Showing posts with label Paganism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Paganism. Show all posts

Sunday, November 17, 2019

The Incas Sacrificed Beautiful Children to Pachamama


 One of the ice mummies: a child brought to the gods as human sacrifices by the Incas.


(Lima) The work of archaeologists in Peru was reported at the end of September without any direct connection with the Amazon Synod.  It was a research activity that has particular relevance in view of the recent, so pervasive presence of Pachamama portrayals.

The Pachamama, which literally means "World Mother," rather than "Mother Earth," was a deity of South America that ruled over one of several worlds (Pacha means world, Pachakuna are the worlds), which also means cosmos and era.

The Incas, the high culture of South America encountered by the Spaniards as they explored the newly discovered continent, worshiped the Pachamama as a dragon goddess.  They sacrificed animals to their gods and other deities, as well as humans on special occasions.  The human sacrifices that could be proven so far were all children.

The archaeologists now know so much: These children, who were sacrificed to the pagan gods by the Incas and who were found by archaeologists on the tops of volcanoes, could come from different parts of the empire.  The archaeologists, especially Polish, know at least a dozen places in Peru where the Incas sacrificed some 500 years ago to their gods on the tops of mountains or volcanoes.  These human sacrifices were part of the Capacocha ritual.

Dagmara Socha, bio-archaeologist of the Centro de Estudios Andinos (CEAC) of the University of Warsaw in Cuzco, studied together with Rudi Chavez Perea, director of the Santuario Andinos Museum of the Catholic University of Santa Maria (Universidad Catolica de Santa Maria) in Arequipa (Peru), carried out the project on the remains of these children for several years.

This year, researchers focused on the children sacrifices placed on two volcanoes, the 6,288 meter high Ampato and the 5,665 meter high Picchu Picchu.  Several decades ago, the American anthropologist Johan Reinhard found the mummies of these children in a sitting position on stone platforms.  At present, these ice mummies are kept refrigerated at the Museo Sancturios Andinos.

According to Dr. Socha believed the Incas that at the time of sacrifice, children would become mediators between the gods and humanity.  The Incas, said the scientist, considered the children as pure and immaculate.  Therefore the human sacrifices had to be impeccable and virginal.  Accordingly, they were carefully selected.  Their status should have made it easier for the gods to make concrete decisions.

However, the scientists do not yet know the exact criteria in choosing the sacrificed children.  Socha told Szymon Zdziebłowski of Science in Poland, a website of the Polish Ministry of Science, that they needed "extraordinary qualities" such as beauty or a certain social background.  In one of the girls, whose remains were found on a platform on the Picchu Picchu, the researchers found a deliberate deformation of the head, which was extended specifically.  It is well known that this practice was not applied in the mountains, but in the plains and coasts of the Inca Empire.  This could mean that this girl came from a family living in a region far from the place of sacrifice.

 Using their teeth, the scientists were able to determine that the girl had either starved for a certain time or had suffered a severe trauma at the age of three.  At the time, the girl was allegedly brought to Cusco by her parents to be prepared for her offering for three years.  The trauma may have been caused by the separation from the parents, either first in Cuzco or already at home.  Then the child would have been brought to the capital by representatives of the theocratic Inca Empire.

Some of the mortal remains of six children examined by Dagmara Socha this year were mummified, if not all.  Other remains are poorly preserved and some have burn marks.  Socha explains that the Incas erected sacrificial platforms in places exposed to lightning.  There is ample evidence that these platforms have been repeatedly hit by lightning.  In the cosmology of the Incas, lightning represented
connections between the various god-worlds (Pachakuna) and the human world.

 While the altitude of the sacrificial sites meant that the sacrificed children were preserved as permafrost corpses, so-called ice mummies, some were indeed very well preserved, this is not always due to the lightning strikes for their clothes.

 According to the Incas, a person struck by lightning was being bestowed with great honor, as a god expressed interest in him.

The mummies studied by the Polish archaeologist are now in a similar state as before their discovery.  The mummies did not have to be moved.  Scientists used X-rays to minimize interference with the remains.  This made it possible to discover also many objects that were given to the children as grave goods: gold brooches for fastening the robes, wooden objects such as ritual cups, but also a gold tube and even petals.

The best-known example of a surviving human sacrifice of the Incas is the boy from El Plomo, who was found in 1954 near the summit of the 5424 meter high Cerro El Plomo in Chile.  At the time of his sacrifice, he was eight years old.  His skin was soft at the time of the discovery, as if he had just passed away.  The sacrifice was almost 500 years back.  The boy then was mummified by being transported to lower altitudes and becomes almost rock hard.

 All in all, 192 sacrificial ceremonial sites have been located on 192 mountains in the former Inca Empire.  So far, 27 surviving human sacrifices of the Capacocha ritual have been discovered on 14 mountains.  All were found over 5400 meters above sea level, which explains their conservation.

