Lunar

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

Two is written as two dots. A day numbered two stands in the second place of whichever trecena it belongs to, one day past the sign that names that run, and the count proceeds by advancing the number by one and the sign by one simultaneously, so that the two cycles of thirteen and twenty turn together like meshed gears.

That simultaneous advance is what generates the 260 distinct combinations. Thirteen and twenty share no common factor, so every number meets every sign once before any pairing repeats, and thirteen times twenty is 260. Nothing further needs to be stipulated; the length of the count follows from the two cycle lengths alone.

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.

The word Lunar, attached to this coefficient in modern popular literature, comes from Jose Arguelles's Dreamspell of 1987 and not from any Maya source. The thirteen coefficients in the living count kept by highland Guatemalan daykeepers are simply the numbers, and no separate names for them are recorded in the Classic inscriptions or the colonial sources.

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