ing stars, and the hoot of an owl.They believed that Viracocha was the most important god of all. He was similar to Omelecuhtli, the Aztec god. He was the creator of the Sun, Moon, and Stars that were all seen as gods. The Sun was the life giver and was the most important server of Viracocha. He watched over the crops and was the father of the Emperor. His image was a human face surrounded by rays of flowing hair.The Moon was the wife of the Sun. It was believed that an eclipse was the result a great serpent or mountain lion trying to eat her. To frighten off the creatures, they would point their weapons at the moon and start screaming and shouting at it.The constellations, or Stars, all had duties assigned to them by Viracocha. For example, Pleiades had the job of looking over the seeds in the fields, and Lyra, which looked like a llama, looked after the herds.They also worshipped some other gods such as Thunder, the god of weather, who was an important deity. He was pictured as a man with a war club and a sling in the other hand. Thunder and lightning came from the sling and he drew rain from the Milky Way. Farmers worshipped the Earth Mother and fishermen worshipped that Mother Sea.The Aztec and Inca both had very different beliefs for the afterlife.The Aztec, like most Indians, believed that the four directions of the world were extremely important. One important thing to remember about the Aztecs is that they used a language that was very symbolic and used many allusions. They perceived the North (where the Sun was never visible), South (where the sun was highest in the sky), East (where the sun rose), and West (where the sun set), were key to understanding magical and religious thinking. The sequence of the Sun also represented the sequence of life. They believed that the body rises, becomes stronger, weakens, and finally dies. The east was the home of the morning star, the west was the home of the Lord of the Jewe...
