HAWKSBILL SEA TURTLE Painting

The Mayans were the masters of time and nature was in sync with the Universe, Turtle for the Mayans, is a living symbol of the interconnected universe. They believed that we lived in a dimension called the Fourth Creation. The Mayans lived by the stars above, which were directly linked to Creation. Mayan cosmology is an intricate wisdom tradition with many levels of interpretation. For the Mayans, Polaris (North Star) was the eye of the heavens, residing in its center. The deep darkness of space was the void from which creation began. The Orion Belt constellation in the Milky Way was a gigantic cosmic tortoise and a path on which all creation exists. The sky above these three stars is a reflection of the Renaissance Tortoise, on whose shell the first home was placed. The Quiche people call these three stars the hearthstones. They call the nebula visible nebula below Orion's Belt - home smoke. For the ancients, a home is neither heaven nor earth, it is the intermediate place from which creation first appears. From home, the sun, like the morning fire, will rise again. The turtle shell is the source of the tree of life, sometimes called the world tree. The tree of life is the axis of the terrestrial Heaven. Its roots are found in Xibalbá, the underworld; Its upper branches reach out to the realms of heaven. The tortoise shell itself represented the large plates of the earth's crust. Through the cracks in this shell emerged the First Father, the Maize God. For the people, corn was and is an important source of food, the staff of life. Therefore, it was a perfect metaphor for the life of the tree.