The Tzolkin is a 260 day calendar. It is the spiritual hub of the Mayan calendar system. Unlike solar calendars, lunar calendars, and soli-lunar calendars, the Tzolkin, with its factors of 13 and 20, easily refers to the human frame itself with its 13 major joints and 20 digits of 10 fingers and 10 toes. 13 x 20 =260. Although there is lively discussion about the “end date” of the Mayan calendar, there is general agreement by daykeepers, those who are “counting the days,” “walking the days,” or “walking the knowledge,” that 9/09/2009 was a 1 Imix day and the beginning of a 260 day period, a “tzolkin round.” 9/09/2009 started a 260 day period and has an end date of 5/26/2010, a 13Ahau day. The next Tzolkin round begins on 5/27/2010, again a 1 Imix day, and ends 2/10/2010, a 13 Ahau day. A 260 day Tzolkin round always begins on 1 Imix and ends on 13 Ahau.
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The above spreadsheet of the daily Tzolkin begins on 1 Imix 2/11/2011 and ends on 13 Ahau 10/28/2011. Each of the 260 cells shows the Gregorian date and its corresponding Julian Day. The 20 daysigns are listed vertically down the left side in the colors of the 4 directions. The 20 trecenas (13 day periods) are shown in colored boxes throughout. The 13 columns (20 day periods) are listed horizontally in the top row in shades of grey showing the 4 kinds of odd and even numbers. The numbers 1-13 are listed vertically in the color of their trecena. In addition to 20 and 13, there is also the pattern of 9. The numbers 1-9 are commonly referred to as the 9 Night Lords.* The Night Lords are listed in black next to to the trecena number. The number to the left of the dash is the Night Lord that repeats with number 1 every 260 days. The number to the right of the dash repeats with number 1 at 1 Imix every 2340 days, or 9 rounds of 260 days. Other Tzolkin rounds going back to 2/23/2001 and forward to 9/02/2014 are shown as spreadsheets in the calendar section of this website.
In the same way that a day can be thought of as morning, afternoon, evening, and night, the year can be thought of as a “big” day—Spring Equinox to Summer Solstice (morning), Summer Solstice to Fall Equinox (afternoon), Fall Equinox to Winter Solstice (evening), and Winter Solstice to Spring Equinox (night). The days of the solstices and equinoxes have been added to the 260 day tzolkin rounds: Spring Equinox (green), Summer Solstice (yellow), Fall Equinox (orange), and Winter Solstice (blue). The pyramid of Kukulcan at Chich’en Itza, built by decendents of the Maya, honors the solstice year and the equinoxes in its very design.
The tzolkin can be studied mathematically simply as the number 260 with all its factors, 1 x 260, 2 x 130, 4 x 65, 5 x 52, 13 x 20, 20 x 13, 52 x 5, 65 x 4, 130 x 2, or 260 x 1; or, as already mentioned, as it relates to our human frame with our 13 major joints, and 20 digits of 10 fingers and 10 toes. Both aspects will be looked at more closely on this website.
*from www.pauahtun.org/Calendar/gglyph.html
“The nine lords of the underworld, in Maya religion, were known as the Bolon ti ku (“Nine of them,” or “Nine in Holiness”). We do not know the Maya names of these gods, but the glyphs corresponding to these deities are well-known, and were worked out by Thompson in the late 20’s (Thompson, 1929). G Glyphs are usually the very first glyphs seen on monuments after the tzolkin, and form a continuous 9-day cycle. G9 operates as G0 would if there were such a thing, which is why they’re shown in the sequence they are.”
In the Aztec calendar the first Night Lord repeats every 260 days and begins with Night Lord 1 in cell 1, 1Imix. But because there are nine Night Lords, and nine does not go evenly into 260 but does divide evenly into 261, the last cell in the Aztec calendar has two night lords, both 8 and 9, to make Night Lord 1 start fresh again in cell 1, and 1Imix.
The Mayan calendar treats the nine Night Lords in a different way. Because nine divides evenly into 261 and not 260, it takes 9 complete rounds of 260 or 2340 days for Night Lord 1 to begin again in cell 1 and 1Imix. The first round is Night Lord 1 and 1Imix, the second round is Night Lord 9, cell 1 and 1Imix, the third round is Night Lord 8, cell 1 and 1Imix, and so on until nine rounds are completed. It is this constant counting of nine, through 9 rounds of 260 using the Tzolkin as the eternal framework, that makes it the most universal calendar ever conceived by humankind.
Throughout this website, the Night Lords referred to in the Aztec calendar will be referred to as NL1 (260), and Night Lords used in the Mayan calendar will be referred to as NL1 (2340). In the daily tzolkin, both the 260 Night Lords and the 2340 Night Lords are notated, the number to the left of the dash is the Aztec 260 version, and the number to the right of the dash is the Mayan 2340 version.