Solar

This is the ninth 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 nine, b'elejeb', a number strongly associated with the nine lords of the night and the levels of the underworld, and often felt as a day of the ancestors and of greater cycles. The name recorded here, Solar, and its keyword of intention belong to the modern Dreamspell system of Jose Arguelles, a New Age overlay from the 1980s that is distinct from the Maya count and not part of traditional daykeeping. The daykeepers reckon by the number itself. The authentic element is the coefficient nine and its role in the interlocking of thirteen numbers with twenty day signs that produces the 260 unique days of the sacred count.

The ninth of the thirteen numbers that combine with the twenty day signs to generate the Tzolk'in's 260-day count, marking the ninth day of its trecena. Nine carries its own separate cosmological association in Maya tradition, corresponding in some colonial and epigraphic sources to the nine levels of the underworld, Xibalba, paired with the thirteen levels of the heavens in a cosmological structure distinct from, though sometimes loosely associated with, the Tzolk'in's own thirteen-number count; the Bolon Yokte K'uh, a group of nine deities attested in Classic inscriptions including the much-discussed Tortuguero Monument 6, is one specific attested reference point for the number nine's independent religious significance.

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

Nine is written as a bar and four dots, the last coefficient before the second bar appears at ten. Nine has a distinct presence in Classic Maya date recording: the supplementary series that follows the Tzolk'in day in a full Initial Series includes a glyph from a set of nine, cycling every nine days, which epigraphers label G1 through G9 and identify with the Lords of the Night.

That nine-day cycle runs alongside the 260-day and 365-day counts as a third independent period, and colonial Yucatec sources name a group of nine deities, the Bolon Ti Ku, against a group of thirteen, the Oxlahun Ti Ku. Nine is also the number of levels commonly given for the underworld in Postclassic Mesoamerican cosmology.

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.

Solar, the modern name for this coefficient, belongs to Jose Arguelles's Dreamspell of 1987 and not to any of this material. The Lords of the Night are a genuine and separate Maya cycle; the Dreamspell tone names are a twentieth-century overlay on the coefficients, and the two have nothing to do with each other.

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