Nahuales

On Wednesday I discovered my nahuales.  In the Mayan religion, nahuales are the signs that influence your life.  Each person has three principal signs and six signs that have a lesser influence.  The principal signs are the conception sign, the birth sign and the destiny sign.  The birth sign corresponds to the day one was born on the sacred Mayan calendar.  The sacred Mayan calendar is 260 days and has 13 months of 20 days.  Each of the twenty days of the Mayan month has its own nahual.  For example the first day in the calendar, Bat’z’, signifies original knowledge, the unfolding of time, the umbilical cord and the evolution of humankind.  The nahual is paired with a number from 1 to 13 designating the strength of the nahual with 13 exerting the strongest influence.

The Mayans also had a solar calendar with 365.25 days they used for more practical matters like farming.  Once every 51 years, the sacred calendar aligns with the solar calendar, but obviously is very hard to figure out a sacred calendar date from a date on the Gregorian calendar.

It was quite an interesting journey trying to figure out my nahuales with my maestra Gladys.  Gladys is an indigenous woman who teaches k’iche’ in addition to Spanish.  We started talking about nahuales our second day and she said she would help me find out what mine were.  I said why wait, I bet I could figure out what day my birth, June 14, 1988, corresponded to on the sacred Mayan calendar.  I figured all I would have to do is figure out how many days I have been alive and divide by twenty.  The remainder left over in the division would be the number of days to subtract for the current date on the sacred Mayan calendar.

The problem is, even if my calculations worked—and they didn’t—then I still would have no idea what my other eight nahuales might be.  Consequently, Gladys told me she would enter the day of my birth into a computer program at her temple that would calculate my nahuales.  The next time we met to have class she showed my nahuales, but it turned out that she had mixed up my birthday and the nahuales she had were not mine.  The next time we met, I finally had my real honest to God nahuales.

According to Mayan tradition, people are supposed to keep their nahuales a secret because they contain your strengths and weaknesses and others would be able to manipulate you with that intimate knowledge.  Often it is only the Mayan priest and you yourself who know your nahuales.  So I guess I can’t tell you exactly what my nahuales lest you know all the chinks in my armor.  But let me just say the nahuales were pretty accurate and reflected my traits well.

The purpose of finding your nahuales is self-realization and self-actualization.  They do not tell you a foregone destiny, but rather tell you information about yourself.  The task then is to balance out your negative and positive influences and find equilibrium.  If you use heed the warnings and the counsel the nahaules provide then you will be able to reach your fullest potential and have the brightest future possible.

You’re probably thinking this sounds like a load of BS.  Could these signs really affect our lives?  The day we are born on really matter so much?  I’m not saying I’ve converted to the Mayan religion, but I probably put more stock in this than in transubstantiation or parting seas.