Alberto Villoldo schrijft,
In all the countries north of the equator – and remember that the great cultures of history developed north of the equator – God is a descending god. Think of the Greeks, the Romans, the Christians, the Muslims. The Divine comes from the heavens and descends to the Earth… But for the Incas, the only great culture to develop south of the equator, the god-force is ascending. It rises from the Mother Earth… rises from the Earth to the heavens like the golden corn.
And those who are buried at Sillustani (at Lake Titicaca, the Sea on Top of the World) are the men and women who spent their lives acquiring knowledge, germinating and cross-germinating their wisdom and their corn, discovering and understanding the forces of Nature and the relationship between the Sun and the Earth and the Moon and the stars. They practiced a way of knowing that is… an alchemy of life.
The alchemy of your European ancestors consisted of taking dead matter – base elements like sulphur and lead – and placing it in a crucible and applying fire in a vain effort to make gold. But my people used living matter, placed it in the crucible of the Earth, under the fire of the Sun, and produced corn, a living gold.
[top-down, bottom-up, descending, ascending, an alchemy of life, the golden corn, a living gold, a way of knowing]