Abram Santa Cruz comes from Mayan descent via his paternal grandfather, who came from a tribe that is of mayan descent about 2 hours south of Mexico City near the city of Puebla. Kukulkan’s Portal is dedicated to the memory of his late grandfather who passed away in August of 2020. Abram wanted to tune in with that part of his heritage in designing this project because of his fascination with the Mayan culture and history. The Merkabah also has deep rooted spiritual connections in various theologies and cultures from around the world that attribute the shape to a sense of enlightenment and spiritual evolution.

Abram Santa Cruz chose Kukulkan to represent the encompassing cube to the merkabah because of its encompassing theological meaning in Mayan and Aztec culture. Kukulkan was known to be the conduit between the physical world in the spiritual world for the human soul. “Kukulkan is the Mayan Feathered Serpent god of wind, sky, rain and Sun. He is also the creator that gave mankind his learning and laws.” Source. 

‘Spiritually, the Merkabah (stellated octahedron or dual tetrahedra), also spelled Merkaba, is the divine light vehicle allegedly used by ascended masters to connect with and reach those in tune with the higher realms. “Mer” means Light. “Ka” means Spirit. “Ba” means Body. Mer-Ka-Ba means the spirit/body surrounded by counter-rotating fields of light, (wheels within wheels), spirals of energy as in DNA, which transports spirit/body from one dimension to another.’ Source

Combining Kukulkan with the merkabah made perfect theological sense as we plan on adding a meditation platform at the center of the merkabah. By providing a meditation platform, Kukulkan can take the visitor on a journey into themselves and transcend into higher realms.

_________________________________

Kukulkan’s Portal is a modular geometric sculpture in honor of the new discoveries made in mathematics and science. Although the cube and the stellated octahedron shapes are not new to mathematics, researchers have claimed to have invented a new class of equilateral convex polyhedra.

“Since Plato’s work, two other classes of equilateral convex polyhedra, as the collective of these shapes are called, have been found: Archimedean solids (including truncated icosahedron) and Kepler solids (including rhombic polyhedra). Nearly 400 years after the last class was described, researchers claim that they may have now invented a new, fourth class, which they call Goldberg polyhedra.” Source

Polyhedra falls into the Kepler solids category and worked as a stepping stone to the new findings.

Kukulkan’s Portal is lined with 10,000 programmable LEDs. Lights are controlled with a raspberry pi and run through 90 minutes of animations. The LED’s are individually programmable, which combined with the right hardware and software, can be made to be highly interactive.  

Currently, we have the ability to make the lighting patterns sound or music reactive and we can apply hardware which would allow the light sequences to be manipulated with physical movement.