The Thirteen Days of Trecena 2

Trecena 2 runs from 1 Ocelotl through 13 Miquiztli, death, the thirteenth and closing day sign of its span, thirteen consecutive day signs read against the fixed run of numbers one through thirteen with no repeat of either register within the week. Its position as the second trecena means every day sign within it, jaguar through death by way of eagle, vulture, movement and flint, carries the number appropriate to its place in this particular pass through the cycle rather than any number fixed permanently to that sign, since the same day sign recurs with a different number in most of the other nineteen trecenas across the full 260 day count.

Sahagun's account treats the reading of a date as inseparable from knowing which trecena it falls in, since the trecena patron colours every one of its thirteen days, and a diviner asked to judge a birth or the timing of a journey needed the full tonalamatl table open in front of him rather than the day sign alone. The severity generally read into this trecena meant its later days, as the numbers climbed toward thirteen, were watched particularly closely by the tonalpouhque for signs that the week's difficult opening was intensifying or, more hopefully, beginning to ease as the count approached Trecena 3.