time social organization reaches the level of the complex

state, Cobo’s text shows otherwise.

Keywords:

shamanism, Inca (Inka), Peru, Friar Bernabe Cobo, visions

Introduction

Friar Bernabe Cobo (1582-1657) is perhaps the best known and

one of the most scholarly Jesuit scholars of the middle

Colonial period in the Viceroyalty of Peru. He spent sixty-

one years of his life in the Americas, forty-eight in Peru.

From his direct experiences traveling and working all over

Peru beginning in 1609, he published in 1653 ‘one of the

most respected sources on the Incas,’ his Inca Religion and

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Customs (Hamilton 1990: xi). The level of detail that Cobo

provides, such as the list naming the over three hundred

Inca huacas (sacred places) around Cusco (Bauer 1998), makes

his work valuable to scholars seeking to reconstruct key

features of the last great pre-Hispanic Andean empire

(MacCormack 1991: 392-405). This specificity has made it

possible to mine Cobo’s account for various non-religious

themes, for instance, the important role of textiles (from

the clothing of provincial Inca women [Katterman 2002] to

the uses made of the state’s knot writing devices known as

khipu [e.g., Urton 1997: 178]). However, many of the

important religious subjects covered by Cobo remain to be

explored. The present discussion focuses directly on what

Cobo recorded, and is not meant to be a summary of all of

Inca religion, which obviously has many facets and many

interpretations.

One as yet untapped source of information in Cobo

concerns the role of shamanistic beliefs and practices in

the state religious apparatus.1 Cobo, an avowed ‘extirpator1 The general use of this southern Siberian term for the religious orientation of Native Americans, long widespread

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of idolatry,’ though he was deeply prejudiced against what

he recorded, focuses in Chapters 33-36 of Inca Religion and

Customs with what can be recognized today as the basic

features of a shamanistic religious complex. He describes

various shamanic roles, often providing the Quechua names

for them, and he mentions visionary trances and shape

shifting as well. (Cobo also recounts several curing and

divination rituals in some detail; however, that noteworthy

but complex aspect of his work remains the topic for another

discussion.) While obviously geared to Inca values in their

particulars, these elements are nonetheless very familiar in

the context of what is known as ‘core shamanism.’

Core shamanism may be defined as a widespread, age-old

approach to the supernatural mediated by skilled ritualists

we generally call ‘shamans,’i who practice divination and

in the literature, has recently gotten support from genetic research by the Genographic Project. As of March 2006, the findings for Amerindians point to DNA markers ‘that link them unequivocally with Asia. The same markers cluster in people who today inhabit the Altay region of southern Siberia, suggesting it was the starting point for a journey across the land bridge… between20,000 and 15,000 years ago.’ (Shreeve, 2006, p. 6). My thanks go to Laura Wingfield for pointing this out to me.

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cultivate trance states in order to consult higher beings

perceived as existing outside the bounds of the normal

terrestrial context (in the sky, underworld, land of the

dead, and so on). This visionary information allows the

shaman to cure social and physical ills, foretell the

future, and control natural fertility (bring rain, game

animals, babies, etc.). Shamans are called to their roles

by supernatural forces rather than by human election.

Typically one or more of the following draws attention to a

potential shaman: extraordinary occurrences during their

births or early life, recovering from a usually fatal

illness, spontaneous visions, omniscience, or prescient

dreams (Stone 2011: 55-60). Thus, shamanism is unusually

gender inclusive; callings may come equally to males or

females no matter what overall political system is in place.

Shamans go through lengthy and arduous apprenticeships;

according to their talents and experience (often as a

‘wounded healer’), they principally specialize in

childbirth, divining the future, or curing ailments (the

latter at various levels: through herbs, sucking or blowing

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out disease, and on up to leaving the body to retrieve a

client’s soul lost in the land of the dead). There are

typically different titles for the practitioners of the

various specialties, who tend to form a loose hierarchy in

which the herbal curers are lower, the diviners in the

middle, and those most skilled in the out-of-body trance

toward the top (e.g., Harvey 2003; Halifax 1982; Huber and

Sandstrom, eds. 2001; Langdon and Baer, eds. 1992; Stone

2007a; Stone 2011; Tedlock 2005).

While any given culture may emphasize or eliminate some

of these core elements, they tend to operate together and

have done so for many millennia. The pre-Inca Andes had had

a long history of shamanistic approaches, evidenced by the

numerous images of male and female practitioners conducting

curing ceremonies, as well as those depicting the

transformation of the human into the animal during trance

states (Berrin ed., 1997: 135, 136; Stone-Miller, 2002a,

2002b, 2004; Stone 2011). The post-Inca Andes likewise

demonstrate the strength and adaptability of the shamanic

approach, which survives to this day in both remote locales

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and urban settings as well as everywhere in between

(Calderon et. al 1999; Dobkin de Rios 1973; Glass-Coffin

1998; Joralemon and Sharon 1993; Siskind 1973).

Though deeply inter-digitated with Catholicism since

the Spanish invasions, traditional Andean shamans continue

to perform the same basic types of roles, actions, methods

of being called and initiated, gender balance, and status

hierarchy as in earlier times (Stone 2007a; Stone-Miller and

McQuaide 2005). While the past and present configurations

are certainly not identical, there are deep-rooted

commonalities in the various manifestations likely based on a

similar set of experiences. Prime among the common experiences are

trance visions that display a set of near-universal

properties and tend to generate certain assumptions, such as

that humans are not dominant over other animals and that all

things are alive (Harner 1973b; Naranjo 1973; Ryan 1999:

203-209; Siegel 1977; Stone-Miller 2002b: xxi-xxvi; Stone-

Miller 2004; Stone 2011: 13-48). Likewise, core shamanic

actions such as divination are based on interpreting

‘chance’ configurations: spiders’ positions on the ancient

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North Coast (Cobo, 1990: 162), llama organs during Inca

times (ibid.:163), or candle flames in the modern era

(personal communication, Esteban Tamayo, 2004).2 Curing

through the extraction of malevolent substances from the

body through sucking and blowing is a particularly

consistent feature, though what is extracted varies over

time and between cultures (Cobo, 1990: 166; Harner 1973a:

17, 21; Siskind 1973: 31). Thus, like other, more

institutionalized religions, shamanism maintains a

2My colleague Dr. Michael McQuaide introduced me to a highland Quichua family of shamans practicing in north-central Ecuador. Esteban, Pablo, and Esteban Tamayo (grandfather, son, and grandson respectively) use a number of techniques from what we would consider various cultures to diagnose and cure clients. A shrine to Jesus is prominently featured ‘because Jesus is a very powerful spirit’ and Catholic prayers in Latin are recited. Other techniques include an Andean version of palmistry, invoking the help of power objects on a mesa or altar, and determining the problem by meditatively looking at the client through a candle flame (lit after the client has blown on the candle, which presumably injects it with their life force and so gives the yachaj access to their soul). Curing features blowing fireballs and tobacco smoke at the client, as well as cleansing and uplifting them with rocks, perfume, alcohol, and flowers. Their work well exemplifies the typical combination of core features (mesa, meditation, cleansing) with idiosyncratic ones (fireballs, palmistry) and how flexible and inclusive shamanic practice is at base (Stone-Miller and McQuaide 2005).

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diagnostic constellation of features over time, despite

major cultural shifts.

