The Incas sought their cosmology in the space between space. With feet planted firmly on the ground in the southern hemisphere, they turned their eyes skyward to the blanket expanse of the cosmos and watched the blushing sky thicken into the deepest shade of night. The milky way cut across this star studded canvas, a luminescent seam, billions of stars silently shooting and falling, even more clustering to form rivers of purl, swirling swirling swirling in an ocean of gold, cosmic curtains of gauze and gossamer. Their eyes flocked to islands of night in the spiraling symphony of stardust to the emptiness of negative space, to the ink that paints by not being and named these their constellations.

The Incan constellations are dark constellations, representing the silhouettes of animals that came to drink from the waters of the celestial river.

The Incan constellations are dark constellations, representing the silhouettes of animals that came to drink from the waters of the celestial river, Mayu, thereby obscuring its heavenly glow. Yacana, the llama, still tethered to her child through her umbilical cord, Mach’acuay- the serpent, Hanp’atu the Toad, Atoq the fox and Yutu- the ground partridge.