Electric

This is the third of the thirteen numbers, or tones, that combine with the twenty day signs to form the 260-day Tzolk'in. In living Maya daykeeping the coefficient is simply the number three, oxib', and in the rhythm of the trecena, the thirteen-day period a day sign opens, the third day is often associated with action and service set in motion. The name recorded here, Electric, and its keyword of activation belong to the modern Dreamspell system of Jose Arguelles, a New Age framework from the 1980s that is distinct from the Maya calendar and not part of traditional daykeeping. The daykeepers reckon by the number itself. The authentic element is the coefficient three and its role in the interlocking of thirteen numbers with twenty day signs that generates the 260 unique days of the sacred count.

The third of the thirteen numbers that combine with the twenty day signs to generate the Tzolk'in's 260-day count, marking the third day of its trecena, the thirteen-day period formed as a fixed sign's number counts upward from one to thirteen before the day sign itself advances to the next in sequence. The widely circulated Dreamspell name for this position, "Electric," is not a traditional Maya term; it comes from Jose Arguelles's 1987 system, which layers its own invented tone vocabulary onto a structurally similar but numerically distinct 260-day count that does not stay synchronised with the authentic Tzolk'in over time, since the Dreamspell calendar skips the Gregorian leap day while the true Tzolk'in count, kept unbroken by living daykeepers, does not.

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

Three is written as three dots, and the third day of a trecena is the last that can be written in dots alone before the count reaches four. In practice all four of the first coefficients are written with dots and the fifth introduces the bar, so the visual character of a numbered day changes as the trecena advances.

The coefficient is not a property of the day sign it accompanies. Any of the twenty signs can carry any of the thirteen numbers, and over a full 260-day round each does so exactly once, which means a sign appears with the number three once in every round and a specific numbered sign such as 3 Akbal recurs only once in 260 days.

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.

Electric, the name attached to this coefficient in modern popular writing, originates with Jose Arguelles's Dreamspell of 1987. It is not a Maya term and does not appear in the Classic inscriptions, the codices, the colonial Yucatec sources or the practice of present-day daykeepers, who use the numeral.

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