The tortoise, living animal since more than 250 million years, and omnipresent in the memory of men and civilizations, will, one day, be no more than a nostalgic memory. So let us remember… Symbols are primarily attached to the cultures and the ancient traditions from which the contemporary world is drawn, and which also creates many symbols for it. It is not surprising to note that old civilizations, mainly in the rural and mountain areas, are those in which the symbols had the most importance. Attached to the prototypes symbolic systems one generally finds tales or legends referring to the particular character of the tortoise. We will evoke beliefs, legends, but also cosmogony, i.e. the representation of the world and its creation in old civilizations. In the Far East (China, Japan, Vietnam, Korea, India, Tibet…) as in North America (from Mexico to Alaska), the turtle is before all the support of the world. In the near total of the old ages of the whole world (of which some still exist, as the indigenous people of Australia, China or Vietnam) the tortoise was always primarily a symbol of longevity and wisdom. That is due of course to its very long lifespan and to its nonchalance, but also to its discretion in the face of events which regulate the world. The slowness of its movements also makes it appear like worthy representing wisdom… and having all of eternity by way of art.

It is striking to note at which point it is in Chinese civilization that the tortoise marked the spirits the most. It should be said that the first traces of the Chinese writing go back to approximately 3500 years and that these primitive ideograms, when they were not engraved on stone, were it on the carapaces of this animal. In addition the writings of ancestors were engraved for eternity if they were made on a tortoise shell, more so than if these symbols were engraved on stone. This longevity of the tortoise and the stability of its carapace during long centuries after its death also intrigued the soothsayers who allotted a true knowledge of the future to him hidden in the reasons for his carapace. By throwing the carapace a few minutes in the fire of the ground, one could see the celestial spirits communicating with the men by registering symbols by the cracks and cracks caused by fire on the carapaces. Wanting to reproduce the reasons thus generated the soothsayers and the scientists 3500 years ago then traced the first symbols which became gradually the 214 basic keys allowing the development of all the Chinese written form. In addition magic numerology and the first squares were invented and carried out with the assistance of the reasons and the provision of the scales of the backing. The Chinese were the first breeders in the world. For more than two thousand years in certain provinces of mountain the possession of a tortoise under its roof has provided a divine protection to the family and the hearth. There wasn’t a single temple Taoist or Buddhist which does not have tortoises, not to eat them but protect the life from those which reside at it. Thus the tortoises could be taken in nature for human consumption (practical primarily Confucians) but also to be used as protective companion of the family and the shelter.

In the Tao, a major philosophy of old China like modern China, five elements are sufficient to build all bricks of the world. They are wood, metal, fire, the earth and water. With these five elements are associated five seasons (monsoon is one season), five directions (four cardinal points plus the place where we are), five colors, and five animals. The tortoise is one of these five animals. It is associated north, the element water, the winter and the black (color of the purity in the Far East contrary to the Occident).

In China there is a certain number of gods who are not gods in the way that we understand gods to be in Occident, rather representations of the very diverse aspects of the human spirit. Among these gods, we will discuss two because they are directly dependent on legendary tortoises- the god of the Examinations and the god of Longevity. The gods of the Examinations is illustrated in the Chinese sky by the four stars which form the Carriage of Large female bear. It is a god of a particularly marked ugliness, the face deformed by a horrible grimace. In its left hand it holds a bushel, in its line a brush of calligrapher. It is entirely naked except for a loincloth surrounding its hips. It is held oddly forward leaning and in an attitude which points out a man spirit to run. Only the right foot rests on the ground, or rather… on a head of tortoise. The advanced explanation is that at the time of its life on ground, it was accepted first with the Doctorate, but seeing his ugliness immonde the emperor refused to grant the diploma to him. Out of despair and dishonor, it gave up its clothing and tried to drown but an Ngao tortoise that was passing by there, took him on his head and made of him a god, leading it in the Sky. The god of Longevity has the typical face of an ancient Chinese man equipped with a long beard and an enormous bald head. He is hunched over and not upright supported on a large knotty cane, and holds in one with its hands the fruit of Immortality. At his feet is a tortoise and sometimes a heron or a crane (these animals are known for having a very long lifespan).

