Raising Awareness and Understanding of Traditional Timekeeping

What does it mean that 13 Bak’tun is over, or that the Fifth Sun is over? Should we be preparing for the New Dawn? How?

We all have the feeling that it is about time to enter a new cycle of consciousness, reconnecting to Earth. In the Otomi tradition our Elders speak frequently about the New Dawn. But the details about the timings of the New Dawn are blurry… Why 2012? Was there something happening in the sky that made that year significant? The explanations provided by scholars and amateurs–as well as by traditional day keepers–are difficult to integrate in a single, comprehensive picture. We need something like a map, where time and space can conflate just like it did for the Mesoamerican cosmovision professed by astronomer priests and governors. We need the time-space map that reminds us how we were originally related to our territories, and for that map to make full sense, we must be able to live by the Original Calendars.

We must know our Original Calendars just as well as we need to “know our land, know our waters and know our seeds” (as the Hopi Elders say). We need to understand how we are connected to the cycles of Mother Earth and all the celestial bodies observed by the ancestors of Turtle Island. We need to learn to live by the natural rhythms of Moon, Venus, Pleiades and others stars, and proceed to live in community without ever forcing nature beyond her capacity to create life and regenerate herself.

We need to live according to the Original Instructions of caring for all life (as the Elder Kogi brothers tell us) and strive towards a process of Unification, where all cultures bring the best of their wisdom to create thriving biocultural communities.

Among communities in Mesoamerica, there has been confusion about how the 365-day calendar worked in synchronicity with the Sun. As Timekeepers, we have developed a Calendar Converter that will help you and your community to live by the Original Calendars of your Maya, Otomi or Mexica relatives of Turtle Island.