Mayan Calendar and The Dreamspell / Thirteen Moon calendar.What are the differences?

[..... (RaInBoW wArRiOr) ......]

Today there seems to be two different calendar systems that are presenting themselves as Mayan alternatives to the Gregorian calendar. One of them is the so-called Dreamspell/Thirteen Moon calendar and the other is the traditional Mayan calendar system, which revolves around the Sacred Calendar that is still in use in certain parts of Guatemala. As we are approaching the Oneness Celebration and the ensuing Return of the Calendar of Quetzalcoatl it is becoming all the more important to discuss the differences between these two calendars. Yet, in some countries the Dreamspell calendar is so dominating that few will even know that it differs in significant and profound ways from the traditional Mayan calendar. This is not the least because Dreamspell teachers will often not bring up the differences, but rather portray the Dreamspell as identical with the Mayan calendar or as a modernized variety of it. On the technical level there are however some very significant differences between the Dreamspell and the traditional Mayan calendar:

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1/ The Dreamspell/Thirteen Moon calendar is makes jumps on certain days. One very notable such jump is at the leap day on February 29 every four years (Olympic years such as 2004). The Traditional Sacred Calendar however never makes any jumps and is perfectly regular. It follows the uninterrupted flow of divine creation and assigns a Sacred energy of time to every day. Every day, without exception, has a sign and a number associated with it. The idea that there would be days without an energy in the Sacred Calendar seems very alien to Mayan day-keepers and it is not easy to interpret what this would mean. What , in other words, would make February 29, 2004 so different from all other days that it would not have a spiritual energy? After all, the decision made by Pope Gregory in 1582 to make this particular day a leap day was not made by the Maya. In the Dreamspell calendar his decision has really been given the important role of excluding a certain day, which even affects the understanding that people today have of the Sacred Mayan Calendar.

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2/ The Thirteen Moon calendar similarly makes a jump every year on July 26. This is in contrast to the traditional Mayan way of counting moons, where the durations of months alternate between 29 and 30 days. These were followed without interruption of the Traditional Mayan Moon calendar was a reflection of the phases of the moon. The traditional Mayan way of counting months is synchronized with the natural female cycles of menstruation, ovulation and gestation, while this is not true for either the Dreamspell calendar or the Gregorian calendar. While modern doctors often claim that the female cycle is 28 days, there is extensive evidence, both mythological and modern statistical, to show that the female cycle is indeed linked to the cycle of the full moon of 29.5 days. Presumably, medicine has throughout the patriarchal era sought to deny this magical link between the female and the full moon and so a fictitious cycle of 28 days has been invented. Neither the Gregorian calendar with its alternating numbers of days in the month, 28, 30 or 31, nor the Thirteen Moon calendar is synchronized with the female cycles and both of them seems to deny the link between the female and the full moon.

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3/ The Traditional Sacred Calendar of the Maya (tzolkin) that is still in use in certain parts of Guatemala is directly linked to the long-term prophetic thirteen baktun calendar called the Long Count. Thus, on a micro scale the Traditional tzolkin reproduces the energies of time of the Long Count. The Dreamspell tzolkin count, on the other hand, which makes an interruption every four years could not have any such direct relationship to the prophetic Long Count. Since it makes jumps on the leap day it will reflect a certain flow of creation for four years only, and after a leap day it will reflect a new flow. The traditional tzolkin instead reflects one and the same ongoing creation process without interruption.

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4/ The prophetic calendars of the Maya are based on non-physical cycles. They are non-astronomical cycles based on the inherent creative energies of time itself. The Dreamspell/Thirteen Moon calendar is instead built around the particular astronomical cycle of our planet around the sun of 365,25 (at the current time 365,2422) days. The Traditional Mayan calendar system is valid for the whole universe and goes back to the so-called Big Bang about 15 billion years ago when the universe was born and no solar systems with their particular cycles even existed. This is according to modern physicists and the Mayan calendar alike. Since the Traditional Mayan calendar is not limited to our own planet or solar system it is not subordinated to its particular astronomical cycles, such as the solar year. It reflects a cosmic process of creation, where our own particular solar system is just a small part. In fact, the Traditional Mayan calendar system would be equally valid on Mars or Venus or any other planet in the cosmos as it is on earth, despite the fact that the periods of revolution of these planets would be very different from ours. In this, it differs from all other calendars in the world that are geocentric and based on the parameters of our own particular planet.

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It thus seems that the purpose of the Dreamspell and the Mayan calendar is very different.