I will argue here that the Inca Empire, a vast and

sophisticated state-level socio-political organization,

serves as the ‘missing link’ between overtly shamanistic

ancient Andean cultures and the continuing traditional

practices of the modern era. Cobo outlines in startling

detail and clarity the recognizable features of the

shamanistic core configuration in his four chapters ‘Of the

Priests and the functions they had,’ ‘Of the sortilegos

[sorcerors],’ ‘Of the sorceror-doctors and the superstitions

they used in curing,’ and ‘Of diviners and how they summoned

the devil’ (Cobo 1990: 158-171). Cobo’s open hostility

toward indigenous beliefs and practices arose from his

orthodox views, but his destructive agenda also led him to

describe in very revealing detail the shamanistic basis of

Inca religion (all the more effectively to exterminate it).

His intentions and our own, to rebuild rather than tear down

the past, may diverge sharply; however, the unintended

byproduct of his anti-shamanic stance, his substantial and

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in-depth recording, serves modern purposes surprisingly

well.

A few factors particular to Colonial Peru and to Cobo’s

work make it useful for such an analysis. While 1534, when

Pizarro ‘conquered’ the Inca, obviously constituted an

important watershed, it did not signal an absolute end date

for ‘Inca’ practices. The rebellious Neo-Inca state and

later series of ‘Indianist’ movements, Spanish in-fighting,

a series of devastating plagues, and the difficulties posed

by the arduous environment all meant that indigenous culture

was not as abruptly or as completely changed as it was in

Mexico and other parts of the Americas (see Lockhart 1994;

MacCormack 1991: 185; Silverblatt 1998: 64-81). While on

the one hand, this means that fewer chroniclers were

involved in recording Inca customs soon after Inca times

(compared to Mexico, for instance), it also means that

versions of Inca customs could more easily persist in such a

relatively chaotic situation than in a more controlled and

rapidly acculturated one.

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Importantly, Cobo had access to information about the

Incas from the first post-conquest generation: he parroted

the best and earliest chronicler of Peru, Juan de Polo de

Ondegardo, who interviewed native peoples throughout Peru

only one generation removed from Inca rule, within living

memory of times predating Spanish hegemony. Polo’s detailed

report on indigenous culture came out in 1559, although that

version remains lost and only a summary published in 1585

remains of the original. John Rowe states that Cobo’s ‘book

on Inca religion is based almost entirely on earlier

manuscript sources’ (Rowe 1990: xi), and Cobo specifically

mentions Polo’s inquiry in his text (Cobo, 1990: 162). Rowe

goes on to comment that ‘Cobo preserved more of Polo’s

material than the 1585 summary did’ (Rowe in Cobo, 1990:

vii). That Cobo cleaves so closely to Polo gives added

credibility to Cobo’s account. In addition, he consulted

many other texts, such as the chronicles of Pedro Pizarro,

Cristobal de Molina, Pablo Joseph de Arriaga, and Pedro

Sarmiento de Gamboa (MacCormack 1991: 392-393).

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In his own time, three to four generations after 1534,

Cobo clearly finds that Inca beliefs remain difficult to

erase: ‘thus with the poverty of one group, the simplicity

of the other, and the diligence of the devil, things were

established that are not only harmful but also difficult to

eradicate, as experience has shown’ (Cobo, 1990: 162). Many

sources confirm that Colonial indigenous peoples were

practicing secret versions of ancient rituals and being

punished for it; for instance, ecstatic dance and oracular

trances by ‘sorceror preachers’ were central to the Taqui

Onkoy religious-political revolt of the 1560’s (MacCormack

1991: 181-204). Mills adds,

‘In mid-seventeenth century Quipan and Huamantanga, thereligious system that focused on huacas in natural surrounds was very much alive. This system both antedated and persisted through the Spanish military conquest and feats of colonial reorganization of peoples and boundaries. Different degrees of secrecy and modification had been forced upon the system’s keepers by the uneven hand of priestly vigilance and the intermittent efforts of official persecution, but Spanish pressure had not eradicated it by mid-colonial times’ (Mills 1997: 45).

Indeed, the fact that Cobo knows of these beliefs and

practices at all, and in such detail, shows that these

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‘heretical’ practices remained a significant force in

colonial times.

Finally, while Cobo repeatedly employs powerfully

pejorative discourse (e.g., ‘All of [the sorcerors’] power

and science stems from an explicit or implicit pact with the

devil’ [Cobo, 1990: 160]), he proves capable of stepping

outside his own cultural and religious orientation. At one

point he stops to admire, in spite of himself, some of the

diviners’ results: ‘And it is true that with regard to

stolen or lost things these diviners made admirable

inquiries. In many instances the diviners accurately stated

where the things were located. Other times they told what

had happened in far-off places before the news arrived or

could possibly arrive in any normal way’ (ibid.: 168). This

constitutes a major concession from a seventeenth century

Catholic extirpator of idolatry.

By ignoring the negative language and actively

acknowledging the obvious point that the Spanish were by no

stretch of the imagination anthropologists, cultural

relativists, or scholars attempting neutrality, analysis of

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Cobo’s Chapters 33-36 reveals that core shamanic

spirituality played a key role in the Inca Empire. This

discussion will proceed from the general issues, what Cobo

reveals about the gender of Inca shamans and how they were

called to the profession, to the specific descriptions he

gives of shamanic specialties (reordered here from most to

least prestigious), ending as he does with those shamans

outside the Inca imperial purview. Only the fire ritual

will receive its due attention; various other rituals Cobo

describes are completely understandable within core

shamanism but await their own in-depth consideration

elsewhere.

Gender and Calling to the Shamanic Professions

As regards the gender of who is called to the

profession in the Inca Empire, while Cobo almost always uses

the gender-neutral plural pronoun ‘they’ throughout his

discussion, which in itself shows inclusivity. Yet he also

specifies both genders and, in a few cases, singles out one

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or the other. In four instances he notes that women as well

as men could be and were shamans in the Inca Empire.

Divination ‘was practiced by men and women alike, although

more commonly by men…Since this occupation [of diviner] was

open to both men and women…it is no wonder that so many

people practiced it’… ‘There were four hundred seventy-five

man and women who had no other occupation [than diviner]’ in

Cuzco… [Finally,] ‘there were many Indians, both men and

women, who cured sicknesses’ (ibid.: 160-164).

The Inca favored gender balance in general, as part of

their Andean valuation of complementary pairs, especially

male-female. They had a particular word for balanced

opposites, ayni, and another for the ideal complete man-

woman unit of marriage and work obligations, karihuarmi or

man-woman (Classen 1993: 11, 22, 60-61). However, it remains

an indication of core shamanic practice that men and women

were included as religious specialists on a nearly equal

basis, certainly not a given elsewhere in the male-dominated

Inca Empire. Such overall gender flexibility is typical of

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core shamanism cross-culturally (e.g., Glass-Coffin 1998;

Harner 1973a: 17).

There were gender-specific specialties among the Inca,

however. For the highest spiritual role in the land, the Sun

Priest(s), Cobo uses the male pronoun ‘he’ and the noun

‘men,’ consistent with ‘priest’ being an exclusively male

term in European usage (Cobo, 1990: 158-159). In three other

instances he calls attention to women curers in particular.

One is a specific mention of a highly influential woman

diviner by the name of Galina ‘who was considered very

eminent in this occupation’ (assuming this is a woman

according to the Spanish linguistic rule that the feminine

ends in an ‘a’) (ibid.: 160). This case suggests that

individual women could essentially become famous as shamans.

