I should begin by saying that I am not claiming outright that the stories I learned about at the monument to Pachacutec are untrue. On the contrary, over the course of this trip I have become more and more able to believe all kinds of things. I have seen natural phenomena that I wouldn't have believed existed, and I have seen an unmistakable set of fundamental principles running through a huge and wide variety of religions, faiths and philosophies, from Buddhism to Hinduism, Sikhism to Christianity. I am not immediately plunging myself wholesale into believing, for example, in the hail spitting giant cat of the ancient Incas, but I am willing to believe in the principle that the weather, whatever it brings, is a force to which humans must be subjugated, and that gratitude is due, somewhere, to the force which balances our world, whatever form that supernatural being may take. If it helps me to imagine what I suppose I am essentially describing as God, as a huge cat, so be it.
And that is what the Pachacutec monument makes me wonder. Pachacutec himself, and the monument to him, are surrounded by myths and stories, which for many people to this day, are very real. But does it matter whether they are actually true?
Pachacutec was the ninth Inca (king) and is famous for leading his people in battle against the invading Chankas. As I understand it, the Incas were essentially a peaceful people, whose key goals were to remain at harmony with nature, (though there did seem to be rather a lot of bloody human and animal sacrifice involved, and I have subsequently discovered that Pachacutec himself had his own brothers killed). This fight was in defence against a tribe threatening to conquer and take over, making me wonder whether Pachacutec's continued fame today might have a certain wistful quality, given the bloody and wholesale take over by the Spaniards much later.
Pachacutec won the battle, so the story goes, with the help of a battalion of mysterious bearded men, who were transformed out of rocks and whom only Pachacutec could see. He urged his people on, assuring them of the supernatural aid of the bearded men, who, when the battle was over, transformed themselves back into rocks, scattered all over the country. Only Pachacutec could recognise those rocks, and after that he identified these rocks over time and over distances, and they were worshipped by the tribe as sacred stones.
Perhaps every word of it is true. Perhaps there was supernatural aid given to a people who were being unfairly attacked. Who knows. Given that the Spanish attack decades later also claimed supernatural aid it is rather difficult to see whose side the supernatural forces were on. And on a general basis I dislike the idea of supernatural help being claimed to support bloodshed.
But how encouraging must that story have been? A people, frightened and fighting for their lives, must have drawn huge strength from the concept of these invisible beings, fighting alongside them. Perhaps the truth of it is secondary to the effect of the story.
There have been studies, in which psychologists have tracked the effect on sick people of being told they were being prayed for, across a variety of faiths. They found an overwhelming improvement in the health of those who had been told they were being prayed for, and who believed in the deity being prayed to. This more rapid recovery rate was not so evident in those who either did not believe in the deity being prayed to, or did not know they were being prayed for.
I have a faith and do believe in God's ability to heal, though I do not believe it happens often. I certainly do not condone the naive attitude that someone very sick will be definitely healed as long as the prayers are fervent enough. That sort of 'push a button and out cones the desired result' idea of God is short sighted and causes untold heartache for those who have lost a loved one. There is more wisdom in the acceptance of sickness or of God as a gentle welcomer of those who lose their battle against it.
What I think those studies show is that, whilst I maybe can believe that a God might intervene on some occasions, or at least has the power to, the essential element is hope.
I read once a book which went to some lengths to argue that the 'miracles' of Jesus were in fact simply down to the suggestibility of the people. The sicknesses which were healed, it stated, would have been, on many occasions, all in the mind, in particular those which related to 'demon possession'. It didn't really move me. If Jesus' power was one of suggestion, but a suggestion so strong it could heal people of an imagined sickness, so strongly imagined it felt absolutely real, is that necessarily any less impressive? Is the power of imbuing such absolute hope not something miraculous in itself?
Hope really matters.
When the monument was being made, the story goes, during the crafting of Pachacutec's Inca breast plate, a great crash of lightening came out of nowhere, on an otherwise calm day, and struck the statue, filling it with power.
On the day the monument was opened, three great eagles were seen to fly over the statue and three rainbows, one above the other, appeared in the sky.
This was in the 1990's. Pachacutec, or at least, the hope he inspired, still has power in this city.
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