This article was published in Connecting Link, Editor: Susanne Konicov, Time Shift, pp 67-69, Issue #17, Alto, MI, July/August 1992.
Is there more than one calendar by which to measure time? Yes!
Lets take a brief tour of calendars to see how various cultures mapped either the passage of the moon or the sun. After this brief tour we will then look at the calendar of the 13 moons, and how José Argüelles in his new work titled Dreamspell is bringing to light the Mayan calendrical system of 13 moons to be used as a self divinatory system of planetary transformation.
First and foremost a calendar is a system of measuring the passage of time.The easiest way to measure any time was to anticipate the seasons, watch the sun and the moon, or watch how the plants grew at particular times of the year. Albeit this is a simple way to begin this story that is essentially the way it began. Nature has periodic cycles associated with it and star gazing is probable the largest system of measurement that has ever been used. Celestial navigation has been used by all cultures throughout time as even indicated in some of the deciphered records of ancient Sumer which date well into 6000 BC.
The moon has been the predominant unit of measure. The interval between successive full moons, sometimes referred to as the lunar month, was used by most native cultures. The Lunar month lasts about 29 and one half days. If the sun were used to measure time there is what is called a solar year. The solar year lasts about 365 days and has two crucial points the two equinoxes and the two solstices. The accuracy of such a calendar is established if the equinoxes always fall on or about the same days each year. The kind of a year that is used to do all this measuring is called a tropical year or the year of the seasons. This is dependent on the interval between two successive returns of the sun to the vernal equinox.
Most ancient calendars represented some compromise between the lunar and solar years. The Babylonians intercalated an extra month three times in a cycle of eight years. The Egyptians used a solar calendar and used the Dog Star Sirius as a key marker in the eastern sky. The Romans borrowed from the Greeks, and by the time of Julius Caesar the accumulated errors in all calendars caused the introduction of the Julian Calendar. Caesar ruled that the year we know as 46 B.C. should have 445 days and was called the year of confusion. Interestingly enough the Julian calendar was used for over 1,500 years. After all the corrections the Julian calendar lasted about 365 days.
Finally the Gregorian calendar was established to correct any errors in the Julian calendar so in 1582 Pope Gregory XIII corrected the Julian calendar. The Roman Catholic nations adopted the Gregorian calendar, but German states kept the Julian until 1700. Great Britain and all the American Colonies changed to the Gregorian calendar in 1752.
That's not all either. There is also a Jewish calendar, a Muslim calendar, a Chinese calendar, and last but not least the one we are so interested in is the Mayan Calendar?
The accuracy of the Mayan calendar was amazing. The old calendar had 18 months and 20 days each. There was a name for each month and day, and at the end of the year there were 5 extra days belonging to no particular month. The calendar showed 28 weeks, each of 13 numbered days or a total of 364 days with only one day left over. The Mayan calendar is one of the most accurate in all the world and considering that the Mayan long count or the beginning of their calendar took place in 3113 B.C. one has to re-consider how these people were able to understand with such accuracy the movements of the planetary bodies around the earth.
This short review brings up the issue of what it has been like for so many centuries to adjust all these variables to some consensus. The one major factor in all calendars is the movement of the moon , sun, and stars. Today most Westerners take for granted, or don,t even bother to consider the meaning of a calendar. But to the ancients this was a task reserved for only the priests.
Dreamspell is a new board game that has been introduced by Jose Arguelles. Dreamspell also has the Mayan calendar displayed as well as an understanding of the 13 moons. Here again the 13 moon calendar is re-appearing after so many centuries. Its not that 13 moons are not being used in the world today by some native tribes, but it is important that the meaning of the 13 moons is understood. Jose is offering Dreamspell players a chance to break out of a time measuring system which is based on productivity and money into a system that allows us to understand the natural cycles embedded in our solar system. However, in Dreamspell it is not only the loom of the 13 moons which are revealed but also the cosmology of the Mayan belief system which reclaims our galactic heritage. Each one of the 13 moons has a different meaning, each one lasts 28 days and each of those days has associated with it the deeper meaning of the Mayan cosmology.
