Mayan astrology

In the astrology the West knows, the sky is in charge: the position of the planets at the hour and in the place where you were born. Mayan astrology runs on a different clock. In several Mayan languages, the word for day is also the word for sun: kin in the Maya of Yucatán, and q'ij in K'iche'. When it is time for something, a Maya speaker announces that its day has arrived.

So if Mayan astrology has a star, it is the day itself. The names of the days hardly mention the sky, and the 260-day count follows no cycle up there. Some practitioners put it this way: the count pays no attention to where the sun, the moon and the stars are.

That changes the question that matters. Nobody here needs the hour of your birth, because the day is enough. The Maya kept careful track of time, and they also wanted to know what each stretch of it means for the lives of those passing through. That is the question Mayan astrology puts to the day you were born.

In Mayan astrology, the star is the day, and it rises every morning.

The count has two wheels turning together. One runs from 1 to 13. The other goes through twenty names, the nawales. Each day joins a number to a name, such as 4 Ajpu or 9 Kej, and the same pair only comes round again after 260 days.

The ajq'ijab' say the calendar lives in the body. Fingers and toes add up to twenty, and in K'iche' twenty is jun winaq, one person. The large joints, from the neck down to the ankles, add up to thirteen.

Why 260? In Momostenango, the answer people give is pregnancy: about nine moons, the time a baby takes. It is also the time of highland maize, from seed to ear. Ideally, whatever is sown or conceived on a given day is ready when that same number and name come round again. The theories that tie the 260 days to some cycle in the sky have no direct proof.

The count's name says what it does. In K'iche' it is the Cholq'ij, from ch'ol q'ij, putting the days in order; in Momostenango people also say rajilab'al q'ij, the count of the days. Tzolk'in, the best-known name, was coined in 1921 by a scholar who started from the K'iche' phrase so as to avoid the Aztec name for the calendar.

The Popol Wuj places this count at the beginning of the world. The creators were still trying to make people when they called on an old couple, Xpiyakok and Xmukane, to cast lots: a handful of maize kernels or tz'ite seeds, read against the count of the days. Whoever does this work today is called an ajq'ij, he or she of the days.

The count of days fits inside a person's body and inside a pregnancy.

Nawal is the living force that dwells in everything: in the hill, in the rain, in the animal, in people. Each of the twenty days is a nawal too, and anyone who addresses one calls it ajaw, lord. The nawal of the day you were born becomes yours.

K'iche' has a phrase for this: uwäch uq'ij, the face of your day. Every day has a face and a temper, and that is how people speak of the luck of a moment or the course of a whole life. The day of birth even has its own name, uq'ij ralaxik.

The tradition holds that each day hands whoever is born on it a manner, a craft and a gift, each with its strength and its limit. There is no bad day. That is why parents often know their child's day and bring the child up with it in mind.

The names of the days are not translated. In a reading, each name calls up other words with a similar sound, as in a rhyme: in Momostenango, Q'anil, the day of the seed, brings to mind ripening, sowing and harvesting.

Some people picture the nawal as an animal that goes along with a person. Some ajq'ijab' set that idea aside without denying it: for them, the nawal is the force the day of birth grants.

To be born on a day is to be given its face.

The nawal says who the day is. The number, from 1 to 13, says how strongly it acts. No name walks alone, and it is the number beside it that measures how far that day reaches.

In Momostenango, a small number recalls something just born, and so it is gentle. A large number recalls something that has already ripened, and it weighs more. The numbers fall into three bands: 1 to 3, the gentle ones; 7 to 9, the measured ones, used for routine rites; 11 to 13, the intense ones. The 4, the 5, the 6 and the 10 belong to none of them.

In the practice of the ajq'ijab', a number is read more through images than as a rung on a ladder. Some numbers even have an address: in Momostenango there are shrines linked to 1, 6, 8 and 9, and that is where people go on the days with those numbers.

On how number and name come together, the tradition has two faces. On one side, the number changes the reading of the day without merging with it. On the other, the character of each day is born from the sum of the two.

The nawal is the voice of the day; the number is the volume.

The reading does not stop at the day you were born. The ajq'ijab' also look at two neighbours: they count nine days back and nine days forward, with the birth day as the first in the count. In practice, each one sits eight days from yours.

The day behind is the day of conception, and it tends to speak of where you come from. The day ahead is called destiny; some say mission, and some see in it the day your nawal takes hold. The two are also called the day of the past's good fortune and the day of the future's protection.

The practitioners who draw the Maya Cross add two more days, six before and six after the birth, as its arms. That makes five houses: conception at the top, destiny at the bottom, your day in the centre and an arm on each side. Some read the arms as the two sides of the person; others, as helpers to each position.

It is worth knowing where this reading comes from. The records made in the field show the day of birth and the two ninth days. The cross-shaped drawing, with its five houses, comes from the practitioners.

Some people wear their own days. In Zunil, since 1987, the green skirts of many women have carried, woven in, the glyphs of three of their days: birth, conception and future.

Your day never comes alone.

Alongside the 260 days runs a 365-day year, the Ab': eighteen twenty-day months and five more days at the end. The day of the Cholq'ij on which that year begins gives it its name and carries it on its back until the next one. This is the Mam, the year bearer.

The arithmetic explains why only four nawales do this job. A year of 365 days holds eighteen twenties with five left over, so the name that opens the year always moves on five places: Kej, E, No'j, Iq' and then Kej again. The number goes up by one each year, and the same number with the same name only opens the year again after 52 years.

