Cosmic

This is the thirteenth and highest of the numbers, or tones, that combine with the twenty day signs to form the 260-day Tzolk'in. In living Maya daykeeping the coefficient is simply the number thirteen, oxlajuj, the fullness and completion of the trecena, after which the count returns to one with the next day sign; thirteen is a deeply sacred number, the count of the layers of the heavens. The name recorded here, Cosmic, and its keyword of transcendence belong to the modern Dreamspell system of Jose Arguelles, a New Age overlay from the 1980s that is distinct from the Maya calendar and not part of traditional daykeeping. The daykeepers reckon by the number itself. The authentic element is the coefficient thirteen, whose pairing with twenty signs, thirteen and twenty having no common factor, is exactly what yields the 260 unique days of the sacred count.

The thirteenth and last of the thirteen numbers that combine with the twenty day signs to generate the Tzolk'in's 260-day count, completing a trecena before the count returns to the number one attached to the next day sign in the twenty-sign sequence. Thirteen is the Tzolk'in's structurally defining number, and its combination with twenty, the two sharing no common factor, is what allows all 260 number-and-sign pairings across the count to be unique. The Dreamspell system's own name for this position, "Cosmic," again originates with Jose Arguelles in 1987 rather than with Maya tradition; the authentic Tzolk'in, kept unbroken by K'iche', Ixil, Mam and other highland Guatemalan daykeepers, uses no such term and instead counts to thirteen in each community's own Mayan language before beginning the next trecena.

Sources Time and the Highland MayaBarbara Tedlock with Dreamspell: The Journey of Timeship Earth 2013Jose Arguelles

Thirteen is written as two bars and three dots, and it closes a trecena. The following day carries the number one again with the next sign in the twenty, so the transition from thirteen to one is where the two cycles visibly reset against each other.

Thirteen has a wider place in Maya thought. Colonial Yucatec sources name a group of thirteen deities, the Oxlahun Ti Ku, against the nine of the underworld; thirteen levels are commonly given for the upper world in Postclassic Mesoamerican cosmology; the Short Count of the Postclassic period runs thirteen katuns; and the Long Count origin is written 13.0.0.0.0, with a completed thirteen baktuns behind it. The number recurs at every scale of the system.

Maya numerals are written with a dot for one and a bar for five, and the coefficient of a day is written in exactly that way in the inscriptions, set beside the day sign in its cartouche. The system is positional and includes a sign for zero, which is why the Long Count can be written as a string of places, but within the 260-day count no number above thirteen ever occurs and the notation stays simple.

Cosmic, the name given to this coefficient in modern popular literature, comes from Jose Arguelles's Dreamspell of 1987 and is not a Maya term. What is Maya is the number thirteen itself and the structural role it plays, which is considerable and needs no addition.

Sources Maya Hieroglyphic Writing: An IntroductionJ. Eric S. Thompson with Dreamspell: The Journey of Timeship Earth 2013Jose Arguelles