Showing that others could become more locally prominent,

Cobo states that the Inca believed that some women working

in the fields during a storm would claim to have been

impregnated by Thunder and subsequently to have given birth

to divinatory pebbles that always told the truth (ibid.:

162). Thunderstorms were and are rare events in the arid

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Andean environment, so being out in one would not be an

everyday occasion. To the Inca, Thunder was a natural force

that was revered like the Sun, Moon, Rainbow, etc. (Classen

1993: 19-25), obviously because of its connection to life-

giving rainfall (Hyslop 1990: 129-130). Giving birth to

stones is analogous to the ubiquitous shamanic healing in

which foreign objects are miraculously removed from the body

of a patient (see below). The implication is that such a

woman would become a successful diviner since she took

Thunder into her body, its power producing a visible

connection to the divine, the pebbles that were so reliable

a source of information from the Beyond.

Cobo also reports that some took up the profession of

midwife ‘when they gave birth to twins,’ obviously limiting

it to females (Cobo 1990: 164). Twins, of course, are out

of the ordinary, yet aptly fulfill the aforementioned Inca

preoccupation with dualistic phenomena, as well as being an

example of abundant fertility, all of which would give them

special power to the Inca. Shamans in general are

responsible for ensuring natural fertility of all sorts, so

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a woman who could produce two babies at once would be seen

as manifesting shamanic talent. In the rest of his

discussion of midwives Cobo uses the plural ‘they’ so we

cannot be certain that all midwives were female, but this is

the case in almost all pre-Industrial and traditional

societies and thus it may be assumed that this specialty was

restricted to Inca women as well. Given that Cobo would not

have been predisposed to grant females equal status in

equivalent European professions, such as medicine, his

repeated mention of women and the balance of the genders in

Inca shamanic roles is all the more noteworthy and

convincing.

This typical gender equality and the extraordinary

circumstances in which some women were singled out for

spiritual power brings up how shamans were called to their

profession(s) within this belief system: expressly not by

human election or self-selection but rather by what were

seen as signs from the supernatural. Despite this,

according to Cobo there were families, clans, and locales

that tended to produce shamans among the Inca. Diviners were

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often from the south-coastal quarter of the Empire called

Condesuyu since Galina was from there (ibid.: 160) and the

Sun Priests were always chosen from the ayllu of Tarpuntay,

for which no reason is given (ibid.: 158); however, calling

of a particular individual remained based on supernatural

signs and demonstrated talent. Cobo states that Sun Priests

were appointed by the Sapa (the Inca ruler) or his governors

(ibid.: 158). It would be understandable that the ruler would

have a hand in picking the top religious official in the

empire. In any case, the imperial aspect of being selected

does not necessarily negate shamanic beliefs, since

presumably the ruler would choose someone already shown to

be exceptional and talented in the ways of the supernatural.

There are a very common set of occurrences in shamanic

societies that point to a person potentially having such

talent: unusual circumstances at birth, overcoming illness

in a miraculous fashion, and/or having special dreams,

spontaneous visions, or the ability to cure without previous

instruction (Halifax 1982; Ryan 1999: 80, 238). These

signal the predisposition of an individual to take up a

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shamanic role, but they are not binding since the person may

refuse (a typical act, given the arduous nature of the

profession) or may not ultimately succeed in being able to

predict the future or cure illness. One of Cobo’s telling

remarks is that ‘It was said that priests were not selected

by chance nor without some mystery that marked them’ (Cobo,

1990: 159). Again the natural force Thunder was seen as

selecting a future shaman, known as a ‘son of the Thunder,’

because of being born during a storm or a clap of thunder.

It may be surmised that Thunder pointed out a prospective

shaman because it ‘spoke’ when the baby was moving from the

hidden to the manifest realms. As he grew ‘the people kept

track of him, and when he was an old man, he was ordered to

dedicate himself to this [the priesthood]’ (ibid.: 158-159).

Another common way to identify potential shamans also

shared by the Inca was that someone was ‘born as twins or

triplets from the same womb, [or]…given by nature something

out of the ordinary’ (ibid.: 159), such as an unusual

physical form. Since having twins could make one into a

midwife, it is internally consistent that being a twin or an

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even rarer triplet could also elevate one to a special

status. Furthermore, although Cobo does not provide examples

of ‘out of the ordinary,’ throughout the world and the

ancient Americas in particular those people born with a

physical distinction of some kind (dwarfism, hunchback,

scoliosis, blindness, etc.) may become shamans as a result

of their special corporeal attributes (Lastres et.al 1943

[many of the works show disabled persons in the meditation

pose with hands on knees]; Stone-Miller 2002b: 86-87; Stone

2007b; Stone 2011: 104-107, 155-160, 171-176, 186-188).

Physical distinctiveness also includes the ability to

overcome diseases contracted after birth, some of which

leave one looking markedly different, such as leishmaniasis

(Stone-Miller 2002b: 227-228). A person surviving normally

fatal conditions is considered to demonstrate their inborn

healing talents, ones that may generalize to curing others.

Cobo describes this common situation of the wounded healer

(Halifax 1988: 16-21): ‘The way in which many of them took

up this occupation [of bonesetter] is as follows. Whoever

had broken an arm or leg or any other bone in their body and

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got well in less than the normal time was taken among them

to be an expert in curing such maladies, and they made up

great things to explain how they had gotten well, including

dreams in which they were given power to cure’ (Cobo 1990:

164).

That certain persons can contact the supernatural and

gain power from it via dreams is likewise a familiar

shamanic belief. Cobo draws attention to this in a number

of situations.

‘When they were asked to tell who gave them or taught them the occupation that they practiced the majority ofthem would give as the main cause that it came to them in a dream. They said that while they were asleep, someone appeared to them grieving about their plight. This person told them that they were being authorized to cure the sicknesses that they cured. And whenever they started giving a cure, they would sacrifice something to that person who, as they claimed, had appeared to them in their dreams and taught them how tocure and what instruments to use in doing it’ (ibid.: 164).

Spiritual communication via dreams was also cited by Cobo as

the source of divine guidance for the shamans who

interpreted the needs of the sacred places, the

huacacamayocs. He dismisses as nonsense how ‘the guacas

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complained to them at night in their dreams of how they were

neglected’ (ibid.: 158), but reports the belief nonetheless.

In addition, ‘others said that a deceased person came at

night in their dreams and brought the pebbles [they were to

use in divining] to them’… [The women who were impregnated

by Thunder] ‘in their dreams … were told that the

predictions made with these pebbles would be true’ (ibid.:

162). Many modern shamanic societies incorporate dreams

into curing in a number of ways, particularly seeing them as

another source of information from the Other Side, like

waking visions, and believing it is possible to cure

patients by entering their dreams and changing the outcome

(Siskind 1973: 33-34; Kracke 1992: 145-146; Stone 2007a;

Stone 2011: 59; Tedlock 1987).

Finally, Cobo does not go into detail on the issue of

shamanic initiation or training, the latter almost always

accomplished through a protracted apprenticeship in core

shamanism (Huber and Sandstrom 2001: 59-60, 93-94, 103-106,

183-184, 246-247; Langdon 1992: 55; Siskind 1973: 32; Stone

2007a). This would not have been information freely given

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to anyone who was not a shaman, the teaching of secret

knowledge being by definition itself a hidden, esoteric, and

idiosyncratic process. The only comment Cobo offers about

initiation is that Inca shamans would tell the common people

‘the ways that the devil had to teach [the profession] to

them and the hardships they had to suffer in order to learn

it’ (Cobo 1990: 166). The difficulty in becoming a shaman

is one of the reasons even singled-out individuals may

refuse to take it up. It is typically a lengthy process,

taking several years or more, and involves all-night,

physically demanding rituals (dancing, singing, drumming

continuously for hours), ingesting substances that are

physically nauseating and enervating, learning vast

quantities of oral information, such as long chants, songs,

cures, medicines, as well as maintaining sexual and food

abstinences (Agustin Grefa, personal communication, 2004,

2006; Harner 1973a: 18; Stone 2007a; Stone 2011: 60-62).

