Chuen

Chuen is the eleventh of the twenty day signs of the Tzolk'in, the 260-day sacred count of the Maya, still kept by highland daykeepers and reconstructed for the Classic period. Recorded here by its Yucatec name, Chuen, it corresponds to the day B'atz', the monkey, in the living K'iche' tradition. Its imagery is the monkey, the artisan and patron of the arts, play, and craft, and the thread, for B'atz' is the day of the weaver and of the unspooling of time itself; it is among the most important days in K'iche' practice, when new daykeepers are often initiated. In the directional scheme that runs through the twenty signs it belongs to the west and the colour black. These are the meanings the Maya calendrical tradition carries for the day.

Chuen is the eleventh of the twenty Tzolk'in day signs; the living K'iche' tradition knows the corresponding day as B'atz', meaning thread or monkey, and it is B'atz' that opens the 260-day count in the K'iche' calendar's own conventional starting sequence, giving it particular ceremonial importance among contemporary daykeepers distinct from Imix's role as the first sign in the Yucatec ordering recorded here. Chuen's imagery, the monkey, is linked in Maya art and myth to skilled craft, particularly weaving, writing and artistic work generally, an association reflected in the Classic-period Howler Monkey Gods, patrons of scribes and artists depicted in Maya vase painting. In the directional scheme, Chuen belongs to the west and the colour black.

Chuen is the Yucatec name and B'atz' the K'iche', both meaning monkey, and the eleventh sign is the one on which the two traditions diverge most consequentially in practice rather than in meaning. In highland Guatemala the count is conventionally described as beginning from B'atz', and the day 8 B'atz' is when new ajq'ijab' complete their training, so the sign occupies a position in living K'iche' practice that no Yucatec source anticipates.

Central Mexico places Ozomatli, monkey, in eleventh position, agreeing with both Maya names. The monkey in Mesoamerican thought is the patron of writing, of music and of the arts, and the Popol Vuh tells of the elder brothers of the Hero Twins being turned into monkeys and afterwards invoked by artists and scribes.

That the 260-day count has no arithmetical beginning is worth restating here: 260 days form a closed loop, and any position can serve as a conventional first day. Yucatec sources start from Imix, highland practice speaks from B'atz', and neither is more correct than the other. Chuen is not a Year Bearer in the Classic set, Ik, Manik, Eb and Kaban, nor in the Yucatec set, Kan, Muluc, Ix and Kawak.

The eleventh position therefore carries a caution for readers of this atlas. Numbering the signs from Imix, as the atlas does, follows the colonial Yucatec ordering and is a presentational choice, not a claim that the count starts there. A highland daykeeper reading the same twenty would begin the list at B'atz' and arrive at exactly the same cycle, since a loop has no first element until someone names one.