Blue Monkey (Seal 11)

Blue Monkey is the eleventh Solar Seal, blue and of the west in Arguelles's rotation. Its stated triad is magic as its power, playing as its action and illusion as its essence, and it is read in Dreamspell practice for humour, spontaneity, trickery and the recognition that appearances deceive. It stands sixth in the second wavespell. Like White Dog it keeps the Maya animal name, and like White Dog it repurposes it.

In the Dreamspell tradition, Blue Monkey, Solar Seal 11, is described as governing magic, play and skilled artistry, built from the borrowed imagery of the Tzolk'in day sign Chuen. Blue Monkey belongs to the Dreamspell's Blue colour family, alongside Blue Night, Blue Hand, Blue Eagle and Blue Storm, a colour grouping original to Arguelles and absent from the traditional Tzolk'in's own black-coded directional set at this position. Its Dreamspell wavespell is the eleventh of twenty. As with the other nineteen seals, Blue Monkey's gloss of magic and play is Arguelles's own construction, and it should not be mistaken for a translation of what Chuen, or its K'iche' counterpart B'atz', means within the living daykeeping tradition still practised in highland Guatemala, where the same day carries associations with craft, weaving and the ceremonial opening of the 260-day count itself.

The corresponding Maya day is Chuwen, the monkey, and in the Maya record the monkey is not primarily a trickster but a patron of the arts: the howler monkey scribes and artisans, Hun Batz and Hun Chuen of the Popol Vuh, are the elder half-brothers of the Hero Twins, turned into monkeys for their arrogance, and they become the gods of writing, painting, sculpture and music. Classic-period vase painting shows monkey scribes at work with brush and codex, and the day is accordingly associated with craft and with the making of things. The Dreamspell reading of play, magic and illusion has picked up the monkey's reputation from a general and largely non-Maya stock of trickster imagery; the Maya association is with skilled work.

Chuen is the eleventh of the twenty authentic Tzolk'in day signs, its imagery the monkey, linked in Maya art to skilled craft, weaving and artistic work; the living K'iche' daykeeping tradition knows the corresponding day as B'atz', meaning thread or monkey, which opens the 260-day count in the K'iche' calendar's own conventional starting sequence. In the directional scheme, Chuen belongs to the west and the colour black. Arguelles's Solar Seal 11, Blue Monkey, borrows Chuen's monkey and craft imagery directly, though it makes no reference to B'atz''s distinct standing as the K'iche' tradition's own starting sign.