The Mentor: The Incas, vol. 6, num. 3, Serial No. 151, March 15, 1918

LEARN ONE THING EVERY DAY
MARCH 15 1918
SERIAL NO. 151
THE MENTOR THE INCAS
By OSGOOD HARDY, M. A.
DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY
VOLUME 6 NUMBER 3
TWENTY CENTS A COPY
The deity whose worship the Incas especially inculcated, and which they never failed to establish wherever their banners were known to penetrate, was the Sun. It was he who, in a particular manner, presided over the destinies of man; gave light and warmth to the nations, and life to the vegetable world; whom they reverenced as the father of their royal dynasty, the founder of their empire; and whose temples rose in every city and almost every village throughout the land.
Besides the Sun, the Incas acknowledged various objects of worship, in some way or other connected with this principal deity. Such was the Moon, his sister-wife; the Stars, revered as part of her heavenly train, though the fairest of them, Venus, known to the Peruvians by the name of Chasca, or the “youth with the long and curling locks,” was adored as the page of the Sun, whom he attends so closely in his rising and in his setting. They dedicated temples also to the Thunder and Lightning, in whom they recognized the Sun’s dread ministers, and to the Rainbow, whom they worshiped as a beautiful emanation of their glorious deity.
In addition to these, the subjects of the Incas enrolled among their inferior deities many objects in nature, as the elements, the winds, the earth, the air, great mountains and rivers, which impressed them with ideas of sublimity and power, or were supposed in some way or other to exercise a mysterious influence over the destinies of man.
But the worship of the Sun constituted the peculiar care of the Incas, and was the object of their lavish expenditure. The most renowned of the Peruvian temples, the pride of the capital, and the wonder of the empire, was at Cuzco, where, under the munificence of successive sovereigns, it had become so enriched that it received the name of “The Place of Gold.” It consisted of a principal building and several chapels and inferior edifices, covering a large extent of ground in the heart of the city, and completely encompassed by a wall, which, with the edifices, was all constructed of stone.