Wari

Wari is a primordial deity of the Aymara world below, the Manqha Pacha. Ethnohistorical reconstruction presents him as a chthonic power of the dark, pre-solar age, worshipped at subterranean oracles and bound up with springs, hurricane winds, and the hidden mineral wealth of the earth, sometimes taking the forms of snakes, lizards and other creeping creatures. As a being of the underworld he is associated with the pachakuti, the periodic cataclysm that overturns the world, and stands in structural opposition to the celestial, solar order that succeeded his age.

Domains

• underworld and mineral wealth

Powers

• to command the springs, winds and hidden wealth beneath the earth
• to overturn the world in the cataclysm of the pachakuti

Sources

• Wari is a primordial Aymara chthonic deity of the world below (Manqha Pacha), a being of the pre-solar age associated with underground oracles, springs, winds and subterranean wealth, standing opposite the later solar order.: Thérèse Bouysse-Cassagne, Lluvias y cenizas: dos Pachacuti en la historia (1988) (secondary); Thérèse Bouysse-Cassagne and Olivia Harris, Pacha: en torno al pensamiento aymara, in Tres reflexiones sobre el pensamiento andino (1987) (secondary)