Quariwarmi
Quariwarmi (Wechua: qhariwarmi, literally "man-woman") were ritual specialists in traditional Wechua society whose gender expression combined masculine and feminine elements. As a category within the broader chawpi runakuna ("people of the center"), quariwarmi held specific ceremonial functions that required their capacity to embody and mediate between complementary forces. The tradition is rooted in Wechua cosmological principles of yanantin (complementary duality) and tinkuy (sacred convergence).
Historical sources attest to quariwarmi serving in temples, participating in agricultural ceremonies, and performing divination. The role declined significantly during the Atteran occupation and subsequent centuries of instability, though it was never fully extinguished. The Great Restoration beginning in 1673 AN brought renewed interest in traditional practices, and contemporary quariwarmi continue to serve within the Faith of Inti, though in smaller numbers than in pre-Atteran times.
Terminology
The term qhariwarmi combines qhari (man) and warmi (woman), expressing the dual nature attributed to these individuals. In Classical Wechua, the term appears in religious texts and administrative records pertaining to temple personnel. The compound construction follows standard Wechua word-formation patterns for expressing combined or intermediate categories. Alternative terms recorded in various sources include tinkuy runa ("person of convergence"), emphasizing the cosmological function, and inti wawakunapa ("children of Inti"), a honorific used in some temple contexts. Regional variation exists: Coastal Wechu communities historically used taqi warmi-qhari, while Southern Wechu sources record ch'ulla runa ("singular/unique person").
The relationship between quariwarmi and the broader category of chawpi runakuna is one of specific to general. All quariwarmi are chawpi runakuna, but not all chawpi runakuna are quariwarmi. The latter term denotes individuals who took up specific ritual functions, while the former encompasses all persons whose gender identity exists between or outside the male-female binary, regardless of spiritual vocation.
Cosmological basis
The quariwarmi tradition derives from the Wechua cosmological principle of yanantin, which holds that existence comprises complementary pairs in dynamic balance. Male and female, day and night, sun and moon, mountain and valley: these apparent opposites are understood not as conflicting but as mutually necessary, each incomplete without its complement.
Within this framework, points of tinkuy (convergence or meeting) between complementary categories hold special significance. Certain geographic locations, such as the confluence of rivers, mountain passes, and cave entrances, are considered tinkuy sites where different realms or forces meet. These places are often marked as wak'a (sacred sites) and figure prominently in Intic religious practice.
Quariwarmi were understood to embody tinkuy in their persons. By combining masculine and feminine qualities, they manifested the convergence of complementary forces within a single individual. This was not considered a deficiency or abnormality but a distinct mode of being with specific capacities. Just as tinkuy sites served as bridges between realms, quariwarmi could serve as bridges between gendered domains and, by extension, between the human and divine.
Historical roles
Temple service
The primary documented role of quariwarmi was service in temples of the Faith of Inti. Sources from the pre-Atteran period and early Wechua state describe quariwarmi among temple personnel, though their precise functions varied by location and period.
In temples dedicated to Inti, quariwarmi participated in ceremonies marking solstices and equinoxes, moments when the sun's apparent path crosses thresholds between seasons. Their presence at these transitional observances reflected the symbolic association between their gender status and cosmic transitions. Some sources describe quariwarmi kindling or extinguishing sacred fires during these ceremonies, acts of mediating between states (dark/light, cold/warm) that corresponded to their social position.
Temples of Pachamama and Mama Sara (the maize deity) also included quariwarmi among their personnel. Agricultural fertility ceremonies, which invoked the union of male sky and female earth, employed quariwarmi as ritual actors who embodied this union within their persons. Planting and harvest festivals featured quariwarmi in prominent roles, blessing seeds, sanctifying first fruits, and performing dances that enacted cosmic marriage.
Divination
Quariwarmi were associated with certain forms of divination, particularly methods involving the interpretation of ambiguous signs. Reading coca leaves, interpreting the entrails of sacrificed animals, and observing the flight patterns of birds were divinatory practices in which quariwarmi specialists were considered especially skilled.
The logic underlying this association held that individuals who existed between categories possessed enhanced perception of boundaries and thresholds. Divination fundamentally involves perceiving information across the boundary between present and future, known and unknown. Quariwarmi diviners were thought to access this liminal knowledge more readily than practitioners firmly situated within single gender categories.
Not all quariwarmi practiced divination, and not all diviners were quariwarmi. The association was one of aptitude rather than exclusivity. However, certain oracular sites and divinatory traditions specifically required quariwarmi practitioners, and consultants seeking guidance on matters involving transitions, such as marriages, journeys, or changes of occupation, sometimes specifically sought quariwarmi diviners.
