Afterpants: Nether Regions pt 21 (Uhku-Pacha)
So....spent last night on the cold, cold ground...woke up, basically every hour or so shivering; even though I'm wearing every piece of clothing I have, like 6 shirts, one (donated) wool jacket, 2 pairs trousers, 2 pairs socks...apparently there's not enough wine in the world to sleep through that. On the upside, I am officially at stage 1 sleep deprivation...the point where colors start to get really bright, sounds are louder than they should be and you get a sort of drifty feeling, like being slightly high or drunk.
Anyway, while I do not officially endorse the Mayan or Incan pantheon or cosmologies (because their gods are dead) today's Nether Region is "Uhku-pacha";
it's an interesting afterlife for several reasons.
strongly associated with the actual underground...the Incan people used to leave offerings to the dead at the mouths of caves and mines.
It's employees are 'demons' called Supay (also the name of their Hell King, as in the Arabic "Shaitan" which is both the name of the ruler of the Djinn and the ruled)
The offerings and veneration were called "a deeper and riskier sacredness" by author Kendall Brown. (referring to the Spanish reaction)
The word "pacha" in ancient Incan seems to mean "the world" and there were adjectives added to it to describe the "kind" of world.
Like saying "upper world" or "lower world", the Incans appeared to have 3, but there could have been more...the Mayans, after all, had 9 layers of their underworld and it is reasonable to conjecture that their cultures had contact.
The Incans also seemed to view interactions between the pachas as natural but catastrophic events.
They also believed that the dead could move between the pachas.
Therefore, because their gods are dead BUT the Incans made actual offerings at caves (and springs) I'll liken Ukhu-pacha to a relatively worn jockstrap. Useful and solid...but you should really buy a new one.
3 out 5 Hellbriefs.
Comments