The corresponding Maya day is Chuwen, the monkey, and in the Maya record the monkey is not primarily a trickster but a patron of the arts: the howler monkey scribes and artisans, Hun Batz and Hun Chuen of the Popol Vuh, are the elder half-brothers of the Hero Twins, turned into monkeys for their arrogance, and they become the gods of writing, painting, sculpture and music. Classic-period vase painting shows monkey scribes at work with brush and codex, and the day is accordingly associated with craft and with the making of things. The Dreamspell reading of play, magic and illusion has picked up the monkey's reputation from a general and largely non-Maya stock of trickster imagery; the Maya association is with skilled work.
Chuen is the eleventh of the twenty authentic Tzolk'in day signs, its imagery the monkey, linked in Maya art to skilled craft, weaving and artistic work; the living K'iche' daykeeping tradition knows the corresponding day as B'atz', meaning thread or monkey, which opens the 260-day count in the K'iche' calendar's own conventional starting sequence. In the directional scheme, Chuen belongs to the west and the colour black. Arguelles's Solar Seal 11, Blue Monkey, borrows Chuen's monkey and craft imagery directly, though it makes no reference to B'atz''s distinct standing as the K'iche' tradition's own starting sign.