Healing
Some quariwarmi practiced healing, particularly for conditions understood as involving imbalance between masculine and feminine forces within the patient. Traditional Wechua medicine conceptualized health as equilibrium and illness as disruption of balance. Certain ailments, including some forms of infertility, were attributed to gender-related imbalances that quariwarmi healers were thought especially capable of addressing.
Healing practices included herbal remedies, ritual cleansing, and the manipulation of sami (vital energy or spiritual essence). Quariwarmi healers sometimes specialized in treating conditions affecting reproductive health or in counseling individuals experiencing distress related to gender or sexuality.
Textile arts
Beyond explicitly religious functions, quariwarmi participated in the textile traditions central to Wechua culture. Weaving carries profound symbolic meaning in Wechua society, representing the bringing together of separate threads into unified cloth. This metaphor for tinkuy, the convergence of disparate elements, made textile work symbolically appropriate for quariwarmi.
Certain complex pallay (woven patterns) were traditionally associated with quariwarmi weavers. The tawa suyu pallay ("four regions pattern"), representing the cosmic quadrants unified at a central point, and the k'uychi pallay ("rainbow pattern"), symbolizing the spectrum that bridges apparent opposites, are among designs historically linked to quariwarmi production. These associations varied by region, and not all weavers of such patterns were quariwarmi, but the symbolic connection between their gender status and integrative design motifs was widely recognized.
Training and initiation
Recognition
Identification of potential quariwarmi typically occurred during childhood or adolescence, when individuals displayed gender expression or behavior differing from community norms for their assigned sex. Families responded variously depending on local custom, economic circumstances, and the specific characteristics of the child.
In communities with active temple traditions, families sometimes brought such children to priests for evaluation. Priests assessed whether the child showed aptitude for ritual service and, if so, might negotiate arrangements for the child's training. Not all chawpi runakuna entered temple service; many lived ordinary lives within their communities, and family decisions about religious dedication involved practical as well as spiritual considerations.
Some individuals came to quariwarmi identity and vocation later in life, following dreams, illness, or spiritual experiences interpreted as calls to service. Adult initiation was less common than childhood dedication but was recognized and accommodated within the tradition.
Training
Those dedicated to temple service as quariwarmi underwent extended training under senior priests and established quariwarmi mentors. Training encompassed religious knowledge, ritual procedure, and practical skills appropriate to the specific functions the initiate would perform.
Religious education included memorization of prayers, hymns, and sacred narratives; understanding of the ceremonial calendar; knowledge of offerings appropriate to various deities and occasions; and comprehension of cosmological principles underlying Intic practice. Initiates learned the significance of their own status within this cosmological framework and the responsibilities it entailed.
Practical training varied by specialization. Those intended for divinatory work learned interpretive techniques and the preparation of materials. Those focused on healing studied medicinal plants, diagnostic methods, and therapeutic rituals. Temple musicians and dancers developed performance skills. Weavers destined to produce sacred textiles mastered the relevant patterns and techniques.
Training duration ranged from several years to over a decade, depending on the complexity of the intended role and the standards of the particular temple tradition. Full initiation marked the completion of training and the assumption of recognized status as a quariwarmi practitioner.
Dress and presentation
Initiated quariwarmi typically adopted distinctive dress combining masculine and feminine elements, visually expressing their cosmological status. Specific conventions varied by region, period, and temple tradition, but common features included wearing garments from both gendered wardrobes, distinctive hairstyles or head coverings, and jewelry or other adornments marking religious status.
Some traditions prescribed specific garments for quariwarmi, such as the unku (tunic) woven with particular patterns or the chumpi (belt) in colors associated with Intic temples. Others allowed considerable individual variation within general guidelines of gender-mixed presentation.
During ceremonies, quariwarmi often wore elaborate ritual costume emphasizing their mediating function. Festival dress might include solar and lunar imagery combined, or representations of both male and female deities. Such costume was reserved for ritual contexts; everyday dress, while still distinctive, was typically more subdued.
Historical disruption
Atteran period
The Atteran conquest and occupation of Wechua territories brought severe disruption to traditional practices, including the quariwarmi tradition. Atteran authorities, influenced by their own cultural norms and religious frameworks, viewed Wechua gender practices with hostility. Temple complexes were destroyed or repurposed. Priests were killed, enslaved, or forced underground. The public practice of the Faith of Inti was suppressed, and with it the institutional structures that had supported quariwarmi service. Mass relocations of Wechua populations, designed to fracture community bonds and cultural transmission, further disrupted the tradition.
Despite this persecution, quariwarmi practices did not entirely disappear. In remote highland areas where Atteran control was incomplete, some traditions persisted. Among displaced Coastal Wechu communities, modified practices continued in forms less visible to authorities. Knowledge was preserved within families and transmitted secretly across generations. The extent of survival varied greatly by region and circumstance. Some lineages of quariwarmi knowledge were entirely lost. Others persisted in fragmentary form, their full meaning obscured even to practitioners. Still others maintained substantial continuity, emerging relatively intact when conditions permitted revival.
