The Serpent and the Jaguar

Book excerpt: Every once in while, a work comes along that breaks through convention and fuses worlds and cultures. The Serpent and the Jaguar is one such work: it transcends the conventional interpretations of the Mayan Tzolk’in calendar and fuses the worlds of traditional Mayan cosmovision, scholarly research, and modern-day needs and concerns. The result is a book that enables virtually anyone anywhere in the world living in industrialized society to apply the Tzolk’in to their lives on a daily basis. For the first time, The Serpent and the Jaguar brings you the Tzolk’in and all of its 260 days interpreted in the context of modern life and modern challenges. The book is the cornerstone in a suite of related tools that include mobile applications, webinars and a strong social media platform designed to help you redefine your relationship with sacred, cyclical time in the face of our demanding, stressful schedules that force us to operate on linear time. Included in the book are: • The full set of the 260 Energies of the Day of the Tzolk’in calendar. • Detailed descriptions of the 20 trecenas and their ruling day signs. • Detailed descriptions of the 13 numbers. • Introductory sections on the Mayan Calendar, the day signs, trecenas, and the numbers. • A guide to living with sacred time • Mayan Calendar tables to calculate dates manually or offline. • Original day sign illustrations by New Zealand painter and artist Maree Gifkins (along with the traditional Maya day sign and number glyphs).