Book summary
Manual de los Calendarios Mayas
A booklet from a Maya publisher in Guatemala that comes with a perpetual paper calendar. In a few pages it shows how to assemble the wheels, how to read both calendars at once, and what each of the twenty days is for.
Updated September 25, 2026
A source of Mayanastro's reading
Usolik rokisaxik ri Cholq'ij, ri Ab' — Manual de los Calendarios Mayas
Edition read: Editorial Maya' Wuj · 2015
Where to read it
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Summary and commentary by Mayanastro, written from reading the book. They do not replace reading it. Editorial Maya' Wuj has no connection with the site.
In short
- It is a short manual, sixteen pages long, from Editorial Maya' Wuj, with editions updated every year.
- It presents the three calendars that mesh together: the 260-day Cholq'ij, the 365-day Ab' and the Long Count.
- It teaches how to use a perpetual calendar made of wheels that turn together, like gears.
- In a few lines, it says what each of the twenty days means and what it is good for.
- Its tables give the Cholq'ij day and the Ab' day for every date in the years the edition covers.
1. Calendars that fit together
The manual opens with pride. It recalls what the Maya achieved in architecture, mathematics and astronomy, and presents the reckoning of time as a system of interlocking parts: the Cholq'ij of 260 days, the Ab' of 365, and the Long Count, which tallies the years since the start of the chronology.
In the Cholq'ij, each of the twenty days takes a number from one to thirteen, and the manual calls it the religious calendar because it looks after human affairs. The text links it to the nine lunar months of a pregnancy and notes that it has been carved in stone since Classic times and has come through five hard centuries.
The Ab' has eighteen months of twenty days plus five more, the Wayeb'. The manual is candid on one point: this solar calendar came back into use in Guatemala only recently, so practice still varies from place to place.
2. The wheels of the perpetual calendar
The booklet comes with a paper calendar in five pieces. Four are wheels stacked one on top of another, one for each part of the date, and the fifth is the base, which holds a place for the year bearer and shows, through a window, the sacred day and the solar day together.
The manual demonstrates it with a much-celebrated date, December 21, 2012, the day of 13 B'ak'tun. Each day, the wheels all turn together and in one direction only, the way climbing vines grow.
And to learn what day it is today, the manual suggests asking whoever keeps the count of days in the community.
3. What each day means and is for
The central part gives, for each of the twenty days, what the name evokes and what the day is for: giving thanks, asking, healing, deciding, starting over, making peace. The names appear in K'iche' and Kaqchikel, and the list starts with Imox rather than B'atz'.
It is a working text, meant for people who want to choose the right day for a ceremony or a task. Several entries speak of a multiethnic, multilingual Guatemala, so the day also becomes an invitation to live together.
The rest of the booklet is tables. Each row sets a Gregorian date beside its Cholq'ij day and its Ab' day, for the years the edition covers.
4. How this book enters Mayanastro's reading
The page for today's day uses the manual's central idea: every day is good for something. The line saying what the day is for, written in our own words, weighs what the manual says against the other sources.
The tables also back a rule of the site: each civil date, from midnight to midnight, has its Maya day, and that is how the birth day is found.
5. The book's limits
It is a manual, not a study. It does not say where the meaning of each day comes from, and those meanings closely resemble what Barrios wrote, which takes away its weight as an independent voice.
It says nothing about the birth day or the Maya cross: it is a calendar for daily use, not a reading of a person. And the tables cover only the years of each edition.
The meaning of each day fits in two or three sentences. Anyone who wants a portrait of the people born on each day needs other books. The booklet is in Spanish.
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