Tone 1, Jun

Jun means one. In the calendar, it is the first of every series of thirteen: after 13 comes 1 again, and with it another nawal starts the count. That is why the 1 has the look of a beginning.

In the bands of numbers, the 1 sits among the gentle ones, next to 2 and 3. In Momostenango, a small number recalls something just born, which is why it is soft and young.

There is a tension here. Being low and odd, the 1 is sometimes taken as weak, and some say a very low number can drain the strength from the day being invoked. Another reading disagrees: the 1 would be the first force of creation, with nothing fragile about it.

The 1 is small like a seed, and just as firm.

In Momostenango, each number has a place. The place of the 1 is the junabal, the one-place, a shrine by the water. The training series of someone who will become an ajq'ij, a person who counts the days, begin on the 1 days.

Once initiated, the ajq'ij returns to the altar where they were presented and makes offerings there on the 1 days, from 1 Kej to 1 Toj. And on 1, 2, 3 and 4 Kej, the children not yet born into the lineage are sown at the founding shrine.

The 1 also appears in the Popol Vuh, which has divine figures named 1 B'atz', 1 Junajpu and 1 Kame. One ajq'ij today singles out 1 and 7 among all the numbers, and links the 1 to Ajpu. Some also mark the 1 days with offerings, because they open a new stretch of time.

Every new series passes through the 1 first.

For someone born on a 1 day, the reading tends to speak of beginnings: unity, firmness and inspiration. People born on it tend to act firmly and to turn ideas into deeds.

In practice, this often looks like someone who likes to start things: they open the project, strike up the first conversation, take the first step. The care the 1 asks for is the care of any seed: a beginning needs time and ground to become a plant.

Like every tone, the 1 does not decide alone. It measures the strength with which the nawal of the day arrives, and it changes its face with each of the twenty names.

With the 1, the first step is yours.

Each nawal falls on tone 1 once every 260 days. Open any of them to read its page.

• 1 Imox
• 1 Iq'
• 1 Aq'ab'al
• 1 K'at
• 1 Kan
• 1 Kame
• 1 Kej
• 1 Q'anil
• 1 Toj
• 1 Tz'i'
• 1 B'atz'
• 1 E
• 1 Aj
• 1 I'x
• 1 Tz'ikin
• 1 Ajmaq
• 1 No'j
• 1 Tijax
• 1 Kawoq
• 1 Ajpu