Frequently Asked Questions
Exhaustive and inspired answers to questions I’ve absolutely been asked over the years!
Natural Time is a neutral description of the Mayan calendar resurrected through Jose Arguelles’ research of this ancient people and his ongoing meditation on their spiritual doctrines. It’s a term challenging the unnatural calendar we follow, established by the Vatican in 1582.
The Gregorian calendar of 12 months of varying lengths is arrhythmic, and as when our heart beats out of rhythm, it is unhealthy. Everything in nature is drawn toward cyclical rhythm. Our year of 365 days is itself a stable cycle, but how we humans subdivide it is increasingly irrational.
One of Natural Time’s greatest revolutionary offerings is a 13 month calendar based on the female menstrual cycle. Pre-industrial civilizations throughout the world used the 28-day menstruation of women as a calendar to abide by. Natural Time has rekindled the use of a 28-day moon and presents a perfect rhythm for our earth year: 13 months (called ‘moons’) of 28 days each equals 364 days, one short of a year (13 x 28 = 364). The 365th day stands alone and is called the day between years.
Natural Time as I experience it is a return to nature, both the elemental outdoors we enter when we leave our homes and get close to the sun and earth, water and open air, as well as our original human nature: we used to be more primal, animalistic and free. This appeals to me, as I feel constricted and confounded by many aspects of modern life in our human civilization. It pleases me to have a means to reconnect to ancient indigenous archetypes and mythology, so that I may live each day in reverence, to the gods and their gifts that magically sustain us.
Finally, I would say that Natural Time is a moniker that takes away from perceptions of appropriation. I do use the description, ‘Mayan’, throughout my work, but Natural Time is supposed to create a distinction between following the doctrines of the living K’iche Mayan people, and the resurrection of Mayan mysticism that can be channeled through meditation by all kinds of devotees around the planet.
I named my presentation in the world ‘Resonant Truth’ because I didn’t want to call it ‘Lisa Star.’ I was drawn to the Resonant tone as a descriptor because I do endeavor here to channel and attune from divinity, rather than just throw around my own mental thought forms. I am aspiring to bring the ascended Maya into our daily lives.
I am pretty dedicated to truth telling. This means everything from troublemaking (saying what most people would rather have silenced) to exploring the boundaries of truth – like is having visions true or false? Is it a fantasy or is it real?
Resonant Truth is intended to be an experience of true divination, the truth about a resonant and less physicalized world. It’s an invitation for all of us to trust and develop our intuition, our visioning, our faith in synchronicities that arise through Natural Time, and in the ascended Maya themselves, as a supernatural force of guidance and inspiration.
Factually, as I best understand it, the Tzolkin calendar is truly Mayan. It is their sacred spiritual calendar. Of course we have Anglicized names, but they are largely consistent translations of the Mayan origins. And for reasons I can’t explain, Jose Arguelles’ version of the Tzolkin is not synchronized with the one currently used by the K’iche Maya. They are both 260 days, share the same totems, but renew at different times. So if you are told your ‘Mayan birthday’ when traveling in Central America, it will not be the same as the one celebrated in Natural Time.
The 13 Moon calendar is not Mayan. It’s a consolidation of all pagan or pre-colonized calendars that are based not on the moon cycles from new to full and new again, but on the female menstrual ‘moon’ of 28-days. The Maya were more drawn to divide their 365-day year into vinals, or 20-day periods. There are 18 of them in a year, with a five-day vayeb at the conclusion that serves as a purification ritual. It’s presumed to be authentically Mayan to start the new year on July 26.
You have to use the decoder on a website. There is a way to do it with a calendar in your head, but it’s a highly developed skill using learned knowledge of the Tzolkin’s patterns. I can do it, and I mostly get it right – but this is where technology bests humanity. Please use my specially created decoder, or another site’s, and refer your friends there so they get it right the first time!
I don’t actually prophesy ‘native Mayan’ spirituality. I feel like I can channel the ascended Maya, whom I envision as the souls that rose when the Mayan civilization was all but decimated by colonial invasion. I can sense that there is a heavenly realm of those holding these cycles in their spirit, and they are actively encouraging some of us to embrace their ceremonial legacy.
I try not to portray that I can prophesy the future – such as specific events and outcomes – because I believe it’s most holistic to keep our attention on what we feel, in our body and soul, in the present moment. But I do rely on the Mayan cycles as factual and real, not a fantasia, i.e., I can imagine that an upcoming Blue Storm year will be catalyzing. Or I can describe that tomorrow, perhaps a Yellow Spectral Warrior day, might dissolve into conflict. The cycles are meant to be guideposts and anchors to help us develop faith and trust.
Jose was a man born in Minnesota in 1939. He died peacefully in New Zealand just after the tsunami ravaged Japan in 2011, when thousands of souls were rising from that part of our planet. His Mayan birthday names him Blue Spectral Monkey, the intersection of the eleventh tribe and the eleventh tone, a sweet 11:11 synchronicity.
There is a voluminous biography presented here on his legacy website, The Foundation of the Law of Time (FLT). Indeed, all the written offerings at the FLT are directly coordinate to Jose’s primary teaching and give a strong flavor of his style and impetus in bringing the Mayan code to our modern age.
The most important aspect of Jose to be addressed here is his birthright as Blue Spectral Monkey. He was a master magician, an incredible visionary who could contemplate the universe with an eye for the lost connections between spiritual traditions that have been buried due to divisive religious values. He could see numeric codes that interlaced the Mayan calendars with Islamic, Hindu, Buddhist and Christian teachings.
His Spectral quality dissolved the rigid demarcations that make spiritual traditions separate. He conjoined the Mayan code with the I’Ching and the Celtic runes, the Sanskrit chakras, and the Native American medicine wheel. He was childlike in his will to dig into layer upon layer of sacred teachings and add them to the mandala of inclusion it was his mission to offer the new world age. We are gifted this legacy of his boundless stirring of light into the shadows where the Mayan codes have been relegated since colonization came to the American continent.
And some factoids: he was Mexican American and has a twin, still living, named Ivan; he co-created the Whole Earth Expo in Northern California, and conceived the Harmonic Convergence that was celebrated in the summer of 1987 by people around the planet who for the most part did not attach it to anything Mayan; he lost his son in the same window of time, and wrote The Mayan Factor in a passage of grieving; he was a great visual artist and published a book of his works in various media called Mandala; he was a comparative literature professor who at different times taught at U.C. Davis, Evergreen State College and Princeton University.
I have had the impression from personal attempts to bring this Mayan code to the fore that the teaching itself does not want to be sullied or dissipated through popularity. Jose Arguelles was successful in creating a modernized and mystical version of the ancient Mayan cycles for us to use congruently with our everyday lives. We could live on his resurrection for generations without wanting for depth of experience.
Maybe Natural Time will become famous, but it seems to me it will do so when it’s naturally time. It wasn’t important that everyone on the planet burn their Gregorian calendars in Jose’s lifetime, nor shall they in mine. Rather, Jose sought to restore part of his Mexican lineage within himself, through mystical wandering, and he shared it with as many who would listen.
