The Complete Idiot's Guide to 2012 - Dr. Synthia Andrews Nd [34]
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A Day Keeper was a Mayan shaman whose job was to keep the count of the calendars. He also used the calendars to interpret auspicious dates and give “Life Tree” readings, similar to present-day astrology charts.
Birthdates
The Day Keepers were particularly interested in the combination of day-signs and day numbers at the time of a person’s birth. This told the Day Keeper what spiritual qualities were present. As we saw earlier, this means that multiplying 20 times 13 gives 260 different energies or character combinations. According to your birthday, you possess one of those 260 combinations.
The Day Keeper created a birth chart for each child known as an individual Life Tree. The tree showed the energies prevailing on the date of the child’s birth, but also what energies were complementary or contradictory. In some ways, this is very similar to today’s astrological readings. The purpose of a Life Tree reading was to give insight into the individual path of each child.
Codex Cues
If you want to know your Mayan birth day-sign, here are some websites that will help you convert your birth date to a Mayan day-sign:
◆ www.pauahtun.org/Calendar/tools.html
◆ www.fourmilab.ch/documents/calendar
◆ www.diagnosis2012.co.uk/conv.htm
Modern Life Tree readings are also available. You can search the web with keywords “Mayan astrology,” or check out one of these sites:
◆ mayandaysigns.blogspot.com
◆ www.mayanastrology.com
Haab Calendar
The Haab calendar is the companion to the Tzolk’in. It’s a civil calendar that works with the Tzolk’in to serve the needs of daily life. The Haab originated around 550 B.C.E. The word Haab translates as “the cycle of rains.”
In one sense, the Tzolk’in and the Haab together represent the secular and sacred interests of the culture. The Haab is the yearly cycle, while the Tzolk’in relates to hidden dimensions of the spiritual.
Days and Months
The Haab is a little easier to understand than the Tzolk’in. It’s an astronomical calendar of the solar year and is divided into 18 months of 20 kin each (the Mayan word for “day” is kin). The 18 months make a 360-day year followed by five extra days that existed at the end of the Haab year, making it a 365-day cycle. The five-day extra period was called the Wayeb period. It was the transition between the end of the old and beginning of the new; a time when the spirit Wayebs could play tricks on humans.
Here are the names of the Haab months. The names in parentheses are Quiche Mayan, which are sometimes different from the more common Yucatec:
The Haab calendar is more like our own month and day system. Each of the 18 months is named and has 20 days. The days are numbered from 0 to 19. The zero day was called the “seating of the month” and established the new monthly cycle. Using a zero day is unique to the Mayan calendar; no other ancient or current calendar does this.
Unlike the Tzolk’in, which changed names and day number together, the Haab maintains the same month through a complete cycle of 20 days. So 0 Pop would be followed by 1 Pop, 2 Pop, and so forth, until 19 Pop. Then it would change to a new seating of 0 Wo, followed by 1 Wo and continue through the new month. Like the Tzolk’in, the years of the Haab calendar were not counted.
Famous and Exact?
Archeologists are quick to say the Maya did not know the true length of the year. You will see this isn’t true in Chapter 6. Many archeologists thought the Haab was crude and inaccurate since it treated the year as having 365 days, ignoring the extra quarter day (actual solar year is 365.2425). This means the seasons were off the actual dates by a quarter day each year. Eventually, over centuries, the calendar dates no longer corresponded to the seasons at all.
You probably agree that it’s important to keep dates in line with the seasons. In a solar calendar,