In Momostenango, each Mam is welcomed on a mountain: Kej on Quilaja, to the east; E on Tamancu; No'j on Joyan; Iq' on Socop, to the west. The rites begin at noon on the eve, and the Mam arrives at midnight, with copal burning and fireworks on the hilltop.

Each bearer colours its year. Kej, the untamed one, shrugs off his load, and money tends to be lost in his years. E years are calm and steady, and trade goes well. No'j has a sharp mind, so his years are inventive, for better and for worse. Iq', the fierce one, comes with a downpour or with drought.

Near the turn of the year there are five days when the old Mam has already taken his leave and the new one has not yet arrived. They are days for caution: people go out less and avoid closing deals.

You were born on a day and also in a year, and every year has someone to carry it.

The Maya looked at the sky, and closely. Venus, Mars, eclipses, the moon and the solar year: the ancients measured all of them with a precision that still impresses. And the sky is still watched: in Momostenango, the people who follow the paths of the heavens with the naked eye are initiated ajq'ijab'.

Rites start in the dark before sunrise, as soon as the morning star is up. Any planet shining in the east before the sun is called the sun carrier. When the planet is Venus, it takes a day's name: Junajpu, the name of the Popol Wuj hero and of the day this site writes as Ajpu.

The stars also serve as clock and calendar. At night, they tell the hour. Through the year, they signal when it is time for rites and when it is time for the fields. By mid-November, the Pleiades come up in the east at nightfall and open a series that runs until April: in the dry season, stars rising or setting at twilight mark the rites.

The sky has names of its own. The Milky Way changes its name along the way: it is the white road where it runs whole, and the road of Xib'alb'a, the world of the dead, where a dark rift splits it. The Pleiades are mötz, a handful. The planets are the red stars. And all of it together, with the sun, the moon and the comets, makes up a single family: ch'umilal kaj, the starry sky.

So the sky is watched with care. When the subject is a person, though, what speaks is the day that person was born.

The sky marks the hour of the rite; the day marks the person.

The day of birth gives a leaning, like ground that slopes to one side. The one who walks still chooses the step. Some ajq'ijab' point out that even a heavy day allows a reasonable life to someone who learns to handle it.

When something good or bad happens to someone, you may hear an ajq'ij say: it is their day. It is one possible explanation among others. A day with a bad name for journeys, for instance, only asks that you travel with care.

Whoever rereads their own story through the calendar tends to find ways out they did not see before. Knowing the days also makes it easier to live with yourself and with others: everyone has gifts and flaws, so blaming makes little sense.

A consultation with an ajq'ij goes beyond a text. An ajq'ij finds your day and number, then opens up what they hold, reading the signals of their own body as well. And each ajq'ij has their own way: the same day takes on different meanings from one to another.

Some practitioners take a firmer tone and speak of the nawales as forces that rule a life. Most voices, however, speak of guidance. This guide sides with them, and it is a general reading: it does not replace a conversation with an ajq'ij, who reads the whole person.

The day tilts the ground; you are the one who walks.

The 260-day count is still in use in the highlands of Guatemala, in dozens of Ixil, Mam, Poqomchi' and K'iche' communities. There it lives in homes and at altars, even though the ruins of the region bear no inscriptions at all. In Yucatán, in the lowlands, the old way of counting reached us by another road: carved stones and the few books the fire spared.

For centuries, K'iche', Kaqchikel, Mam and Q'anjob'al families kept the calendar at home, often in secret. Today it is spoken of openly.

The great day is 8 B'atz', which comes round every 260 days. In Momostenango it draws crowds to the largest rite in Mesoamerica still set by the ancient calendar, and it is on this day that new ajq'ijab' are usually initiated and presented to the community. Many practitioners call 8 B'atz' the Maya New Year and start the count from it. An ajq'ij asked to explain the wheel, on the other hand, starts from today: for those who count the days, the wheel has no fixed first day.

Some ajq'ijab' prefer the name ajq'ij to sacerdote, the Spanish word for priest, which, for them, does not say what they do. The drawings of the days have a history too. In the highlands the days had only names, and using the glyph as the picture of each day is a practice taken up again since the 1980s. The glyphs on this site follow that path, with a line inspired by the codices.

The Dreamspell is another count. Created in 1990, it also combines 13 tones with 20 seals, but it counts in a different way and, for the same date, lands on a different day. Mayanastro uses the ajq'ijab' count and shows the Dreamspell Kin only as a reference.

The 260 days keep counting, and today is one of them.

The terms in this guide, which also appear across the rest of the site.

Cholq'ij

The 260-day count, in K'iche'. It means putting the days in order.

Tzolk'in

The best-known name for the same count, coined in 1921 from the K'iche'.

Nawal

The living force of each day. The one of the day you were born is yours.

Tone

The number, from 1 to 13, that travels with the nawal and measures the strength of the day.

Ajq'ij

Someone who looks after the days and reads them for others. Plural: ajq'ijab'.

Maya Cross

Your day in the centre, with conception, destiny and two arms around it.

Mam

The year bearer: the nawal that opens the solar year and carries it to the next.

Ab'

The 365-day year: eighteen twenty-day months and five days more.

8 B'atz'

The day of the great festival in Momostenango, when new ajq'ijab' are initiated.

Dreamspell

Another count, from 1990. For the same date, it gives a different day.