Meaning
Every day of the count carries a number beside its sign, and a daykeeper reads the pair together. One opens each thirteen-day run: after 13 comes 1 again, with the next sign. In the highland ethnography, as others report Barbara Tedlock's work at Momostenango and Ruth Bunzel's at Chichicastenango, the low numbers are gentle and the high ones strong.
We place 1 in our mild band, with 2 and 3; the bands and their edges are EsoTerrier's grouping of that reported principle, not a published scheme. Our keyword for it, "beginning, seed", and our sentence, that one is a mild, unformed force, the first step of whatever is starting, are ours, offered as a reading aid and not as what the tradition teaches.
Days and ceremonies
1 Imox is day 1 of the 260, the day the count's tables begin with. 1 Kej opened the highland year on 18 February 2026, the bearer whose number then rises by one each year.
Barbara Tedlock described in her 2005 interview how daykeepers take people to the shrines especially on days numbered one, for prayers and ceremonies there.
The numeral
The scribes wrote one as a single dot. In the Classic inscriptions a number could also be written as the head of a god, and Thompson identified the head for 1 as the youthful earth and moon goddess, the same god he gave to the day Kab'an: a Classic writing fact, which says nothing about how a daykeeper reads the number today.
In the count
The number 1 falls on twenty days of the 260: days 1, 14, 27, 40, 53, 66, 79, 92, 105, 118, 131, 144, 157, 170, 183, 196, 209, 222, 235 and 248, with the signs Imox, I'x, Kej, Ajpu, Aj, Kame, Kawoq, E, Kan, Tijax, B'atz', K'at, No'j, Tz'i', Aq'ab'al, Ajmaq, Toj, Iq', Tz'ikin and Q'anil in that order. A sign comes back every twenty days and a number every thirteen, so the same pairing, such as 1 Imox, returns only after 260 days. Each year the highland year bearer's number rises by one, because 365 days are 28 runs of thirteen and one day more.
Correspondences
Each item with how it stands: “sourced” is in the work cited, “our construction” is EsoTerrier’s own, and “disputed” means the sources disagree.
- Strength, in the highland reports
- The number gives the day its force: low numbers gentle, high numbers strong (Tedlock at Momostenango and Bunzel at Chichicastenango, as reported) sourced
- Our band
- mild; the bands and their edges are EsoTerrier's grouping, not a published scheme our construction
- Our keyword and sentence
- "beginning, seed"; One opens every thirteen-day run: a mild, unformed force, the first step of whatever is starting. our construction
- Head variant of the numeral, after Thompson
- the youthful earth and moon goddess, the god he gave to the day Kab'an sourced
- A fixed character for the number
- None established; which numbers are good differs from town to town disputed
How the schools read it
- Highland ethnography, as reported
- The number is the strength of the day, gentle in the low numbers and strong in the high.
- Thompson's survey of highland towns
- Which numbers count as good or bad differs from town to town.
- Classic scribes
- Wrote 1 as one dot, or as a god's head: the youthful earth and moon goddess, in Thompson's identification.
- Dreamspell (1990)
- Gives each number a name of its own in a different modern count; not used here.
- EsoTerrier
- Mild in our bands; keyword "beginning, seed". Our words, a reading aid.
Claims about it
-
The number 1 has a fixed traditional character.
unverifiedWhat the record shows: The highland reports give the numbers strength, low gentle and high strong; fixed characters per number are modern, and our own keyword is labelled as ours.
-
One is one of thirteen cosmic "tones" with a Maya name.
falseWhat the record shows: The tone names are Dreamspell's, from 1990. The Maya count has numbers 1 to 13.