Period of instability
The collapse of the Atteran Empire brought not relief but new forms of chaos. The territories of the Wechua people passed through successive periods of warlordism, foreign domination, and incorporation into the unrecognized Keltian Green. These conditions were generally unfavorable to cultural revival, and the quariwarmi tradition remained marginal. Some communities maintained practices throughout this period, but without institutional support or wider social recognition. Quariwarmi in these contexts often functioned more as folk practitioners than as members of an organized religious tradition. Their roles contracted to local healing, agricultural blessing, and family ritual, with the grander temple functions of the pre-Atteran era beyond recovery.
First Wechua state and the Wechua Sorrow
The establishment of the first Wechua Nation in 1657 AN created possibilities for revival. Sapa Wechua Manco Capac supported restoration of traditional practices, and the quariwarmi tradition began to receive renewed attention. However, this period of reconstruction was cut short by the White Plague and the Wechua Sorrow that followed, during which the Wechua state collapsed and the population suffered devastating losses.
The Wechua Sorrow represented another severe disruption. Whatever progress had been made toward reviving the quariwarmi tradition was largely undone. Survival rather than cultural restoration became the priority, and many practitioners perished along with the broader population.
Modern revival
Great Restoration
The Great Restoration beginning in 1673 AN inaugurated the contemporary era of Wechua cultural revival. Under Sapa Wechua Manco Capac I, systematic efforts to recover and preserve traditional practices commenced. The quariwarmi tradition was among the elements targeted for restoration.
Scholars and priests worked to collect oral traditions, locate surviving practitioners, and reconstruct knowledge that had been fragmented or lost. The Royal Academy of the Wechua Language, established during this period, documented terminology related to quariwarmi and other chawpi runa traditions as part of its broader lexicographical work.
Revival faced significant challenges. Continuous transmission had been broken in many lineages. Surviving practitioners often possessed only partial knowledge, and different regional traditions preserved different elements. Reconstruction required synthesis from fragmentary sources, raising questions about authenticity that continue to generate scholarly and religious debate.
Federation period
The formation of Nouvelle Alexandrie in 1685 AN brought the Wechua people into political union with Alduria and its predominantly Alexandrian population. This created new contexts for traditional practices, including the quariwarmi tradition.
Aldurian and Alexandrian legal traditions, grounded in secular Enlightenment-influenced philosophy, generally protected individual expression and religious practice. The constitutional framework established by the Proclamation of Punta Santiago guaranteed equality before the law and freedom of religion. Quariwarmi practice, as an element of the Faith of Inti, received protection under these provisions.
The federation period saw gradual normalization of quariwarmi status within New Alexandrian society. While the tradition remained specifically Wechua and specifically Intic, broader federal culture increasingly recognized and accepted gender diversity, influenced in part by Wechua concepts. The 1702 AN administrative regulation recognizing a third gender category on official documents reflected this cultural exchange, drawing on both Wechua traditional frameworks and secular rights-based reasoning.
Contemporary practice
Status within the Faith of Inti
Contemporary quariwarmi serve within the Faith of Inti, though in smaller numbers than historical sources suggest existed in pre-Atteran times. The tradition has been partially restored but not to its former scale. Several temples in the Wechua Nation include quariwarmi among their personnel, and the role is recognized within Intic institutional structures.
Functions performed by contemporary quariwarmi include participation in solstice and equinox ceremonies, agricultural blessings, divination for temple consultants, and healing work. Some quariwarmi specialize in counseling individuals navigating questions of gender identity, drawing on traditional frameworks to provide guidance.
Training continues through apprenticeship with senior practitioners, though formalized programs remain limited. The High Priest of the Sun has not issued definitive statements establishing uniform standards for quariwarmi training and recognition, leaving these matters to regional temple authorities and individual lineages.
Variation and debate
Attitudes toward quariwarmi vary within the contemporary Faith of Inti. Most practitioners and communities accept the tradition as authentically Wechua and spiritually legitimate. Some conservative voices, influenced by Nazarene or other traditions that have blended with Intic practice in certain communities, take more restrictive positions.
Scholarly debate continues regarding the relationship between historical quariwarmi practice and contemporary revival. Some argue that modern practice represents genuine continuity with pre-Atteran traditions, preserved through centuries of persecution and fragmentation. Others contend that contemporary quariwarmi practice is substantially a reconstruction, shaped by modern values and incomplete historical knowledge. Most scholars occupy positions between these poles, acknowledging both continuity and innovation.
Questions of authenticity and authority sometimes generate tension. Who may legitimately claim quariwarmi status? What training is required? Which practices are genuinely traditional and which are modern additions? These questions lack definitive answers and are negotiated differently across communities and lineages.
