List of Figures
INTRODUCTION
MAYAN ASTROLOGY FOR MODERN TIMES
This book presents a simple approach for learning and practicing the intricate system of astrology invented by the Maya in ancient Mesoamerica. People today have much to learn from the profound intellectual and spiritual heritage of the Native American peoples who lived for millennia in todays Mexico and Central America and still live there today. Their knowledge and understanding of the influences of the cosmic environment on human life was encoded into a system that has survived the book-burnings of religious fanatics.
Mayan astrology offers a perspective on human existence not found elsewhere. The authors have devised a unique and practical way of interpreting the components of this lost system, since no one really knows how they were originally used. Our reconstruction of the astrological symbols and techniques is a work in progress that it is based on many sources of information: indigenous sources, including ancient manuscripts, inscriptions, and the oral traditions; academic studies by archaeoastronomers, ethnoastronomers, and anthropologists; and real-life observationsanecdotal evidence gathered in the course of over twenty-five years of correlating the characteristics of individuals with their Mayan birth data.
The major difference between Western and Mayan astrology is that Western astrology interprets sky-events (i.e., astronomical cycles, eclipses, planetary alignments, etc.) spatially while Mayan astrology interprets them in blocks of time. Western astrology focuses on zodiac signs, houses, and aspects that measure space. In ancient Mexico, the same sky-events were interpreted in terms of their significant influence on the period of time in which they occurred.
THE MAYAN CALENDAR
At the center of the Mayan astrological system are several calendar-like groupings of days. The most important of these is the 260-day sacred astrological calendar, known as the tzolkin. This mathematic and scientific marvel organizes intricate correlations between time, number, and astronomy and exists separately from the 365-day civil calendar that was used to govern mundane matters of day-to-day life. The 260-day tzolkin was strictly a Mesoamerican intellectual creation; nothing like it has been found in any other part of the world. As a calendar it serves many purposes, including divination and the timing of rituals and events. But perhaps its most important use, and one that is still valid today, was as a matrix of personality types.
The features of the calendar that are most significant in our approach to practicing Mayan astrology are as follows:
- The Day-Sign. The Mayan calendar divides its year into periods of twenty days. Each of the twenty days has its own sign. Like the signs of the Western zodiac, these day-signs reveal important components of personality and destiny.
- The Trecena. The 260-day astrological calendar is divided into twenty blocks of thirteen days that also function like signs. Trecenas are a kind of subset of the day-signs, and they seem to describe qualities of the personality that are similar to those described by the moon in Western astrology.
- The Lord of the Night. A repeating sequence of nine days is named for important gods of the underworld. It may be that these Lords of the Night symbolize ones deep unconscious, hidden motivations, and even ones dark side.
- The Year. In the Mayan calendar, the solar years are grouped in fifty-two-year cycles. The Maya gave each year in the cycle a specific name, and regarded each as having its own special quality. This methodology is similar in some ways to the Chinese twelve-year cycle of animals, in which people who are born in a given year supposedly share similar qualities that are reflected in their personality and character.
- The Phase of Venus. The cycle of the planet Venus is divided into four main periods, used as calendar markers. The phase in which a person is born can offer insights into social values and his or her role in society.
The system works as follows: First, the twenty named days repeat endlessly, as does our seven-day planetary week (inherited from the civilizations of the Ancient Near East). Each named day functions much like a zodiac sign, in that it symbolizes an archetypal concept that appears to be deeply imprinted in the psyche of any person born on that day. This interpretation is much like the Western zodiac approach except that the signs change daily. The unit of twenty days appears to function much like a biorhythma cycle of twenty days, in which one of the days is personal.
Days are also grouped into units of thirteen days. These units take on the name of the day-sign (one of the twenty named days) that begins the period. After thirteen cycles of the twenty named days, and twenty cycles of the thirteen-day periods, exactly 260 days have elapsed, and the interplay of thirteen and twenty begins again. As a result, 260 basic personality types are possible in this system because any birth is located in one of the twenty named days, and also within one of the thirteen-day periods.
The Mayan Calendar is a brilliant intellectual creation from a numerological perspective and continues to fascinate the archaeologists and astronomers who study it. What makes the system truly impressive is that it appears to have captured something about human personality as well. Before exploring the many-faceted calendar, however, it is important to understand something about the culture that created it.
CULTURE AND HISTORY OF THE MAYA
The Maya are a distinct culture that originated and still live in the southern parts of Mexico, all of Guatemala and Belize, and the western portions of Honduras and El Salvador. The ancient Maya are known for their hieroglyphic writing, their accomplishments in mathematics and astronomy, their monumental architectural structures, their art, and their cosmology, among other achievements. Mayan civilization developed over the course of several millennia and flourished at about the same time as the later Roman Empire and the early Byzantine and Islamic civilizations. For nearly all of their history, the Maya were a culture of mainly autonomous cities and villages that shared related languages and customs. They traded among themselves and formed dynastic alliances, and they also fought bitterly with each other. Until the arrival of the Spanish, however, the Maya were rarely disturbed by outside civilizations such as the Toltecs or Aztecs. Today, as many as six million Maya live in the same regions as their ancestors did and continue to practice many of their traditional ways in spite of constant pressure from religious and commercial institutions that strive to force Western views on them.
Mayan history, which spans over three millennia, has been divided into three major periods. During the Preclassic period (1800 BC to AD 250) many core components of Mayan culture were created. One of these components is the Mayan calendar, which was based on highly sophisticated astronomical observations applied in an astrological manner. Another component is hieroglyphic writing, the only true writing of the New World. Also during this period, the Maya built large ceremonial centers consisting of spectacular architectural constructions decorated with paintings and sculptures. It is now thought that some of the earliest Mayan centers were located near the Pacific coast. The ancient ceremonial center of Izapa in this region shows much sophistication at what was otherwise an early time for such architecture. The influence of the even more ancient Olmec peoples is found here as well, and some archaeologists have speculated that the coastal location suggests possible contacts with peoples from South America. Later, Preclassic Mayan centers were established farther inland, in Belize and Guatemala.
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