The false Mayan Calendar: ³The Dreamspell/Thirteen

Moon calendar²
is based on patriarchal dominance
by
Carl Johan Calleman

To much of the world a calendar system invented by José and Lloydine Argüelles in
the early nineties: The Dreamspell/Thirteen Moon Calendar has come to be known as ³the
Mayan Calendar². Despite the fact that this is a calendar system that has never been used
by the Maya, many of its protagonists have however been falsely presenting it as Mayan.
In campaigns of a sizable scale and on many web sites on the Internet many people have
been deluded into believing this and today one of its main functions in the world is to
create confusion and block people¹s access especially to the true Sacred Calendar used
for millennia in Mexico and Central America. Last year calendars based on the true
Sacred Calendar count were, to my knowledge only published in Guatemala and Sweden.
The rest of the world has thought of Dreamspell as ³Mayan².

The structure of the calendar system known as the Thirteen Moon calendar/Dreamspell
is basically as follows: It proposes that we use a calendar of Thirteen different Moons of
28 days presented as the feminine cycle to which a ³day out of time² on July 25 is added
to account for the 365 days of a solar year (13 x 28 +1 = 365 days). Linked to this is a
count of the 20 glyphs and 13 numbers that have been borrowed from the Sacred Mayan
Calendar. In this the symbols are however associated to the days in an entirely different
way compared to in the true calendar meaning that when people are given their purported
Mayan tzolkin day of birth in this system, called the ³Galactic Signature², this is
invariably different from the Sacred Calendar symbols that the Maya have been and are
using for that particular day. Many have been deluded into thinking that this is their true
Mayan day-sign and have in this way been diverted from the cosmic flow of time. An
important aspect of this calendar system is that the leap day in the Gregorian calendar is
simply ignored, and so, at those days every four years the sequence of the Dreamspell
symbols is interrupted and makes a jump thus ignoring to give the leap day a spiritual
energy.

How Mayan is this system? Except for the signs and symbols used in the tzolkin count
(260-day count) not at all. While this is now becoming known to increasing numbers of
people, especially in the English-speaking world, few have come to the realization that
this calendar system on many different levels is an _expression of patriarchal dominance.

The first of these expressions is that the female cycle is 28 days. This idea is really a
construct of patriarchal medicine that for ages has been frightened by what it has
perceived as a magical link between the woman and the full moon cycle of about 29.5
days. The ancient Maya followed a moon cycle alternating between 29 and 30 days, as
did many other peoples, creating a mean consistent with the full moon cycle.

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 I think many women today, as well as also many men, have special feelings linked to
their hormones on days of full moon. I do not want to become too detailed and technical
here since on my web page you may find an article about the topic: ³The Mayan calendar
and the cycles of the goddess², which discusses the mater in depth. Suffice it to say that
there is overwhelming evidence that the female cycle is linked to the light of the full
moon. (A piece of anecdotal evidence is that some women wanting children will sleep
with a light above their heads to precipitate ovulation.) Yet, many women have, partly
because of the perturbations of their cycles due to the artificial lights and artificial
hormones present everywhere today, come to believe that a ³normal² period is 28 days.
The Thirteen Moon calendar movement has further perpetuated this myth in an
adaptation to the false claims of patriarchal medicine.

In this Thirteen Moon Calendar the day July 26 has been chosen as a ³New Year¹s day²
and you sometimes hear it being called ³the Mayan New Year². Sometimes the suggestion
pops up that the origin of this date is the heliacal rising of the Dog Star, but in the
Yucatan Sirius does not rise on this day at all and did not do so in ancient times either. In
reality this fixed first day of the so-called Thirteen Moon calendar is the very opposite of
the Mayan Calendar system. Fixing it on this date really meant the end of the traditional
Mayan calendar in the Yucatan. In ancient times, and among the living Quiché-Maya
still, the Mayan calendar had no fixed ³New Year¹s date² that could now be directly
translated into a Gregorian such. Yet, it followed a 365 day year called the haab, and
because this was about a quarter of a day short of a solar year the position of its
beginning kept moving backwards one day every four years in terms of Gregorian dates.

The distinction of the traditional Mayan calendar of not having a fixed new year¹s date
is actually of very great importance today. It means that unlike most other calendars of
the world it is not subordinated to mechanical time and astronomical cycles. As I have
described in my books the prophetic Mayan calendar system expresses energies
influencing human consciousness that are unrelated to physical cycles. To exemplify the
workings of this haab its first day fell on February 13 in the year AD 694, while in AD
1540 it fell on the day corresponding to July 26. 1541 was however the year that the
Yucatan was conquered by the Spanish. This meant that its forced conversion to
Christianlty began marked by the burning of Mayan calendars instigated by Bishop Diego
de Landa in 1562. It is from this very Bishop we first hear of the day July 26 as the day
that the Maya ³always celebrated their New Year². In reality, as part of the forced
adaptation to Christianity and its ecclesiastical year with celebrations of saints and
Christmas, etc the subordinated Maya had to freeze the previously moving beginning day
of the Haab at the date it had at the time of the Spanish conquest in 1541.

This freezing meant the effective end to the Mayan calendar system in the Yucatan and
its conversion to a system of mechanical astronomical time. The Spanish in fact saw the
symbols of the Mayan calendar as idolatry, and repressed it severely as reflected in the
autodafé of Mani. What this means is that the date July 26 was really imposed by the
Spanish Conquistadores and is a clear _expression of their dominance over the Maya. It
is the very opposite of a Mayan New Year. Its use symbolizes the very end to the original
Mayan calendar system in the Yucatan.

