The Chakana, the Andean Cross

The chakana is a stepped, equal-armed cross with a hole at its centre. In English it is usually called the Andean cross or the Inca cross; in Spanish, la cruz andina. It is older than the Inca. Its twelve corners have been read as the three worlds, the four directions and the turning of the year, and its name comes from the Quechua for bridge. We embroider one on the front of most of our caps, because the pattern it sits on is inspired by the same world the symbol comes from.

What does chakana mean?

The word is usually traced to the Quechua chakay, to cross over, and translated as bridge or ladder. Both fit the shape. A bridge joins two banks; a ladder joins levels. The chakana is read as both at once: the passage between the world above and the world below, and the link between the four quarters of the land. You will also see it spelled chacana, and called the stepped cross, the Inca cross or the cruz andina.

The shape

Take a square, set a smaller square on each side of it, and open a circle in the middle. That is the chakana: an equal-armed cross whose arms step outward, twelve outer corners in all. It is cut into stone at Tiwanaku and Ollantaytambo, woven into cloth, and drawn on the ground before a ceremony. The hole at the centre is not empty. It is the axis, the place where the levels meet, and in many readings it stands for Cusco, the centre of the Inca world.

The three worlds

The most common reading is vertical, in three steps. Hanan Pacha, the upper world of the sun, the moon and the condor. Kay Pacha, the middle world of people, animals and the puma. Uku Pacha, the lower world of the ancestors, of seeds and of the serpent. The steps of the cross are the passage between them. It is why the condor, the puma and the serpent turn up together so often in Andean art: they are the three levels of the same cross.

The four directions and the four quarters

Read flat, the four arms are the four directions. For the Inca they were also the four quarters of their state, Tawantinsuyu, the land of four parts: Chinchaysuyu to the north, Antisuyu to the east, Qullasuyu to the south and Kuntisuyu to the west, all meeting at Cusco. Other readings pair the arms: above and below, sun and moon, the dry season and the rains. The Andean idea that everything comes in complementary pairs is called yanantin, and the chakana is one of its clearest pictures.

The chakana and the Southern Cross

Many people in the Andes connect the chakana with the Southern Cross, the constellation that points the way south in the night sky, and some read the proportions of the cross from it. In parts of Bolivia and Peru the first days of May, around the Fiesta de la Cruz on 3 May, are kept as the time of the chakana, when the Southern Cross is said to stand upright in the evening sky. It is not the only way to tell the story, but it says something true: the chakana was a way of reading the sky as much as the land.

Older than the Inca

The stepped cross appears on pottery and stone from Tiwanaku, near the southern shore of Lake Titicaca, centuries before the Inca state existed; the great Akapana platform there is often described as laid out on a stepped-cross plan. It turns up on textiles from the coast earlier still. The Inca took it up the way they took up the loom and the road. It is not one people's symbol. It is the Andes' symbol, carried today by Quechua and Aymara communities from Peru and Bolivia to the north of Chile and Argentina.

The chakana today

You will see it everywhere in the Andes now: in silver in every market, carved into doorways, painted on walls, worn on a cord around the neck. Some of that is decoration. Much of it is identity, a way of saying where you come from without words. That is how we use it.

On our caps

Most of our caps carry a chakana at centre front, embroidered small in a single colour chosen against the cloth: scarlet on black, gold on rainbow, teal on desert stripe. On those caps it is the only mark we add; the patch camp caps wear a small woven Inpire patch instead. The cloth is the voice; the cross is the signature. See it on the camp caps and the denim caps, where it is the loudest thing on the front, and read how it is embroidered. The cloth around it has a language of its own: tocapu, the woven squares of the Inca, and the six weave families we cut from.

Questions

What does the chakana symbolise?

Most often the three worlds of Andean thought, the upper world, this world and the lower world, together with the four directions and the bridge between them. Its twelve corners are also read as the twelve months of the year.

Is the chakana an Inca symbol?

The Inca used it, but it is older. Stepped crosses appear at Tiwanaku and on earlier coastal textiles, centuries before the Inca. It belongs to the Andes as a whole.

What is the chakana called in English and Spanish?

In English, the Andean cross, the Inca cross or the stepped cross. In Spanish, la cruz andina or la chakana, sometimes written chacana.

What is in the middle of the chakana?

A circle: the axis that joins the levels. Many read it as Cusco, the navel of the Inca world, which is what the city's name is often said to mean.

Is it respectful to wear a chakana?

Worn with some knowledge of what it is, yes; it is worn every day across the Andes. We put it on a pattern inspired by the same tradition, and we credit that tradition rather than calling it our own. Read what we stand on.