In Chinese cosmogony, the world is carried by four elephants, themselves being supported by a tortoise. This vision of the world comes straight from India. Indeed in India we will find the tortoise carrying the elephants, as in Chinese cosmogony. For the Hindus the creation of the world is allocated to the Brahmâ god. An enormous corrosive snake suspending itself by the tail in the vacuum of infinity symbolizes the eternal race of the Sun in the sky. On this snake a tortoise rests. It is by it that the force of the skies will be translated in the world of the achievements. The tortoise thus takes in the spirit of the Hindu the symbol of force and creative capacity. On this tortoise are elephants that carry the three worlds; the lower world of the demons and the hell, the intermediate world of the men and the Earth, and the higher world of the gods and the happiness. It is by the tortoise that these three worlds exist, because the tortoise is the direct bond between the universe and its demonstration.

Always in India the second of the ten reincarnations of Vishnu was in the shape of a tortoise called Kurmâ which brought its assistance to Indra to overcome the Asuras demons. With this intention it was used as central pivot to make it possible for the gods to churn the Ocean of the Origins from which was born the liquor of immortality, the tree of the Paradise, the medicine of the gods, the goddess of the wine, the nymphs, the divine horse, the royal elephant, and many other wonders… The same scene is also represented in a splendid way on a low-relief of the Temple of Angkor to Kampuchea.

In Vietnam, in the south of the old town of Hanoï, there is a small lake which constitutes a true paradise in the middle of the city. This lake names Hoan Kiêm, the Lake of the Restored Sword. It is one of the most romantic places in the world! You could walk all afternoon, strolling along the pleasant small wooded paths which surround it. This Lake formerly carried the name of Lake Thuy, i.e. the Green Lake. Not a single Vietnamese is unaware of the legend of this small lake! One day a young fisherman on the open sea found hung in his nets a blade without handle and which carried an engraving “According to the will of the Sky”. He went to offer this blade to the son of a very rich man who, after research, found a home for this blade. The sword thus reconstituted was used during ten years for this nobleman in the war against the Chinese invaders. This noble was called the Law. He lived from 1385 to 1433. After having pushed back the Chinese invader, he became king in 1428 under the name of reign of Thài Tô. In order to benefit from this finally acquired peace, he immediately settled in the city which is now known as Hanoï. The King liked to take tours in a small boat in the middle of the Green Lake. But I could not keep the sword well preserved for long. A few days after the end of the war, while he was on his small boat, a giant tortoise suddenly emerged from the bottom of the water. Terrified, the king drew his sword, held it in front of him but the tortoise was very fast and without wounding the tortoise, the sword with its handle fell out of his hands before disappearing for eternity into the depths of the lake.

Even the king himself says God Tortoise of Gold was certainly the true owner of the magic sword, which it had only been lent to him and that peace now returned. Thus was born the legend from the lake of the “restored” Sword with its divine owner. In this lake there are many tortoises. Alas, there are hardly any more today. In the middle of the lake there is a very tiny island and now it is extremely rare to see a tortoise taking a sun bath there. Any time this event occurs, it is highly appreciated by the population of Hanoi, so much so the tortoises which formerly populated this lake abundantly became rare. Such an event is always regarded as a good omen for the weeks to come.

In Japan, land of Sand Art, the tortoise is still a symbol of longevity and stability of the world. A very old legend tells that a tortoise, Minogamé, live 10.000 years ago, covered in a coat of algae at the bottom of a lake. This legend is perhaps to bring closer the Vietnamese legend of the Lake of the Restored Sword. In this Japanese land where the martial arts flowered, the sand art (Ïaîdô) is still practiced even today. The sand is always decorated. And very often two animals are themed: the Crane and the Tortoise, which represent the two complementary and radically opposed universal aspects, this bird being symbol of freedom in the sky and the detachment of the spirit in face of the events of the world, and the tortoise symbol of the attachment to the earth. In addition these two animals live equally a very long time.

