Lakes

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LAKES

LAKES . Water, essential to life on earth, has occupied a preeminent place in religious thought and imagery, together with the land and sky. In many cultures it is considered to be procreative, a source of forms and of creative energy. The life-giving property of water has been projected in its almost universal perception as fons et origo, "spring and origin," the element that preceeds solid form and is the support of all earthly creation. In this context, from remote times to the present, among peoples who have perceived the world in terms of sacred and profane phenomena, springs, ponds, and lakes have figured importantly in the realm of water symbolism. In many regions of the world where lakes are major geographic features, they often have been the setting of cosmogonic myths and have been invested with many meanings, historical associations, and ritual functions.

The importance of sacred lakes in cultural context will be discussed by examining the ritualistic and mythic significance of two American lakes, Titicaca and Texcoco, associated with the Andean and Mexican civilizations respectively. The areas around both these lakes have been heavily populated in ancient, colonial, and modern times. Accounts of the ancient ceremonial pageantry, mythology, and human-made or natural sacred places in and around these lakes have been reported since the sixteenth-century Spanish conquest. Their meanings and functions in the evolution of native American civilizations continue to form an expanding field of inquiry in archaeology, art history, and ethnology, as well as in the history of religions.

Lake Titicaca

Lake Titicaca lies between southern Peru and northwestern Bolivia, where the Peruvian intermontane valleys and rugged cordilleras give way, at the 12,500-foot level, to the spacious Altiplano. This lake is impressive in its size and is the highest navigable body of water in the world. It sustained the agricultural and economic life of the surrounding areas. As the mainstay of complex societies, the religious meaning of the lake was most dramatically defined in the case of the civilizations of the Tiahuanaco (c. 100 to 1000 ce) and the Inca (c. 1400 to 1532 ce). Near Lake Titicaca, the principal archaeological ruins are those of Tiahuanaco, located in Bolivia a few miles inland from the southern shore. This was an important political and religious center whose influence spread over large section of Bolivia and southern Peru. The Titicaca basin came again within the orbit of an imperial state during the fifteenth century, when the Inca nation extended political control from the capital of Cuzco, some 200 miles to the north. At this time the Inca nation affirmed a spiritual and historical connection with the earlier Tiahuanaco state, and the Inca ruler Tupac Yupanqui visited the islands of Titicaca and Koati on the lake and commissioned shrines there. Inca interest in the lake was expressed in religious art and architecture, the location of major shrines, and the incorporation of ancient myths concerning the lake into their own mythology. By these means the lake's ancient significance continued to remain part of an imperial sacred geography.

In Andean religion the border between the notion of deities and the phenomena of nature was entirely open, with emphasis placed on direct communication with the elements of nature. The worship of huacas and major nature deities was a basic theme of Andean religion. A huaca was an object or phenomenon that was perceived to have unusual presence or power beyond the range of everyday life, where the sacred may have been manifested or where the memory of some past momentous event resided. It could be the locus of an oracle, a cave, or a curiously indented boulder where a people were thought to have emerged from the earth during the time of creation. This belief system was closely tied to the formation of sacred geographies and formed part of a cosmological religion with an array of gods associated with natural epiphanies.

The island of Titicaca, about seven miles long, serves as a good example of how a lake figured in Andean sacred geography. Adolph Bandelier's explorations and interpretive report of 1910 remain fundamental to an understanding of the island and its ruins. Toward the northern end of the island there is a construction, and it was across this isthmus that a precinct wall was built to separate sacred from proface space. Early Spanish accounts record that three gates were arranged in succession here and that confessions were required of all who sought to pass through. The religious and ritual focus of the site lay beyond the gates. The sacred feature was comprised of a great rock about 25 feet high and 190 feet long, with a broad plaza or assembly ground built in front. This was the chief huaca of the island, named in Aymara titi ("wild cat") kaka ("rock"), the latter word a substitution for kala ("stone"). The shrine rock was thus the source for the name of the lake itself. Also included within this sacred precinct were burial cysts with offerings and paraphernalia, storehouses, and residences for cult priests, officers, and aides. In this context it is important to mention the Pilco-Kayma building on Titicaca Island, which corresponds to another structure called Inyak-Uyu on Koati Island nearby. The design and siting of these two buildings reveal an important aspect of Andean religion. Both buildings stand near the eastern shores of their respective islands, and the principal apartments in each ruin, with the most elaborate entrances and prominent niches, open toward the majestic snowcapped peaks of Sorata and its neighbors across the lake on the Bolivian (eastern) side. These grand mountains even today continue to be worshiped by the people in their vicinity. Considered in relation to Lake Titacaca and the island of Titicaca with its huge rock huaca, the mountains complete the imago mundi of Altiplano peoples.

