almost all Chavín structures "have something to do with ritual performance and the revelation of concealment of esoteric knowledge"
"The temples at Chavín contain stone labyrinths and hanging staircases which seem designed not for communal acts of worship but for individual trials, initiations and vision quests. They imply tortuous journeys ending at narrow corridors, large enough for only a single person, beyond which lies a tiny sanctum containing a monolith, caved with dense tangles of images. The most famous such monument, a stela called 'El Lanzón' ('the lance'), is a shaft of granite over thirteen feet tall, around which the Old Temple of Chavín was constructed. A well-lit replica of the stela, often assumed to represent a god who is also the axis mundi, or a central pillar connecting the polar ends of a shamanic universe, has pride of place in Peru's Museu de la Nación; but the 3000-year-old original still resides at the heart of a darkened maze, illuminated by thin slats, where no single viewer could ever grasp the totality of its form or meaning." (389-90)