Mayan Astrology
The Day Signs
Twenty signs, four colours, one for the day you were born. Here they are in the order the count runs.
What a day sign is
A day sign is the character of a day. The Tzolkin gives each of its 260 days a sign and a tone, and the sign is the part that says what the day is made of. The tone says how loudly. If you were born on a Blue Hand day, you are a Blue Hand, and the page for that sign is about you.
The twenty signs run in a fixed order and their colours cycle red, white, blue, yellow, five times over. Red begins, white refines, blue transforms, yellow ripens. Keep that in your pocket as you read down the list.
The twenty in order
Red Dragon, Imix, is the first spark, the one who starts things and shifts a room by walking into it. White Wind, Ik, is the breath that carries the message, the one who finds the right words when nobody else can. Blue Night, Akbal, walks the inner dark and brings back what it finds there. Yellow Seed, Kan, is the gardener who sees what is trying to grow and gives it the conditions to do so.
Red Serpent, Chicchan, is life force in a body, passionate, alive and able to shed a skin and begin again. White Worldbridger, Cimi, stands at the threshold and builds the crossing, between people, between worlds, between the head and the heart. Blue Hand, Manik, learns by doing and keeps at a craft until it is mastered. Yellow Star, Lamat, sees beauty and makes it, and knows that beauty is not a decoration.
Red Moon, Muluc, feels the current before anyone else and gives emotion a voice. White Dog, Oc, is loyalty itself, the companion who stays through the hard part. Blue Monkey, Chuen, plays, and in the playing turns a heavy room light. Yellow Human, Eb, chooses, and ripens choice into wisdom through lived experience.
Red Skywalker, Ben, walks between worlds and comes back with a wider view of what is possible. White Wizard, Ix, holds the space in which other people change, and shapes things by intention. Blue Eagle, Men, sees the whole pattern from a great height. Yellow Warrior, Cib, faces what frightens others and ripens courage into something steady.
Red Earth, Caban, roots, belongs to a place, and teaches others to be at home in their bodies and on the ground. White Mirror, Etznab, reflects the truth back, kindly when it can, clearly always. Blue Storm, Cauac, clears what is stale so something new can arrive. Yellow Sun, Ahau, the last of the twenty, ripens awareness itself and lights the way for the rest.
Each sign has its own page, named for the sign, with its nature, its strengths, its challenges, how it loves and works, how it reads across the thirteen tones, and where it sits beside the Western, Chinese and Vedic traditions.
The four families
Lay the twenty out by colour and you get four families of five.
The red signs begin: Dragon, Serpent, Moon, Skywalker and Earth. The white signs refine: Wind, Worldbridger, Dog, Wizard and Mirror. The blue signs transform: Night, Hand, Monkey, Eagle and Storm. The yellow signs ripen: Seed, Star, Human, Warrior and Sun.
I find the family a quick first read. Tell me someone is a white sign and I already know they are here to clarify something, before I know whether it is words, bonds, loyalty, consciousness or truth. The Tzolkin Calendar page goes further into the colours.
How to find yours
Your sign is set by your kin, and your kin is found by counting the days from a fixed anchor to your birthday. That is a calculator's job, and the Find Your Numbers and Signs page will do it for you. One caution before you look elsewhere: some popular websites use a different correlation from the one the archaeologists use and skip the leap day, so the sign they give you may not match mine. My pages and my readings use the archaeological count, and the Tzolkin Calendar page explains why.
How to use the pages
Read your own sign first and notice what fits. Then read the section for your tone in The Thirteen Tones, and go back to your sign's page for the part about how it reads across the tones, because the same sign at tone 2 and at tone 12 is a different person.
Then read the sign of someone you love, or someone you find hard. In my experience the second one teaches you more.
Which of the twenty is yours, and did you recognise it before you reached the end of the list?
If you would like your own chart read, my readings are here.
Related pages
The Signs · The Animals
In this section
Mayan Astrology
The other pages in this set, and where they sit in the Library.
See every page and post in the Contents.
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