The Inca people paid homage to Titicaca Rock as the dominant and central feature associated with the lake. This is illustrated by Spanish written accounts of an annual pilgrimage made to the island across the straits from a shrine on nearby Copacabana Peninsula. In that festival, which centered around solar events, two principal idols were brought in reed boats from Copacabana: a statue of the sun father, Inti, and one of the moon mother, Mama Quilla. These two effigies were regarded as husband and wife, and they were transported with other idols dedicated to thunder and other natural forces. The sun was represented in the form of an Inca of gold embellished with much brilliant jewelry; the moon was represented as a queen of silver; and thunder was a man of silver, also very brilliant. Once landed, they were placed in splendid litters decorated with flowers, plumage, and plates of gold and silver, and they were carried to the sacred enclosure. The idols were set up in a plaza, almost certainly in front of the sacred rock. After having placed the idols, the attendant Inca priests and nobles prostrated themselves, first worshiping the effigy of the sun, then that of the moon, afterward that of the thunder, and then the others. The prostrations were concluded by blowing kisses to the images and to the huaca itself. Dances, banquets, and amusements were then held to close the festival.

Even today, Titicaca Island is known as the "island of the sun," while Koati is the "island of the moon." Yet it is clear that, although the cult of these celestial bodies was maintained upon the islands by the Inca, they remained subordinate to the primary cult of Titicaca Rock itself.

What then, was the meaning of the sacred rock, the dominant icon of the island? What was its relationship to the surrounding waters of the lake? The answers lie in mythology. Bandelier's compilation of myths recorded by the sixteenth-century Spanish chronicler Cieza de León include a text in which the Indians tell of an event that occurred before the Incas ruled in these lands. Long ago, they went without seeing the sun for a long time and suffered greatly, so they prayed to their gods, begging them for light. The sun then rose in great splendor from the island of Titicaca, within the great lake of the Collao (the ancient name of province), so that all were delighted. Then from the south there came a white man of large size who showed great authority and inspired veneration. This powerful man made heights out of level plains and flat plains out of great heights, and created springs in live rock. Recognizing in him such power, they called him Maker of All Created Things, Beginning Thereof, and Father of the Sun. They also said that he gave humans and animals their existence and that they derived from him great benefits. This being, called Ticciviracocha, was regarded as the supreme creator. Another myth, recorded by Juan de Betanzos before Ceiza, also connects two successive "creations" of the world by "Con Tici Viracocha" to Lake Titicaca (Bandelier, 1910, pp. 298–299). In yet another version, the sun and moon were said to have risen from Titicaca itself. In this mythological context, "wild cat rock" must be seen as a cosmogonic place of origin.

Rising from the windswept sheet of reflecting water, the island hills and promontories are removed from the sphere of ordinary life. On the ridges, marine fossil strata underscore the theme of aquatic emergence at this unusual site. The placement of the huaca and the relationship of buildings to the distant mountains are joined with ritual and mythic imagery in a powerful metaphor of humanity and land. The sense of place, of being "at the center," is also linked to notions of history, for the ancient myths and the architectural features of the Pilco-Kayma building (designed in an archaic style) reminded the Inca of Tiahuanaco and established a succession to that old imperial tradition. In this respect, the Inca shrine incorporated a sense of the past and signaled territorial possession. Woven into these levels of meaning was a still more fundamental theme. Most of all, the setting was designed to bring to mind the time and place of the beginnings. The sacred lake was the primordial natural icon, a reminder of illud tempus. Passive in the mythic imagery, the lake formed the fluid cosmogonic field from which all forms came forth in darkness. Upholding the island birthplace of the sun and moon, Lake Titicaca, as the home of Viracocha, who gave form to mountains, plains, and people, was the element from which the world itself was made.

Lake Texcoco and the Valley of Mexico

Rimmed by mountains and snowcapped volcanoes, the Valley of Mexico is a spacious basin that formerly contained a system of shallow interconnected lakes. The central lake, known as Texcoco, was saline from evaporation, but the southern lakes of Chalco-Xochimilco were fed by abundant aquafers that issued from the base of the steep Ajusco Mountains. To the north, lakes Zumpango-Xaltocán depended more on seasonal rain, but there is evidence that in ancient times the surrounding hills and open fields were watered by abundant springs and streams. In a collective sense, the entire set of lakes may be referred to as Lake Texcoco.

