Caban is the seventeenth of the twenty day signs of the Tzolk'in, the 260-day sacred count of the Maya, still kept by highland daykeepers and reconstructed for the Classic period. Recorded here by its Yucatec name, Caban, it corresponds to the day No'j in the living K'iche' tradition. Its imagery is the earth and its movement, and, in the K'iche' No'j, thought, knowledge, and wisdom, the mind that understands. It joins the sense of the living, moving earth with intelligence and synchronicity, the incense of the mind rising like smoke. In the directional scheme that runs through the twenty signs it belongs to the east and the colour red. These are the meanings the Maya calendrical tradition carries for the day, presented as that living and reconstructed tradition frames them.
Caban is the seventeenth of the twenty Tzolk'in day signs; the living K'iche' tradition knows the corresponding day as No'j, meaning thought, knowledge or wisdom, distinct in emphasis from the Yucatec sign's own association with earth and movement, though contemporary daykeeping practice reads the two as compatible facets of the same underlying sign, intelligence understood as an expression of the earth's own ordering movement. In the directional scheme, Caban belongs to the east and the colour red, opening the fifth and final four-day directional set. No'j is widely regarded among contemporary K'iche' daykeepers as governing intellectual and scientific work, and days bearing this sign are traditionally considered favourable for study, planning and the resolution of complex problems.