Mayan Astrology

That count is the Tzolkin, and it is the heart of Mayan astrology as I read it.

What the Tzolkin is

The Tzolkin is a cycle of 260 days. It is built from two smaller wheels turning together. One wheel carries twenty day signs. The other carries thirteen tones, numbered 1 to 13. Each morning both wheels move on one step, so every day has one sign and one tone, and the pair does not repeat until 260 days have passed.

The day you were born had a sign and a tone like any other. That pairing is your kin, and there are 260 of them. Kin 1 is Red Dragon with tone 1. Kin 260 is Yellow Sun with tone 13. Yours is somewhere in between, and it came round again on the day you turned 260 days old, and it has been coming round every 260 days since.

The twenty signs are the character of the day. I use the modern colour names, Red Dragon, White Wind, Blue Night and so on, and give the old Yucatec name once for each, Imix, Ik, Akbal, because that is how my own notes have them, and the Yucatec names are the ones you will find in the books. The thirteen tones are the pulse behind the sign, the stage a thirteen day wave has reached. A sign tells you what you are made of. The tone tells you how you carry it.

How I use it

Every full portrait I write has a Mayan layer, and that layer is your kin. I work it out with my calculator using the correlation the archaeologists use, the one under which 21 December 2012 fell on 4 Ahau, the last day of the thirteenth baktun. I read the sign first, then the tone, then the two together, and then I set it beside your Western chart and your numbers and see what agrees.

In my experience the kin rarely contradicts the rest of a portrait. It adds a colour. Someone whose Western chart says cautious and whose numbers say builder will often turn out to be a Yellow Seed with a Self Existing tone, and the whole picture settles.

How this section is laid out

The pages run in the order I would teach them.

Learning Mayan Astrology is where to begin. It covers where the count comes from, what it is for, and how sign and tone make a kin. The Tzolkin Calendar gives you the arithmetic of 20 and 13, the four colour families, the question of which correlation to trust, and what actually happened in 2012. The Thirteen Tones works through each tone in turn, 1 Magnetic to 13 Cosmic, and explains the thirteen day wave they belong to.

The Day Signs gives each of the twenty signs its own page, Red Dragon to Yellow Sun, covering its nature, its strengths and its challenges, how it loves and works, and how it reads across the thirteen tones.

Where to start

Find your kin first. That takes a day count from a fixed anchor and it is a calculator's job, so the Find Your Numbers and Signs page will do the sum for you. Then read the page for your sign and the section for your tone, and notice what fits and what does not.

Then do the same for someone you know well. You will learn more from two kins side by side than from any amount of theory.

You will be your own teacher. All I will do is help you remember what you already know.

If you would like your own chart read, my readings are here.

In this section