Talismán station

Neighbouring stations

• 5Line 5Río Guadalupe ← Talismán → Victoria

The story behind the icon

The station silhouette is of a mammoth.

More than 12,000 years ago the basin of Mexico was occupied by lakes, on whose shores lived animals of various sizes, such as the mammoth and the mastodon, of the proboscidean family; camelids such as llamas, alpacas and dromedaries; horses, bison, giant armadillos, megatheriums, sabre-toothed tigers, deer, rabbits and so on. The ancient inhabitants of the basin of Mexico hunted them for food.

During the excavations to build the Metro station, the bone remains of a mammoth (Mammuthus archidiskodon) were found, and it is displayed exactly as it was found in the excavations.

The elephant is the direct descendant of the mammoth and is considered in many parts of the world an amulet or talisman of good luck if it is found with its trunk raised — the very feature borne by the station's symbol.

When we speak of a talisman, we mean a figure or engraved image, or an object that has, or is credited with, a certain relationship with the celestial signs to which various virtues are attributed. The talisman is a magical object trusted to ward off some harm or danger. It is a word of Arabic origin, rendered tilisman or tilsman, meaning sacred image. According to other scholars of the occult, the word talisman is of Greek origin, rendered thelm, meaning will, and in some hermetic texts thelesma is equivalent to astral force.