Oc, the Day Sign Behind It

The corresponding Maya day is Ok, the dog. The dog in Mesoamerican thought is above all a psychopomp: it guides the dead across the waters of the underworld, and dogs were buried with the dead for that purpose in many Mesoamerican cultures, a role shared with the Aztec Xolotl and the day Itzcuintli. Dogs also appear in the Popol Vuh among the creatures that turn on the wooden people and help destroy them. The Dreamspell reading of loyalty and love takes the domestic and affectionate side of the animal, which is not absent from Mesoamerican sources but is much less prominent in them than the funerary role. The difference is a good illustration of how far a modern reading can travel from its source while keeping the name.

Oc is the tenth of the twenty authentic Tzolk'in day signs, its imagery the dog, associated in Maya belief with loyalty, guidance and the soul's passage through the underworld; the living K'iche' daykeeping tradition knows the corresponding day as Tz'i', the K'iche' word for dog. In the directional scheme, Oc belongs to the north and the colour white. Arguelles's Solar Seal 10, White Dog, borrows Oc's dog imagery directly, one of the more transparent name-borrowings in the whole Dreamspell system, retaining both the animal and its general association with loyalty and heart-centred devotion.