Located in full heart of the Island of Java in Indonesia is the Buddhist temple of Borobudur. This temple set up in the IX° century is one of the largest masterpieces of the Buddhist art. This immense temple, with the pyramidal aspect and in which one does not remain, is an initiatory spiral carrying out of the ground representing the material world to the point representing the spiritual world. In Buddhism all the work of a boddhisattva is to manage to the realization of its own Evil then to patiently carry out all the living beings, including the animals, to their own Evil, stopping suffering. Throughout this course going up the spiral case in this temple of Borobudur immense stone frescos depict a history of the historical Buddha or large bodhisattvas of the past.

The panel n°192 of the temple of Borobudur reports the history of a tortoise. One day, while a marine monster attacked a boat all the passengers fell into water. A reincarnated bodhisattva in the shape of a tortoise then took the shipwrecked men on his back and brought them to firm ground. Those men, who owed him their life, encircled the tortoise and listened to it to teach the words of the Buddha. Here still one recognizes with the tortoise a divine capacity raising the men towards a better life. According to the Indians of North America, the tortoise, once again by the roundness of its carapace, represents the Earth feeder Mother and by which the Indian race appeared. For Iroquois of North America, in very old times the tortoise saved the Mother, left Eve of the Indians, when she fell into the ocean. Collecting the Virgin it carried her out of the water on its carapace. Thus for Iroquois the Earth is a gigantic tortoise floating on the sea. And on its carapace, the Virgin was able to give birth to and become the mother of the men, becoming thus the Mother. Many petroglyphs of the Neolithic era represent the tortoise in North America and to Hawaii; until the XX° century when the Indians made the tortoise in a very present theme in songs, tales, and tribal legends, and even in rituals. At Tohono O' odham (People of the Desert) of Arizona and Comcáac of the Desert of Sonora there is the tortoise which planted the giant cactus saguaro and remained the guardian of it. However, to these Indians of the desert of Sonora and Arizona, the tortoise was consumed after the remainders used in all the possible ways, like, musical instrument jewel boxes, babies’ toys, girls’ hair, or even used like ingredients the pharmaceutical preparations.

However there was a regulation of this consumption by the belief in taboos. To these Indians of the desert, to have a tortoise in captivity at home was to bring misfortune. Plus, grass wouldn’t grow and a curse would fall on the village, the children could not grow more, depriving the world of women and being left with girls. A nest of tortoises was a sacred place where touching was forbidden. And the collecting of tortoises at food ends was to be done only under certain conditions, in precise places and moments. To transgress a prohibition concerning the tortoises was the insurance to attract the disease. The populations of tortoises were thus maintained despite everything, which is not any more the case since the arrival of the white man and “civilization”. The tortoise attracted also misfortune on the impolite, criminal, or quite simply bad people. And only a tortoise could entreat the fates which were allotted to him. A Comcáac legend tells the history of a man named Ziix Taaj, equipped with supernatural capacities, which was seen one day playing board game with a tortoise sitting opposite him. And both discussed together. The tortoise gained many turns, and Ziix taaj became furious and started to howl. He quit and starting hitting things, putting an end to the game. The witnesses were frightened. Since then no other Comcáac dares to look at a tortoise in the eyes, understanding the language of Comcáac and certainly speaking with their ancestors.

To the Inuits of the icy north of Canada, which is also Indians and whose name means “the simple men”, the tortoise is associated with the earth, Procreative mother of all the “men”. In this very particular origins civilization, they remind the children of their attachment to their parents by keeping a small segment of their umbilical cord with them. The young girls carry it in a sachet of skin in the shape of tortoise. And for the little boys this sachet is in the shape of a lizard.

This feeling of protection brought by the presence of a tortoise was also found in certain African tribes for which it was high with the row of true totem living village.

