Divinity Atlas
A Body Part Is the Bridge to an Inca Capital, by Name
The navel connects to exactly one sacred site in this atlas, Cusco and the Qorikancha, and the bridge is not a borrowed metaphor. It is the city's own name.
The Center of the World, Read Several Ways
The navel recurs across traditions as a figure for the center of the world as much as a bodily landmark. Ancient Greek religion held the omphalos stone at Delphi to mark the navel of the earth, the point Zeus found by releasing two eagles from opposite ends of the world to meet in the middle. Daoist internal practice locates the dantian, a lower energy center at or below the navel, as the body's own seat of vital force, an inward rather than geographic navel. The Inca capital carries the same idea by name rather than by metaphor.
Cusco's Own Name
Qosqo, traditionally read as navel in Quechua, is the sacred capital of the Inca empire, laid out as the navel of the world with the Qorikancha, the Temple of the Sun, at its heart. The temple was once sheathed in gold and served as the empire's supreme sanctuary and astronomical center, with sacred pathways radiating from it to shrines across the realm. Of every sacred site this atlas holds, this is the one whose own name states the connection this bridge is built on, rather than an outside tradition reading the idea into it afterward.
Where To Read More
- NavelThe body part whose only sacred-site bridge in this atlas runs through a capital's own name
- Cusco and the QorikanchaInca SitesThe capital itself, Qosqo read as navel in Quechua, laid out as the navel of the world