The turtle is a symbol of the individual who turns inward towards subjective life. He withdraws into the cave of the heart and experiences the inflow of the light of the soul. The Vedic seers visualised the convex shell of the turtle as the upper part of the head and as the micro-version of the upper dome of space with the North Pole above the head. They saw the seven stars of the Great Bear in the region of the head centre. Similarly, the lower pole is understood as an inverted dome or a dish, in which the southern star called Sirius or the Dog Star is visualised in the human body near the tip of the spine.
An image developed over some days in meditation: A turtle with a radiant heart appeared; it was the dome of space inside the head with the luminous central axis of the spine going down. I created the structure of the image by transforming the photo of a turtle and by superimposing layers of an image of the Great Bear and of a polar bear. For the central axis I transformed a photo of the Milky Way. At the bottom I placed a dish-like sphere and in its centre I fused a picture of Sirius and of a dog. Then I worked on the colour shades and the transitions. The way the picture developed was again, for me, a surprise.
See more pictures on the site with my paintings. If you want to print the image, you can download the file in medium and high resolution format.
13 July 2015, pencils and photo work
