Distinct from the rainforest shamanism of the Amazonian lowlands covered elsewhere in this collection, Andean cosmology is the spiritual framework of a mountain civilisation — the Inca and the peoples who came before them — built around agricultural terracing, precise astronomical observation, and a central ethical principle: nothing is taken without something given back.
Pachamama — Mother Earth — remains the most widely and actively venerated figure in Andean spirituality today, a fertility and provision goddess whose worship has continued for centuries, now commonly layered with devotion to the Catholic Virgin Mary in many communities. Viracocha (Wiraqocha) is named in Inca tradition as the great creator god, credited with bringing the sun, moon, stars and humanity into being, closely associated with Lake Titicaca as the point of cosmic origin. Inti, the sun god, held particular importance to the Inca state itself — the ruling Sapa Inca claimed direct descent from Inti, and Cusco's great temple, the Coricancha ("Golden Enclosure"), was dedicated entirely to solar worship.
These three interconnected realms are frequently symbolised together in the chakana, the stepped Andean cross with a hole at its centre — a widely recognised symbol representing not just the three worlds individually but the point of connection running through all of them, still displayed prominently across the Andean region today.
Central to Andean ethics is ayni — reciprocity, the principle that every act of receiving carries an obligation to give back in turn, applied equally to relationships between people and to the relationship between people and Pachamama herself. This principle is enacted directly through despacho ceremonies — ritual offerings made to the earth in gratitude for what has been received and in request for what is still needed, a continuing, living exchange rather than a one-directional act of worship.
Significant mountain peaks are understood to house powerful guardian spirits called Apus, each watching over the surrounding region and its people — still actively petitioned and honoured by Quechua and Aymara communities across the Andes today.
Nothing is simply taken from the earth. Everything received creates an obligation to give something back — this is the whole of ayni, and the whole of how the Andean world stays in balance. — A common paraphrase of Andean reciprocity ethics
A living tradition, not a lost civilisation: unlike the framing "ancient Andean religion" might suggest, this cosmology remains an active, continuously practised spiritual system among millions of Quechua and Aymara people today, commonly held alongside Catholic faith rather than displaced by it — closely paralleling the syncretic survival patterns seen in Caribbean Afro-diasporic traditions covered elsewhere in this collection, though arising through a distinct historical process.