The World / Andean Eschatology (Pachacuti)
Andean Eschatology (Pachacuti)
The end as a turning-over: pacha kutiy, the reversal of world and time, when an era-world is overturned and remade. The word became an emperor's title, and the concept met the Spanish Last Judgment as two readings of the same turn.
Pachacuti is the archive's reminder that not all ends are linear or cyclic in the familiar sense: the Andean cosmos turns over, the way a field is turned, so that what was below comes up. See the myth entry for the concept, and its strange double life as the name of the ninth Inca. MacCormack's essay is the essential scholarly reading of how the concept met Christian judgment.
Key texts
- Colonial chronicles (16th c.): Guaman Poma, Sarmiento de Gamboa
- Sabine MacCormack, 'Pachacuti: Miracles, Punishments, and Last Judgment' (JSTOR)
- Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, Comentarios Reales
Key figures
Viracocha · Pachacuti · Manco Capac
The end, in order
- 01The cosmos runs in era-worlds, each destroyed and replaced by cataclysm
- 02A pachacuti — the turn of the world — reverses the established order
- 03The new era-world begins, often under a new sun or a new people
- 04The Spanish conquest itself was read as a terrible pachacuti
- 05The future holds another turn: the world will overturn again
What survives
The new world that the turning brings — the Andean end is a renewal as much as a reversal.