Illapa

The Thunder in Cusco

Illapa was one of the principal powers of the Cusco state cult, with his own chamber in the Coricancha according to Garcilaso and his own image, lands, and servants according to Molina and Cobo. Bernabé Cobo (1653), summarizing earlier reports, says the Andeans imagined him as a man in the sky with a club in one hand and a sling in the other: the crack of the sling was the thunder, the flash of his clothing the lightning, and he drew water from the river of the sky, the Milky Way, and poured it down as rain.

Rain, hail, and the mountains

Because he controlled rain and hail, Illapa was petitioned in times of drought, often on mountaintops. Colonial extirpators report that people struck by lightning and survived were thought chosen for ritual office, and that twins, and children born feet-first, were considered children of the lightning.

Santiago

The Spanish battle cry to Saint James and the saint's thundering horse made an easy identification: in colonial and modern Andean usage Santiago became a name for the thunder itself. This fusion is a post-conquest development, well documented in the extirpation literature, and not evidence about pre-conquest belief.