He had an agenda of grandeur, but perhaps this was an accidental egoism even in his own teaching. It did not take. I perceive he tried, as others have and will, but it’s not necessary that so many be turned onto the Mayan calendars. It’s more important that those who attune to these sacred cycles do so with true faith and reverence. We’re lucky – those of us in devotion – that the movement is still so pure and unadulterated.
I was baptized Episcopalian as a baby and never once taken to church. I grew up in Northern California in the 70s at the height of my parents’ generation’s resistance to the establishment, including traditional religion. I was exposed to what interested my parents: the Tarot, Buddhism, Native American ceremony, reverence of nature, Aikido and Jungian psycho-spirituality.
On my own I dedicated my life to faith in the unseen world, such as the spirit that lives within every carnal body and connects us. I developed my ‘psychic ability’ through two intense years of study and guided practice. I came, through a near-death experience, to understand emphatically that death is not the end, and that the afterlife is a place of vast peace.
I have been heavily influenced, at different junctures, by Thich Nhat Hanh, Krishna Das and the Order of Franciscan Monks. I have practiced ashtanga yoga and kirtan and been a Waldorf teacher. In recent years I have been in 12 Step recovery, which is considered a spiritual program.
It’s the day you were born within the Tzolkin calendar, the 260-day Mayan sacred cycle. Because it represents a 260-day cycle, not 365 like our earth year, our Mayan birthday comes around more frequently – about every nine months. Therefore, our annual Gregorian birthday is not synchronized with our Mayan one.
Everyone is born into a specific archetypal ‘tribe’ – one of 20 – and in a particular ‘tone’ which symbolizes a number count between one and 13. The tribes are always a color oriented to one direction of the medicine wheel in Mayan tradition. I was born on a Blue Storm tribe day, in the tone called Overtone – indicating the fifth day in a count of 13. I am called, by my Mayan birth energy, a Blue Overtone Storm.
I cannot comment. I am so grateful that the Internet and international travel can explain things that are unfamiliar to me. I am always interested in first hand accounts of the living Maya and when I am given that kind of accounting, I often use what I learn to enhance my study of the calendar cycles.
Most prominently, to be in rhythm and apart from the very arbitrary and strangely outdated Gregorian calendar. We don’t have any other world policy as old as the 16th century, never revisited and refreshed.
You could follow Natural Time to experience magic and mystery as expressed in shamanic ritual throughout indigenous cultures. You could follow Natural Time to align your body’s rhythms with the passage of time – specifically through feminine menstruation, or counting the days on your fingers and toes or the major joints of your body as the Maya did.
You could follow it to find a relationship between the passage and time and a spiritual practice – because the Mayan code instructs where to place our reverence every day, not leaving that to mood swing or free will. You could follow Natural Time to entertain yourself with a hidden and forgotten spirituality rife with potent archetypal images and creation mythology, in case your other approaches to holy practice have gotten stale or seem outgrown.
You could also participate in this wave of spiritual study and devotion in order to make sense of the synchronicities that arise, since you will see through the Mayan calendric lens how many accidents are divinely ordained and directly correlate to the passage of Mayan days.
I follow it because I need to dedicate myself to divinity every day, in a way that sparks creativity in my mind and devotion in my heart.
I am an Anglo-American. My relatives have been on this continent a very long time, with no identifiable ancestors in the Old World. My grandfather was Cajun – this is the extent to which I qualify as exotic at all.
For me it was very real, both the day and the ensuing year. I came to believe in a simple mythology, that the prophecy day of Winter Solstice 2012 represented the rebirth of the sun from the center of the Milky Way. I believed that this astronomical opera, the aligning of the sun with the center of this greater surrounding galaxy, on the darkest day, was truly like our god passing through the womb of our cosmos.
Some people look for Christ to come again. For me, this was the same emblem. I felt, in my fantasia of it, that our god – Creator – whatever we choose to call that divinity that gives us life – was rejuvenated and refreshed. It could in turn sustain us who needed stronger, more constant enlightenment.
On that day, I climbed the mountains above Santa Barbara on foot, some of it on remote pathways, some on paved road with cars breezing by en route to everyday errands. I noticed the highest peak of bright light after midday, and it felt like a transmission of energy, if not words. The hike took all day, and I felt lost and removed from the culture for most of my time, even when confounded by fast-moving traffic, or the ache of my own tired feet. I climbed to a peak ascent, and I curved downhill for miles back home. I could see the sky, the earth and the sea, very simple and elemental frequencies, for the most part of my day.
I did not gather with others in ceremony because I did not trust I would know the same people after the prophetic passage as before, and this has proven to be true. My life is quite different and serene. In one capacity, everyone stopped talking and seeming to care about the Mayan teachings – since nothing of note happened – and that was a general relief to me, as that trend was noisy in some way, frenetic, without much concern for the lasting Mayan calendars that are my passion. I went into a kind of retreat and have yet to teach since the prophecy day. Simultaneously, my personal dreams of living in serenity and harmony have started to come true.
In the year called 2013, from that Winter Solstice to the next, I saw many around me find deep love, or their true calling. It was a seminal time of true celebration and joy. I attributed that to the sun being strong, renewed to its core essence, and past the worst of the birthing pain that preceded the prophecy day, which I remember in my life to have been so dark and desperate at times.
Now I am not sure if the sun’s rebirth has normalized and I am not as aware of the change, or if I am simply, as they say, raising my vibration to attune with the divine source and thereby experiencing fewer lows than I used to. I definitely feel the new world age as an exhalation from tension, an unwinding as though settled in warm surroundings, a sunny holiday. I sense, too, an easier understandings of life’s goings on, as if I can see more clearly. These are changes I would attribute simplistically to more solar power – our sun center beaming at a higher wattage.
How can each one of us help but be affected if our sun is recalibrated in brilliance and power to sustain us? I assume, from being watchful, that every one of us is dynamically empowered past where we stood at the turn of world ages, that individually we are evolved and harmonized, and collectively we are coming into connectivity and greater possibilities of ease and peace. But I try to focus on my own experience, its subtleties, and I also try to do right, as I understand it, by my newly emergent sun god. Slowly but persistently, I feel less trapped by the dark forces in my efforts to be kind and loving in the world.
I have included this question in part because I have asked it myself. I liken Jose’s writing to a UFO’s user manual, or the translation of an alien transmission. It lacks relatability on the human heart level. I also feel Jose was brilliant and beyond his time.
I attest to this because I can actually understand The Mayan Factor now, but when I tried to read it 15 years ago it was still unintelligible to my psychic development. There are concepts in there that were so radical at first printing but are now totally acceptable and routine within the metaphysical movement. I don’t even try to read The Cosmic History Chronicles, although I expect that in another 20 years, they will become comprehensible. He was an extraordinary illusionist, and it makes it hard to see what he is presenting plainly.
I have personally tried to intermediate between Jose’s collective vision and the wider general public not versed in all things cosmically supernatural. But I am reliant, personally, on his written conversion of the Mayan code. They are the seed from which all other awakening has bloomed.
