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Replica of the Golden Sun Disk on display outside the Coracancha Temple, used in modern day festivals in Cuzco.

Revisiting the Solar Path of the Inca Creator God Viracocha

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The high priests of the Inca Empire of ancient Peru used their sacred texts, known as the Codes of Sacred Geography, to build sacred community centers ( wakas) along 42 long-distance ceke lines.  These alignments were all centralized at the Coracancha Temple of the Sun in Cuzco, where a huge golden disc at the center of this temple, radiated these lines across the entire Inca empire.  In his quest to uncover secrets of archeoastronomy, historian Ashley Cowie traces the footsteps of the Inca creator god Viracocha, who undertook a legendary a journey from the city of Tiwanaku on the shores of Lake Titicaca and crossed mountain peaks, towards the north-west, where he left the shore of South America’s Pacific coast near the border of Peru and Ecuador.

The Malvern Hills in England. Alfred Watkins believed a ley-line passed along their ridge connecting a string of ancient places.

The Malvern Hills in England. Alfred Watkins believed a ley-line passed along their ridge connecting a string of ancient places. (CC BY-SA 2.0)

Ancient Landscape Alignments – the Concept of Ley-lines

In the summer of 1921, amateur archaeologist Alfred Watkins, stood on a hillside in Herefordshire, England, and noticed a straight line of churches, town crosses and ancient burial mounds and in 1925 he published The Old Straight Track postulating that the entire English countryside was knitted together with similar alignments. Clive Ruggles is the United Kingdom’s leading authority on archeoastronomy and in his Ancient Astronomy: An Encyclopaedia Of Cosmologies and Myth, (2005) he noted that the alignments of the buildings Watkins plotted, had place names containing the syllable 'ley‘, hence the term ‘ley-line’.

At the time, and generally still today, archaeologists mostly disregarded Watkin’s theory because if for no other reason than: “Ancient Britons were regarded as being too primitive” to have devised a system where buildings are located along ancient landscape alignments. Nowadays, the skeptical argument is one of probability:  since so many ancient features pepper the English countryside, the chances of finding alignments is quite high.

A catastrophic mess of alignments can now be found on the internet and often they are given ‘ancient alien’ origins and perhaps Watkins would turn in his grave if he knew what the New Age has done with his observations. This sentiment was shared in 2004 by John Bruno Hare of the Internet Sacred Texts Archive (ISTA) who wrote a paragraph in Early British Trackways in defense of Watkins: “He was an intensely rational person with an active intellect, and I think he would be a bit disappointed with some of the fringe aspects of ley-lines today.”

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Ashley Cowie is a Scottish historian, author and documentary filmmaker presenting original perspectives on historical problems, in accessible and exciting ways. His books, articles and television shows explore lost cultures and kingdoms, ancient crafts and artifacts, symbols and architecture, myths and legends telling thought-provoking stories which together offer insights into our shared social history.  www.ashleycowie.com.

Top Image: Replica of the Golden Sun Disk on display outside the Coracancha Temple, used in modern day festivals in Cuzco. (Image: Ashley Cowie)

By Ashley Cowie

 
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Ashley

Ashley is a Scottish historian, author, and documentary filmmaker presenting original perspectives on historical problems in accessible and exciting ways.

He was raised in Wick, a small fishing village in the county of Caithness on the north east coast of... Read More

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