Only the date matters: the tzolk’in is a calendar, not an observation of the sky. The calculator counts the days elapsed since the reference date of the Maya count, with the correlation accepted by most scholars (known as GMT, constant 584,283), the one still followed today by the daykeepers of Guatemala. It gives your number (1 to 13), your day sign (one of 20) and the Aztec equivalent.
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The Maya of the Classic period (250–900) kept several counts of time at once, and it is their interlocking that makes the system so rich. The tzolk’in, “count of days”, is a 260-day cycle obtained by combining a number from 1 to 13 with one of 20 signs: the day 1 Imix is followed by 2 Ik’, 3 Ak’b’al, and so on; the two series advance together, and the same combination returns only after 13 × 20 = 260 days. It is the sacred calendar, that of divination and of names. The haab is the approximate solar year: 18 months of 20 days plus 5 “nameless” days (the wayeb), ill-omened days on which one avoided undertaking anything. Tzolk’in and haab combined form the Calendar Round of 52 years (18,980 days), after which the same date reappears — a cycle the Aztecs marked with the New Fire ceremony.
To count beyond 52 years, the Maya used the Long Count, a number of days elapsed since a mythical creation date, written in five positions: k’in (1 day), winal (20), tun (360), k’atun (7,200), b’ak’tun (144,000). It is this count that caused the talk about 2012: on 21 December 2012 it went from 12.19.19.17.19 to 13.0.0.0.0, the end of the thirteenth b’ak’tun — a change of “millennium”, not an end of the world, and no Maya inscription announces anything for that date, apart from a laconic mention on a monument at Tortuguero.
The names below are those of Yucatec Maya, the best attested; the K’iche’ of Guatemala, who still keep this count, have others, and the Aztecs had theirs (the tonalpohualli, given in brackets). The meaning given to each sign comes from daykeepers and colonial sources; it does not have the precision of a catalogue, and two diviners may give two readings.
The number shades the sign. The traditional reading runs from 1, the beginning, still fragile, to 13, fulfilment, almost excessive; the middle numbers, 6, 7 and 8, are held to be the most balanced, and daykeepers readily choose those days for ceremonies. A 1 Kawak and a 13 Kawak share the sign of rain, but one barely carries it and the other overflows with it.
Throughout Mesoamerica, the tzolk’in day on which one was born was taken as a destiny and a temperament. Among the Mixtecs and the Aztecs it gave the name: the codices preserve the biography of the Mixtec lord Eight Deer Jaguar Claw, born on a day 8 Deer, and Nezahualcoyotl, the poet-king of Texcoco, also bore a day name. Among the Maya, the diviner (ajq’ij, “the one of the days”) read the birth day to tell the child’s strengths and weaknesses, and the count was consulted to fix sowing, weddings and departures. This practice never ceased in the highlands of Guatemala: the K’iche’ daykeepers still keep the chol q’ij today, the same 260-day count, in continuity with the Classic count — which made it possible to confirm the correlation between the Maya and Gregorian calendars.
What is found online under that name — “Maya signs” with detailed psychological profiles, compatibilities, a “synchronary” of thirteen moons of 28 days — is largely a reconstruction of the 1980s and 1990s. The most widespread system, José Argüelles’s Dreamspell (1987–1990), uses a day count different from the traditional one: it does not count 29 February and is not aligned with the K’iche’ chol q’ij. Two websites can therefore give you two different Maya signs. Our calculator follows the traditional count, that of the inscriptions and of today’s daykeepers; if another site tells you something else, it is not a calculation error, it is another calendar. The Maya calendar is authentic and admirable; the “astrology” drawn from it is a recent invention, to be taken as a game.
Like all astrology, nothing predictive: nobody has ever shown that a child born on a Jaguar day is stronger or more nocturnal than a child born on a Flower day. But the tzolk’in has two rare qualities. It is a living calendar, kept without interruption for at least two thousand years by a people who survived the conquest, and consulting it is a way into a culture rather than into a belief. And its twenty signs are concrete images — the wind, maize, the road, flint — that lend themselves well to the game this site proposes: asking what the image says about you, and talking about it as a pair. For the other systems, see Vedic astrology, the Chinese zodiac and the history of the Western zodiac.
Because it probably uses the Dreamspell count, offset from the traditional count and skipping 29 February. Both are consistent with themselves; only the traditional count is the Maya’s.
No: the day changes at dawn in tradition, and the calculation looks only at the date. Someone born at three in the morning would, strictly, belong to the previous day; the calculator follows the civil date.
They observed Venus, the Moon and eclipses with great precision — the Dresden Codex contains tables of remarkable accuracy — and some scholars believe they have identified a zodiac of thirteen constellations in the Paris Codex. But their personal “astrology”, as far as it is known, rested on the calendar and not on the planets.
The end of the thirteenth b’ak’tun, on 21 December 2012, was a change of cycle comparable to the turn of a millennium. No Maya text predicts a catastrophe for that date; the idea came from Western authors of the 1970s to 2000s.
Page checked in September 2026. The data cited can change.
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