It seemed like the Mayan prophecy hoopla was pushed into being a fad and for the consumption of people in fear of an apocalypse, in need of a promise of brighter enlightenment. That has come and gone and no one in the world of publishing or promotion seems to be committing to more Mayan spirituality projects. Simultaneous to this waning interest from the masses, my own practice in Natural Time has only gotten stronger and more enduring.
I have seen so many people try following the Tzolkin sacred cycles for a while, or become immersed in their Mayan astrology for a while, then beg off because it’s very complicated, requiring dedication and discipline to learn. I don’t think this qualifies as being a fad, but of being for people who desire more than a passing fancy in the endless New Age offerings.
It is a devotional path akin to what people lived centuries ago, in order to praise the light of each new day, a miracle. This typically appeals to people with longevity in spiritual practice.
I try to keep it very simple. I mostly offer the tribe – and I call it a ‘Mayan archetype’ or a ‘Mayan day sign’. I don’t like blasting people with super esoteric imagery and I also don’t want to win anyone over – the cult sales pitch. I might say, ‘You were born on the day when the Maya celebrated —- and so you hold that energy for your whole lifetime.’
There are tribes that are very comprehensible to Western civilization sensibilities (Storm, Sun, Star, Wind, Moon, Earth, Dog, Monkey, Eagle), and there are some that will need some help with orientation (Skywalker, Worldbridger, Dragon, Mirror). There are the in-betweens, too, where the tribe means something identifiable in English language – but what does it mean in terms of mysticism (Night, Seed, Hand)?
You can refer people to a website, and you can also just keep practicing your short hand of the tribe descriptions so you can help people understand easily, in few words. Lots of people will want lots of words, but it’s nice to practice simplicity and spareness. To share light instead of a heavy concept load. That’s just my opinion, based on some trial and error.
In terms of explaining about the tone, I often use the physicalized wave and say, ‘You were born on the day when the wave peaks/breaks/just moves up from sea level.’ Or I share Arguelles’ descriptions of the tone: ‘You are drawn toward integrity and harmony/organizing and creating equality/empowering and commanding people.’ Practice makes imperfect 😉 but develops your own style and skill at conveying the basics.
P.S. My Natural Time Handbook to the calendars is very helpful in seeing the short cuts and essence of the tribes and tones!
It’s important to have a practice of gratitude and homage, and if we are to cite one soul who made the Mayan rhythms accessible and real, it would be Jose.
He was supported by others – friends and family – who also brought their energy to the resurrection and modernization of the Mayan code, but he was the one who wore it like a shield and committed his life entirely to its publicity and presentation to the larger world. And he wasn’t just a promoter, but a passionate artist who made the sacred count of the Maya translatable for us today. He didn’t get rich doing this, and was never really lauded by the New Age movement in a way that would signal ‘success’. He’s not a martyr, either, just someone in between.
I honor Jose because without his work I would never have found this discipline, and it’s been of deep resonance, has reshaped my life. Any one of us who is drawn in and chooses to observe and experience the Tzolkin and 13 Moon calendars in depth is beholden to Jose for his mission. And as I have written, he was so dense with cosmic insight, we will be unraveling his last messages for years to come, finding new insights for our own study of the cycles.
We don’t have to care because anyone is advertising that we should – that’s the best part of the media furor diminishing. We may find that we care, as I still do, so deeply. I care about the ascended Maya, of course, as distinct from caring about the Mayan peninsula and its extant peoples. If you care about the Mayan communities living in Southern Mexico and Central America, that is also beautiful. My point is that we should share passionately and openly about what we truly care about, in our hearts, our souls, our sensibilities.
There is a great phrase in Natural Time to describe living with integrity, in harmony, assigned to the Galactic tone, or the eighth stage in a cyle of 13. The inquiry of the Galactic energy is, ‘Do I live what I believe?’ I am caught asking and answering that constantly on the heels of the prophecy day, and the ensuing year.
I don’t seem able, any longer, to live what I don’t, in my heart, have faith in. I can’t act against my conscious as I used to, enabled by the more destructive energies in my midst. So I am able to care about what I truly love in my life, and discard what doesn’t help my heart, but hurts it. And that to me is the legacy of the change between world ages that the Mayan prophecy proclaimed.
This is a broad question! The answer that comes to mind is: years of dedication to being in Natural Time. I don’t really believe in spiritual shortcuts, or I could say I don’t believe spiritual shortcuts work because they have a destination in mind. And the whole gestalt of spiritual practice, to me, is in the process. That there is no actual arrival point seems, too, to be the biggest spiritual lesson.
You can learn by reading: books, calendars, the web posts from so many passionate authors. You can learn by paying attention to the days that arise and are significant to your cosmology. What synchronicities and signs arise? What happens? How do you feel? Whom do you encounter? What memories of earlier times arise?
And then, you can learn what you already know. For instance, I’m a Blue Overtone Storm. I have spent time over the years deeply immersed in the Mayan origins, experienced magical Tzolkin occurrences, and weathered my own catalytic passages. But I’ve also watched lightning, listened for thunder, felt the deluge of dark winter rains, seen the sun emerge afterwards in renewed resilience. This has helped me understand my essence. I assume the Mayan were looking at the totems of the Tzolkin that literally, and it is important sometimes to be primitive – primal – in our self-exploration, like children.
This is a grand philosophical argument that bounces around my head plenty! From my perspective, the question is, ‘How can I teach Mayan spirituality through the Internet?’ Furthermore, ‘How can I stand to?’ This is because I find staring at my computer screen for any reason for long durations as mind numbing and hard on my eyes.
The gift of the Internet is international connectivity. I am grateful for the ability to bond with people from every continent on the path of Natural Time. It’s lonely otherwise. I would not wish to give up Resonant Truth and recede back to having no contact with others who care about the Tzolkin. For that reason, I devote most of my Internet access time to the site. Then I take long walks in nature with my dogs.
In terms of the insinuation that something ancient and indigenous can’t be broadcasted through pixels or bounced off satellites, I don’t know what to say. I try to believe in the brilliance of our modern innovation, while I simultaneously hold fast to elemental principles like time outdoors brings me closest to the residual energy of those who went before me.
If I can really appreciate the sunset, the moonrise, I am following the path of ancients and keeping their spirit alive. I balance this kind of faith with wondrous amazement – and at times disgust and disdain – for what technology can do. Truly, most of the internet is like having our wildest dreams come true, for better or worse, and I am navigating the awe and overwhelm as much as the next human.
I can tell you what I did, and what I wish my work to support, in turn. Start one day a time. Get a calendar, or visit this website and listen and read each day’s offering. Read the original Arguelles descriptions of each day’s tribe and tone energy. I wrote down on my calendar every day a couple of the synchronicities, the ways that I saw a connection between events and the tribe/tone qualities. I did this for two years, and never read anything outside of a calendar’s sidebar notations.
I also learned about the calendar through other people, as I looked up everyone I knew via their birthday and discovered their Mayan tribe and tone. In my femininity, I am drawn to practicing spirituality through relationship; I see people who come into my life as teachers of things previously buried and unknown. So I paid attention to both good, old friends and family, as well as chance encounters, passersby, and learned everyone’s Mayan attributes. It brought the calendar to life and made it full dimensional theater instead of dry concepts on a written page.
