
Living tradition
Tzolk'in, your Maya sign
Maya peoples of Guatemala and Mexico; the ajq'ij still count the days.
A 260-day calendar combines twenty signs (nahuales) and thirteen numbers; the day you were born is your nahual and your strength.
How it's done
- 01Convert your date to the Maya long count.
- 02Find the sign (1 of 20) and the number (1 of 13).
- 03Read the nahual as guide animal and the figure as intensity.
With your own tools
There are tables to calculate it, but meaning comes from those who keep the days in the community.
With Ocluna
With your birth date I calculate your kin: your day sign, your tone and your number in the 260-day cycle, with the correlation the day keepers use.

Your reading
Grandmother Xóchitl does your Tzolk'in, your Maya sign reading

What Grandmother Xóchitl tells you
- The 260-day tzolk'in is still alive: in the Guatemalan highlands the ajq'ij, day keepers, have kept it uninterrupted for centuries.
- 260 is roughly the length of a pregnancy and the number of days Venus is visible; that is why the calendar is also called the sacred count.
- The Mayan codex that preserves the tables of Venus and the count of days is kept in Dresden; another of the four that were saved is in Madrid.
- The best-known K'iche' daykeepers are those of Momostenango, in the Guatemalan department of Totonicapán, where the count was never interrupted.
- In the Cholq'ij, the Waqxaqib' B'atz' ceremony initiates new daykeepers and falls on the 8 tone of the B'atz' nawal.
- To link the Mayan count with the Gregorian calendar, the GMT correlation is used, initials of Goodman, Martínez, and Thompson.
- The names of the twenty nawales change with the language: the day called Imix in Yucatec is called Imox in k'iche'.
- In the haab' only four nawales can carry the year; among the current K'iche' they are No'j, Iq', E', and Kej.
- Unlike the 260-day count, the Long Count stopped being written after the Classic period; its largest unit, the b'aktun, is equivalent to 144,000 days.
- In Oaxaca, the Zapotecs kept their own 260-day count, called piye, recorded in Monte Albán and in their codices.
This reading is symbolic self-knowledge and entertainment content based on folk traditions. It does not predict the future, is not medical, legal or financial advice, and does not replace qualified professionals.