The Maya Cross

In the Maya calendar, a newborn receives the day: the nawal and the number of that date. But those who count the days do not read that day alone. To the birth they add the ninth day counted backward and the ninth counted forward, with the birth itself included in the count.

The Maya Cross arranges this reading into a figure of five houses: the birth in the centre, conception at the top, destiny at the bottom and one day on each side. Each house is a day in the calendar, with its own nawal and number.

The link with pregnancy is direct. The K'iche' explain the 260 days by pregnancy, which lasts about nine moons, and it is in that spirit that the day of conception enters the reading.

The Cross reads your day together with its neighbours.

The count starts from the date of birth. Counting the birth as the first day, the ninth day back lies 8 days away, and so does the ninth day forward. That is why conception is the day 8 days before the birth, and destiny is the day 8 days after.

The two sides lie 6 days away: one 6 days before, the other 6 days after. Two voices of the tradition, independent of each other, arrive at these same jumps, and none of the books consulted contradicts the count.

Some draw the Cross with the names alone, without numbers. When the number comes in, it is that of the real day: the tone travels with the nawal. Someone born on 4 Ajpu does not have their conception on a 4, but on whatever number that day, 8 days earlier, actually had.

The example below works out the count for 21 December 2012. For your own Cross, all you need is your date of birth.

Eight back, eight forward, six to each side.

Conception, 8 days before, usually speaks of where life comes from: the past, the family, the ancestors. Some read it with the same weight as the birth.

Destiny, 8 days after, is the name the tradition gives to where life is heading, and some add the word mission. Another reading calls that same day the one on which the person's nawal takes hold.

The two sides are read in two ways. In one, they are the person's right and left hemispheres, each bringing what the nawal on that side holds. In the other, they are helpers, days that support the position in the middle.

The two ninth days also have other names: the day of the past's good fortune and the day of the future's protection.

At the top, where you come from; at the bottom, where you are going.

A wider version of the Cross uses nine nawales instead of five. Conception, birth and destiny each gain two helpers: the day 6 before and the day 6 after each of them.

The drawing becomes a three-by-three grid, with conception at the top, birth in the middle and destiny at the bottom. In this reading, the nine nawales match the nine moons of the one being born.

The numbers of the nine days are added up too. The total, which runs from 53 to 73, measures the person's forces, and those who teach this count say it comes from the ajq'ijab' grandparents.

The Cross of 5 fits whole inside the Cross of 9: it is the middle column and the middle row of the grid, the same five days in the same places.

The Cross of 5 is the heart of the Cross of 9.

In the figure, the day 6 before the birth sits on the viewer's left, and the day 6 after on the right, like a person facing us.

That is why the person's right side appears on the left side of the paper. In practice, anyone comparing drawings from different sources does well to check the date of each house rather than its place on the page.

The Cross faces you.

The Maya Cross is a practitioners' reading. Academic studies of the living count describe the reading by the day of birth, the face of the day, with no day of conception and no positions laid out in a cross.

The closest thing to it in the field records comes from Zunil, in the skirts of the women. Since 1987, many of them have had the glyphs of their three days woven into the cloth: the day of birth, the day of conception and the day of the future.

The cross is also a sign of the craft. At initiation, the new ajq'ij receives a table and a cross, and that equal-armed cross points to the four directions and to the flowering tree of life.

The personal Cross is a tradition of those who count the days.