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Updated: May 29, 2025
Every vessel used in the temple services was of gold or silver, and there were beside many figures of animals, and copies of plants and flowers The greatest Sun festival was called 'Raymi; at it a llama was sacrificed, and from the appearance of its body the priest sought to read the future.
Certain fires must be kindled by specially appointed sacred persons: among the Todas of Southern India, when a new dairy is visited or an old dairy is reconsecrated; among the Lacandones of Central America, on the occasion of the renewal of the incense-bowls; in the Peruvian temple at the feast of Raymi, when the flame was intrusted to the care of the Virgins of the Sun, and was to be kept up during the year; in the temples of Hestia and Vesta; throughout Greece, when the fires had been polluted by the presence of the Persians, it was ordered that they should be put out and rekindled from the sacred fire at Delphi.
It was on the night of the feast of Raymi, when our Father the Sun had left the Sacred Fleece unkindled, and when was fulfilled the prophecy that the night should fall over the land of the Children of the Sun. Now, tell me, you who speak the language of my people, how long have I been sleeping?
At the feast of Raymi, the sacrifice usually offered was that of the llama; and the priest, after opening the body of his victim, sought in the appearances which it exhibited to read the lesson of the mysterious future. If the auguries were unpropitious, a second victim was slaughtered, in the hope of receiving some more comfortable assurance.
They were employed in spinning and embroidery, and, with the fine hair of the vicuna wove the hangings for the temples, and the apparel for the Inca and his household.40 It was their duty, above all, to watch over the sacred fire obtained at the festival of Raymi.
Perhaps the most magnificent of all the national solemnities was the feast of Raymi, held at the period of the summer solstice, when the Sun, having touched the southern extremity of his course, retraced his path, as if to gladden the hearts of his chosen people by his presence.
The Incas of Peru celebrated a festival called Raymi, a word which their native historian Garcilasso de la Vega tells us was equivalent to our Easter. It was held in honour of the sun at the solstice in June. For three days before the festival the people fasted, men did not sleep with their wives, and no fires were lighted in Cuzco, the capital.
Then I lifted up my voice and spoke the ancient Invocation to the Sun which generation after generation of my fathers had spoken from the same spot at the beginning of the feast of Raymi, and when I had ended this the Children of the Blood lifted up their voices after me and sang the long-silenced and yet never-forgotten hymn to the Sun, and then, standing before the kneeling multitude, I replaced the Llautu on my brow and proclaimed myself Inca and supreme Lord of the Land of the Four Regions in the name of my long-dead fathers, whose divine right to lordship had been preserved in me.
These amusements continued for several days, though the sacrifices terminated on the first. Such was the great festival of Raymi; and the recurrence of this and similar festivities gave relief to the monotonous routine of toil prescribed to the lower orders of the community.32
It chanced that I was kept late from my bed last night by certain business connected with the approaching Feast of Raymi, and I was therefore astir when the Villac Vmu and Motahuana returned from your banquet.
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