However, to perform the various shamanic roles delineated so

carefully by Cobo, many forms of initiations and

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apprenticeships, now unfortunately lost to us, had to have

taken place among the Inca.

Roles and Hierarchy of Inca Shamans

Cobo leaves no doubt as to the large number, ubiquity,

and variety of shamanic specialists who were organized

hierarchically within the Inca imperial organization, as

well as some that coexisted outside its official reach.

Besides the aforementioned 475 male and female diviners ‘who

had no other occupation’ in Cuzco (Cobo 1990: 162), he also

reports that ‘every town had many of them [sorcerors]’

(ibid.: 160). To put this in context, there was a population

of perhaps 100,000 in Cuzco in 1534 (Hyslop 1990: 29, 64-

65), and as many as fourteen million subjects in the empire

as a whole (ibid.: 291). Thus, while there were many

practicing shamans, it was still an exclusive occupation in

the overall scheme of things. Modern shamanistic societies

vary in the relative exclusivity of the profession(s): among

the Shuar (previously known as the Jívaro) of Ecuador nearly

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a quarter of all men are shamans (Harner 1973a: 17), yet

among most groups the number is much smaller (e.g., Siskind

1973: 31).

As to the organization of the many practitioners,

‘Among themselves the priests had their ranks and grades of

higher and lower officials’ (Cobo 1990: 158). This is

typical of core shamanism in which talented, proven,

prestigious practitioners rise to the top and are

acknowledged with special titles, while lesser ones occupy

lower rungs of the ladder. The modern Siona, for instance,

refer to the top shamans as ‘seers,’ those below that level

as ‘those who leave,’ and those inexperienced novice shamans

or people outside the profession or an as ‘only a man’

(Langdon 1992: 53). The levels of the Inca religious

hierarchy will be described below, from the top down.

However, first it is important to note that for Cobo to call

them ‘officials’ signals that they had overt political

status; he erases any doubt that the Inca state religion was

shamanistic. Clearly making a distinction between personal

religious practice of divination and sanctioned state

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religious actions, he writes, ‘although everyone was

permitted to cast lots for his own purposes, only those

named by the caciques [indigenous leaders] as public

officials who make their living by this occupation were

permitted to cast lots of behalf of other people’ (Cobo

1990: 162). Some of the confusing and seemingly

contradictory information in Cobo stems from this situation

in which the entire society was practicing various shamanic

actions and, as a subset of that, the official state

religion claimed the most powerful actions and practitioners

for itself. Certain roles represent differences in degree

(divine for oneself, for the community, or for the empire as

a whole) and some in kind. Most are within the state

control, a few outside it.

On the issue of who does what for whom, Cobo is quite

explicit that there were many separate roles but often one

person played several at once. This overlap would be

somewhat unfamiliar to a European, whose culture sharply

demarcated priests from doctors from witches.

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‘Many times these occupations [confessor and curer] were confused with the first type of priests [higher status ones, including the High Priest of Sun] because the same person practiced them all together. Other times these occupations were separated because each person attended to his own task. Nevertheless the first situation [one person being confessor, curer, anddiviner] was the most common. More often than not the same priests were confessors, doctors, and sorcerors.’ (ibid.: 159)

What to Cobo was confusion was almost certainly not to the

Inca. A cure consisted of consulting about the problem,

conducting a divination to diagnose its cause (‘they cast

lots for all the things that they wanted to undertake’

[ibid.: 163]), then magically interceding to solve it. Cobo

breaks up a cure into components and assumes each action had

to be a discreet specialty. In shamanic practice revealed

talents determined what one does: a good diviner and curer

was both, or, if one divined but did not affect cures, one

could simply be a diviner of the future, a very important

specialty (such as the royal fire diviners, the yacarca

[ibid.: 169-170]). It makes sense that the Inca state would

be most concerned with knowing the future and enlisting help

in imperial decision making, i.e., divination, and so

29

elevate such individuals as demonstrated the most talent in

this direction. However, there were practitioners of the

various tasks at all different levels of the hierarchy, as

can be gleaned from Cobo despite his attempts to fit the

Inca into the entirely discreet roles of priests, sorcerors,

curers, and diviners Europeans would expect. Here his

evidence will be reconfigured so as to illuminate the status

level and duties of the major types of shamans, whose

actions of interceding with the supernatural, divining, and

curing were often interpenetrating, as Cobo himself

admitted.

At the very top of the Inca hierarchy of spiritual

specialists Cobo pinpointed what he calls the High Priest of

the Sun, in Quechua the Villac Umu or ‘the diviner or sorceror

who speaks’ (ibid.: 158), also known as the Willajj umu (Herbas

Sandoval 1998: 591). He was always a member of the ayllu

(lineage/labor sharing group) of Tarpuntay, but after taking

up this role he resided/presided at the Qorikancha, the

Golden House or Inca main temple in Cuzco. The Villac Umu was

‘the highest ranking dignitary among them and the superior

30

and prelate over the rest of the priests, both those

dedicated to the Sun and those dedicated to the rest of the

gods’ (Cobo 1990: 158). In other words, he directed all the

priests who served natural forces such as the Moon, Rainbow,

and Thunder (Classen 1993: 19-25). Despite Cobo’s term, this

‘Sun Priest’ might be better glossed as simply ‘the High

Speaker,’ or, in Cobo’s own words, “The One Who Speaks.”3

While it cannot be proven, one may hypothesize that the Villac

Umu may have gone into trance to speak to and for all the

celestial forces. It may be worth noting that during the

majority of trances a shaman is able to verbally narrate the

visionary events, as there is not typically a total loss of

consciousness but rather a dual or altered consciousness

(Stone 2011: 16-18). Many vision-producing substances cause

prodigious verbal performances (Munn 1973; Siskind 1973:

33). Therefore, ‘one who speaks’ could be an apt description

of the entranced diviner, perhaps one who has ingested 3 Herbas Sandoval records no particular relationship to the sun, p. 591, as affirmed by Bruce Mannheim, personal communication, 2006; similarly Cobo calls the Qorikancha theTemple of the Sun, although it translates as Golden House Group and contained all the most sacred cosmic imagery and avariety of attendants.

31

mixtures such as those mentioned for diviners in general

(see below). In general, royal/celestial divination would

entail speaking the questions of the Sapa Inca and reporting

the answers gained from the supernatural realm; such a

Speaker would interpret between the terrestrial and the

Beyond. Thus, it can be argued that a consummate shaman who

could bridge present and future was elevated to the greatest

prominence in the Inca politico-religious hierarchy, one

deeply concerned with influencing the future through

continued conquest.

