The Terms of the Tradition
Your two forces
Nawal — A conscious, living energy — a force that shapes the nature of a living thing. Each person is shaped by nawals; both of your two forces (the numeral and the nominal) are nawals.
Day sign — The combination of your two forces: your number (the numeral nawal) and your nominal nawal, working together. Each of the 260 days of the calendar is one day sign — one distinct pairing of a constant impulse and an oscillating personality. Your day sign is not one force but two.
Numeral nawal — The first of your two forces, carried by your number and formed at conception. It is your constant operating style — how you meet life — and it does not change, like water. In plain English we call it your automatic impulse. Together with your nominal nawal it makes up your day sign.
Nominal nawal — The second of your two forces, formed during gestation. It is your personality — what you are drawn toward — and it oscillates between warm and cold, like fire. In plain English we call it your personality patterns. Together with your number it makes up your day sign.
Warm and cold — The two movements of your oscillating force (the nominal nawal): warm when it ascends and burns bright, cold when it descends and runs low. They are not good and bad — they are two expressions of the same fire.
K'amal B'e — "Guide of the path." The day sign a person was born into, as the leader of their council of nawals — the force that leads their decisions through life.
Ch'ob'oj — The council of nawals standing around the day sign and influencing it — pushing, pulling, and giving dynamics. These are separate from the nawals of the trecena.
Your formation
Masculine domain — The tradition's name for conception: the father's contribution, formed in a single moment, where the mother's part instead unfolds across months. It does not imply that the masculine is superior.
Feminine domain — The tradition's name for pregnancy: the nine months of gestation, which belong to the mother, who forms and shapes the developing being.
Masculine complement — During pregnancy, the masculine figure in the mother's life. Often the father — but it may be someone else who stood close to her, such as a relative, a friend, or a partner who is not the father (and not necessarily a man) — or there may be no one in that place at all. What matters is the mother's experience of that presence or absence.
The calendar
Cholq'ij / Tzolk'in — The sacred 260-day calendar at the heart of the tradition. Cholq'ij is its K'iche' name; Tzolk'in is the widely-used name — they are the same calendar. Its 260 days mirror the roughly nine months of human gestation.
Trecena — The thirteen-day cycle that each day belongs to; your birth day sits at a particular position within it.
Mam — "Grandfather" or "elder": the calendar of the solar year. Four of the nawals — Kej, E, No'j, and Iq' — are its Elders. Each Elder combines with the thirteen numbers, giving fifty-two variations in total, and the same Mam returns once every fifty-two years. Every Mam belongs to its own trecena, carrying that trecena's strongest expression and end meaning.
The inner being
Uxlab — Your inner being: your first consciousness, the conscious "you" at your core, awake from the moment of conception. The Uxlab is not a nawal — it is the being that your two nawals shape. The word is tied to the breath.
K'uxlaxik — Heart-centered consciousness (k'ux = heart, essence, core): a quiet, intuitive, creative way of knowing — the inner being radiating outward.
Na'oj — Environmental sensitivity: the inner being's capacity to perceive and feel the world around it — and, in the womb, the mother's states especially. A nawal carries a closely related name (No'j); they are different things.
Chajinel — The "guardian of the mind": the part of you that filters what reaches your inner being, deciding what passes through to your core. A useful protector, but one that tires when overworked.