Ever since Arguelles published his trilogy, Earth Ascending, The Mayan Factor, and Surfers of the Zuvuya many people have come to know of the Mayan's as a deeply spiritual people who believed in receiving instructions from Hunab Ku on how best to live their lives. Hunab Ku is centered at the hub of our local galaxy. The Mayans called this flow of information from Hunab Ku as the great G force, and used the G symbol on all their temples. To the Mayans this G force represented all the understandings of measurement and movement in the universe. When the Mayans developed their calendar they used a grid composed of 260 squares each with a number associated with it.
These numbers represented the movement of the planets in our solar system as well as other sequences which scholars are still discovering. The grid is known as the Tzolkin or the Mayan Sacred Calendar. For over 30 years Arguelles has been studying this grid, and his discovery of how the Mayan's used this calendar is the basis for Dreamspell. As I mentioned earlier the current standard for measuring time is the Gregorian calendar. Keeping in mind that a calendar is a system to measure time it also stands to reason that any calendar will also measure cycles. Arguelles proposes that the Gregorian calendar is an unnatural system to humans to measure time by, and also keeps us humans earth centered rather than galactic centered.
This unnaturalness is expressed by Arguelles as "timing frequencies", and the Gregorian frequency is considered a 12/60 frequency meaning 12 months and 60 minutes per hour. This 12/60 frequency or ratio, Arguelles feels, is a timing frequency which represents the "third-dimensional civilization". It is this 12/60 civilization which is responsible for the concept of materialism, and thus the main underpinning for the industrial society which is using up all of natures natural resources.
The Mayan calendar, on the other hand, according to Arguelles, functions on a 13/20 frequency which stands for 13 moons, and the 20 sacred glyphs which make up the 20 days in a Mayan month. Dreamspell is, therefore, a board game that allows participation in the correction of the 12/60 timing frequency, and replaces it with the perpetual calendar of the 13 moons.
The 13 moon calendar provides a perpetually recurring, logically consistent annual time frame in accord with the naturally occuring 13 lunations of planet earth. The 13 moon calendar can do this because it is a galactic timing device.
According to Arguelles, being galactic, the adoption of the 13 moon calendar will automatically enter humanity into the 4th dimension. Therefore, the 13 moon calendar gives humanity back to a larger solar-galactic 52 year cycle. It takes exactly 52 cycles of the Mayan calendar to return to the same glyph on the same exact day in the calendar. According to Dreamspell the last possible moment for entering the 13/20 timing frequency is July 26, 1992, and is referred to as Time Shift. Some people also consider this date of July 26, 1992 as Harmonic Convergence II.
However, it is to be known as Time Shift. By accepting and adopting the Dreamspell calendar of the 13 moons, Arguelles provides a rite of passage into a new time, the 4th-dimensional order of the Galactic Federation, the great G force, called Hunab Ku by the Mayans. Each Dreamspell player learns the day they were born on in the Mayan calendar, and acquires one of the 20 sacred signs as a "galactic signature", and enters the Rainbow Nation as a kin member. Each kin member also has a number, and a color associated with their sign, and it is one of these 260 numbers comprising the Tzolkin or the Mayan sacred calendar that enables playing the Dreamspell. The Dreamspell board game allows the kin member to move their glyphs or sacred signs over vast periods of time represented on the game boards called the "Chromatic Time Tunnel".
By playing Dreamspell you enter this tunnel , and at the other end meet the "galactic fifth force", also known as the Galactic federation. Dreamspellers' learn how to communicate with the Galactic Federation, and reclaim their galactic heritage which was removed by using the 12/60 timing frequency.
For example: I am a White Crystal Dog in the Dreamspell, and I use the planet Mercury to assist me in navigating in the Chromatic Time Tunnel. I am guided by the wind and the spirit, and also aided by the moon and challenged by the sun. All the mysterious forces in the known and unknown universe are overseen by the Monkey glyph who presides over all those hidden forces impacting on my life. All of my kin relationships form my personal destiny pattern or my radial polarity configuration. Likewise every other kin has a different set of relationships, and when all the Dreamspell players learn their kin relationships they form the Rainbow Nation, and telepathically communicate in the 4th-dimension. In a nutshell that is the essence of Dreamspell.
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