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The Legend of Lake Titicaca
By Henry Cooper

In Inka mythology, Manco Capac and Mama 0cllo, children of the Sun, emerged from the depths of Lake Titicaca to found their empire. Today's visitors to Titicaca will be surely be equally captivated, as was the famous naturalist Jacques Cousteau, by the symbolic universe of the ancient Peruvians. With lofty snow-capped peaks along its far shores, the vast blue lake at 3,800 meters is one of the Andes' most enchanting scenes.

An indigenous community of some 350 families continues to live there within the traditions of the 14th century and according to the principles of Inca life. Here, without noting the passing of time, the three golden rules of the Empire of the Sun have been kept: Ama suwa, Ama quella, Ama llulla (do not steal, don't be idle, and do not lie). Contact with other civilizations has not been able to destroy the profound identity of the Inca way.

The Aymara people living in the Titicaca Basin still practice their ancient methods of agriculture on stepped terraces that predate Inca times. They grow barley, quinoa (a type of pigweed that produces a small grain), and the potato, which originated on the Altiplano. The highest cultivated plot in the world was found near Titicaca-a field of barley growing at a height of 15,420 feet (4,700 meters) above sea level. At this height the grain never ripens, but the stalks furnish forage for llamas and alpacas, the American relatives of the camel that serve the Indians as beasts of burden and as a source of meat.

The remnants of an ancient people, the Uru, still live on floating mats of dried totora (a reedlike papyrus that grows in dense brakes in the marshy shallows). From the totora, the Uru and other lake dwellers make their famed balsas-boats fashioned of bundles of dried reeds lashed together that resemble the crescent-shaped papyrus craft pictured on ancient Egyptian monuments.

In 1862 the first steamer to ply the lake was prefabricated in England and carried in pieces on muleback up to the lake. Today vessels make regular crossings from Puno, on the Peruvian shore, to the small Bolivian port of Guaqui, and a narrow-gauge railway connects Guaqui with La Paz, capital of Bolivia. The world's second-highest railway runs from Puno down to Arequipa and the Pacific, completing for land-bound Bolivia, an important link with the sea.

Peru is a land steeped in ancient prophecies and wisdom that is vital for our planet during these transitional times. Life in the Incan empire was measured by a thousand-year cosmic cycle called an Inti, which means 'Sun.' This cycle was then divided into half, each of which was referred to as a Pachakuti.

Native of Uros - Photo by J.L. Tord

The Cosmo vision of the Andean world is the conception of duality that is in permanent opposition, but complementary, like the principle of ying/yang that expresses this opposition between day/night, light/dark, man/woman, earth/sky, up/down. This same principle of duality applies to each Pachakuti. However, Pachakuti also refers to the transitional time that divided each Pachakuti, and this is characterized as a time of great changes.

During the five hundred years of the eighth Pachakuti, Pachacuteq, the greatest spiritual leader of the Incas and the builder of Machu Picchu, ruled. This was a time of light when the Inca Empire flourished and there was expansion and good fortune.

The ninth Pachakuti, on the opposite side of the duality, brought with it the five hundred years of darkness when the Spanish invaders conquered the Inca and the Andes people lost their power. We are now entering the tenth Pachakuti, which the Andes people refer to as the returning of Pachacuteq, the returning of the Light. This is the time when the etheric crystal cities of the fourth dimension such as the lost golden city of Paititi and the eternal etheric city under Lake Titicaca will again be available to us.

The Uros of today, still live as the original inhabitants did as they continue to use the totora reeds to build their huts and rafts. The Uros are singular people and even though they keep to themselves very quietly, they do allow people to visit with them.

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