Turtle Island

I wanted to share a bit more about the excellent exhibit at the Peabody Essex Museum. In particular, I wanted to relate the title and concept of the exhibit to our blogs here at The Mayanist.

Fiery Pool: The Maya and the Mythic Sea, is organized into four  sections: “Water and Cosmos”; “Creatures of the Fiery Pool”; “Navigating the Cosmos”; and “Birth to Rebirth.” The Fiery Pool itself refers to a Mayan view of the world. Our earth, as the Mayans knew is, was imagined as a great turtle floating in the ocean. The shell or back of the turtle is what the Mayans thought was their land, their world. And the sun, rising in the east, setting in the west, was the Fiery Pool. We now know that for the Maya, water was a critical primordial element in all aspects of their lives. (The figurine pictured above is of the Jaguar God of the Underworld, riding upon a crocodile.)



For the Maya the turtle was associated with water, thunder and with the earth. The surface of the world was depicted as the back of a turtle. The Maya deity (Pauahtun) who supported the world on his shoulders is sometimes depicted wearing a turtle shell on his head and the Maize God is sometimes shown emerging from a turtle shell.


And so the Maya believed they rode upon "Turtle Island". This exhibit  really touches on new territory, for while some Mayan cities were on the coastline, a vast majority were built inland, and giant cenotes were created to hold water for the cities. For a generally inland people, the discovery that they were obsessed with the sea is a surprising new fact.

When you take in the exhibit, which will travel on to Fort Worth and St. Louis, you will get to see a 10 foot tall cast from Belize, with three masks that represent Water Lily Serpent. Also a block of glyphs that seem to recount the travels of a Mayan King, who made a pilgrimage to the sea.

Above, Lidded bowl with the Iguana- Jaguar, from about 500AD

          Lidded Vessel of a World Turtle          


The wonderful exhibit runs till July 18th, and it is a rare chance to see pieces never displayed in the U.S. before.

THE FIERY POOL, THE MAYA AND THE MYTHIC SEA

PEABODY ESSEX MUSEUM

27 MARCH-18 JULY 2010

WWW.PEM.ORG

J.T. Turner, Mayanist
                                                                
                                                                  

Fiery Pool: The Maya and the Mythic Sea

As a passionate Mayanist, I was delighted to discover that a nearby museum was having a exhibition on the Maya.

Fiery Pool: The Maya and the Mythic Sea is a new exhibit at the Peabody Essex Museum, (PEM) located on Essex St. in Salem Ma. As the Mayan civilization was surrounded by water, this exhibit makes a great connect between the Maya and the sea. And since the glyph of the "sea' was only translated in the late 1980's, our realization of the role of the sea is relatively fresh.

                                                               




 Incense Burner, Deity with Aquatic Elements

I attended the exhibit at the Museum this past Monday. I had high hopes for it, and they were not only met but surpassed. The Museum has done a fantastic job with the layout of the 90 artifacts, spreading them out over 6 rooms, with nothing feeling cramped nor rushed. I asked Whitney Riepe, Senior Public Relations Associate at PEM why this exhibit was important.

"Fiery Pool presents exquisitely rendered and extremely rare examples of Maya art, many of which have never before been seen in the United States.  Beyond the aesthetic delight, this exhibition offers an entirely new interpretation of Maya cosmology based on cutting-edge research.  It's immersive, it's dramatic, and it's not to be missed!"

                                                                                                          Jade Sculpture of a Jester God 

As you enter the Exhibit, you are greeted by a 5 foot tall statue of the deity Cha'ak, (Chaac in some spellings), god of rain and storms.Around the corner is the first room, and like most  of the others is a mix of stone friezes, pottery, jewelry and figurines. The pieces are spread out, and supplemented by some simple audio visual effects. For example, in the first room several screens hang overhead with rolling storm clouds projected on them. There is also the sound of rain in the background.

This fantastic exhibit pulls you in and lets you  reflect on Mayan cosmology. It is kid friendly, with a nice guide for families to use as they tour the artifacts One fun feature is a oval stand, with a top that is a touch screen computer. Shadow like forms of fish swim around in it, and by touching them, the information about the fish, and what it symbolized to the Maya, pops up. A group of kids just before us spent a lot of time sharing the information about different types of fish with each other.

Below is an example of one of the surprising pieces in the collection. It is a lobster effigy from about 1550 AD, discovered in what is now Belize. The face peering out is just so unexpected.