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 Yet, in present day Guatemala significant aspects of the ancient calendar system, such
as the haab and the tzolkin (Cholquij) went underground and has survived until the
present time in its highlands. It can be verified from archeological artifacts that the
Sacred Calendar have been kept unaltered by the daykeepers of the Quiché-Maya since
antiquity. My own view is that this particular true tzolkin count is a gift to the future of
humanity if we can only make the right use of it.

Today, increasing number of people that are starting to use this Sacred Calendar are
experiencing the energies of time that it describes. Yet, it is not part of the Dreamspell/
Thirteen Moon calendar, the main reason being that this makes a jump every four years
on the leap day in the Gregorian calendar, a day that according to the Dreamspell has no
tzolkin energy. Hence the experience of the flow of the energies of time is broken at this
day and the day-signs and numbers of the following day will shift one step in relation to
the true tzolkin count. Over several decades passing through many leap days this creates
a very substantial scrambling effect. Thus people that have their day-signs and numbers
calculated according to this invented tzolkin count will never conform to the true ones
based on an uninterrupted flow of time. Adam Rubel of Saq Be, an organization
reflecting indigenous and especially Mayan views says: ³Regarding the dreamspell and
work of Arguelles: It has been made clear, I think everybody here understands, the need
to distinguish this system from any relation to the Mayan tradition. [Š] This is the wish
of the elders, that the confusion and misrepresentation cease.²

Why have the inventors of the Dreamspell Tzolkin chosen to deviate from the
traditional Sacred Calendar in this way?, we may wonder. The reason is obviously that as
an adaptation to mechanical astronomical time and the exactness of the solar year it has
incorporated the leap day from the European calendars (Never done among the Maya).
The Gregorian calendar incorporates a leap day every four years ever since Julius Caesar
decided to make February 23 a such. What this means is that the ³Galactic Signatures²
calculated by Dreamspellers are directly dependent on the decision of Julius Caesar to
make this particular day the leap day. Had this Roman Emperor chosen another day as the
leap day, say April 4 or Novemeber 11, then these ³Galactic Signatures² would have
become entirely different. (How galactic is that?) Hence, in a very direct sense the
Dreamspell diversion from the Sacred Mayan calendar is a creation of a Roman Emperor
and as such obviously a reflection of a patriarchal dominance that still today deludes
people as to the identities of their Mayan day-signs.

Hence, the whole system of the Dreamspell/Thirteen Moon calendar system is a

reflection of patriarchal dominance and its true creators are modern medicine, the
Spanish Conquistadors and Julius Caesar, quite in contrast to much of the rhetoric of its
inventors. Of course, it may then be appropriate to ask to what extent a system so much
based on the dominance of rulers is also reflected in the internal workings of this
movement. It seems so.

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 Lloydine Arguelles, co-founder of the Dreamspell/Thirteen Moon movement in an
email to supporters in 1997 said:³You must understand the promise to be 100 % faithful to
the new knowledge. Nothing that Valum Votan (José Arguelles, my clarification) presents
is not in accord with the divine plan² This is hardly an encouragement of members of the
movement to think for themselves, but a reflection of a patriarchal dominance almost
religious in nature. The tone has obviously changed since then, and the attitude is now
more of rainbow people and ³anything goes², while its own patriarchal agenda is
projected onto the Gregorian calendar as adiversion. And so, until this day the man ³who
has disciplined himself in a superhuman manner² (ibid) has not by his movement been
asked to publicly explain why he has invented a tzolkin count that keeps people in the
dark about the traditional. Regardless, for independently thinking peopla it is easy to see
that the Dreamspell/Thirteen Moon calendar system is embedded in a patriarchal agenda.

It is not very polite to publish an article of this kind that for most people will expose a
delusion, and, especially in Latim America and certain other parts of the world there are
many that have been deluded. It is then necessary to say that where Arguelles got the
authority to lead people into this system was through some very great early contributions:
The book the Mayan Factor was the first in modern times to truly demonstrate the
prophetic validity of the Mayan Calendar. Equally important was his bringing to the
world of the Harmonic Convergence highlighting moments of a new spiritual awakening
for many (although unfortunately he did not point out that the dates chosen for this event
had been chosen by the Native American Tony Shearer based on the true calendar.
Incidentally, I also myself asked him to write a foreword to my most recent book in
recognition of these great pioneering efforts. Arguelles early contributions were very
significant and it is also a fact that Arguelles is the person that brought the knowledge of
the existence of the Mayan calendar to the world (albeit in a very seriously distored form
through the Dreamspell/Thirteen Moon Calendar).

Humanity has however now come to a point in its evolution where the cost of being
polite is too great. The Mayan Calendar is a much too precious thing for humanity to be
present in a delusional and distorted form based on a veiled patriarchal agenda. The
energies of what I have termed the Fourth DAY of the Galactic Underworld, beginning
on December 4, 2004, will tend to expose dominance in all of its forms and it is not a
moment too early. In the words of the Mayan elders: ³The confusion must cease² and this
in the interest of the many. The Dreamspell/ Thirteen Moon calendar should never by
people of integrity be presented as the Mayan calendar or a form thereof. In the name of
integrity webmasters hosting sites presenting the Dreamspell as the Mayan calendar
should dismantle these. The truth is now an urgent matter and time is of the essence.
Now, also many people that are participants of movements with spiritual aspirations may
have to scrutinize the existence of dominance within their own folds and its wider
repercussions of their lives. The cost of continued confusion caused by the false
pretensions of the Dreamspell is enormous. This calendar system blocks the path of
humanity to the treasure of the true Mayan Calendar system, which will play a decisive
role of guiding humanity towards freedom and enlightenment in the years ahead.