Page:Amazing Stories Volume 21 Number 06.djvu/169

Rh Reales de los Incas, by Inca Garcilasso de la Vega, that two feathers of the coraquenque bird were always placed in the Incan emperor's llautu, or turban (the colors of the turban being, incidentally, symbolical of the rainbow, meaning that the wearer was a Child of the Sun.)

There is no clue as to where the practice originated, so one can only conjecture. They might have borrowed something from the Tiahuanaqueños just as the Aztecs borrowed certain (gentler) religious precepts from those who existed before them in the land of Anahuac. At any rate, this could serve to add the Incans to the list of those who used the two horned symbol, although my own conjecture would be that they knew far less about its real significance (at least in the latter days of the empire) than did the people who brought the symbol to this region, if, indeed, it is a borrowed symbol. On the other hand, the two feathers might represent the heavenly parents of the first Incas, Manco Capac and his sister wife, Mama Ocllo, who were supposed to have come from the sun (Incan version of Adam and Eve?), symbolical of the duality of the sexes, embodying the forces of creation. In the pre-Incan god, Pachacamac, we see two faces, one of a woman and one of a man, in this case a deliberate symbol of creative powers. Then again, the two feathers could stand for the Sun and the Moon, the two most conspicuous heavenly bodies, both of which were adored by the Incas. (Note: Incas refers to the Incan kings or emperors, supposedly children of the Sun; Incans refers to the subjects of the Incas). I forgot to mention, for those of you who may not know it, that Tiahuanaco and Cuzco (capital of Incan civilization) are just across Lake Titicaca from each other (Cuzco being some slight distance back from the lake).

In regard to the underground passages at Cuzco, I have been told again and again by natives and some foreign investigators that there are subterranean passages in the neighborhood of Cuzco which are still guarded. Men have actually been known to try to enter these passages and either disappear or turn up dead. Rather than attribute this to deros (this is not sarcasm, as I find Shaverism very much worthy of study) I would attribute it to the zeal of the Indians to guard the treasures of the past to which they feel they are the rightful heirs. Separately, someday, I hope to present a treatise on why I believe the Treasure of the Incas exists today near Cuzco and that it could not be valued at much less than seventy-five millions of dollars, but that is a lengthy subject. There is much to support the possibility of the existence of the underground passages to which Mr. Hansen refers, because, among other evidences, it is known that the Incas had secret ways of traveling great distances under ground. A friend of mine (a Peruvian miner with twenty years of experience among the Quichua Indians in the Andean highlands) has actually discovered the