The complex spatial and temporal constructions of South American cosmologies, and the values associated with them, allow only the broadest of generalizations. Vertical structures of the universe vary widely in composition from three-layer arrangements to massive twenty-five layer compositions inhabited by a great variety of beings. In general, the upper worlds are associated with the creative and life-renewing forces of light, lightness, and liquids (river, lakes); the underworlds, associated with places of darkness, the netherworlds of the dead, and animal spirits; and this world, the center of the universe, associated with human life. Different kinds of space and places of being in the universe are systematically associated with one another so as to constitute a whole. Horizontal space highlights the center (or centers), associated with a wide variety of images (cosmic trees, mountains, waterfalls, ladders, vines) symbolizing communication between spatial planes; the periphery, or...