ANST-601 Lessons

Standing at the front of the classroom, the professor flicks her wand and an image of a city in ruins surrounded by dense jungle appears, floating above the students. Another wand movement and the ruins seem to hurtle backward in time, the stones moving to form complete buildings, and the jungle receding to the fringes of the image. Within the image, people begin walking around the recreated city and interacting with each other. The professor holds the image for one more moment, and then waves it away with her wand.

That, my dears, was an image of what we suspect the Inca city of Vilcabamba may have looked like prior to its demise in the late 1500s. Much of the work of magiarchaeologists and magianthropologists alike is to use the most minute details they can find about a civilization or a dig site to recreate both the physical structures and culture. But more on that in future years!

Vilcabamba and its more famous counterpart, Machu Picchu, is where we shall focus our attention today. Before we begin, however, we need to discuss a particular Muggle - or NoMaj, as he was an American. This particular person was mostly responsible for discovering the ruins of both of these two cities and his name was Hiram Bingham III. To set the scene, Bingham was an American explorer, despite having no formal archaeological or anthropological training. While visiting Peru in 1911, he accepted an offer for a tour of some ruins by a local resident, somewhat on a whim. Detailed in a book he would later publish in the Muggle world, Bingham visited and “discovered” both Machu Picchu and Vilcabamba. 

It was in this book that Bingham published the (incorrect) assertion of Machu Picchu as the lost city of the Inca people, something that had the magical community shaking their heads in bewilderment. While members of his expedition who were local descendants of the Inca tried desperately to dissuade him of this opinion, the complete separation between the Muggle and magical communities in North America allowed this mistaken conclusion to be disseminated widely. It was at that point that magiarchaeologists began integrating themselves into North American and European expeditions and discovery sites in these areas. By doing so, they were able to, at least in part, prevent massively erroneous information from being distributed, and guiding the Muggles away from areas that were unsafe (both for the Muggles themselves and for the ongoing secrecy of magic).

Now, do not take this to mean that Machu Picchu was not an important site, as it most certainly was. However, the discovery of Vilcabamba was much more important, especially to the magical community. Let’s have a closer look at these cities and their significance.

The Magic of Machu Picchu

During Lesson One this year I mentioned that Cuzco was the capital of the Inca Empire. There was, however, a sort of “second capital” in the empire - the nerve center for all magical practices in Inca civilization, more commonly known as Machu Picchu. 

As you may be aware, natural magic was quite advanced in the Americas prior to the arrival of the Europeans. While the Inca and all of their contemporaries across the Americas did not use wands to focus their magic, they were nonetheless adept at various types of magic, especially potion making. The sheer vastness and variety of magical and non-magical flora and fauna around the equatorial region is simply incredible, and the knowledge and practice that the Inca people had was hard to comprehend by today’s standards.

Inca witches and wizards were also quite aware of the fact that magic comes from the sun, which is a rather advanced concept, though it is taught early on in present-day Astronomy classes. One of the ritual stones at Machu Picchu was created to directly tap into the energy of the sun. Called the Inti Watana stone (also Intihuatana), it had great ritual significance. It was directly linked to both practices of astronomy and potion-making, and was believed to have been able to channel the magical energy of the sunlight into the potions created atop the rock. We know they must have been significant for the stone to be so prominently placed, however that official knowledge has been lost to time, as Machu Picchu was a casualty of the Spanish conquest and currently lies in ruins.

In addition to potions, divination was also studied in great detail in Machu Picchu. While the diviners dabbled into some questionable areas of divination (among other unsavory forms of magic, they did practice human sacrifice), their knowledge of the art was impeccable. The diviners foresaw the destruction of Machu Picchu by the Spanish - not through violence, per se, but with a plague of smallpox introduced to the city by the Spanish. Given the impending arrival of their doom, the inhabitants of the city abandoned it, many fleeing to Vilcabamba, the last sanctuary of the free Inca people. 

The Last Stand of Vilcabamba

As I mentioned in lesson one, the Spanish conquered the Inca civilization in 1525. After they had been conquered, however, the Spanish decided to allow the Inca monarchy to continue in the form of appointed emperors who were in fact puppets of the Spanish. While this plan worked in favour of the Spanish for a time, they were eventually fooled by Manco Inca Yupanqui, who they put on the throne in 1533. Unknown to the Spanish, Manco Inca was actually a wizard of great skill who had secretly united the wizarding population to form a resistance against them. Upon his defection from the Spanish intent for his rule, Manco took the remains of his people to form the Neo-Inca state. Their home and headquarters to their rebellion was the jungle city of Vilcabamba.

Vilcabamba was more than simply a place to plan the rebellion. In fact, all recorded magical knowledge from Machu Picchu and other sites had been transferred secretly to Vilcabamba during the Spanish Conquest. Magical research began again in earnest when Manco moved the people to this last free city in order to protect it from discovery and destruction by the Spanish, as well as to try and find ways to fight the Spanish.

Manco worked with wizards and Muggles alike to try and find a way to oust the Spanish from his homeland. Unfortunately, one of his gambles blew up in his face like a Blast-Ended Skrewt. Following the belief that  the enemy of his enemy was his friend, Manco chose to hide and protect a group of unknown mercenaries responsible for assassinating a Spanish leader. Unfortunately, murder came too easily to these people and, for whatever reason, in 1544 they chose to murder Manco as well, though the wizard went down fighting and managed to take all but a few with him, with the lone survivors of the fracas lasting only hours in the jungle away from proper medical treatment. 

Vilcabamba and the Neo-Inca state survived as the last bastion of the free Inca people and stronghold of magical knowledge until 1572. Having lost the talents of Manco Inca, the population, wizards and Muggles alike, were unable to perfectly shield the city from the Spanish, resulting in its discovery and destruction. So swiftly did the Spanish descend on the city, and so mercilessly did they attack, that the archive of magical knowledge was burned to the ground along with the rest of the city. While some of the people escaped, none of the collective knowledge survived.

An unknown witch or wizard, perhaps even a group, heartbroken by the actions of the Spanish, cast a concealing charm on the city. Effectively, no one could find the remains of this now empty place, earning it the title of “The Lost City.” It wasn’t until the late 1800s that the spell was broken by a small group of Peruvian wizards who happened to stumble across the remains of the city and recognized the feeling of the spell.

Conclusion

And that, I’m afraid, is all the time we have for the Inca people this year. In our next lesson, we will discuss the neighbouring Nazca civilization, including their infamous Lines of Nazca. Until then, you have a mandatory essay (don’t be alarmed - it’s not that difficult) and a quiz to complete.

Image credits here, here, here and here
Original lesson written by Professor Liria Morgan