Keep it simple, but keep it constant. The only way to really experience the magnitude of the magic of the Mayan code is to be disciplined and devoted. That’s how the Maya built their incomprehensibly magnificent pyramids – a still unsolved mystery since they did not have pack animals or wheels to move the monolithic stone blocks the temples are made from.
This path is designed for dedication and full faith, and patience and humility. One day at a time is a phrase that translates well for committing ourselves to the changing archetypes of Natural Time.
There’s a full description of my conversion in the introduction to my book, Natural Time: A Guidebook to the Maya Calendars. In brief, I followed my mother’s devotion to Jose Arguelles’ teachings, many years after she first pitched it to me as gospel. I was a single mother struggling to corral my broken family towards spiritual discipline. I almost chose Christianity, but it was too revivalist in my region. I opted for the Mayan calendar and was self-taught for a few years with the helpful guidance of Eden Sky’s first calendars.
I have stated that my belief is the ascended Maya, the souls of those who died when genocide came to the Mayan territories (some of it intentional murder, most of it unintentional disease and starvation), are guiding those of us drawn to their sacred cycles. Many of us are not of Mayan ancestry.
I don’t know what the Mayan people alive today think of this use of their ancient calendars for the stabilizing and deepening of faith. I am sure opinions are varied. I have been lucky in that I feel people with clear hearts and clear minds can see what is clear in my practice and my teaching. I trust that there is a divine order asking all of us to work towards integration instead of exclusion. I have had this karma in my own family of mixed ethnicity, so the process for me has been very ‘real’ and not only an ideological argument.
No, I never was his student or met him personally. I was not drawn to follow my mother’s passion that way. I preferred Eden Sky’s everyday teaching tools (she was deeply Jose’s student) and didn’t seem to ever need more.
I’ve met some who studied with him who seemed like zealots, convicted that we should abolish the Gregorian calendar throughout the world. And I have been privileged to touch on the works of many who used Jose’s legacy as an inspiration for a life in service of sharing the Mayan sacred teachings: Aluna Joy Yax’kin and Arielle Spillsbury and Daniel Pinchbeck come immediately to mind, as well as an incredible contingent in the Netherlands of deep Arguellian scholars.
I’m answering this as though it is asked by a non-beginner, by someone who has been studying Natural Time some moons, and is already transfixed by the magic. They are believers in the historic power of the Maya, but are asking how to translate the ancient teachings to a modern way in faith, such as people practice Buddhism, Islam and Christianity. I have an answer for that from my own life.
I podcast and post every day as much in devotion to my own practice as to educate and edify others. You might need to choose something that is your own everyday interaction with the Mayan teachings. This is indeed a daily practice. Natural Time is inclusive. If you already have a prayer or meditation pursuit, it can be preserved.
I find following the Mayan cycles is about maintaining a living meditative state, because I am not limited to an hour seated in solitude in order to reflect on each day’s point of reverence. Synchronicity throughout my day – in whom I meet by chance, in what activity I have scheduled, in what I hear media announcing from the world stage – reminds me there is a divine order somehow – miraculously – threaded to the current Mayan archetypal energies.
In this way, Natural Time is not an isolated spiritual practice, but fully interactive with everyday life. It just makes normal undertakings – errands, hours on the job, parenting, chores, even challenging hassles – somehow religious.
Recording synchronicities through art and writing, in any form, supports your practice. Sharing your findings with others, even those green to Natural Time, can deepen your faith. I actually try to live without things tightly scheduled, freelance in as many ways as I can, so I may then embrace the day’s energetic focus to its greatest potential.
I don’t mean I try to manage or manipulate my life in favor of the Mayan totems. Usually I just leave space for my day’s destiny to arise and over the years my intuition has drawn me to many experiences that were indescribably perfect in aligning with the Natural Time resonances.
Lastly, I have never changed my life to become Mayan or part of the Natural Time movement. I just lived my practice and as my faith grew, I took on my own presentation of Mayan teachings and drew people and experiences to me to support my spiritual growth even further. I have my own opinions that it’s more relevant to live simply and have time and space for spiritual devotion than to spend money on flying across the world to learn from a teacher or gather in a selective Natural Time group. Take that insight or leave it – I am just advocating that this practice is etheric more than organized in humanity. It can find and fill you at any moment, anywhere you are.
Most importantly, pay attention to how you feel when their days/moons/wavespells arise. And also learn the circle of influences around their Mayan birthday: guide, antipode, analog and occult partner. Notice what wavespell their day falls within, and realize they have a role in that seminal energy field coming to life.
By the way, you might feel obsessive about a person’s Mayan astrology because they are here to teach you something. If you can detach your focus from them and instead fixate on their Tzolkin energy, you will see what they are here to show you, to balance within you and fill in your life where you have lack.
Fixate on their archetypal essence: that’s what you crave, hunger for. You want what they have – but maybe by understanding their Mayan oracle you can get that quality of life in another way. Or by simply bringing it to consciousness, you relax your inexplicable tension about want, need for someone and simply can celebrate the mythology they hold.
Because it allows me to believe in – and constantly experience – magic. Another way to describe this is ‘synchronicity.’ By following the Natural Time cycles, I am constantly surprised (or not surprised) that the day’s unfolding directly reflects the Mayan archetypal energy we’re passing through. I spent some years in awe, some more trying to get everyone else on the bandwagon, and these days I just continue on in a cloud of reverie that never gets old. Magic is my new normal. Surreality, as though living in a dream, has more of a stronghold on me than the rationality and logic offered by ‘real life’.
I am not someone who believes a shaman can only be of a still indigenous tribe or culture. I sense, for example, that Carl Jung was a shaman. I was taught deeply by a woman who is certainly in my perception a shaman, Margit Drysdale of Ukiah, California. She never ceremonialized me as a shaman, but through her rituals and profoundly expansive guidance, I do feel I stepped into authority as a seer and healer. Later, attuned to the ascended Maya, I became a teacher of their etheric legacy.
I do not call myself a shaman because I am shy and overly sensitive to appropriating certain terms and tones of Native American spirituality, but I sense I am easily a White Wizard, as described in Natural Time: I hold the eye of god in a sanctuary you may enter for insight and healing. Carl Jung was a White Cosmic Wizard, indeed.
I am aligned in nearly every way, and what comes most strongly to mind is that I agree this is a metaphysical teaching more than a literal Mayan translation. Like Jose, I believe this is a gift from and link to the ascended Maya. And Jose, most impressively to me, sought to integrate the world spiritualities, rather than support dualism and exclusion between practitioners.
He found the sacred numerology connectors between the Maya and the I’Ching, first, then in the Celtic Runes and the Sanskrit chakras. He was himself a practicing Buddhist for many years and used concepts from his Rinpoche in his Anglicized translation of the Tzolkin.
I also believe in integration of world spiritualities and particularly enjoy exploring the likenesses between the Mayan code and the Christian one, especially since it was Catholicism that in some respects decimated indigenous religions. It’s a cutting edge to me to see the convergence of Christ’s message and the Tzolkin. I love perpetuating Jose’s magician insight and practicing his sleight of hand to keep things challenging and evolving on this path.
