At the Crossroads of the Earth and the Sky: An Andean Cosmology

Above Misminay, the sky also is so divided by the alternation of the two axes of the Milky Way passing through the zenith. This mirror-image quadri- partition of terrestrial and celestial spheres is such that a point within one of the quarters of the earth is related to a point within the corresponding celestial quarter. The transition between the earth and the sky occurs at the horizon, where sacred mountains are related to topographic and celestial features. Based on fieldwork in Misminay, P…