Again, the "heart" in this case is not the human organ, but is used in the sense of "the heart of something". This had a highly resonant meaning to the ancient Maya, as 'ohl was also the name of the portal used in vision rites (Freidel, Schele, and Parker, 1993:215), although 'ohl should not be translated "portal". In Maya iconography the portal to the Otherworld has a characteristically quatrefoil shape.

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Note from Marc Zender: It used to be thought that the text from the altar of El Peru Stela 38 [depicted above] described how the Maize God was reborn through a crack in the back of the cosmic turtle by referring to *ti-yo-'OHL-la 'a-ku, *ti yohl ahk, "in the heart of the turtle." [The asterix indicates that the reading is reconstructed, the original sign being effaced.] But a closer look at the photographs and Ian Graham's drawing for the Corpus of Maya Hieroglyphic Inscriptions reveals that what was taken for a *ti is a actually *tu. And *tu-yo-'OHL-la 'a-ku, *t(i)-u-y-ohl ahk is an impossible construction for "in the heart of the turtle" in prestige Eastern Ch'olan, the language of the inscriptions. There is now ample evidence that this collocation is merely a "name-tag" or "caption" for a king named Tu[tum] Y-ohl Ahk or "covered is the heart of the Turtle". Similar names are known from a variety of sites and contexts, with varying degrees of spelling and underspelling.