About The Tzolkin

The Tzolkin is an ancestral Mayan calendar. Like many ancient civilisations, the Mayas had extensive knowledge of planets and astronomy and had more than a dozen calendars to keep track of nature’s cycles and rhythms. They used these cycles to organise important days and aligned their agriculture accordingly.

The Tzolkin, which translates to ‘count of days’, is one of these calendars. It was used by the Mayas for divination and self-knowledge. This calendar count is a fractal of larger counts—years, decades, and so on—and, in its essence, contains the whole.

The Tzolkin is based on a combination of 20 solar signs and 13 lunar tones, representing the light and shadow in all that is. These elements are reflected in our bodies as 20 fingers and toes and 13 joints. These, multiplied, give us a total of 260 days, the duration of a human gestation or pregnancy. This planner is a simplified version of these signs and symbols and is accessible to all, including those without previous knowledge of the Tzolkin.

The modern version of the Tzolkin has been introduced by Dr Jose Arguelles as the Dreamspell in the 1980s.