This is the eighth of the thirteen numbers, or tones, that combine with the twenty day signs to build the 260-day Tzolk'in. In living Maya daykeeping the coefficient is simply the number eight, wajxaqib', a number of particular ceremonial importance, for the day Wajxaqib' B'atz', Eight Monkey, opens the ceremonial round and is a great festival among the K'iche', an occasion for initiating new daykeepers. The name recorded here, Galactic, and its keyword of harmony and integrity belong to the modern Dreamspell system of Jose Arguelles, a New Age framework from the 1980s distinct from traditional practice. The daykeepers reckon by the number itself. The authentic element is the coefficient eight and its place in the pairing of thirteen numbers with twenty signs to produce the 260 distinct days of the sacred count.
The eighth of the thirteen numbers that combine with the twenty day signs to generate the Tzolk'in's 260-day count, marking the eighth day of its trecena, past the cycle's midpoint at seven and moving into its final stretch. The widely circulated Dreamspell name for this position, "Galactic," reflects Jose Arguelles's own late-twentieth-century interest in galactic and cosmic themes rather than any attested Classic or Postclassic Maya vocabulary; no surviving inscription or colonial-period source uses a term resembling "galactic" for this or any other Tzolk'in number, and readers encountering the term in popular contexts should understand it as a modern addition layered onto, not translated from, the authentic count kept by Maya daykeepers.
Sources Time and the Highland MayaBarbara Tedlock with Dreamspell: The Journey of Timeship Earth 2013Jose Arguelles