The Mayan new year is oriented to a day in which Sirius, the ‘dog star’, rises from the Eastern horizon at the same time as the sun. This was such a tremendous convergence for the sky-watching indigenous world: their brightest night star in synch with the tremendous day star. Many other cultures besides the Maya chose this convergence for their new years’ orientation.
I have always noticed that the Maya, living in the Northern Hemisphere’s seasonal cycle, also celebrated their new year in the time of summer’s abundance of harvest, a richness of life force, a blaze of light and heat. This is quite polarized from the Roman-Christian identification of dark winter scarcity, emptiness, as the seat of new beginnings.
They both have spiritual relevance, but I’ve grown to welcome a new year at the height of summer, whether it feels like a full fruition and explosive bloom – or a burned out overheating under the sun’s intense glare. I always connect my childhood and all those years of starting school in late summer to the cycles of the Mayan year and its moons.
Winter Solstice becomes another earmark, the descent into darkness a profound exercise in being in the unknown and trusting a new emergence to unfold with returning light. But I haven’t been drawn to orienting myself to January 1 as a beginning in a long time, and wish for you the same rededication to an ancient and indigenous ritual of celebrating light as the opening or awakening of a new year.
Jose Arguelles invented the moniker of ‘wavespell.’ It’s a span of time quantified by 13 stages. A wavespell can be 13 days, 13 moons or 13 years. 13 was a sacred number to the Maya and an anchor of their mysticism. The whole Natural Time code of recurring numbers is oriented to 13 at its heart.
The Mayan number of 13 is not static, a couple of digits. It’s a description of movement which is shaped in a waveform. This is Arguellian magic, something he channeled as a vision. The Maya certainly saw 13 as sacred, so grand it portended great life change, but they didn’t use the language or imagery of physics. So we can consider the number 13 ancient and the description of it as a building and breaking waveform a modern innovation.
Because I’ve lived in coastal California my whole life, I envision the waveform to be an ocean wave, such as a child would draw or a surfer would ride. The wavespell starts below the surface, in the darkness of deep ocean currents. It’s growing in ascent even before we can see the water rise above sea level. Then the wave is a watery mountain building higher and higher.
It crests, and then the power of its surging energy is met and overwhelmed by the force of gravity. The wave cannot climb closer to the sky and breaks. It shatters into whitewater. The surface of the ocean in all foam and foment. Then the water settles, calms, is glassy and flat. But you can sense, once more, that another underwater current is in the works, pushing up from the depths.
This is the description, too, of the energetic shifts of a wavespell. There are 13 stages named ‘tones’. We move through them day by day, moon by moon, in this organic crescendo. When you follow the Tzolkin, a 260-day cycle that is made of 20 wavespells (20 x 13 = 260), you are rolling with a wave set, and you will live the kind heightened drama nature presents so perfectly in its ocean.
Remember, there are 13 moon wavespells that comprise a year, and also 13 year wavespells where we can really track a monumental shift for ourselves and each other, a starting point in the dark unknown, a push towards the sun, a relinquishing of pressure to spill over and back to earth. You can follow the Natural Time calendar’s 13 year cycles, but also your own from birth. Invest in a Cosmology Chart and it will detail your life’s wavespell arcs.
In Lak’ech is to my mind a Mayan version of the Sanskrit greeting, Namaste. It’s similar in that it is a soul honoring: larger than this body, longer than its short life on earth, I bow to your eternal self. I see you and I see all that surrounds you in divinity.
In Lak’ech has been translated to mean, tu es mi otro yo, ‘you are my other self.’ Generally, in the Natural Time community, the expression is, “I am another yourself.’ The holiness within the phrase is that we are equal, inclusive, reflective of one another. We are the same, and when we hurt or heal another it will impact ourselves similarly.
This is perfectly sympathetic with all sorts of spiritual disciplines – historic (‘do unto others…‘) and contemporary (the adage about pointing a finger at someone and seeing how many others are pointing back at oneself). It is an exercise in getting free from judgment and condemnation, from feeling less or greater than, from pointing out difference and dissent.
It also, to me, implies the discovery of a soul connection: there you are, you are my other me. But in Mayan mysticism as I experience it, soul mates are not reserved for romantic roles. We can find them all day, everyday, by beholding each other more deeply.
It is the tribe that is most similar, ‘analogous’ and supportive of you – like a brother/sister or best friend. It doesn’t create tension, but makes your life easier and richer. The sum of Analog tribes adds up to 19:
0/20 Yellow Sun – 19 Blue Storm
1 Red Dragon – 18 White Mirror
2 White Wind – 17 Red Earth
3 Blue Night – 16 Yellow Warrior
4 Yellow Seed – 15 Blue Eagle
5 Red Serpent – 14 White Wizard
6 White Worldbridger – 13 Red Skywalker
7 Blue Hand – 12 Yellow Human
8 Yellow Star – 11 Blue Monkey
9 Red Moon – 10 White Dog
You can read more in any of my written literature – I do want to encourage your understanding but some of these special energies need more exploration than in a FAQ. They are sacred mystical powers each of us is imbued with at birth. I hope you will take some time to go deeper with your personal ‘medicine wheel’, which includes an Analog, Antipode, Guide and Occult Partner.
I was actually told once, ‘If you wore Mayan clothes, you would get more people at your events.’ I include this inquiry in my FAQ because I gave it a lot of thought, thereafter, why I tend to dress like I’m going for a job interview when I teach, rather than a mystic from another eon.
I am drawn toward presenting my perspective to people who are most in need, and I honor them by showing how I am like them. I am a classic ‘blue blood’ Ivy League-educated overachiever who has struggled with self-esteem blows and episodic trauma my whole life. I am most interested in touching people with hidden hurt, maybe so buried they’ve never been drawn to alternative spirituality. Its dramatic and fantastical presentation may have put them off.
I would like everyone to feel safe, seen and welcomed. I try to dress beautifully, but not to portray myself as falsely indigenous or particularly flouncy. And, as much, I would rather focus on the message than the messenger’s ceremonial garb.
In general, I am a direct disciple of Jose Arguelles’ resurrection of the Mayan calendars. Without him, I am nothing :). Like any historic disciple, I have taken a few liberties and I have a few points of dissent.
For instance, I count the tones that correspond with the major joints of our body as beginning at our left ankle; Jose described them starting on the right ankle. I just imagine that as a female, I am drawn to see the count beginning close to the earth on the feminine, receptive side of the body – and he perhaps was intuitively aligned with the masculine directive side stepping forward.
I don’t call the quartets of wavespells – five of them in total – ‘castles’, but rather ‘spirals’, as that sounds less culturally specific to my ear. I don’t use his daily affirmation verses as from a young age I rejected this as sort of sci-fi hokum. I feel that way about most of his game board presentation of the Mayan teachings: perfect for a Blue Monkey mastermind (his birthright), but not straight forward enough for my Blue Storm elemental fury.