Cobo discusses another imperial spiritual rung only

slightly less elevated than that of the Villac Umu, namely the

yacarca, a group of diviners that the Sapa Inka took with him

‘wherever he went’ (Cobo 1990: 170). By their proximity and

indispensability to the Sapa Inka, the yacarca were by

definition the supreme diviners of the realm. Although Cobo

does not elaborate as to why, this highest type of royal

diviner specialist, or what might be called a ‘Fire Shaman,’

came from the town of Guaro near Cuzco. Their fire

divination helped influence the most serious affairs of

32

state, illuminating the Sapa regarding weighty political

matters such as if a certain province were about to rebel, a

constant problem in the far-flung Inca Empire (Davies 1995:

109, 130, 190). Before the fire ritual, children were

sacrificed, signaling a momentous royal ceremony indeed, as

were white llamas and precious metal objects. The Sapa

would fast, abstaining from chili peppers, salt, and meat

for two to three days before the yacarca conducted the fire

divination ceremony. (Fasting is a very common shamanic

action; in modern times an initiate spends years on a

proscribed diet, purifying himself as s/he learns to control

supernatural powers, and before rituals several days of

fasting also occurs [e.g., Agustin Grefa, personal

communications 2004, 2007]). When all was ready, Cobo

describes in great detail ‘the method of summoning the

devil’ by fire, the method ‘with the most authority’ to talk

to the spirits of the dead or living who were distant (Cobo

1990: 169-170). It is worth quoting extensively, as such

detailed descriptions of long gone rituals are rare

33

opportunities to reconstruct actions that leave little or no

trace in the material or documentary record:

They took two braziers made of silver, copper, or clay,which were about

the size of a large still…that had many openings all around it and another larger opening in the top from which the flame came out. The braziers were placed facing each other, full of slivers of wood soaked in fat. The braziers were lit up, and the attendants blewinto them with tubes…made of copper from the middle upward, and the other half was silver. Around these braziers many vessels made of gold, silver, wood, and clay were set with various kinds of food and drink. Later the principal attendant, with the others, chewingcoca, first chanting then weeping, started with the words that they knew for this purpose to summon the spirits of those persons about whom they wanted to knowsomething. The spirits were invited to come to the banquet that had been prepared for them in the presenceof the sacred Fire, the Sun, and the mother Earth, Pachamama. Once the fire was burning well in the braziers, its flames started coming out through the vents, and then the devil would come. Without being seen, he spoke to them, saying that he was the spirit of the person about whom they were asking. That person might be alive or dead, in a nearby place or far away. The first thing the devil did was to make it known thathe had accepted the invitation to the banquet, and later he proceeded to answer as many questions as they might ask. Finally in order to confirm everything thathe had said, with incantations and magic charms they forced him into one of the braziers. They made him go through the opening around the brazier which was designated by them. Then they ordered him to repeat and verify everything he had said by means of the flamecoming out through the opening. In this way, with the

34

flame, he answered everything that they asked him (ibid.: 171-172).

The fact that this ritual used various precious metal

vessels conforms to the pattern that royalty employed

objects made of these precious and restricted materials; for

instance, drinking beakers that were usually made of ceramic

or wood, and called qeros, were made of gold and silver for

the Inca nobles, and called aquilla (Cummins 2002: 178-188).

This detail leaves no doubt as to the highest prestige and

significance of the ceremony. The food and drink were

offerings to the fire, which is a huaca or focus of divine

energy and thus in need of sustenance in order to

reciprocally provide answers to the ruler’s questions.

Feasts were the modus operandi of the Inca Empire, on both

the practical and the sacred levels (Cobo 1990: 212; Classen

1993: 86). The Fire Shamans chewing coca reflects a

ubiquitous Inca practice and a long-standing and widespread

ancient Andean one in general (Jones 1974). However, in

shamanic settings the stimulating effect of the leaves helps

give the celebrants energy to sustain long chants and

35

rituals and to counteract the latter’s soporific effects

(Agustin Grefa, personal communications 2004, 2006).

The yacarca then called upon the spirits of the dead or

of someone living but inaccessible, beings that only such a

spiritual intermediary skilled in the non-linear would have

had the power to call to the here and now. Fire Shamans also

invoked the all-powerful masculine principal of the Sun and

balanced it with the feminine Pachamama, or Mother Earth.

This inclusiveness reflects the aforementioned fundamental

Andean principles of ayni and specifically karihuarmi, amply

participating in the overall gender balance of shamanism in

which male and female practitioners and spirits were/are the

norm. The power the yacarca achieved from male and female

principles and from the celestial and the terrestrial realms

was considered necessary to invoke the dead through fire,

itself a powerful natural element. Such multiplied power was

probably why Cobo avers ‘they were greatly feared by the

Inca as well as by the rest of the people’ (Cobo 1990: 172).

How the yacarca obtained an answer to the Sapa’s query

seems to be based on correlating it to the pattern of flames

36

escaping a brazier. My interpretation of Cobo’s somewhat

confusing description is that the Fire Shamans would say

something like ‘So-and-so’s Dead Spirit, if your answer is

yes, we should go to war against the such-and-such, then

Fire come out of the left side of the brazier now.’ If it

did, then the answer was ‘yes,’ and if not, either the

answer was ‘no,’ or a different question was needed. The

yacarca double-checked the spirit in the first brazier by

repeating the same question and seeing if they got the same

answer; this would show that the answer was not due to

chance but was instead a consistent communication. The

passage goes on to say that other spirits could be asked to

enter the other brazier and independently confirm Fire’s

predictions. By independent trials --a method of

reproducible results similar to what in modern science is

called Cox’s Postulate (Simonton 1988)-- the yacarca

demonstrated to royal satisfaction that the dead/absent

obeyed their commands in an internally verifiable and

systematic fashion. Clearly, the shamanic power to harness

great forces such as the sun, earth, and fire, to freely

37

consult the past and the distant to predict the future, was

considered fundamental to the Inca imperial functioning and

political strategy.

Central to more quotidian imperial practice, and

apparently found at all levels of the priestly hierarchy,

were a very large number of huaca keepers. They would

report to Inca government high officials known as vilca

camayocs (keepers of the sacred) who oversaw all the huacas,

and the sacrifices given to each one. There was one vilca

camayoc for each of the vast quarters (suyu) of the empire

(Cobo 1990: 155). (Below the possibility will be raised that

this high official kept not only ‘the sacred’ as a concept,

but perhaps ingested and/or oversaw rituals involving the

sacred vision-inducing plant also known as vilca.) The

Quechua term for the huaca keepers would be huacacamayocs,

although Cobo does not use that name but rather

interchangeably calls them huaca ‘priests,’ ‘attendants,’

and ‘caretakers,’ all of which encompass what –camayoc means

in all other situations.4 Huacacamayocs were very numerous 4 Others include khipucamayocs, or the keepers/makers/readers of the knot records, and qompicamayocs, keepers of the fine

38

because ‘there was not a shrine, large or small, whether it

be a stream, a spring, a hill, or any other place of

veneration for which attendants and caretakers were not

designated’ (ibid.: 159). They were given divine guidance as

to what the huaca needed via supernatural messages in their

dreams. Andean belief that all phenomena were fundamentally

alive and thus able to communicate in various ways is a

basic core shamanic tenet; in visionary experience this

universal life force and speaking with all types of beings

is a given (Halifax 1988 pp. 9-11; Harner 1973b: 165-168;

Naranjo 1973: 185-188; Stone-Miller 2002b: xxiv-xxv; Stone

2011: 39). The presence of spirits vivifying natural places

and requiring humans, guided by dream knowledge, to sustain

them through a reciprocal exchange of gifts fits into larger

shamanic patterns. A deep spiritual connection between rock

spirits and Andean shamans, as well as ordinary people

engaged in spiritual matters, continues to this day (Allen

1997; Stone 2007a).

textiles.