The Capacocha ritual was part of the religiously motivated state cult in the Inca Empire.  The boy of El Plomo was sacrificed after 1483, when central Chile was incorporated into the Inca Empire, and before 1533, when the Spaniards reached the area and put an end to the human sacrifices.

 
 Coronica (1615): human sacrifice on the mountains

 According to the scientists, the children were stunned with coca leaves and fermented drinks before being "buried" alive.  At least in the high-altitude sacrificial sites, they quickly froze, largely maintaining the squatting posture in which they had to sit.  In this position they were then worshiped - eerily scary - like living dead.

 Don Felipe Waman Puma de Ayala, an Indio, born around 1550 in the Spanish Viceroyalty of Peru, in what is now southern Peru, wrote a history of more than a thousand pages of Andean peoples, including 398 drawings (see illustration) ).  His mother tongue was Quechua, the language of the Inca Empire.  As a boy, he learned Spanish.  One of his drawings also shows how a child sacrificed on a mountain is worshiped.  His chronicle ends with his death in 1615. The description describes that in pre-Christian (pre-Columbian) time, human sacrifice was common.  The mentioned drawing expresses this, but also that at the beginning of the 17th century the sacrificed children were still worshiped by some of the Indians.

In detail, Don Felipe Waman portrays Puma de Ayala's sacrificial customs for the various deities, including Pachakamaq.  All were sacrificed in addition to other offerings and children in greater or lesser numbers.

 Its primer Nueva Corónica y Buen Gobierno was made fully accessible on the Internet a few years ago by the Copenhagen-based Congolese Bibliotek, in whose possession it is located.

Basically, it should be not that in past epochs ago, more or less, human sacrifices existed in all peoples and cultures in pre-Christian times.  That the true God does not want human sacrifices, He made clear already in Genesis, the First Book of the Bible, in the prevented sacrifice of Isaac by his father Abraham.  In the time of Abraham, and long after that, human sacrifices in the Middle East were obviously common practice.  In Divine Pedagogy, the great work of civilization, God led Abraham and his descendants away from human sacrifice for the time being because of the incomprehension of human beings, as an intermediate stage, as an animal sacrifice, although God Himself did not want that.  Where Christianity came, this cruelty was overcome, which illustrates its outstanding civilizational significance - and makes the contrast to the return of pagan amazons as the Pachamama in the context of the Amazon Synod all the more evident.

 Text: Giuseppe Nardi
 Picture: Primer Nueva Corónica y Buen
Trans: Tancred vekron99@hotmail.com
AMDG



Monday, July 20, 2015

Cardinal Ravasi Participates in "Mother Earth" Worship

Pachamama-Cult
 (Buenos Aires) Gianfranco Cardinal Ravasi, President of the Pontifical Council for Culture actively took part in the Argentine city of San Marcos Sierras  a Pachamama cult ceremony. The goddess Pachamama means in the Quechua language "Mother Earth" or "mother cosmos". It is a relic of pre-Christian, pagan times, which has been preserved in parts by the Quechua and Aymara Indians of the Andean countries.
Sacrifices will be made to the goddess Pachamama, which is "omnipotent" in the indigenous imagination, especially "Coca leaves", "talismans, herbs, llama fetuses", "little dolls" as the Neue Zürcher Zeitung wrote. "On the witches' market in La Paz"  there are traded "the ingredients for the burnt offering in honor of Pachamama"  and  "faith as business," said the NZZ.
The animist cult is also operated in a place of central Argentine province of Cordoba. There, San Marcos Sierras, with its nearly 950 inhabitants (2010), about 150 kilometers from the city of Cordoba, is where Pope Francis had been exiled   in the 80s by his provincials. San Marcos Sierras is regarded as the last place, where in the main of which is inhabited by the  more than 5,000 remaining  indigenous people of the Comechingones (Henia and Kamiare).

"Court of Nations" with Idolatry

Cardinal Ravasi Pachamama cult
Cardinal Ravasi at Pachamama cult
The Pachamama cult action was in November 2014 under Ravasis Initiative, "Court of Gentiles", which appeared at that time on Argentinan television stations, but is only now becoming available through the publication of a video. The organized idolatry was organized by Foro Ecumenico Social (Ecumenical Social Forum). The most prominent attendee of the "Mother Earth" was Cardinal Ravasi, "which was cultivated" (ORF) by the curial cardinal. The cardinal was not only an observer but an active participant (see video). With him Theresa Varela, who was vice president of the Foro Social Ecumenico and president of the Foundation Mision Esperanza to San Marcos Sierras  came  "along with the indigenous peoples".
According to unofficial information in Argentina, the place is said to have grown to 3,000 residents, as there is a strong influx of Argentines from the largest cities of Argentina, by Europeans and white US citizens "of the middle and upper classes." San Marcos Sierras is developed for tourism and is considered a destination of the hippie movement. A connection to Pachamama cult is believed.