I also just can’t abide by some of his space ship rhetoric, such as was famously presented in the New York Times Magazine and made him seem silly when he projected there was a great silver blimp – or something – en route to lift us out of the apocalypse. And any of the specific presaging that had to do with epic financial market implosions – it was embarrassing to me like a kid who wants their parent to be more normal.
I respect prophecy but try not to predict the future as it seems to me another form of denying present moment sensations. I tuned most of the futuristic rhetoric out as it arose in Jose’s teachings and redirected myself to understanding the daily synchronicities of the Tzolkin.
But despite my adolescent rebellion against certain aspects of Jose’s reverie, my work and faith is couched in his incredible intuitive insight that brought the Mayan code to light for us in everyday usage. I thank him and think of him on every Blue Monkey day, and when he passed from this earth, I made a pledge to carry his message forward, ever in honor.
It is the tribe that is most opposite you, literally because it is the opposite finger or toe of your own tribe’s. It represents the energy that challenges you in your life, but in doing so brings balance. I always encourage people to embrace, and make peace with, your Antipode power. The difference between the tribe numbers of Antipode partners is always 10.
0/20 Yellow Sun – 10 White Dog – thumbs
1 Red Dragon – 11 Blue Monkey – pointer fingers
2 White Wind – 12 Yellow Human – middle fingers
3 Blue Night – 13 Red Skywalker – ring fingers
4 Yellow Seed – 14 White Wizard – pinky fingers
5 Red Serpent – 15 Blue Eagle – big toes
6 White Worldbridger – 16 Yellow Warrior – second toes
7 Blue Hand – 17 Red Earth – third toes
8 Yellow Star – 18 White Mirror – fourth toes
9 Red Moon – 19 Blue Storm – pinky toes
You can read more in any of my written literature – I do want to encourage your understanding but some of these special energies need more exploration than in a FAQ. They are sacred mystical powers each of us is imbued with at birth. I hope you will take some time to go deeper with your personal ‘medicine wheel’, which includes an Analog, Antipode, Guide and Occult Partner.
It is the tribe that is mystical to you, a place of mystery and enchantment. Occult means ‘hidden’, in a sort of secrecy or remove from consciousness. This is where are intuition lives, and our dream life. Our Occult partners lead us into a surreal and mysterious experience deeper or larger than everyday occurrences. The sum of Occult tribes adds up to 21:
1 Red Dragon – 0/20 Yellow Sun
2 White Wind – 19 Blue Storm
3 Blue Night – 18 White Mirror
4 Yellow Seed – 17 Red Earth
5 Red Serpent – 16 Yellow Warrior
6 White Worldbridger – 15 Blue Eagle
7 Blue Hand – 14 White Wizard
8 Yellow Star – 13 Red Skywalker
9 Red Moon – 12 Yellow Human
10 White Dog – 11 Blue Monkey
You can read more in any of my written literature – I do want to encourage your understanding but some of these special energies need more exploration than in a FAQ. They are sacred mystical powers each of us is imbued with at birth. I hope you will take some time to go deeper with your personal ‘medicine wheel’, which includes an Analog, Antipode, Guide and Occult Partner.
The Tzolkin is a traditional Mayan count of days, 260 in total. The 260-day length suggests human gestation (~ 9 months). It also takes 260 days for corn to grow from germination to full harvest in the Mayan territories. I like to suppose that the correlation between the creation of life, in the legacy of humankind and the food staple of maiz, was so divine it inspired a calendar in honorarium.
The Tzolkin is subdivided into 20 13-day wavespells (see What is a wavespell? for details). Each wavespell is named for and oriented to one of the 20 Mayan day names or ‘tribes’. So there is a Red Dragon wavespell, a White Wizard wavespell, and so on until every tribe has been represented. Each of us will have a time within the Tzolkin, a 13-day span of intensity, that celebrates our birth energy.
The Tzolkin thereby holds the keystones of the Maya’s sacred numerology: 13 and 20. The modern Natural Time movement is sometimes defined as 13:20 time instead of 12:60 (the latter representing our 12 month calendar and 60 minute clock). The difference between 13 and 20 is 7 and also sacred. The addition of 13 and 20 is a nice link to Christian mysticism: 33.
Although there are two calendars utilized in Natural Time, the Tzolkin is definitely more authentically and exclusively Mayan in origin. And it’s the anomaly that stretches our brain out, blows our mind: a calendar that’s not oriented to a planetary orbit, that’s about something more etheric than astronomical?
And it’s extremely mystical, as well. We’re celebrating the span of creation of our species. This is the time that it takes to come alive in the womb, to move from seed to sentient being. This is profound, and when you can mark your life by cycles akin to gestation, you’ll see many monumental things come to birth and be.
I don’t have the confidence or conviction that any of us healer/seers should be paid as much as attorneys and CEO’s. I would like to be paid as much as a therapist, who also invested time and money in their accreditation.
It is the tribe that is leads you, directs you, and calls you to keep moving forward. It’s the energy you are always aiming for and inspired by towards growth. You are always guided by a tribe of the same color. If you are born in the Magnetic, Rhythmic or Spectral tones, you are said to be ‘guided by my own power doubled’ and are characteristically not drawn to follow leadership and direction from outside yourself. The complicated formula for finding your guide is as follows:
Magnetic – ‘guided by my own power doubled’
Lunar – guided by the tribe two back, of the same color
Electric – guided by the tribe one forward, of the same color
Self-Existing – guided by the tribe one back, of the same color
Overtone – guided by the tribe two forward, of the same color
Rhythmic – ‘guided by my own power doubled’
Resonant – guided by the tribe two back, of the same color
Galactic – guided by the tribe one forward, of the same color
Solar – guided by the tribe one back, of the same color
Planetary – guided by the tribe two forward, of the same color
Spectral – ‘guided by my own power doubled’
Crystal – guided by the tribe two back, of the same color
Cosmic – guided by the tribe one forward, of the same color
You can read more in any of my written literature – I do want to encourage your understanding but some of these special energies need more exploration than in a FAQ. They are sacred mystical powers each of us is imbued with at birth. I hope you will take some time to go deeper with your personal ‘medicine wheel’, which includes an Analog, Antipode, Guide and Occult Partner.
A ‘moon’ is a term that was also used in Native American cultures to describe not necessarily the lunar cycle, but a woman’s menstruation. It was more marked in an indigenous tribe when a woman started her menstruation than when the moon was new or full. It became a way to track time, and presumably in a less industrialized society women cycled at 28 days, which is considered healthy or optimal.
A ‘moon’ in Natural Time is a 28-day month that replaces the 30- and 31-day months we’ve used in Gregorian time. There are 13 moons in a year (13 x 28 = 364) with one day left between years, called the ‘Day Out of Time.’ A moon is subdivided into familiar 7-day weeks. The 13 Moon calendar looks just like a Gregorian grid, except every month is evenly 4 rows of 7. It’s relaxing to the eye! It’s a year of Februaries.
I think of myself, fondly, as slightly agoraphobic – meaning it’s hard to leave home, especially when I live in a place that feels like a sacred retreat center (Santa Barbara, California). I would love to travel to where you are, if you want to co-facilitate the event. You may contact me via email, knowing I have always gone where I was truly wanted.
