Crystal

This is the twelfth 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 twelve, kablajuj, near the end of the thirteen-day trecena, often felt as a day of gathering and understanding what the period has brought. The name recorded here, Crystal, and its keyword of cooperation and understanding belong to the modern Dreamspell system of Jose Arguelles, a New Age framework from the 1980s distinct from traditional Maya practice; the daykeepers reckon by the number itself. The authentic element is the coefficient twelve and its place in the pairing of thirteen numbers with twenty day signs that generates the 260 distinct days of the sacred count.

The twelfth of the thirteen numbers that combine with the twenty day signs to generate the Tzolk'in's 260-day count, marking the twelfth day of its trecena, immediately before the cycle's completion. Contemporary K'iche' daykeepers generally read the final days of a trecena as carrying the accumulated character of the whole thirteen-day period, a culmination of what began at the trecena's first day, rather than treating each number as a wholly self-contained unit disconnected from its position in the broader thirteen-day sequence, a holistic reading consistent with how the Tzolk'in is used in practice for both personal-name calculation and communal ceremonial timing.

Sources Time and the Highland MayaBarbara Tedlock with Dreamspell: The Journey of Timeship Earth 2013Jose Arguelles

Twelve is written as two bars and two dots, and it is the penultimate day of a trecena. There is no Maya cycle of twelve in the calendar, which is worth noting because a reader arriving from the European zodiac or the Chinese branches may expect one; the Maya periods are five, nine, thirteen, twenty, 260 and 365.

That difference in the basic numbers is a good guard against false equivalence. The twenty-eight Chinese xiu, the twenty-seven Indian nakshatras and the twenty-eight Arabic manazil are all lunar mansion systems and can be compared with care; the Tzolk'in is not a lunar system at all and has no counterpart outside Mesoamerica.

Maya numerals are written with a dot for one and a bar for five, and the coefficient of a day is written in exactly that way in the inscriptions, set beside the day sign in its cartouche. The system is positional and includes a sign for zero, which is why the Long Count can be written as a string of places, but within the 260-day count no number above thirteen ever occurs and the notation stays simple.

Crystal, the name attached to this coefficient in modern popular writing, comes from Jose Arguelles's Dreamspell of 1987. The atlas records the Dreamspell as a modern invention with a named author and a date, and records the Tzolk'in as an ancient count still kept, and does not allow either description to borrow the other's authority.

Sources Maya Hieroglyphic Writing: An IntroductionJ. Eric S. Thompson with Dreamspell: The Journey of Timeship Earth 2013Jose Arguelles