Text: Giuseppe Nardi
Bild: liriosdelvalle/Youtube (Screenshots)
Trans: Tancred vekron99@hotmail.com
Link to Katholisches...
AMDG

Thursday, September 13, 2012

Blair Witch Monastery in Collegeville

“We sit by and watch the Barbarian, we tolerate him; in the long stretches of peace we are not afraid. We are tickled by his irreverence, his comic inversion of our old certitudes and our fixed creeds refreshes us; we laugh. But as we laugh we are watched by large and awful faces from beyond: and on these faces there is no smile.” — Hilaire Belloc, This That and the Other (1912)




Edit:  The whole thing has an air of the Gnostic, legends of porcine craftsmen constructing dwellings, and of the lairs of fallen men who serve ancient and malevolent powers they fear but don't understand.  It's a tendency in public art to avoid representing anything, no battle, no spiritual triumph or even a mere scientific one, just a couple of disconnected inanimate objects whose purpose is to confuse you at best, at worst, lower your spiritual aspirations down to a purely material plane.

What do these rather amorphous and primitive structures have to do with Benedictine worship?   Perhaps a word from Catholic World Report's John Buescher can throw some light on these bizarre constructions, which reveal to our mind the gnostic associations of puritanism:
Nevertheless, there is a harder-edged answer to the question of the puppets’ purpose: If it is “Puritan,” why this explosion of celebratory paraphernalia in the puppets and costumes? It derives from the “apophatic” meaning of the puppets: as instruments in deconstructing traditional forms that stand between the individual and God. “Forms,” like “dogmas,” are, to the modern mind, idols, and must be taken down. The traditional form of the liturgy, thus, is the enemy of faith, and the puppets invade its sanctum, as agents of iconoclasm. In short, the puppets are intended as mockeries, speaking (mutely) truth to power (Silence = Death!), meant to pull down the temple in the name of the people, acting in the liberty of the free spirit. They are meant to unmask hypocrisy—regarded as the ancient tradition in its entirety.
Here's the article where it appeared from the above photo at 1240AM Radio:

COLLEGEVILLE – An unusual structure is going up this week at the entrance to St. John’s University.  Artist Patrick Dougherty is leading a project to build a series of five chapels made out of sticks, inspired by the campus.
He says he wants his artwork to be accessible to everyone.
Dougherty is spending a three week residency at the St. John’s Arboretum.  He says there are 10-15 people working on the sculpture each day.
Once it’s done, it will stand for about two years.
Dougherty works on about 10 of these types of projects each year all around the world

Surely, they're nuts at AM1240...

Sunday, April 1, 2012

Immaculate Conception Parish in Chicago- Holy Week Yoga and Zumba

Above: Roadside sign announcing Yoga and Zumba and pointing to the church.



Above: Immaculate Conception Parish weekly schedule announcing Yoga, Zumba, and Ecumenical Way of the Cross during Holy Week.


Immaculate Conception Parish located at 7211 W. Talcott Ave. in Chicago, IL is offering Yoga and Zumba classes during Holy Week.

A roadside sign outside of the parish announces Yoga and Zumba classes this upcoming week (Holy Week!) Page 8 of the bulletin of the parish (http://icparish.net/bulletins/040112.pdf) and the parish calendar (http://www.mychurchevents.com/calendar/calendar.aspx?ci=G1H2I3I3K5K5O9L6I3) announce these events as well.

Fr. John Hardon, S.J. wrote an excellent article about why Yoga is incompatible with the Catholic faith: http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/religion/re0275.html

Oh and Zumba? Well here it is on youtube in case you have never heard: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vf0q6qtThF4 Appropriate exercises to hold at a Catholic parish?

Even if it could be argued (it can't) that these are appropriate exercise activities for Catholics to be participating in....aren't there better things to announce on a roadside sign outside of a Catholic Church during Holy Week?

Monday, November 22, 2010

Severed animal parts in New Rochelle may be tied to religious rites

A woman taking an afternoon stroll at Glenwood Lake Park in New Rochelle came upon a startling sight: a severed goat head surrounded by the heads of four roosters.

The grisly Nov. 12 discovery came days after the bodies of two decapitated rams, male sheep, were found Nov. 7 at Ward Acres Park. The heads lay nearby.

While no direct link between the two macabre discoveries has been made, investigators said the incidents were the latest in the Lower Hudson Valley linked to ritualistic practices, such as Santeria, an Afro-Caribbean religion that often uses animals for ceremonial sacrifices.

Read further...

Thursday, November 5, 2009

Uganda Witch Doctors Banned from Advertising on Radio in Uganda

Ugandan witch-doctors have used radio up to now to advertise their healing powers. However, this could soon be a thing of the past. The government's ethics minister, James Buturo, has said that radio stations are contravening the 1957 Witchcraft Act and "...are promoting witchcraft-related activities to the detriment of Uganda's integrity".

Witchcraft remains a major problem in Uganda and the government is keen to stamp out its promotion in the country. Radio, with its huge audiences, is key to its plans.

Link...