I can whole heartedly recommend this to anyone with even a passing interest in the Maya, or any ancient civilization. The artifacts are excellent: I am use to seeing stelae, figurines and glyphs in the jungle, here they are whole, clean and easily observed. Below is an example of one of the vessels on display. Since most of the Mayan pieces I have observed tend to be dull red clay pieces, the craftsmanship and preservation of the collection is astounding to me.This piece shows the world turtle, and we will revisit this image next blog.

This is a great exhibit, I encourage you all to go see it!

In my next blog I will share more about the exhibit, and where the title, "Fiery Pool" come from.

THE FIERY POOL, THE MAYA AND THE MYTHIC SEA
PEABODY ESSEX MUSEUM
27 MARCH-18 JULY 2010
WWW.PEM.ORG

Sculpture of a Pelican







J.T. Turner, Mayanist

The Sacred Tree

In my travels to Guatemala, a wonderful and favorite sight of mine is the ceiba tree. To the Mayans, the ceiba is a sacred tree. It incorporates the whole cosmos for the Maya. The underworld represented by the roots, the trunk being this world, and the branches are the heavens. Its low hanging branchs are a path through which a persons soul can ascend to the heavens. So to the Maya these marvelous trees are sacred, and to this day when land is cleared, a ceiba tree is often left standing. You can often see these magnificent trees standing alone in open fields.

We have been chatting about the Milky Way, and the many things the Mayans saw in it. But in addition to a ball court or a crocodile, the Milky Way is also the World Tree.

In the Popul Vuh, the World Tree is mentioned as the origin of all life, with the 4 cardinal directions spreading out from it's center.(Many other ancient cultures have a World Tree as a part of their creation tradition). We can think of the great tree as soaring above us, the Milky Way being it's branches. In some legends, there is a great monster in the tree, it's mouth being the Dark Rift. In other versions, the trunk of the ceiba is actually a crocodile, (like a croc, the cieba has rough skin, with thorns found along it's trunk), and its mouth is the Drak rift high in the sky. With a bit of imagination, it is easy to see how the Mayans view the great Milky Way as the collective branches of the tree.

A major element of the World Tree includes the Kawak Monster, a giant head with a kin (symbol) in its forehead.  A bowl on its head contains a flint blade representing sacrifice, and  death.On top of the World Tree we find a bird that has been called, the Principal Bird deity, or Itzam Ye. During the months of winter, when the so-called "Winter" Milky Way dominates the sky, it was called the "White Boned Serpent."  

Soon I will start to pull this symbology together with the Mayan calendar, time and the doomsday. But first I will be spending the next few blogs talking about a new exhibit at the Peabody Essex Museum, which is about the Mayans, and their connection to the sea.

J.T. Turner
Mayanist

The Crocodile in a Tree

Glyph of the sky


Last blog I mentioned that to the ancient Maya, the Milky Way represented a great ball court in the sky. It links back to the creation tales of the Hero Twins. But to the Maya, the Milky Way represented several other things.For example, it was also seen as a great Crocodile, ( or in some translation, a Jaguar/Toad animal).. And the Dark Rift in the Milky Way was called the "mouth of the crocodile". It is often referred to as Hunab Ku, the center of the galaxy.And it is also referred to as xibalba be, the road to the underworld. Passage through the mouth of the crocodile then, was passage to the underworld of the Maya.


(In other cultures, it is viewed as a great serpent eating it's own tail. the Ourobus. And the ancient Greeks looked upon the time cycle displayed by the Milky Way and the Dark Rift as indicating the end of an age, as the Maya did).


The K'iche called this portion of the Milky Way "The Crossroads". They believed that when a planet, or the sun or the moon lined up in the center of the Rift, (in Sagittarius), that it was possible to cross from our world to the Underworld. This spot in the sky happens to be th Galactic Equator, or the center of the Milky Way. And this is key in our Doomsday discussion, as when a planet, sun or moon lines up, a journeyer can pass from our would to another. According to popular theory, on 12/21/12, there is a Galactic Alignment. The Galactic Alignment is the alignment of the December solstice sun with the Galactic equator. This is a rare event occurring on 25,800 years.


Let us appreciate that the Mayan's could find the dead center of the Universe. Truly they were an ancient civilization with amazing comprehension of time and space.


But the key consideration of the Milky Way is the concept that it is the World Tree of the Maya. Indeed the Crocodile symbolism is often called the Crocodile Tree. This is very similar to the World Tree concept that also contains a "monster' in it's branches. So next post, we will look at what the cieba tree means to the Mayans, and then we will look at the World Tree as seen in the Milky Way.

J.T. Turner, Mayanist