Blue Storm (Seal 19)

Blue Storm is the nineteenth Solar Seal, blue and of the west in Arguelles's rotation. Its stated triad is self-generation as its power, catalysing as its action and energy as its essence, and it is read in Dreamspell practice for sudden change, for the clearing of what is stagnant and for transformation through disruption. It stands second in the fourth and last wavespell of the twenty-seal round.

In the Dreamspell tradition, Blue Storm, Solar Seal 19, is described as governing self-generation, catalysis and sudden transformative energy, built from the borrowed imagery of the Tzolk'in day sign Cauac. Blue Storm belongs to the Dreamspell's Blue colour family, alongside Blue Night, Blue Hand, Blue Monkey and Blue Eagle, a colour grouping substituted by Arguelles for the traditional Tzolk'in's black-coded third directional set. Its Dreamspell wavespell is the nineteenth of twenty, the last before Yellow Sun closes the full sequence. Self-generation, the seal's Dreamspell gloss, is Arguelles's own late-twentieth-century construction built outward from Cauac's storm imagery, and, as with every seal recorded on this page, it should not be read as a rendering of what the authentic, living Tzolk'in tradition holds the same day to mean.

The corresponding Maya day is Kawak, in Yucatec Cauac, meaning storm or thunder, and its glyph is the standard sign for a rain cloud and also for stone; it is associated with the rain deities, the Chaks, with thunder and lightning, and with the mountains where rain gathers. The Aztec equivalent day is Quiahuitl, rain. In highland practice the corresponding day is connected with the ancestors, with women and with the healing role of the midwife. The Dreamspell reading of catalysis and self-generation keeps the disruptive force of the storm and drops the rain, which in an agricultural society is the point of a storm; that inversion, from the giver of water to the agent of upheaval, is worth noticing.

Cauac is the nineteenth of the twenty authentic Tzolk'in day signs, its imagery storm and renewal; the living K'iche' daykeeping tradition knows the corresponding day as Kawoq, meaning storm or rain, closely matching Cauac's own sense. In the directional scheme, Cauac belongs to the west and the colour black. Arguelles's Solar Seal 19, Blue Storm, borrows Cauac's storm imagery directly and closes the Dreamspell's nineteenth wavespell before Solar Seal 20, Yellow Sun, completes the sequence, mirroring the way Cauac stands second-to-last among the twenty authentic Tzolk'in day signs before Ahau closes that count.