By Carlos Cedillo
We are advancing rapidly to the end of another Tzolkin cycle. This week we began both a new uinal (20-day cycle) on Sunday, and a new trecena (13-day cycle) this past Tuesday.
There are 13 uinals and 20 trecenas. The uinals always begin with Imix/Crocodile days and end with Ahau/Sun days.
To understand the meaning of the uinal cycles, we look at the ending Ahau day. This is not as simple as 1-2-3, because the 20 glyphs and 13 numbers rotate together like two differently sized, interlocking gears — and this leaves a remainder of 7 days.
Thus the Ahau days run through the tzolkin starting with 7 Ahau, then 1 Ahau, and then 8 Ahau followed by 2, 9, 3, 10, 4, 11, 5, 12, 6 and finally 13 Ahau. The numbers take on qualifying functions rather than quantitative.
Each uinal has characteristic themes and feelings and events that grow and evolve through each round of the tzolkin. Once you start putting some attention on these cycles in your own life, patterns will emerge to help you evolve past negative habits and areas of your psyche that may be stuck.
So we are in the tenth uinal cycle, and it ends on the day 5 Ahau — which happens to be the 4th of July this year. At least this holiday will feel really like a day of rest and relaxation. The quality of this entire uinal is affected by the number 5. Five is usually a great energy for love and for seeing life from a higher-plane perspective.
There are good things happening in the world but they are disguised as serious tragedies — like the Sunni insurgents the U.S. has been arming in Syria suddenly overrunning a third of Iraq. This happened so fast last week (starting on the Full Moon of 9 Tijax/Flint Knife) that the U.S. media is flabbergasted and can’t believe that Bush and Co. were so wrong about what the 2003 invasion would eventually bring about.
The good news is that as Americans wake up to our folly, we can muster the willpower to kick out any remaining war hawks — hopefully including Hillary Clinton. Her vote for the war and unwavering support for all Bush’s transgressions make her unfit to lead our country as President, IMHO!
On a smaller scale, Tuesday June 17, 2014, began a new trecena with 1 Akabal/Night. Akabal is a great day to dream the future and work on your dream house.
This trecena ends on 13 Tzikin/Eagle, June 29, 2014 which happens to be Ramadan. 13 Eagle is epitomized by the Great Seal of the U.S.A. that has an eagle holding 13 Arrows. With the 4th of July just five days later, it is almost too ironic. (Don’t ‘cha think?)
The Summer Solstice lands on 5 Quej/Deer, so this should be a time of compassionate love and enhanced psychic activity. Another Summer of Love coming up? I hope so!
On a lighter note, my own tzolkin birthday glyph, 12 Ix, the Jaguar, is on July 28 this year. The universe has a way of granting me gifts on that day. One of the cool things about the Maya calendar is that you get to have many more birthdays to celebrate!
More than that, understanding the tzolkin calendar aids your spiritual development and evolution to higher states of awareness. It is our birthright as dwellers on “Turtle Island” to live in sacred time all the time. My offering to you as a Daykeeper shaman is to help you get on this road. May you walk in peace!
Until next week,
Aho Mitakuye Oyasin!
Carlos is available to help you along your road of spiritual awareness through private Maya tzolkin readings and sacred ceremonies. Contact him at cosmicjaguar@yahoo.com and check out his website, Violet Flame Records.
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This has been a great Solstice season, Friday, 4 Death, I attended Sweat Lodge in Wimberley. There was much prayer to and discussion about the Ancestors. 4 Death is my past life sign in my Mayan Cross chart. As we spoke about moving on to new lands and leaving behind your old living situation and relationships, I realized how this day’s energy affected my youth. My family always moved out of town, out of state or overseas for my dad’s work. So I never got culturally assimilated to one place, I was always the weird new kid:(
I understand now that I had always been guided spiritually by my Ancestors from beyond the veil, and still am today!
5 Deer was amazing. I had a gig cancel on me so I went to San Marcos to meditate at Prospect Park and I was guided to go to Headwaters Park to find some beautiful women singing Kirtan chants to a harmonium played by a radically talented girl named Robin. I got to accompany her on guitar, so I played a gig anyway! Then we stayed up past 2 AM singing all kinds of wonderful songs together!
6 Qanil has been about healing the Warrior goddess within! This day happens to fall in the masculine section of my Mayan Cross. I got to heal a relationship I thought I may have lost!
Aho Mitakuye Oasin! (we say this loud when it is time to open the door to the sweat lodge at the end of a round! …and we just like to say All My Relations!)
-c
The more I read you, the more I see how this is an entire mathematical system, more than a language and quite extraordinary. Thanks Carlos, for your instruction, enlightenment and optimism!
Carlos: Your talent for observation complements your thorough knowledge of how the Maya calendar cycles correlate with each other. Because life itself is (as you wrote) “not as simple as 1-2-3”, it appears that your modality combines necessary complexity with some impressive specificity in order to correspond to life’s realities. Without a proper interpreter, however, important things can be missed or mis-read. We here at Planet Waves are very lucky to have your interpretations and you are very generous for explaining how you derive them. i just now used my hands to run through that Ahau sequence, and it made sense on a level above my normal “1-2-3” sensibility and beyond what i can describe. Quite an experience, that. Thank you!