The body and archetypal symbolism in the Taki Onkoy movement, in the Andes, by the end of the XVI century AD

Abstract

During the years that followed the Spanish conquest of America, various military, political, civil, religious and social phenomena emerged. Historians and anthropologists devoted themselves to the admirable task of gathering sources, checking data and studying testimonials about these phenomena. Within this literature, we find the Taki Onkoy movement, usually inserted among rebellions occurred as a reaction of the indigenous people to the Spanish domination. However, unlike any other rebellions of that period, the Taki Onkoy movement became the most dramatic manifestation of the Andean notion of the sacred and of the power of the Andean priests, who threw themselves into the search for a transformation and restructuring of the awareness. This article aimed at deepening the knowledge of the collective religious experience of the Taki Onkoy movement, and understanding its archetypal symbols and psychological origin.  Based on the Jungian theory, it was approached the encounter of two worlds, seeking to understand the complex psychological and physical processes around it. Analytic psychology contributed to understand the historical moments of violence and trauma during which a set of social symbols was annihilated, and human beings desperately returned to search for their own imaginary, their myths and their own essence, by using symbols and the body.