By the first century ce, the city of Teotihuacan began to dominate the lesser settlements in the Texcoco lakeshore region. A powerful manufacturing, trading, and religious center of some one hundred thousand people, Teotihuacan became the center of a trade network that ramified to the most distant parts of Mesoamerica. With the violent eclipse of this metropolis in the seventh century, power was transferred to other capitals throughout the neighboring highlands. The old ascendancy of the Valley of Mexico was not restored until the fifteenth century with the rise of the Méxica-Aztec capital of Tenochtitlán and its allied neighbor, the city of Texcoco. Built on an island and reclaimed marshes near the western shore of Lake Texcoco, Tenochtitlán became the most feared and powerful city, the seat of the most powerful empire in Mesoamerican history.

An agricultural economy, supplemented by fishing and the gathering of natural products, remained fundamental to urban life throughout the long history of the valley, and the problem of maintaining fruitful relationships between humans and nature formed an underpinning of religious life. To express this relationship in symbolic form, monumental works of art and architecture were built as stage sets and memorials for seasonal rites as well as the important ceremonies of government and war. The ruined pyramids of Teotihuacan were the largest in Mesoamerica, and long after the city was destroyed they were visited in pilgrimage by the rulers of the later Méxica-Aztec state. In the middle of the Méxica-Aztec capital, Tenochtitlán, a new pyramid and attendant temples were built in a great quadrangular enclosure, with gates at the cardinal directions. The main pyramid, representing a symbolic mountain with dual shrines to the rain god, Tlaloc, and the Méxica national ancestor hero, Huitzilopochtli, established the vertical axis mundi of the cosmological design. A similar but smaller ritual center was constructed in the allied city of Texcoco.

In addition to such urban monuments, other shrines and temples were scattered throughout the valley on mountaintops, in caves, by springs and rivers, and in the waters of the lake itself. These places were the shrines of nature deities whose cults were also represented in the temples of the city. These cults, in addition to those of conquered nations, were woven into the religious fabric of the city in an effort to form an embracing state religion. The many divinities were impersonated by ritual performers on festival occasions. The costumes often visually corresponded to the cult names themselves: For example, Chalchiuhtlicue, a female deity of water on the ground, that is, a lake, river, or spring, would appear with a green-painted skirt or a skirt sewn with pieces of jade. Chalchiuhtlicue means "jade skirt" in the Nahuatl language. Thus the costume was an ideogram, and the impersonator became a living, moving metaphor naming the element of nature that she represented.

An illustration of this custom is recorded by the sixteenth-century chronicler Alvarado Tezozomoc, who describes a ceremony that took place to inaugurate an aqueduct built from mainland springs to the island of Tenochtitlán. The emperor Ahuizotl instructed two high priests to be attired as Chalchiuhtlicue and go welcome the incoming water. As the water arrived, they sacrificed quail and burnt copal incense. After drinking, the chief priest spoke directly to the water: "Be very welcome, my lady, I come to receive you because you shall be coming to your home, to the middle of the reeds of Mexico-Tenochtitlan" (Alvarado Tezozomoc, 1975). The passage shows how a deity impersonator would also address the natural element whose symbolic form he represented. In this way of thought, the elements themselves were seen to have life-force and were considered inherently sacred. Lake Texcoco was spoken of as Tonanhueyatl, "our mother great water," a provider of moisture to agricultural fields who was teeming with edible algae, aquatic plants of various kinds, mosquito eggs (also edible), shrimp, a diversity of fish, as well as frogs, ducks, and other aquatic birds. As a sustainer of life, the lake was looked upon as the mother of Tenochtitlán.

Pilgrimages were made by the Aztec and their neighbors to sources of water at springs, streams, and lakes, as well as in hidden caves and ravines on cloudy mountaintops. At such places it was common practice to offer green stones and jewelry as well as sacrifices. A preoccupation with fertility was paramount among the reasons why water was so widely venerated. Nowhere was this more apparent than in an elaborate annual pilgrimage made by the ruler of Tenochtitlán and three allied rulers to shrines on the summit of Mount Tlaloc and in the middle of Lake Texcoco. The relationship between these two water shrines shows that no part of the natural setting could be considered in isolation, and that the imagery of sacred geography, based upon the ecological structure of the land, established fundamental integrating bonds between society and nature.

The bonds between humans and nature are evident with the sequence of rituals, beginning at Mount Tlaloc. The archaeological ruins of the Tlaloc temple are located below the summit of this mountain, close by a grassy vale where springs are still located. Here the ruins of a square courtyard enclosed by masonry are entered via a long narrow walkway that had a controlling function in ritual procedure. Within, there was a flat-roofed chamber housing the main Tlaloc effigy, around which were clustered a group of lesser idols. These were intended to represent the other mountains and cliffs surrounding Mount Tlaloc. Thus the arrangement was a microcosm of the land itself, the symbol of a geographical setting where rain and springs were seen to originate.

