Turtle

The turtle carries the world on its back in many cosmologies. Many Indigenous North American traditions speak of Turtle Island — the continent resting on a great turtle’s shell. Chinese tradition places the Black Tortoise among the four celestial animals. Hindu myth gives us the avatar Kurma, Vishnu as a turtle supporting the churning of the ocean. Jungian analysis reads turtle-dreams as the slow wisdom — a patience that is also a cosmology. Notice whether the turtle is in water, on land, or in between.