39

Huacas maintained their own status hierarchy from: pan-

regional pilgrimage sites, such as Paria Caca (Salomon

1991); and major oracles such as Pachacamac (Davies 1995:

4); to key Inca locales like the origin place Pacaritambo,

or Paucartambo (ibid.: 22-25); and regionally and locally

important rocks and springs, such as the ones around Cuzco

that served as a ritual calendar (Bauer 1998). Individual

huacacamayocs likewise would have held social-political-

religious positions commensurate with their tended huaca’s

status level. Those around Cusco would likely have been

considered sought-after positions for these priests, as they

were royal and noble ceremonial sites (ibid.). A hierarchy

of importance would have subdivided the Cuzco huacas as

well. For instance, the boulder on Huaynacauri Hill above

the capital of Cuzco where the founder Ayar Ucho transformed

into stone (Davies 1995: 22) was a vitally significant

oracle (Cobo 1990: 169); its keeper would garnered extremely

high status in keeping with its mythico-historical

importance. This huaca, like a number of other Inca ones,

was believed to result from a human ‘lithomorphosis,’ a

40

deeply magical changing of form between beings and rocks. In

this case, the interchange happened after Ayar Ucho had

become an eagle and flown to the sun to gain vital

information concerning the Inca future, a deeply shamanic

account of a series of corporeal interchanges and out-of-

body experiences. Thus, not only the keepers, but also the

huacas themselves reflect a shamanic assumption that shape-

shifting, flying, and visionary consulting of the

supernatural for human good are key occurrences reified

throughout the sacred landscape. The transformation from

human into stone and back again has been a central Andean

construct from ancient times through to the present (Howard

2006; Stone 2007a).

While Chapter 33 of Cobo remains vague as to exactly

what huacacamayocs’ ritual practices were, two of his

comments in later chapters may shed some light on this

question. First, he says that no sacrifices would ever take

place without a prior divination (Cobo 1990: 162). Since

managing the sacrifices to the huacas was the main duty of

the huaca priests, it seems likely that huacacamayocs also

41

divined. Second, visionary experience is specifically

associated with huaca keepers: ‘the devil answered his attendants from

a stone or some other thing that was venerated by them [huacas]. On many

occasions he appeared visibly to them in several frightening forms, such as that

of a snake or other wild animal, and he spoke with them’ (ibid.: 169).

That the huacacamayocs were seeing and communicating with

the huaca spirits in visions is clear from Cobo’s reference

to ‘the devil’ in the form of a snake or other wild animal

emerging from a stone or something else they valued and saw

as alive. Snakes and wild, predatory animals are among the

most constant features of visions (Harner 1973b; Naranjo

1973; Schultes and Hofmann 1992). Therefore, huaca

‘priests/attendants/caretakers’ seem to have been diviners

and trance-visioning shamans-- thus corresponding more fully

to core shamanic practice than is implied by Cobo’s names

for them. Spread throughout the empire, throughout the

status hierarchy, and overseen by important high vilca

officials, huacacamayocs show how fully integrated

shamanism, including its visionary component, was in the

imperial organization.

42

Apparently mostly clustered in the middle of the

hierarchy was what Cobo calls ‘sorcerer-doctors.’ This term

corresponds best to the curing role adopted by shamans, who

achieve various levels of power and types of healing

specialties cross-culturally (and thus Westerners have

called them ‘witch doctors,’ ‘medicine wo/men,’ curandera/os,

and so on). Speaking from his own cultural stance, Cobo

makes a distinction: these practitioners had ‘made a pact

with the devil’ and intended to do evil, as opposed to the

regular ‘sorcerors’ who cast lots and meant no harm. He

discounts these ‘sorceror-doctors,’ as having the people

fooled because their ‘methods were useless and ridiculous

and did not produce the results that they claimed to be the

effects of their art’ (Cobo 1990: 160). However, he sets

his own skepticism aside to admit that the Inca considered

‘the occupation of sortilego not only to be permissible, but

also useful and necessary for the republic’ (ibid.). This

statement strongly implies that curers were an official part

of the imperial organization, considered both efficacious

and crucial.

43

Cobo provides two different Quechua names for

‘sorceror-doctors,’ what we could call curers: ‘These

doctors were called soncoyoc or camasca’ (ibid.: 164).

However, because he uses the word ‘or’ between the two terms

it remains unclear whether soncoyoc and camasca were

synonymous or distinct roles, although the most

straightforward reading of the comment is that these

‘doctors’ are either one or the other. Cobo does not himself

define or differentiate the terms; in fact, after he

introduces them he does not use them again in the text.

However, simply having the Quechua words recorded does make

it possible to flesh out their meanings and establish their

relation to the ideas of core shamanism. Soncoyoc in Quechua

means ‘one with a heart, one who has the use of his reason’

(Classen 1993: 167). While we separate reason from emotion,

the heart was the seat of both for the Inca (ibid.: 88, 176

note 22; under sonqo, see Herbas Sandoval 1998: 475-476).

Thus, soncoyoc seems to denote a person who had unusual

acuity with emotions and who could reason, the former

ability would help the curer connect to his patient’s

44

problem and the latter would help him or her find ways to

solve it. Contemporary shamans acquire various types and

levels of both intuitive and systematic knowledge (e.g.,

Langdon 1992: 53).

Likewise, Cobo’s use of the general term camasca for a

curer references a wide complex of ideas about life force

featuring, but not limited, shamans. Camay is a general

verb ‘to create,’ specifically meaning ‘to charge with

being, to infuse with species power.’ Camasca is recipient

of that vivifying power, the ‘tangible instance or

manifestation’ of an invisible, supernatural vitalizing

prototype, the camac (Salomon 1991: 16). For instance, all

earthly llamas are the camasca of a supernatural llama

camac, the celestial force (appearing as a dark

constellation in the shape of a llama) that constantly

generates and sustains llamas, if appropriately propitiated.

Calling a healing shaman a camasca engages life force in

general, someone who works with it to revitalize patients.

However, according to Salomon, the term camasca carries a

very specific and clear shamanic connotation:

45

Ordinary beings could be camasca (participal form,‘infused with camay’) to different degrees. An ancha camasca person is a ‘very powerful’ one. Butone can clearly see that camay means specific formand force, not general potency. In chapter 14 (sec. 191) [of the Huarochiri Manuscript] three men boast of their speed saying: ‘I am a condor shaman!’ some men answered. ‘I am a falcon shaman!’ said others. ‘I am one who flies in the form of a swift!’ replied still others.’ What theysaid more literally is: ‘I am the camasca of a condor!’ ‘I am the camasca of a falcon!’ ‘I am theone who flies as a swift!’ The point appears to bethat these men are three shamans whose patrons, the archetypes of birds who symbolize speed, have infused in them the species powers of speed and range of the condor, the falcon, and the swift.” (ibid.).

If these terms sonqoyoc and camasca were distinct, they

would distinguish a curer/diagnostician lower down on the

shamanic hierarchy from an animal-charged curer with

supernatural powers higher up the ladder. If they were more

complementary, the soncoyoc would serve more as a

diagnostitian and the camasca as more the type of shaman who

actually affected the cure. This is a very typical

arrangement of relative power and skills in shamanic

societies, as mentioned above. On the other hand, if the

camasca and soncoyoc were interchangeable to the Inca,

46

together they describe a healer as a knowledgeable,

empathetic conduit for re-infusing sacred life force energy

into the sick by embodying the powers of animal-spirits.

