As the first cause and ground of all things, Viracocha's distinctive
epithet was _Ticci_, the Cause, the Beginning, or _Illa ticci_, the
Ancient Cause[1], the First Beginning, an endeavor in words to express the
absolute priority of his essence and existence. He it was who had made and
moulded the Sun and endowed it with a portion of his own divinity, to wit,
the glory of its far-shining rays; he had formed the Moon and given her
light, and set her in the heavens to rule over the waters and the winds,
over the queens of the earth and the parturition of women; and it was
still he, the great Viracocha, who had created the beautiful Chasca, the
Aurora, the Dawn, goddess of all unspotted maidens like herself, her who
in turn decked the fields and woods with flowers, whose time was the
gloaming and the twilight, whose messengers were the fleecy clouds which
sail through the sky, and who, when she shakes her clustering hair, drops
noiselessly pearls of dew on the green grass fields.[2]
[Footnote 1: "_Ticci_, origen, principio, fundamento, cimiento, causa.
_Ylla_; todo lo que es antiguo." Holguin, _Vocabulario de la Lengua
Qquichua o del Inga_ (Ciudad de los Reyes, 1608). _Ticci_ is not to be
confounded with _aticsi_, he conquers, from _atini_, I conquer, a term
also occasionally applied to Viracocha.
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