While the Dreamspell calendar aspires to present a new way of dividing the solar year into months, the traditional calendar describes an ongoing cosmic process of creation that has no interruptions. In technical terms the main differences between the two calendars are the ones summarized in points 1-4 above. These differences between the Dreamspell/Thirteen Moon and the Mayan calendar are too rarely pointed out and debated, with the consequence that it is not always easy for people, especially not those new to Mayan calendrics, to make an informed choice about what calendar to choose. Yet, of course, what is important are not the technical differences, but the spiritual consequences. The Calendar of Quetzalcoatl needs to provide guidance for the path of humanity towards Enlightenment and in the upcoming turbulent times only such a calendar will serve humanity.

[caro]

Dear Living in Peace

It is true the Dreamspell has a new purpose but, if I may say so, what you put forward seems to stem from superficial research. The Dreamspell arose from intensive research and study of the Mayan calendar by Dr Jose Arguelles over many years (see his book the Mayan Factor). It is a tool for synchronizing all the ancient 13-moon calendars with the Tzolkin, to re-attune us to the mathematical codes of time and holographic consciousness. 'While the Mayan Factor accounts for the persistence of modern Maya survivors known as “day keepers,” who continue work with the Tzolkin or sacred 260-day calendar, the author, Dr. José Argüelles, plunged into mathematical and historical analyses based on the Tzolkin, which demonstrated it to be more than “just a calendar.” What the Mayan Factor really pointed to is the elaboration of a point of view about time and the existence of a calendar or actually, system of calendars, totally apart from either the Gregorian calendar or the lunar calendars of the Old World. Indeed, according to a contemporary Mayan thinker and ceremonialist, Hunbatz Men, the Maya actually operated with at least seventeen calendars in the prime of their civilization, thirteen hundred years ago.

Two years after the publication of the Mayan Factor, the author and his wife, who had long since begun an experiment living according to the cycles of the Mayan calendar rather than the Gregorian, found themselves in the Museum of Time, Geneva, Switzerland. Because of their immersion in another, “outside” view of time, the Argüelles were able to make an astonishing discovery which was to profoundly affect the course of calendar reform. This was the discovery of the 12:60 and 13:20 timing frequencies, the basis of what they later came to call the Law of Time.

What the Argüelles saw in the Museum of Time was actually the history of the mechanization of time. Incorporated into the Gregorian calendar, which had the same historical root in the metric division of space as the mechanical clock, the combination of mechanical clock and irregular calendar had produced an artificial timing frequency whose unconscious acceptance by and grip of the human mind had caused the human species to deviate farther and farther from the cycles of nature. This timing frequency the Argüelles identified as the 12:60, in contrast to what they now knew was the natural timing frequency, 13:20. This 13:20 frequency is derived from the Tzolkin, which they also referred to as the harmonic module, a permutation matrix of 13 x 20 = 260 units. The singular nature of the use and proliferation of so many calendars by the ancient Maya they now understood to be the result of the Maya knowing the actual timing frequency of the universe, 13:20, something consciously unknown to all other people’s of the Earth.

Knowing nothing whatsoever about the earlier efforts at calendar reform, the Argüelles’ first conclusion drawn from their discovery of the 12:60-13:20 timing frequencies was to change the calendar. Instinctively they knew that the thirteen month 28 day calendar was the appropriate solution, as well as the first step to be taken by the human race to conform again to the natural cycles and thus, save itself and its biosphere from destruction. From their knowledge of the different Mayan calendars they also knew that the Maya possessed a thirteen moon calendar, the Tun Uc or Moon count. Following the Chilam Balam prophetic tradition of the Maya, and in accord with the heliacal rising of Sirius, the synchronization or New Year’s date of the new calendar was set at July 26. July 25, therefore became the Day-Out-of-Time (same as “null day”), which the Argüelles’ also referred to as galactic freedom day or Green Day, and which was for the purpose of forgiving debts and sins and wiping the slate clean. The Argüelles also perceived that while in the 12:60 system “time is money,” in the 13:20 system, “time is art.”

With the Thirteen Moon Calendar as the basis of their investigation of the Law of Time, the Argüelles forged ahead creating a “tool kit” of the new time called Dreamspell, the Journey of Timeship Earth 2013 (1991). Already a whole systems thinker, Argüelles had identified the unique Mayan vigesimal mathematical system with the mathematics of the fourth dimension, the cause of a radical revisioning of the modern physics of time. In his study of the relation of the human within its environment, Argüelles came to study the works of the Russian biospheric scientist, Vladimir Vernadsky (1863-1945). It was in Vernadsky’s final work, Problems in Biogeochemistry II (1944) that Argüelles found what he was looking for: a statement confirming Argüelles’ perception that modern (Gregorian) science had totally misperceived the nature of time by applying the metrics of space as measurements of time, thereby obscuring altogether the actual nature of time. In other words, time is a dimension totally apart from, or greater than space, and, according to Vernadsky, from the point of view of time space is an infinitely locatable point.