This is a very evocative way to describe the complete or

ultimate evolved shamanic role, also resonating strongly

with modern continuities in which the superior intermediary

may diagnose the illness first, then intervene and cure, all

with the help of knowledge and cooperation of the

animal/natural spirit world. While there are countless

specific ways different contemporary peoples conceive of

their curers, they resonate with these ideas fully (e.g.,

Munn 1973: 88). Cobo’s understandable confusion over the

many terms, actions, roles, and status levels of shamans in

the Inca Empire comes to mind again.

An extremely typical distinction in core shamanism is

between herbalists, who are the lower-level, everyday,

village-type ‘doctor’ (more like a nurse practitioner in

contemporary terminology), and those more powerful shamans

who employ trance/divinatory rituals to determine the type

of illness, its (supernatural) cause, and the spirits’

47

recommendations for its cure (which may involve taking herbs

or any number of other actions such as sacrificing,

chanting, etc.). Cobo describes this same situation for the

Inca curers, stating succinctly: ‘There were many Indians,

both men and women, who cured sicknesses. Some of them had a

little knowledge about medicinal plants with which they were

sometimes able to heal. Nevertheless, they all generally

cured with superstitious words and actions and they did not

bring about any cures without making previous sacrifices and

casting lots’ (Cobo 1990: 164).

Two sub-specialties of curers, namely bonesetters and

midwives, are singled by Cobo in Chapter 35. Bonesetters,

whom Cobo does not distinguish as male or female, ‘cured

fractures and dislocations’… ‘as long as the treatment

lasted they took great pains to make sacrifices in the place

where the injured person suffered the fracture or

dislocation’ (ibid.). Thus, they were not just mechanics

fixing the position of a broken limb, but had spiritual

roles to play as well. To make offerings in the location

where the accident occurred presumably would appease the

48

spirits who caused the accident and/or propitiate the

ancestors to help the injured person recover. Shamanic

belief systems attribute supernatural causes to what we

would see as naturally occurring accidents and contracted

diseases. Bonesetting continues to be a shamanic specialty

to this day (Huber and Sandstrom 2001).

Cobo reports that Inca midwives were proficient in all

aspects of female fertility: they knew how to cause

miscarriages and how to assist in childbirth, for instance

turning breech babies using massage. Cobo is quick to point

out that they worked for pay, in this case probably mostly

food or simple goods (slightly later he says high status

curers were paid with food, textiles, silver, and other

things [Cobo 1990: 167], obviously according to the clients

wealth and the seriousness of the illness cured). While we

might resist folding so ubiquitous and necessary a role as

midwife fully into the definition of shamanism, control over

fertility and facilitating major life transitions fall

within the purview of shamans. Disallowing midwifery from

shamanic practice may reflect more on our values and

49

traditions than those of the subjects we are trying to

illuminate; in his time and as a friar, Cobo would have been

more likely to bar women from the category, yet even he did

not. Sustaining the life cycle, of which birth is perhaps

the most significant moment, necessitated powerful

facilitators skilled in various dangerous liminal

situations. This specialty amplifies Cobo’s use of the term

camasca for healer in that the midwife overtly facilitates

the manifesting of life that defines the action of giving

birth. At the same time, birth often involved death,

especially in pre-Industrial times, and shamans were

familiar with the land of the dead, having been there

usually repeatedly in the course of their trance work.

Further signaling the shaman’s central position in

matters of life and death, Cobo next discusses the

malevolent shamans who could ‘kill anyone they wanted’

(ibid.: 165). As in most shamanic societies, curing powers

represent the potential to change things and therefore can

be used for good or for ill (Stone 2007a; Whitehead 2002).

Cobo discusses how the flip side of curing was the ability

50

to kill, using poison herbs and food, as well as to provide

clients with charms to make an enemy waste away.

‘The instruments and materials normally used for their magic charms were molars, teeth, hair, fingernails, shells of different types and colors, animal figurines made of different things, live and dead toads, the heads of various animals, small dried animals, large hairy spiders hat were kept alive in jars with clay lids, a great many different kinds of roots, pots and other vessels full of preparations made of herbs and other ointments’ (ibid.).

Each charm had a specific effect, which Inca curers could

describe in detail, but sadly Cobo does not because he views

these claims as ‘nonsense.’ Manipulating such body parts,

symbols, and toxic animal and herbal charms is completely

typical of what is known as ‘dark’ shamanism today (aka

sorcery, witchcraft). The power to hurt someone in this

manner rests on the assumption that a person’s life force

continues to reside in anything that was part of, touched,

or even represents them, so that actions taken on a

separated part or a possession would automatically affect

the actual person. This belief relies on the deep shamanic

conviction that everything is alive and interconnected,

i.e., consubstantiation (Allen 1997).

51

Besides covering the various curers and their opposite

counterparts, Cobo goes into detail about diviners at all

levels of prestige. The aforementioned top-ranked Villac Umu

and yacarca represent one end of the Inca shamanic divination

continuum, while at the other the local diviners operated

below the official state radar. Toward the upper end of the

hierarchy, Cobo discusses umu, whom

‘the people considered to be diviners, and they came toask them about stolen or lost things, events yet to happen, and what was happening in distant or far-off places. And they consulted the devil about this. They spoke to him and had conversations with him in dark places. He answered them in a harsh and frightening voice which other people often heard without understanding it or seeing who was speaking’ (Cobo 1990: 168).

This visionary, oracular performance corresponds to core

shamanic expectations and typically commands respect, being

seen as direct communication with the supernatural powers

(Cobo’s ‘devil’). Taking place in the dark is a recurrent

circumstance for shamanic rituals of all sorts (e.g., Stone

2011: 132). Illegible, invisible, and terrifying spirits

are likewise extremely common elements today (Bouchillet

1992) and shamans discuss how they telepathically

52

communicate and assume the voices of others, living and

dead, that come through them (Stone 2011: 39, 46).

Placing the Inca even more squarely in the center of

Amerindian shamanic practice, in Chapter 36 Cobo notes

diviners taking substances to induce trance visions:

‘Other times they went into a room; closing it from theinside, they used certain ointments and got so drunk they lost consciousness. One day later they answered the questions asked of them. For these consultations and conversations with the devil, they performed countless ceremonies and sacrifices. The most important one was to get drunk on chicha which had the juice of a certain plant called vilca added to it’ (Cobo 1990: 169).

To close themselves off in a room signifies a hidden ritual,

often a characteristic of trance situations. Chicha (or aqha

to the Inca) is highly alcoholic so drunkenness would

result. However, to get ‘drunk’ and lose consciousness would

also be a European equivalent --and naturally a fairly

judgmental one-- for an altered state of consciousness

brought on by psychoactive substances. That they did so in

order to answer the question the next day means that the

intention was to contact supernatural sources of

information, the universal explanation for taking these

53

mixtures. Native American shamanism today and for millennia

has relied heavily on the use of many different entheogens,

defined as substances or actions that brings one into direct

divine contact, a less culturally laden term than

‘hallucinogens’ (Harner 1973; Schultes and Hofmann 1992). In

relation to his word “ointment,” some psychoactive

substances can be absorbed through the skin, particularly

datura (although Cobo might also be influenced by the

botanically related European ‘witchcraft’ ointments, such as

belladonna (Harner 1973c: 129-131; Schultes and Hofmann

1992: 41, 86-91). In calling attention to the “juice” of

vilca, he may mean that a tea made from the ground seeds was

used. Cobo avers that the use of vilca signaled the most

important rituals, and the term vilca/willka is related to

villac/willaq, as in the top ‘priest’ designation. Both share a

quality of sacredness, yet are not exact synonyms (Bruce

Mannheim, personal communication, 2006). However, the

overlap in terms may signal that the four vilca camayocs were

in charge of the entheogen itself, the access point to the

sacred realm. They may have controlled its availability,

54

overseen its ritual use, and so on, given its great

importance.