This shrine was visited in late April, at the height of the dry season, by the ruler of Tenochtitlán and the allied rulers of Texcoco, Tlacopán, and Xochimilco (the number four was a ritual requirement). The pilgrimage was the duty and privilege of royalty alone. The ceremonies opened with the sacrifice of a male child, followed by a hierarchical procession in which the kings approached the idol in order of rank (Tenochtitlán first). One by one, they proceeded to dress the idols with splendid headdresses, breechcloths, various mantles, jewelry, and so on, according to the status of each monarch.

The next phase again involved a procession in order of rank, as the rulers approached with food for a sumptuous repast. After the food was put before the images, a priest entered to sprinkle everything with blood from the sacrificed child. The blood offering at Mount Tlaloc had a contractual function. As chief ritualists of their respective nations, the rulers set in motion a vital principle that unified the rain and mountains with their people, circulating life and energy throughout the social and ecological orders. Correspondingly, the structure of political alliances was reinforced through sacramental rites.

While these events were taking place, another rite was unfolding in the main religious precinct of Tenochtitlán. A large tree was brought in and erected in the courtyard of the dominating pyramid, on the side of the Tlaloc shrine. This tree, called Tota ("father"), was surrounded by four smaller trees in a symbolic forest designed according to the center and the cardinal directions. A girl attired as Chalchiuhtlicue to represent the great lake and other springs and creeks was brought to sit within the forest. A long chant with drums was then begun around the seated figure, until news was finally received that the rulers had completed the Mount Tlaloc offerings and were now at the Texcocan lake-shore, ready to embark in their canoes. At this time, the Chalchiuhtlicue impersonator was placed in a canoe at Tenochtitlán, and the Tota tree was also taken up and bound upon a raft. Accompanied by music and chanting, a vast fleet of canoes filled with men, women, and children embarked with the symbolic figures to a sacred place within the lake called Pantitlan. This was the site of a great spring, an aquifer that welled up from the lake bottom with remarkable turbulence. At this site the two processions met and, as the rulers and population watched, the Tota tree was unbound and set up in the muddy lake bottom by the spring. The Chalchiuhtlicue child was then sacrificed and her blood was offered to the waters, along with as much jewelry as had been given on Mount Tlaloc. The theme of water as fons et origo was strikingly expressed, incorporating the renewal of vegetation and of life itself at the height of the dry season. The ceremonies were then concluded and everyone departed, leaving the Tota to stand along with others of previous years. Diego Durán (1971) remarks that the peasantry went on to the preparation of the fields, continuing to make offerings at local springs and rivulets.

The imagery of this long and remarkable sequence of ceremonies was directly based on the ecological structure of the highland basin. The relationship of mountains to rain, mountains to springs, and springs to the great lake was symbolically acknowledged in covenants and pleas for water, crops, and vegetation. This communal ceremony, in which the major rulers and lords of the valley participated, affirmed a topographic metaphor: atl tepetl (lit., "water-mountain"), which means "city" or "community." In the Nahuatl language, the habitat of humanity was defined in terms of landscape elements that made life possible. The structure of the ceremony and the metaphor it brought to mind represent a powerful integrating principle that was known and recognized by everyone. Rooted in what was seen and experienced in the land itself, the imagery of the Tlaloc-Chalchiuhtlicue rites represented a sense of order in the highland way of life and symbolically legitimized the governments with which it was identified.

Conclusion

In the Andes and Mexico, sacred lakes formed part of religious systems that grew out of landscapes. The patterns become evident upon considering the ethnohistoric texts, archaeological monuments, and new ethnological reports of religious practices in the context of topography. At the time of the Inca and Méxica-Aztec empires, lakes were seen as sources of life where the generative, procreative qualities of water were especially concentrated. The properties of lakes were acknowledged in myths and metaphors, as in Andean cosmogonic stories and the atl tepetl theme of highland Mexico; in the powerful imagery of ritual; and in the design and disposition of monuments in the city and the country. These symbolic forms of representation celebrated the dynamic relationship of lakes and other features of the natural and human-fashioned environment.

These concerns were fundamentally bound with fertility and agriculture, but the imagery of lakes was also creatively employed by ruling elites in building imperial domains. Myths, rites, and monuments affirmed territorial claims, consolidated alliances, and validated the larger interests and policies of state organizations. Rooted in cosmogony and the seasonal cycle, the symbolism of lakes was inseparably interwoven with the imagery of history. In New World Indian religions, the order of the cosmos and the structure of the state were inseparably bound.

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