The corresponding Maya day is Chikchan, the serpent. Snakes are among the most important creatures in Maya iconography: the vision serpent through whose jaws ancestors and gods appear in Classic-period relief, the feathered serpent of the Postclassic, and the sky-band serpents of the codices. In modern K'iche' practice the day Kan or Can is associated with justice, with the spinal column and with the force that moves in the body, so the Dreamspell reading of life force and instinct is not far from one living interpretation. What should be kept clear is that the modern highland readings belong to communities that still keep the count, and are their property to teach; the Dreamspell reading, whatever its overlap, was constructed separately in the late 1980s.
Chicchan is the fifth of the twenty authentic Tzolk'in day signs, its imagery the serpent, associated in Maya iconography with life-force and with rain-bringing celestial power; the living K'iche' daykeeping tradition knows the corresponding day, somewhat confusingly, as Kan, an unrelated homophone of the Yucatec fourth day sign Kan discussed elsewhere in this atlas. In the directional scheme, Chicchan belongs to the east and the colour red, reopening the cycle's second four-sign directional set. Arguelles's Solar Seal 5, Red Serpent, borrows Chicchan's serpent imagery and its association with vital, instinctive force, and opens the Dreamspell's second wavespell.