In our Linnean terms vilca is Anadenanthera colubrina, a

major entheogenic substance in South America past and

present (Schultes and Hofmann 1992: 34, 78-79, 116-119).

Anadenanthera colubrina is a Mimosa-like tree found in the open

grasslands of southern Peru and Argentina that produces

long, rough, woody pods containing from three to ten glossy

black entheogenic seeds (ibid.). The Inca apparently

powdered the seeds and added them to fermented corn beer; on

the other hand, modern peoples tend to make it into a snuff.

It is interesting to speculate that this southerly location

of the vilca plant relates to Cobo’s comment that after

Galina came from there, diviners were sought from Condesuyu,

the southwestern quarter of the empire (Cobo 1990: 160). In

any case, Cobo’s statement that the Inca used two

entheogenic substances in important ceremonies helps cement

the case that they participated in a particularly widespread

element of Amerindian core shamanism, the sue of sacred

plants to induce visions.

55

Without the trance component, however, divining could

be a ‘low and undignified occupation’ (ibid.: 161) at the

bottom of the hierarchy, reserved for elders who were poor,

weak, and otherwise unfit to work. Despite its low status

level, ‘they say that once, while Viracocha was feeling

sorry about the poverty and hunger of the elderly and needy,

he saw fit to allow their predictions to be correct’ (ibid.).

Evidently even low-status diviners who achieved good results

would command some respect. Cobo makes a final, but key

distinction: ‘without harming or damaging anyone, those who

profess this art [of divination] use it to help themselves

in things that are personally useful or enjoyable to them’

(ibid.: 160). For the present purpose of determining the

role(s) of shamanism in the Inca Empire, Cobo suggests that

everyday diviners avoided being part of the Inca hierarchy,

but only divined for themselves, or at least that not all

divinatory actions were directed at state goals and under

its control. It remains very interesting that the majority

of Cobo’s categories (villac umu, yacarca, camasca/soncoyoc,

midwife, bonesetter, and umu) are official shamans.

56

A final type of shaman and one specifically pinpointed

by Cobo as likewise outside the Inca hierarchy was that of

shape-shifters --shamans able to change their form into that

of animals or other beings-- who ‘although they were not

among those considered necessary for the republic, no effort

was made to punish them’ (ibid.: 170). His wording makes it

clear that other types of shamans indeed were ‘considered

necessary for the republic,’ reinforcing the conclusions

being drawn here. That Cobo is surprised at Inca leniency no

doubt reflects his Euro-Catholic assumption that sorcerors

needed punishment, since in Cobo’s culture of origin

‘sorcerors’ were routinely burned at the stake. Cobo goes on

to give key details about these non-governmental shape-

shifters, ‘who changed into whatever form they pleased

(according to them), traveled through the air covering great

distances in a brief time, and saw everything that was

happening. Upon returning to the place from which they had

left, they told about what they had seen’ (ibid.). This is a

standard description of visionary flight, transformation,

and non-linear revelation, arguably the core experiences of

57

core shamanism (Harner 1973b; Naranjo 1973; Stone-Miller

2002b: xviii-xxvi; Stone 2011: 13-48). While highly

prestigious, magical, and visionary, perhaps by definition

these transformative shamans were beyond human control at

all; their slippery states of being would render them

unsusceptible to imperial mandates. To the Inca, wild forces

were often associated with the eastern quarter of the empire

called Antisuyu, including further east the unconquerable

Amazon, a sore point for the Inca expansionist agenda.

(Wilson 1991; Davies 1995: 101-102). The most extreme

visionary, body-transforming shamans remain in the Amazonian

area to this day, and there are no indications that this was

different in the past (for instance, the early Chavín cult’s

power was based on appropriation of rainforest animal-human

transformation beings [e.g., the cayman, see Burger 1995:

150-152]).

Cobo goes on to say that these ‘outsider’ shamans were

consulted for love magic, charms called huacanqui described

as ‘figurines made of feathers or of other different

things.’ (Cobo 1990: 171). The charms would contain some

58

clothing, hair, or even the blood of the beloved and were to

be placed on their bed to force the love object to return

the client’s affection. This is a familiar role for modern

shamans (e.g., Glass-Coffin 1998), and the huacanquis recall

the dark shamans’ harmful charms, their efficacy following

the same logic. Love magic likely would not have been a

state preoccupation, but rather another local, personal

matter. Given the empire’s millions of diverse subjects, it

makes sense that the state religious apparatus would not

choose to (and indeed could not) regulate all possible types

of shamanic practices and practitioners. It also seems

logical that the Incas nevertheless respected the

uncontrollable transforming shamans, given that their state

religion was based on the same basic principles. In

general, the Inca Empire was organized, successful, and

demanding, but it also recognized the practical advantages

of flexibility and allowed local leaders, culture, art,

ritual, and autonomy to continue under its supervision

(Stone 2007c; Burger et.al 2007).

59

Conclusions

It appears that there is ample evidence in Cobo’s

Chapters 33-36 to conclude that a complex hierarchical

arrangement of shamanic specialties characterized the

imperial Inca politico-religious organization. Yet, it is

equally important to note that alongside these official

shamans existed ones who were either so modest (lowly

personal diviners) or so talented (shape-shifters) that they

did not become incorporated into official schemata. I would

suggest that this dual situation actually helped shamanism

to persist up to modern times throughout the Andes and the

Amazon, defying the colonial campaigns of Spanish

‘extirpation of idolatry.’ Even as the overtly Inca system

was dismantled after the European invasions --slowly and

incompletely, but crippled at the very least-- the outsider

and purely personal shamans could, and did, escape European

control, just as they had that of the Inca. This occurred

in other post-Conquest arenas such as textile production, in

60

which the Spanish appropriated the official Inca fine

tapestry ‘industry’ (qompi made by acllacuna and

qompicamayocs; see Phipps 2004: 73, 95-96), while allowing –

whether intentionally or not-- local weaving in other

techniques to persist and develop through to the present.

Similarly, it may be argued that the Spanish could

profoundly affect but could not ever eradicate shamanic

values, actions, and beliefs, which had many branches and

tendrils throughout the Inca Empire, the Andes, and indeed

the Americas as a whole (Stone 2007a; Stone 2011). The

remarkable syncretism of Catholicism and shamanism in post-

contact Latin America, in which both religious systems were

mutually altering, signals how Inca state religion could

likewise incorporate shamanism at many levels and in many

guises. Shamanism is an approach to the supernatural, rather

than an institutionalized religion, which gives it

flexibility and longevity.

Therefore, it must be concluded that Friar Bernabe Cobo

was ultimately unsuccessful in his stated mission to wipe

out the beliefs and practices he delineates in these

61

chapters of his tome Inca Religion and Customs. Instead, his

work shows us that the elements of core shamanism remained

remarkably persistent even in the largest empire the

Americas have ever known. His insights further allow us to

recognize the key role the Inca Empire seems to have played

as the bridge between pre- and post-Hispanic shamanism in

the Andes.

62

Acknowledgments

I want to thank Bruce Mannheim, Walter Melion, and Arlene Chapman for their help with various aspects of this paper.

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