Synopses & Reviews
The Inca Empire, at its peak,
was the largest kingdom on Earth. The Incas were known as master
builders, fearsome warriors, and practitioners of human sacrifice. Yet
in the year 1532, this mighty state was conquered, overnight, by fewer
than 200 Spanish adventurers. How could this happen?
Step by step, clue
by clue, Sullivan decodes the myths of the Incas to reveal that they
embody an astoundingly thorough record of astronomical events — a record
so precise it can be checked against a modern computer program. And he
uncovers the Incas' tragic secret: they knew they were doomed. As they
watched the skies for over a thousand years, the priest-astronomers of
the Andes came to believe that great transitions in the heavens foretold
great transitions here on earth. In the fifteenth century, they read
the sky and saw the signs of an apocalypse. So the Incas took a
desperate gamble: if events in the heavens could influence those on
earth, perhaps the reverse was true. Their rituals of warfare and human
sacrifice were nothing less than an attempt to stop time, to forestall
the cataclysm that would sweep their world away. The Inca gamble failed,
for just at the time the prophecy predicted, the Conquistadors arrived.
Yet even as their world collapsed, the Andean shamans set their wisdom
afloat in the waters of time, aboard the vessel of myth. In this book,
after four centuries of oblivion, their message has been received.
Synopsis
Step by step, Sullivan pieces together the hidden esoteric tradition of the Andes to uncover the tragic secret of the Incas, a tribe who believed that, if events in the heavens could influence those on earth, perhaps the reverse could be true. Anyone who reads this book will never look at the ruins of the Incas, or at the night sky, the same way again. Illustrations.
About the Author
William Sullivan holds a
BA from Harvard College and a doctorate from the Centre of Amerindian,
Latin American and Caribbean Studies at the University of St. Andrews.
He lives in Massachusetts.