The 13 Mayan tones

The 260-day calendar, the Cholq'ij, combines two wheels. The twenty day names, the nawales, go by one at a time, and beside each name runs a number from 1 to 13. When the number reaches 13 it goes back to 1, and the name moves on to the next. That is how each pair forms, such as 4 Ajpu or 8 B'atz', and the same pair only repeats after 260 days.

That number is the tone. When a day is read, no name appears on its own: the number says how far the day reaches and how intensely it acts. Two days with the same nawal and different numbers are read in different ways.

There are two ways of putting the parts together. In one, the number changes the reading without merging with the name. In the other, the character of each day comes precisely from the sum of name and number. Both live side by side among those who count the days today.

The nawal says who arrives; the tone says how strongly.

In Momostenango, in the Guatemalan highlands, the numbers are divided into bands. From 1 to 3 they are gentle and recall something just born. From 7 to 9 they have measured strength and serve the routine rites. From 11 to 13 they are intense, mature and serious, and they weigh like something fully grown.

The 4, the 5, the 6 and the 10 fall into none of the three bands. In practice, this gives these four numbers a reading of their own, without the shortcut of a group.

The bands are not a rigid ruler. The same community treats 6 as low when the day is Kan, and accepts anything up to 9 as a favourable answer when the day is Aq'ab'al. And the ajq'ijab' read each number through images, the hand, the three stones, the four corners, more than as a step on a scale.

One example shows how the number measures. With K'at, the day of debts, a 3 points to a light, recent debt, and a 10 to an old weight.

A low number is a seed; a high number is a full-grown tree.

Beyond the band, it matters whether the number is even or odd. In the reading of one ajq'ij today, an odd number carries the chaos that creates, the kind that moves things and opens a path, and an even number brings more luck, because it is stable.

The idea shows up in concrete gestures: some teach that a pregnancy should only be asked for on a Tz'ikin with an even number. And among the odd numbers, 1 and 7 have gone together since the Popol Vuh, where names come in pairs, such as 1 and 7 Junajpu.

Added together, the 1 that opens and the 7 that closes make 8, the number from which many count the whole calendar.

Odd pushes; even holds.

In K'iche', all thirteen have names: Jun, Keb', Oxib', Kajib', Job', Waqib', Wuqub', Wajxaqib', B'elejeb', Lajuj, Julajuj, Kab'lajuj and Oxlajuj. Some ask that the Cholq'ij be counted with these numerals and not with the numbers of the civil calendar.

The numbers also name places. In Momostenango, the shrines of 1, 6, 8 and 9 carry the number with an ending that means place: junabal, wakibal, wajxakibal and belejebal. Each has its own offering days, tied to its number.

In Maya writing, a number is drawn with dots and bars: a dot is worth one, a bar is worth five. Thirteen is three dots over two bars. Some explain the bar as the tips of the five fingers held together, the hand laid flat.

Each number has a name, a place and a shape.

One answer lies in the body itself. A woman from Cantel counts the thirteen on her joints: the neck, then shoulders, elbows and wrists along the arms, then hips, knees and ankles down the legs. The whole body becomes a count.

Another answer lies overhead. In the tradition, the sky has thirteen levels, and a story told in the highlands says that Jun B'atz' and Jun Ch'owen climbed up there and measured those levels with a maguey rope.

And the calendar has its own explanation: the K'iche' of Momostenango and Chichicastenango tie the 260 days to human pregnancy, which lasts about nine moons.

Thirteen joints in the body, thirteen floors in the sky.