Red Skywalker (Seal 13)

Red Skywalker is the thirteenth Solar Seal, red and of the east in Arguelles's rotation, and it closes the second wavespell. Its stated triad is space as its power, exploring as its action and wakefulness as its essence, and it is read in Dreamspell practice for adventure, for the prophet or wanderer and for the pillar joining earth and sky. The name is a modern coinage with no Maya equivalent, and the Dreamspell material sometimes glosses it as the sky-walker or prophet.

In the Dreamspell tradition, Red Skywalker, Solar Seal 13, is described as governing exploration, space and the wakeful dreaming of new possibilities, an interpretation with no connection to Ben's borrowed reed and growth imagery beyond the fact that Arguelles chose to rename this particular seal. Red Skywalker belongs to the Dreamspell's Red colour family, alongside Red Dragon, Red Serpent, Red Moon and Red Earth. Skywalker is one of the names the overview of this system already flags as replacing an attested Maya meaning outright rather than merely translating or extending it. Its Dreamspell wavespell is the thirteenth and last of twenty, closing the wavespell sequence before it returns to Red Dragon's opening wavespell, a structural echo of how Ben's own position, thirteenth of the twenty Tzolk'in day signs, sits at the midpoint of the authentic count rather than at any structurally final position within it.

The corresponding Maya day is B'en, associated with green or growing maize and with the reed, and by extension with the household and with the maize plant standing in the field. The Aztec equivalent day is Acatl, reed. Some readings connect it to the world tree and the maize plant as an axis, which is presumably the thread by which Arguelles reached a sky-walking pillar, but the connection is his rather than the sources'. In modern K'iche' practice the corresponding day Aj is associated with the home, with children and with the cane or staff of authority. The Dreamspell reading of exploration and space is a considerable distance from either.

Ben is the thirteenth of the twenty authentic Tzolk'in day signs, its imagery the reed, growth and the home; the living K'iche' daykeeping tradition knows the corresponding day as Aj, meaning reed or cane, a name closely aligned with Ben's own sense. In the directional scheme, Ben belongs to the east and the colour red, opening the Tzolk'in's fourth four-sign directional set. Arguelles's Solar Seal 13, Red Skywalker, departs furthest here from the borrowed name's original sense: "Skywalker" has no basis in Ben or Aj's reed and growth imagery, and is instead an invented name reflecting Arguelles's own space-age interpretive framing.