Failure of Imperial Teachings

Mixing the Sacred with the Profane

What could be considered a “failure of imperial teaching”?
At a time of inquisition tied to Christian religious devotion, blaspheming the Church was a “failure.” Witches of Spanish, Creole, Mulato, Mestizo identity made up a band of studied practitioners who were pursued by those who strongly considered their fantastic acts as devilish. I want to try to discuss this culturally – as a contradiction to the instating Iberian culture and to the orthodox religion, sorcery of the period around the 1630s is a subtle domain of cultural contact which makes apparent (by Silverblatt’s reference) Indian language, Indian herbs, Indian drinks, and Indian chants.

Here’s my *~*1 sentence:

“For even as some testimonies expose the failures of imperial teachings, they also show the tenacious hold that colonial categories of humanness exerted on Spain’s Peruvian subjects. Yes, colonial witches who saw power in Indian herbs and Indian mountains, and even, as we shall see, in the vanquished Inca, might have been arguing, in their way, about the legitimacy of Spanish rule, about its limits and impossibilities… The witches’ illegal, if rich, montage of cultural makings was part of an appraisal that drew its force—and inspired fear—precisely because of colonialism’s contradictions and pervasive cultural designs.” (p. 164)

It is said that the witches’ cultural makings were pervasive. It describes how the hegemonic-building of colonial culture was threated of acts such as conjuring charms. “Revelation”/ “fantastic representation” were socially contracted, via assigned cultural blame and tagging, as “superstition” / “fable.”  Yet the Inca Witch practiced in personal and political domains, with some accounts (noting: Dofia Maria de Cérdoba and Dona Luisa de Vargas) of contact between witches with native hechiceras for sorcery sessions. The culture participated and performed involves a non-colonial knowledge, described by Irene Silverblatt (2004) as knowledge of “herbal cures, divining tricks, and potions for love and power – rooted in the wisdom of three continents” (p.167). Inquisitors framed this as danger and feared native wisdom. That is, wisdom rooted in the land. Sorcery sessions or ceremonies have an inherent sense of justice unfavored to hegemony-building colonial logics.

Interestingly enough, [recalling our theme of subalternity and who’s voices may be representative of the subaltern, and if we can really know this or what it would matter what we intellectually define subaltern if we don’t listen to the content of what is being said anything], chants/spells/ and invocations were inspired by Quechua, often spoken in the Indian language… “sacred language” (p. 176). In terms of another theme of hybridity – we see this very lowly understood era of Witchcraft as a prime instance of “mixing sacred things with the profane,” noticing that the Indigenous and Colonial self-define themselves in an oppositions which do indeed have synchronous meaning… that’s a little confusing, but what I mean is that native wisdom is set apart from imperial teachings, and its curious to consider this as we speak of anti-colonial logics.

The accounts from trial and testimony of Witches, symbolically named as Inca Witches for their lived epoch, involved the unconventionality of alluring Indian customs. Mama Coca being central to their divinations, the bitterness of chew may be lasting que of the senses we’ve forgotten.

Inca dark constellation~