Turtle and Hearthstones

1st Jul 2022

Mexicolore contributor Janice Van Cleve

We’re sincerely grateful to Janice Van Cleve, researcher and author of several books and many research papers on the Maya, for this intriguing introduction to the meaning of the turtle and the three sacred hearthstones in ancient Maya cosmology.

The Maya were keen astronomers and assigned their own interpretations to the night sky. They identified constellations and their zodiac operates similarly to our western one. In fact, Scorpio is the same in both. Susan Milbrath has written a brilliant study of Maya astronomy, Star Gods Of The Maya, in which she points to the three bright stars in Orion’s belt – Alnitak, Alnilam, and Mintaka. These are the Maya constellation of the turtle. They are clearly portrayed as such in the cartouches from the north wall of room 2 at Bonampak (pic 1).
The star Alnitak is also part of the constellation of the hearthstones. Alnitak, Saiph, and Rigel in the constellation Orion form a triangle just below and part of the turtle. The Maya called them ox ibxkub, the “three hearth stars” and Nebula 42 in the centre of them is kak, or “fire.”
The relation of the hearthstones to the turtle is very graphically illustrated in the Madrid Codex, where the turtle carries the three hearthstone stars in tripod formation on its back (pic 2).

The hearthstones are the centre of the Maya universe. Matthew Looper, in Lightning Warrior, translates the creation myth from Quirigua stela C: ‘At the beginning of the current age (August 13, 3114 BCE) the tripod is manifested. Three stones are bundled. Jaguar Paddler and Stingray Paddler plant a stone; it was at First Five Sky Place; it was a jaguar throne stone. Ik Nah Chak plants a stone; it happened at large town place; it was a snake throne stone. Itzamna bundled a stone; it was a water throne stone. It happened at Lying Down Sky place, [this was] the First Three Stone Place, that the thirteen baktuns [cycles of 144,000 days] were completed. This happened under the supervision of the wak chan ahau’.

Linda Schele in Maya Cosmos determined that the wak chan is really wakah chan – the Milky Way. (She also demonstrates that the Lying Down Sky is the Milky Way at nightfal when it appears to rest on the horizon. Later in the night its angle tilts vertical and becomes the Standing Up Sky.) In other words, the beginning of the current age happened when the Milky Way, Orion’s belt (turtle), and the Hearthstones were in a certain celestial position.

Schele noted the connection between the hearth stars of the sky and the hearth stones of the kitchen: ‘As the hearthstones surround the cooking fire and establish the centre of the home, so the three stone thrones of Creation centred the cosmos and allowed the sky to be lifted from the Primordial Sea.’ Because the stones were laid before the sky was lifted, they were laid on earth as well as in the sky. The connection for the Maya was clear and direct. Dennis Tedlock says that the three stars even today are represented in the three hearthstones of the typical Maya kitchen fireplace, arranged to form a triangle with the fire in the centre (pic 4). When Yax Pac, king of Copan in Honduras assembled his three G altars next to Eighteen Rabbit’s stelae in the central plaza, he arranged them in a tripod grouping of three. Perhaps he was attempting to ‘reheat’ the Copan dynasty after Eighteen Rabbit’s untimely death.
As in the heavens, so also on earth, the three hearthstones represent for the Maya a place of origin, foundation, centre, beginning, and source for all that follows.

Picture sources:-
• Pix 1 (bottom) and 2: images supplied by Janice Van Cleve
• Pic 1 (top): image scanned from Bonampak, Chiapas, Mexico by Karl Ruppert, J. Eric S. Thompson and Tatiana Proskouriakoff, with copies of the mural paintings by Antonio Tejeda F., Carnegie Institution of Washington, 1955
• Pic 3: image from Wikipedia
• Pic 4: illustration for Mexicolore by, courtesy of and thanks to Steve Radzi/Mayavision.