Catu Illa 'Shining messenger', the Inca name for the planet Mercury.

capac The Inca word for 'king'. 'Capac' literally means 'he who measures by palm-widths'. Measuring distance on the celestial sphere (that is, the starry night-time sky) is a measure of time; any given star will move a palm-width (with arm extended) in about an hour. Polynesian navigators used the palm measure (called 'nef') during trans-Pacific voyages, and it is said that Aztec priests 'measured the flight of the stars with their hands'. A statue of the Andean creator god Wiraqocha (see below) is supposed to have depicted him with his right arm upraised and thumb and forefinger extended. The ability to measure - as our English verb 'to rule' also indicates - was from very ancient times an important aspect of the ideal of kingship, associating 'rulership' with the royal science, astronomy.

Ch'aska Literally, 'she with dishevelled [or "important"] hair', this was the Andean name for the planet Venus.

conch The conch shell trumpet was sounded at the opening of the solemn Inca rites of December solstice, celebrating the annual return of the spirits of the dead. Symbolically the conch stands for the December solstice not only because the shell's spiral shape mimics the Sun's southward spiral culminating at the December solstice, but also because of the physical location of the conch's natural habitat. In the technical language of myth, the 'highest mountain in the world' (see below) stands for the Sun's northernmost (='highest') position in the sky. The conch, which is found on the floor of the sea - that is, the 'lowest' point in the world - stands for the December solstice, when the Sun is at its southernmost station in the skies.

Cuzco Literally 'navel', this was the capital city and 'navel' of the Inca universe.

flood An event remembered in myth, the 'flood' is a metaphor for significant changes in the rising points and dates of stars caused by precessional motion.

fox The Andean fox, 'Ato'q, has many delightful misadventures in Andean myth. Fox has his prototype in the sky: a dark cloud of interstellar dust between Scorpius and Sagittarius, visible against the background of the Milky Way.

Huayna Capac The name of the last Inca emperor to rule before the Spanish conquest. Like all Inca emperors, he was considered Jupiter's regent on Earth.

highest mountain in the world Mythical metaphor for the position of the Sun at its northernmost point, at the June solstice (see conch above). Strangely for the Incas, whose capital Cuzco lies at a latitude of 13 degrees south, 'north' was considered 'up'.

Kon Tiki Title of the Andean creator god Wiraqocha (see below). Kon Tiki literally means 'primeval spherical grindstone'.

llama Another 'player' in Andean myth, the constellation of the llama was an enormous cloud of interstellar dust in the Milky Way, passing through Scorpius.

Manco Capac The mythical head of the Inca lineage, Jupiter's regent on Earth. His name literally means 'he who measures the depth of waters by palms'. He founded the imperial city of Cuzco by hurling a staff of pure gold, inherited from Wiraqocha (see below), into a marshy area called 'uncovered navel stone'.

mayu The Inca word for 'river' and for the Milky Way.

pacarina Literally 'place of dawning'. Each Andean tribe had a location on its lands - usually a spring, a cave or a tree - from which it was believed the ancestors first emerged at the command of Wiraqocha. Thus the tribes, descended from the stars, rose up together, like stars, at the dawning of the age of Wiraqocha.

Pachakuti The first Inca emperor, whose name means 'overturner of space-time'. The word was also used to denote any 'world age'-ending cataclysm.

Pirua Literally 'granary', this was also the Inca name for Jupiter - and probably the origin of the word 'Peru'.

Sun The Incas claimed descent through the Sun and Moon and indulged in royal incest to keep the conceit alive. 'Sun' was also a term of precessional astronomy, meaning 'world age'.

Titicaca The name of both a lake (now forming part of the border between Peru and Bolivia) and an island in the lake where Wiraqocha/Saturn was said to have created the Sun, Moon and stars. Titicaca means 'crag of lead'. Throughout Eurasia, the metal associated with Saturn was lead, a reference to that god's characteristic method of measurement, with a plumb bob (Latin plumbum=lead).

Tunapa A title of the Andean creator god Wiraqocha. In the Inca language, it literally means 'he who carries the mill'. In the Aymara language of the Lake Titicaca region - whence the god originated - Tunapa means 'he who carries the central support pillar of a round house'. Both of these images refer to Saturn who 'controlled' the precessing axis of the earth, in the sense that the planet Saturn's long orbital period of 30 years gave early priest astronomers a 'sweep hand', allowing them to control their own data on the rate of flow of precessional time.

Vilcacoto A mythical (and actual) mountain whose name means, literally, 'Sun-Pleiades', this was the site where a righteous peasant and 'all the animals' weathered a flood that destroyed the whole world.

waka The name of the statue held by each tribe representing their non-human lineage ancestors, whose abode was in the stars.

Wiraqocha The Andean creator god. The name literally means 'tilted plane of the celestial sphere', encrypting Andean knowledge of the obliqueness of the ecliptic to the celestial equator. In myth, he was a bearded man who carried a staff. His planetary identity was Saturn.

Decoding the myths
Glossary
Timeline