I also post on the site my travel plans so that if I am coming to your area and you would like an in-person reading or to host a group gathering, you can reach out to me to arrange it.
When you turn 52, your Mayan birthday based on the Tzolkin and your Gregorian birthday are finally synchronized once more. It happens the day we are born, and then every 52 years. Presumably, few of us will live until we are 104. And also presumably, the Maya did not commonly live longer than 52 years, given the life threatening insurgencies of indigenous times.
I describe that when we come toward the passage of our 52nd birthday, we are drawn into greater authenticity. We are becoming angels on earth: our bodies house us further but we are in other senses drawn heavenward. We seek to be of service rather than to serve ourselves. We step away from our families of origin, and into being children of god, detached from old familial aches and trauma. We may have hard times as we slough off our false selves, feeling torn apart as our fate seems to demand we become more true and naked, a metaphysical rebirth.
I’ve seen every iteration of this transit: job or location change; old relationships ended or new ones in bloom; financial crisis; health scares and even death; a spiritual reckoning; a grandchild is born. There are a couple of years surrounding this for the purification to run through us. It’s an important time to honor one’s self for the hard work of rebirth, and reconstitution into a being of grace.
The Maya, not having anything from writing utensils to smart phones, kept track of time on their body, which was always accessible. We can do the same. The 20 tribes of the Tzolkin are counted on our fingers and toes, starting with the right thumb, then moving to the right foot, then the left foot, and finishing on the left hand.
Right thumb – Yellow Sun
Right pointer finger – Red Dragon
Right middle finger – White Wind
Right ring finger – Blue Night
Right pinky finger – Yellow Seed
Right big toe – Red Serpent
Right pointer toe – White Worldbridger
Right middle toe – Blue Hand
Right ring toe – Yellow Star
Right pinky toe – Red Moon
Left thumb – White Dog
Left pointer finger – Blue Monkey
Left middle finger – Yellow Human
Left ring finger – Red Skywalker
Left pinky finger – White Wizard
Left big toe – Blue Eagle
Left pointer toe – Yellow Warrior
Left middle toe – Red Earth
Left ring toe – White Mirror
Left pinky toe – Blue Storm
The 13 tones that make up a wavespell are counted on the major joints of our body. Jose Arguelles interpreted them to begin on the right ankle – but I made a choice to diverge and begin on the left ankle. I was trained to sense the left side of our body as receptive and feminine – the right side directive and masculine. I prefer to start from receptivity, accepting gifts and direction from the universe.
Left ankle – Magnetic
Left knee – Lunar
Left hip – Electric
Left wrist – Self-Existing
Left elbow – Overtone
Left shoulder – Rhythmic
Neck – Resonant
Right shoulder – Galactic
Right elbow – Solar
Right wrist – Planetary
Right hip – Spectral
Right knee – Crystal
Right ankle – Cosmic
The chakras are also represented, spinning energy centers that are aligned with our spinal column. In the 13 Moon calendar, we celebrate each 7-day week as a spiral through the chakras. These are energetic spaces in our body, yet they can influence physical sensations in the area they govern.
Crown chakra – Day 1
Root chakra – Day 2
Third Eye chakra – Day 3
Sacral chakra – Day 4
Throat chakra – Day 5
Solarplexus chakra – Day 6
Heart chakra – Day 7
I hope this makes it clear that every arising day, in the Tzolkin or 13 Moon calendars, has a specific correlation to three different parts of our body. We can use this as the Maya did, to count off the passing days. Or as a divination tool: my left hip hurts – I am working on Electric issues of being of service, or perhaps overdoing service and extending myself too codependently; I disjointed my left ring finger and as it heals I understand I am addressing my relationship to Red Skywalker‘s shadow energy of escaping out of body in disassociation and addiction. On a heart chakra day we may have heartache, or our heart soars with new stirrings of love and affection.
The point is to bring knowledge and awareness out of solely our brains and into our extended limbs, so that we’re living the calendar’s changes with our whole bodies, holistically.
A ‘kin’ is a Mayan day. The Tzolkin is a count of 260 different kin or days. There’s a nice covergence in language between the Maya and English, that ‘kin’ to us means family or community. It’s much better to think of the 260 kin not as a span of days, but a gathering of tribes, a web of connected tribesmen.
We are each born of one of these days and represent it with our lifetime. We interact with one other in the energy of our birth. We each have an interrelated part.
I am not much of a ceremonialist; my passion of expression is through writing and art and teaching in the oral tradition – but not calling in the gods for public gatherings. I have never met a Mayan ceremonialist and would never want to portray myself as able to present their traditions.
I rarely choose to participate in indigenous ceremony, as I am more comfortably drawn to multi-cultural celebrations where innovation is allowed and not considered appropriation. My children are Native American and I was taught through exposure to their greater family that it does feel like theft when people insensitively reenact indigenous traditions. So I admittedly err on the side of being non-participatory in order to stay clean in my conscience.
That said, we all have karmic connections to other cultures and their traditions. I honor those that feel capable of crossing over to do ceremony in lineages different than their own bloodline. I always reflect that in a past life anyone might have been from a completely different schema, and we may access those spiritual memories in this lifetime by being called toward the culture that we once, etherically, belonged within.
The Mayan vinal is one of the dearest and most enchanted points of focus in my Natural Time practice. It’s also the most esoteric and has dropped out of sight from the publication of most Natural Time calendars.
The original Mayan year began on July 26 with the rise of Sirius at dawn, but it was not subdivided into 28-day moons. That’s an Arguellian hybridization of most indigenous cultures’ alignment with a 28-day month that reflected the menstrual cycle of the tribeswomen. The Maya organized their year into 20-day vinals. Similar to the 20 tribes, the vinals could be counted on one’s fingers and toes.
There were 18 vinals in a year, with a remaining 5 day ceremonial period called a vayeb. July 21-25 are the vayeb days of the Natural Time calendar. Every vinal and the vayeb have a corresponding poetic phrase, a mantra. Laced together, they make up a strangely lyrical verse.
pop – the one who knows
uo – listens in silence
zip – in order to integrate the universe
zotz – based on the knowledge
zec – that reaches the foundations
xul – where with great wisdom a seed is sown
yaxkin – a little ray of the hidden sun
mol – which unifies all the pieces
ch’en – to enter into the well of inner wisdom
yax – where the student clears the mind, taking account of what is not yet ripe
zac – dissipating the clouds of doubt, raising him/herself up
ceh – breaks with habitual caution and reaches the white light
mac – closing the equivocating part and entering a trance
kankin – receives the light of one who knows
muan – in order to see into darkness
pax – touching a music of the future
kayab – with the song and the rhythm
cumku – located in the correct place where the food of divination is obtained
vayeb – all that is needed to obtain the precious stone
My Natural Time Altar Cards include the vinals to help you follow them throughout the year. I have also cited them in my 13 Moon calendars. I was introduced to them in my first Arguellian calendar, and never lost interest in their mystical intrigue. They are included in my website to uphold the tradition of bridging the ancient Mayan origins with our modern meditation.
