This is the second of the thirteen numbers, or tones, that combine with the twenty day signs to build the 260-day Tzolk'in. In living Maya daykeeping the coefficient is simply the number two, keb' or ka'ib', and it is often felt as the day of duality and challenge, the tension that follows a beginning, the second step of the thirteen-day trecena. The name recorded here, Lunar, and its keyword of polarity and challenge belong to the modern Dreamspell system devised by Jose Arguelles in the 1980s, a New Age reinterpretation distinct from traditional Maya practice; the daykeepers of highland Guatemala reckon by the number itself, not by these invented tone names. The authentic element is the coefficient two and its place in pairing thirteen numbers with twenty signs to produce the 260 distinct days of the sacred count.
The second of the thirteen numbers that combine with the twenty day signs to generate the Tzolk'in's 260-day count. In the trecena, the thirteen-day week formed by counting a fixed day sign's number upward from one to thirteen before the sign itself advances, a day numbered two falls on the second day of its trecena, one step past the trecena's opening day. Contemporary K'iche' daykeepers in highland Guatemala read the numbers using their own counting vocabulary and traditional associations, distinct from the widely circulated Dreamspell tone names such as "Lunar," which derive from Jose Arguelles's unrelated 1987 system rather than from Maya tradition. Within the trecena structure, low numbers near the start of a thirteen-day cycle are generally read by daykeepers as carrying the qualities of initiation and gathering momentum, building toward the trecena's culmination at thirteen.
Sources Time and the Highland MayaBarbara Tedlock with Dreamspell: The Journey of Timeship Earth 2013Jose Arguelles