In Sénoufo mythology in Ivory Coast, it is still a tortoise which carries the world on its back. The tortoise becomes here a symbol of wisdom and of knowledge, bus in its carapace it has all the knowledge of the world.

In ancient Greece, the tortoise is seen from the inside. Its backing is illustrated by the vault of heaven and its four legs are the four pillars of the world. Thus the tortoise protects the world, ensuring stability and balance to him. If one remembers that the sky was always represented like a hemispherical vault and the Earth like an extent circular punt in form, one easily understands why among all people of the world the tortoise is a representation of the universe. Between the dome of its backing and surface point of its drill plate, it was the perfect image of the intermediate world in which the men between the spangled universe and the terrestrial earth live. The tortoise is thus a true connection of the Sky and the Earth. It must thus necessarily have fabulous capacities of knowledge and divination. It must thus also be a marvelous medium, able to provide to the men the secrecies of gods.

It should well be understood that in all the primitive or at least very old societies, the world is a closed space enclosed on itself. There is the flat terrestrial world, located under our feet, rich and fertile but carrying the greatest dramas by its angers and its fire. Above there is a starry vault, full of mysteries and silence, motionless pretence but in which one sees certain stars moving on the immutable bottom, and sometimes of the sudden events like new stars of an extreme brightness and lasting only a few days (comets and as certain stars as modern astronomy names the supernova). This sky, which cannot be touched even from the top of the highest mountains, is thus a world where mysterious spirits and equipped with strange capacities live. It is not surprising that in all ancient civilizations, stars and their positions are closely related to the presence of the gods, the heroes, and the legendary animals. Between the two depths is man, very small, lost at the bottom of his thoughts in the face of this immense world both above and below him.

During a whole human life, until the XX° century and everywhere in the world, the sky seemed immutable above our heads and progressed to very slow steps above the events which constitute the history under our feet. The tortoise, by its form and its nonchalance, constitutes a perfect symbol of walk and aspect of the world. Its arched back is strewn with reasons, seems to be a representation in miniature of the vault of heaven.

Its drill plate, very flat, which is used as a basis and of support on the ground, also seems to be a perfect image of the ground which surrounds us to the horizon visible in our eyes. Between the two of them lies the human being, the flesh, blood, the mystery of the Life. The four legs of the tortoise, with their color and their texture which points out those of the elephants so curiously, are the four pillars which make it possible this vault to be held perfectly above the ground. A tortoise which is turned over is an abomination and a sign of disastrous predicts because it then represents the fall of the sky and the upheaval of the world.

It is important to remember that at one time still in the majority of the areas of the world the life expectancy of the men did not exceed forty or fifty years. However the tortoise is an animal whose lifespan is often double! If you saw it being born, you would not see it die. For a man, it thus represented almost a being immortal and equipped with strange capacities allowing him this unimaginable lifespan for a human being.

Thus it represents a symbol of longevity… but it was with its detriment! Because it became obvious that to nourish flesh of the tortoise was to not only be the source of force and wisdom but also an insurance of longevity.

The magic powers of the tortoise in the way of longevity and the vital force were studied medically as much in Rome or in Greece as in China. The quasi inalterable health of the tortoise could find its origin only in the composition of its flesh and its shell.

This Chinese pharmacopeia which seems to us today quite strange as Westerners was also known to us it in European Antiquity. Today, in a world where technology and the modernism conquered the most traditional villages of the Earth, the tortoise changes little by little in symbol. The men do not believe any more in the power of the sky and are think they can explain all the phenomena of nature. The tortoise finds itself relegated thus little by little to the row of old empirical tradition, symbol of the naivety of the ancestors, the ignorance and the unreasoned fear of the world.

This marvelous animal, formerly venerated as a true intermediary between the material world and the spiritual world, loses its importance in our planetary modern civilization and finds itself quite only in the face of a Man who moves away slowly from the nature which saw it being born.

Jacques Prestreau