I always try to cite Jose Arguelles and Eden Sky, even though I have never met either of them. I honor my mother, but I never really allowed her to teach me. I read one book of Jose’s – The Mayan Factor – and studied Eden’s annual calendar for two years, with total devotion to the intricacies she presented. That’s it.
When I teach, I try to be the launch pad for your own self-teaching. I believe we hold this information within our soul – that’s why we’re drawn to Natural Time. First it speaks to us, then it speaks through us. It’s an ether that we learn to imbue ourselves with for greater health and harmony, and insight and intuition.
The Maya today may conversely feel only those of the ancestry can learn these cycles and the mythology held within them. But I feel I am learning directly from the ascended Maya, as anyone can, through devotion and practice.
You can also read about this under the question ‘What is my ‘Guide?’ The days of the Tzolkin sit in the center of a medicine wheel and are surrounded by ‘powers’ – other tribes that assist and offer challenge or support in some way. Your birthday within the Tzolkin means that this medicine wheel affects you your whole life. You have a guide, an occult power, an analog power and an antipode power. You can read more about these in their individual FAQ inquiries.
Most kin days are guided by another tribe of the same color, as are those born within them. I was born Blue Overtone Storm and I am guided by Blue Hand, which is described as having the power of Accomplishment. Blue Storm has the power of Self-Generation, and will sometimes guide other Blue tribes.
Certain of the Tzolkin days, any with Magnetic, Rhythmic or Spectral tones, are not guided by another tribe, however. They are considered ‘guided by its own power doubled’. This is intense! Not only are they self-guided, but the power they represent is amplified. Blue Spectral Monkey, Jose Arguelles’ birth energy, is guided by the power of Magic, doubled.
I would say people born in the self-guiding tones will demonstrate that. They’re independent, self-directed, not open to outside input. And they may seem sort of intense, or obtusely oriented to one big theme: Magic, Accomplishment, Self-Generation. It’s on loudspeaker.
The days that arise as Magnetic, Rhythmic and Spectral are times when we get to embody that, try it on for size. They can be intense days, and they can be effective in teaching us about the tribe, in triplicate: itself, led by itself doubled. It’s a crash and smash course in Tzolkin theology. Prepare yourself, then trust the process of self-direction.
I have been only one time, to the Yucatan. I was leading a small eighth grade class as a Waldorf teacher. Quite coincidentally, our exact travel dates ended up being the 13 days of the Blue Storm wavespell (my own). I was therein deposited into ancient Mayan homelands in the time of my own coming home to myself, and it could not have been more purely and intensely beautiful.
I will probably write extensively about it in the future. I am afraid to distill that experience by returning to the Yucatan soon or with frequency.
You can usually find the most well known Natural Time calendar – the 13 Moon Calendar by Eden Sky – at your local metaphysical bookstore as they have a national distributor. The Foundation for the Law of Time produces different calendars and almanac alternatives. My personal esoteric favorites are the 13 Moon Daybook from Japan and the 13 Moon Diary of Natural Time from the Netherlands.
In the future, Resonant Truth will be publishing eternal calendars. They do not ever grow old, because they are not oriented to the Gregorian calendar. I used to – as most still do – make calendars that cross-pollinated the twelve-month calendar we are all accustomed to with the initially very alien and confounding 13 Moon and Tzolkin sacred calendars. It’s almost impossible for a beginner to not have one leg in the Gregorian count while stepping forward into Natural Time.
This project was economically challenging because I had to sell everything ‘in time’ before the product was outdated. I don’t really like ecological waste, nor to be in a rush toward a deadline. So I now hope to publish two separate calendars that can be reused over every cycle: one for the 13 Moon year that includes correlating Gregorian dates; and one for the 260-day Tzolkin calendar, that does not.
Please support the movement by purchasing a printed calendar from someone. It is a gift to support any calendar creator and their art.
I smoke marijuana a few times a year, ‘medicinally’. I have never tried ayahuasca. At this point, I truly feel that following the Tzolkin and experiencing the magic and synchronicity of it is like being in an altered state, perpetually – or at least, cyclically.
I guess I have judgment that the most rigorous way into an altered state is through spiritual devotion, and I am drawn to the challenge of sustaining my Natural Time practice in order to mind-bend my way into new awakening.
Fortunately, I have never been asked to compromise my spiritual devotion for a paycheck. To an extent, I have desired to be financially compensated for the knowledge I’ve developed, but there hasn’t been any taker so far – such as a big publisher or promoter. I am comfortable with the humility of my work, and the simplicity in which I like to live.
I recommend my own, just because it was an odyssey to write it and it was meant as a thorough and heartfelt guide for beginners. And I would recommend The Mayan Factor, by Jose Arguelles.
I know there are a lot of other titles out there, and I believe that anyone who writes a book has a mastery that is hard to match. But I am committed to Natural Time, much more specifically than to Mayan spirituality in general, and there is not a lot out there to be found on that strain of Mayan mysticism.
And ultimately, I would say no book will teach you what the Tzolkin itself can demonstrate through experiencing its cycles.
I was in a twice-weekly class for two years with a handful of other women. I would call it ‘psychic boot camp’ because it was the undoing of so many intellectual and spiritual assumptions I held in order to strengthen my trust in my intuition and my faith in an unseen world. Everyone of us in the group got our asses kicked by the energy trying to hold us back from the full freedom of repossessing our innate, instinctual inner guidance.
I have been giving readings as a ‘clairvoyant’ ever since, and that practice has strengthened my gifts. And of course, following the Natural Time calendars has also allowed me to trust and enhance my insights. As I have faith in the etheric world, it has faith in me, and shows itself plainly in my work with others.
I also wrote about this anecdotally in my book. It’s not my birth name, but it’s not really a showy New Age name I grafted onto my identity, either! It was my middle name when I married – a fun idea that went along with trying to shake off attachment to my family of origin. Then, perhaps as karmic retribution, I got divorced. The judge thought my middle name was my maiden name, and turned me into another cosmic Californian star-child by accident. I didn’t fight it, obviously. I was out of ideas for what to call myself, and I suppose it is a very simplistic way to say I feel aligned with the ascended Maya, a star people.
Yes, because I am very shy in some ways, and when I am on the phone, I don’t get stuck being self-conscious. I think phone readings can be more intimate and moving than in-person work, because there is less everyday normalcy, in that I am not taking in your physical characteristics nor you mine; I am intending to look deeper, at soul movement. I feel sad when people distrust the impact of working over the phone, because the phone is still sort of a miracle to me, crossing and connecting great distances.
When I use Skype for international calls, I do not use the video, just the sound. It’s not necessary to take in each other’s visuals, just the field of energy.
Truly, nothing stays with me as consistently as in lak’ech, ‘I am another yourself.’ But I do not maintain that lots of the times, in terms of resenting or blaming others, seeing them as less or better than I. I am totally fallible.
For the past year I have been saying something sort of childlike, in many situations, sometimes aloud but as much to myself: ‘I’m doing the best I can.’ It seems like something I didn’t recognize earlier on.
