Cusco, Peru
20 January 2010
A couple of posts back I wrote about a pilgrimage to a high elevation glacier in the Andes of Peru to gather snow. Quite by coincidence, a book I brought with me to read while visiting various sites in and near Cusco, including Manchu Picchu, contains a personal story of participation in the arduous and difficult to understand (for those of us mostly familiar with European traditions) pilgrimage.
The book is Hugh Tomson, 2006. A Sacred Landscape: The Search for Ancient Peru. Woodstock and New York: The Overlook Press. ISBN 13-978-1-59020-058-2, and the description of the pilgrimage is a chapter A Parliament of Bears: Qoyllurit´i, pp. 232-271.
Qoyllurití (your guess at pronunciation is as good as mine) is celebrated every year after Trinity Sunday in June and entails a climb, at rates far faster than high altitude medicine would recommend, to a glacier over 6,000 m high about 100 km from Cusco. Thousands participate every year in rituals that combine Roman Catholic elements, and the pilgrimage is sanctioned by the church, with ones clearly very much older. If I should teach another course on pilgrimage, I most certainly will include discussion of this one. Meanwhile I recommend the Tomson book both for the chapter and more generally for its overview of archaeological and anthropological finds in Peru.
This began as a blog on the general topic of pilgrimage with postings including examples of pilgrimages, photos and musings on various matters related to that topic. It was abandoned in 2012. I am now Reviving it after abandoning tumblr. From January 2019 it will be more general with coverage of thoughts and travels, though pilgrimage will remain an important element.
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