Mama Quilla

Viracocha commanded the moon to rise from Lake Titicaca.

Betanzos’s account places the creation of the sun and moon at Titicaca Island. Viracocha called them out of the water and ordered them into the sky. The sun went first, brighter. The moon followed, dimmer because a god had struck it with a handful of ash before it could rise. Mama Quilla entered the world already diminished by comparison.

The Inca made her nonetheless the keeper of time.

Silver and the Calendar

Mama Quilla’s metal was silver, as Inti’s was gold. The Inca did not treat this as an aesthetic correspondence. Silver was the tears of the moon. Gold was the sweat of the sun. Both metals carried the substance of divine bodies.

Her function in the Inca system was calendrical. The word quilla meant both moon and month in Quechua, because the two could not be separated. The Inca year consisted of twelve months, each named after a major festival and aligned to the lunar cycle. Mama Quilla governed the rhythm of that year. Inti governed the sun’s path; she governed the count of days.

Cobo’s Historia del nuevo mundo, completed in 1653, records that her image at the Coricancha in Cuzco was a silver disk or a silver female figure. The shrine occupied its own chamber in the temple complex, separate from Inti’s gold-paneled sanctuary. Her attendants were mamacona, women of royal Inca descent who lived within the temple precinct and served no other function than her care. The Inca organized divine service by gender: the sun’s cult was attended by priests; the moon’s was attended by women.

The Royal Marriage

The Sapa Inca was the son of Inti, the direct solar descendant who ruled the empire and commanded its armies. The Coya, the principal queen, was associated with Mama Quilla. The divine pair in the sky corresponded to the royal pair in Cuzco.

The parallel was structural. Inca royal practice required the ruler to marry within the royal family, often a sister, to keep divine lineage concentrated. Mama Quilla and Inti were wife and husband, and in some accounts sister and brother as well. The marriage of the moon to the sun sanctioned the practice below. Molina’s Relación records festival rituals in which the Coya participated in lunar ceremonies while the Sapa Inca performed solar ones, the two cycles running in parallel through the year.

The Eclipse

When the moon began to darken, the Inca understood a creature to be attacking Mama Quilla.

Cieza de León and Cobo both record the response: people shouted, beat drums, clashed weapons, made as much noise as they could manage. Dogs were beaten so their howling added to the din. Weapons were thrown toward the sky. The goal was to frighten away the serpent or mountain lion that was consuming her. The noise continued until the eclipse passed and the moon returned.

The eclipse was not an astronomical event that explained itself. It was an attack on a specific being who kept the calendar running. If she was consumed, the year would lose its structure.

Women’s Rites

Mama Quilla’s domain extended to women’s bodies as well as the sky.

Cobo records that women going through rites of passage, including first menstruation and preparations for childbirth, made offerings at her shrine. Women who wished to conceive and those experiencing complications in pregnancy appealed to her specifically. Her association with monthly cycles was direct: the lunar month and the menstrual cycle tracked each other, and both belonged to her.

This gendered division of divine authority was consistent across the Inca system. Inti and Illapa were male deities whose cults were managed by men. Mama Quilla’s and Pachamama’s worship involved women, both as practitioners and as the primary beneficiaries of the cult’s protective functions.

Further Reading

• Inti — her husband, the sun god whose solar calendar ran parallel to her lunar one
• Viracocha — the creator who commanded the moon to rise from Lake Titicaca
• Pachamama — the earth goddess whose agricultural cycles the lunar calendar marked
• Illapa — the thunder god who shared the Coricancha with Mama Quilla, governing weather as she governed time

Sources

• Historia del nuevo mundo, Bernabé Cobo, 1653 — descriptions of Mama Quilla’s shrine at the Coricancha and the lunar calendar
• El señorío de los Incas, Pedro de Cieza de León, c. 1550 — accounts of Inca lunar reckoning and Mama Quilla’s role
• Suma y narración de los Incas, Juan de Betanzos, 1551 — creation of the moon at Lake Titicaca by Viracocha’s command
• Nueva corónica y buen gobierno, Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala, c. 1615 — illustrations of Inca calendar and festival months
• Relación de las fábulas y ritos de los Incas, Cristóbal de Molina, c. 1575 — ritual context for lunar worship in the Inca year