On this basis Argüelles was able to write “A Treatise on Time Viewed from its own Dimension” (published as The Call of Pacal Votan, 1996). The conclusion to this text considers what Vernadsky calls the biosphere-noosphere transition from the perspective of the analysis of the fourth-dimensional timing standards. According to this analysis, the contemporary human Earth civilization is already in the midst of this transition which augurs a radical shift in operations and evolutionary advance into what Vernadsky calls the “Psychozoic Era.” Argüelles was convinced that the Thirteen Moon calendar change was the most intelligent and only peaceful way for humanity to change its frequency and participate positively in this climactic evolutionary change.

The Argüelles also perceived that due to the unconscious mental effects of the Gregorian calendar, the contradictions inherent in global society are greater than the capacity for their resolution, while the problems created for the environment are far greater than nature’s capacity to restore and regenerate itself. Something dramatic had to happen. In his continuing efforts at decoding the ancient Mayan hieroglyph, on July 26, 1993, something dramatic happened to Argüelles. He began decoding the stone sarcophagus of the tomb of Pacal Votan (603-683) of Palenque, and was thunderstruck by the prophecy of the Thirteen Moons. This prophecy is known as the Telektonon and states succinctly: “Telektonon is revealed to you, God’s plan for peace on Earth, the last and only hope for spiritual renewal and salvation: immediate acceptance and adoption of the 28-day, thirteen moon way, the calendar Telektonon.” From this was born the World Thirteen Moon Calendar Change Peace Movement.

Of note is the persistence of the thirteen moon calendar: Comte’s Positivist calendar was derived from Tahiti. The Andean thirteen moon calendar “Pachacuti” is still in use. The Maya knew and used the thirteen Moon Calendar, calling it the Tun Uc. In ancient England and Europe this same calendar is known as the Druid calendar. Archeology from Japan shows that this calendar was known to its ancestor peoples. The remembrance of the 28 day-cycle, which after all is the human female biological cycle is recalled in the traditions of the 28 lunar mansions of the Chinese and the Hindus, while among the Lakota, 28 poles were always used for the construction of the tipi. And not only is 28 the mean number of days of the lunation cycle, it is also the number of days it takes the sun to rotate at its diameter. The point of” returning” to use of this calendar is precisely because it corresponds to the female menstruation cycle while possessing a profound natural harmony and regularity. What better way for humanity to advance its evolutionary cause and return to the cycles of nature?

The myth of the succession of the weekly cycle has no power in the face of continued use of a calendar which is inherently problematic and without resolution. This myth must be seen for what it is, the final dogma of the Gregorian Calendar. Following the defeat at all efforts at calendar reform in the first half of this century, the Gregorian calendar has had a half century reprieve. But it must be asked, for instance, on which calendar do the NATO powers depend? Humanity must now walk out on its own and experience a day out of time, no day of the week at all, not as chaos but as the beginning possibility of relieving all debts and creating an atmosphere of forgiveness and reconciliation where peace may be practiced as the proliferation of art and culture once again.

Finally, in consideration of the promise of peace guaranteed by a new calendar of harmony and regularity, we should consider the opportunity presented by the principle of “incorporation, disincorporation and regeneration in time.” Virtually all existing institutions are incorporated in the Gregorian Calendar. This means that their sovereignty in time is owing to their incorporation date in the Gregorian calendar. To relinquish this calendar is actually to disincorporate all of these institutions–whether they be corporation or nation state. In the complete calendar reform, all sovereignty in time must be renegotiated in peace.

The thirteen moon calendar is the calendar of peace. It is not in reaction to an old calendar or any old institution, but on behalf of a profound common sense and discovery of an underlying law of nature, the Law of Time.

The Dreamspell is a description of the synchronic order. The Long Count is the sacred count of days. Both use the same harmonic standard - the Tzolkin or Harmonic Module. For Dreamspell, the Harmonic Module is an absolute fourth-dimensional referencing matrix and synchronic gauge. For the Long Count, it is an ever-recurring 260-day count beginning at 4 Ahau, 8 Cumhu August 13 BC 3113 (3114), and which establishes endless cycles of vinals, tuns, katuns, and baktuns.

The Dreamspell is a new dispensation. There is no conflict between Dreamspell and the Long Count. They are merely two different standards that serve two different purposes, both operating with different applications of the same system. The synchronic order harmonizes all timing systems.' See www.lawoftime.org and www.tortuga.com for more information.

I have lived and studied this calendar for 4 years now. It is a game of tuning into all the mathematical permutations and expanding cycles of 13:20, the secret of time which the Mayans gave us. Living this has increased my holographic awareness in all directions, and made more conscious my inner memory of not only the tzolkin, the ancient runes, and the I Ching but mainly an understanding of where - me, humanity, the galaxy, the universe, the Source - find ourselves at this moment of the Great Mythic Quest.