Mayan horoscope: the 13 animals

The horoscope of the 13 animals works like the best-known zodiac: the year is split into date ranges, and whoever was born inside a range gets its animal. What it reads is the time of year you were born.

The Maya count that the ajq'ijab' keep to this day reads something else: the exact day, inside a wheel of 260 days that does not follow the seasons. Two people born in the same week usually have different nawales.

One reads the time of year; the other, the day you arrived.

This is the list that circulates on horoscope sites, with the dates of each animal: Lizard, December 13 to January 9; Monkey (or Gorilla), January 10 to February 6; Hawk, February 7 to March 6; Jaguar, March 7 to April 3; Fox (or Dog), April 4 to May 1; Serpent, May 2 to 29; and Squirrel, May 30 to June 26.

Then come Turtle, June 27 to July 25; Bat, July 26 to August 22; Scorpion, August 23 to September 19; Deer, September 20 to October 17; Owl, October 18 to November 14; and Peacock, November 15 to December 12.

On the Maya side, the sign is the nawal of the day, with a tone from 1 to 13. The nawal gives the character, and the tone gives the intensity with which it shows.

There an animal covers four weeks; here a nawal covers one day.

Here the two agree: neither asks for the hour or the city of birth. In the horoscope of the 13 animals, all you need is the date range your birthday falls in.

In the Maya count the date is also enough, but the whole date, with the year: the nawal changes every day and only returns after 260 days, so the same birthday gives a different nawal every year.

In both, the date is enough; in the Maya count, the year counts too.

The thirteen animals come from splitting the year into thirteen periods of 28 days, as if they were thirteen moons. That makes 364 days; to close the year, the list stretches one of the periods, the Turtle’s, by one day.

The 13 also shows up in the Maya count, but somewhere else: it is the thirteen tones that turn together with the twenty nawales. Thirteen times twenty is 260, and it is that wheel, not the solar year, that gives your sign.

The same number, two different wheels.

There are, in fact, thirteen animals in an ancient Maya book. The Paris Codex, written in Yucatán before the Spanish arrived, ends with a series of thirteen animals tied to the sky, which scholars call the Maya zodiac. Part of the series can no longer be read; among those that can be recognized are a scorpion and a peccary.

The dated list that circulates today is something else. We did not find it in any of the sources we use, and the sites that publish it do not say where it comes from. The 260-day count, on the other hand, is in the ancient books and is still in use in the highlands of Guatemala.

The sky of the thirteen animals existed; today’s dates have no source.

If you like your animal, it is not that far from the Maya count. Several of the thirteen also appear among the twenty nawales: the serpent is Kan, the deer is Kej, the jaguar is I'x, the dog is Tz'i', and the monkeys recall B'atz'. But your nawal does not come from the month you were born in: it comes from the day.

And neither one decides your life. The animal horoscope speaks of personality traits; the Maya count says the day leans, and the step is yours. To find your nawal, all you need is your date of birth.

The animal of the month is an image; the nawal of the day is the living count.