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Tzolkin Tones

Galactic

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Origin 1987 to 1990

Tone Eight is the eighth of the thirteen numbers of the Tzolkin, the 260-day Maya sacred calendar. As the number eight, it expresses harmony and integrity, wholeness modeled and lived. In the traditional count the number simply modifies its day sign, but in the modern Dreamspell system of Jose Arguelles (1987) it is named the Galactic tone, expressing harmony and integrity: the stage at which one harmonizes inner intention with outer action and lives in accord with what one believes. It is read as the moment of integrity, when the endeavor comes into harmony and becomes a coherent model of the purpose it was born to serve.

Facts
Origins
Origin Period
1987 to 1990 2Tradition: Dreamspell (José Argüelles, 1987)
Origin Period
250 to 900 CE 1Tradition: Classic Maya inscriptions
Origin Period
600 BCE to 250 CE 1Tradition: Preclassic Mesoamerican inscriptions
Origin Period
Galactic is the eighth of the thirteen Dreamspell tone names, but the coefficient it labels, the plain number eight running through the Tzolkin's thirteen day trecena, is genuinely ancient Maya, attested on Classic Maya monuments from 250 to 900 CE and rooted further back in Preclassic use of the day count. The name Galactic carries none of that antiquity: it is one of the thirteen Galactic Tone names Jose Arguelles coined for his Dreamspell system, announced at the Harmonic Convergence of 1987 and published in worked out form in 1990. 2
Place of Origin
Mesoamerica. Among the Maya, the lowlands of the Yucatan peninsula, Guatemala, Belize and Chiapas, and the Guatemalan highlands. 1
Origin of the Name
In the living Kiche count this coefficient is simply the number eight, wajxaqib'. Daykeepers reckon by the number itself. 3Tradition: Highland Maya daykeeping in Guatemala
Origin of the Name
The name recorded here, Galactic, is one of the thirteen Galactic Tone names coined by Jose Arguelles for the Dreamspell in 1987. It is an English coinage, not a Maya term, and the Maya count has no names for its coefficients at all. 2Tradition: Dreamspell (José Argüelles, 1987)
Language
Kiche Maya 3
Language
English 2
Identity
Position
8 of 13 1
Meaning
Themes
Harmony, integrity 1
Status
Standing as a Comparative Category
A standard analytic category in the study of religion 1Tradition: Classic Maya inscriptions
Standing as a Comparative Category
Used, but its validity as a comparative category is disputed 2Tradition: Dreamspell (José Argüelles, 1987)
Status Today
Living tradition, practised today 3
Attestation
Meaning in the Attesting Source
The coefficient is the number eight running against the twenty day signs, and it is the day eight of the thirteen-day trecena the day sign opens. It carries no name. 3Tradition: Highland Maya daykeeping in Guatemala
Contested Use
Contested or Appropriated Modern Use
This page's own title is the Dreamspell tone name Galactic, and the keyword beside it is the Dreamspell keyword. Both belong to a system devised in 1987 and neither is Maya; the Maya coefficient is the bare number eight. 2
Learn More
The Eighth Tone of the Tzolk'in

This is the eighth 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 eight, wajxaqib', a number of particular ceremonial importance, for the day Wajxaqib' B'atz', Eight Monkey, opens the ceremonial round and is a great festival among the K'iche', an occasion for initiating new daykeepers. The name recorded here, Galactic, and its keyword of harmony and integrity belong to the modern Dreamspell system of Jose Arguelles, a New Age framework from the 1980s distinct from traditional practice. The daykeepers reckon by the number itself. The authentic element is the coefficient eight and its place in the pairing of thirteen numbers with twenty signs to produce the 260 distinct days of the sacred count.

The eighth of the thirteen numbers that combine with the twenty day signs to generate the Tzolk'in's 260-day count, marking the eighth day of its trecena, past the cycle's midpoint at seven and moving into its final stretch. The widely circulated Dreamspell name for this position, "Galactic," reflects Jose Arguelles's own late-twentieth-century interest in galactic and cosmic themes rather than any attested Classic or Postclassic Maya vocabulary; no surviving inscription or colonial-period source uses a term resembling "galactic" for this or any other Tzolk'in number, and readers encountering the term in popular contexts should understand it as a modern addition layered onto, not translated from, the authentic count kept by Maya daykeepers.

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

The Coefficient Eight in the Count

Eight is written as a bar and three dots, and one numbered day carrying it has a standing in living Maya practice that no other has. The day 8 B'atz', in the K'iche' reckoning, is when candidates who have completed their training as ajq'ijab' are confirmed, and it recurs every 260 days.

This is the sharpest illustration of why the Tzolk'in is a living calendar rather than an archaeological one. The day is kept, the ceremonies are performed, and the count that fixes them has run without interruption through the colonial period and after it. The atlas describes the observance and does not set out its content, which belongs to the communities that hold it.

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.

Galactic, the name attached to this coefficient in modern popular writing, comes from Jose Arguelles's Dreamspell of 1987. Maya organisations in Guatemala have objected publicly to that system being presented as Maya tradition, precisely because it displaces observances such as 8 B'atz' with a parallel count of different design.

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

Cross-Tradition Connections

Contained In

Tzolkin, Calendars

One of the thirteen numbers the count runs against the twenty day signs.

Originates in Language

Modern English, Languages
Source The 2012 Phenomenon: New Age Appropriation of an Ancient Mayan CalendarRobert K. Sitler
Sources
1. The Maya (9th edition)
Michael D. Coe and Stephen Houston, Thames and Hudson, 2015ch. on Maya arithmetic, writing and the calendarView the Source
2. The 2012 Phenomenon: New Age Appropriation of an Ancient Mayan Calendar
Robert K. Sitler, University of California Press (Nova Religio 9:3, pp. 24-38), 2006Dreamspell tone name Galactic: part of Jose Arguelles's 1980s New Age system (The Mayan Factor; Dreamspell), a modern reinterpretation distinct from the traditional Maya day-count.
3. Time and the Highland Maya
Barbara Tedlock, University of New Mexico Press (revised edition), 1992Coefficient 8 (wajxaqib') in K'iche' daykeeping; Wajxaqib' B'atz' (Eight Monkey) opens the ceremonial round and the initiation of new daykeepers; the trecena of the 260-day count.
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