by Bruce Scofield
(This article previously appeared in The Mountain Astrologer, Oct/Nov 1997.)
The modern system of three personal biorhythms is a kind of astrology. It's obvious to anyone acquainted with astrology that the emotional biorhythm of 28 days is same thing as the Moon's cycle. Less obvious is the "coincidence" that the 23-day physical biorhythm is very close to 1/16 of the solar year. Also, three times the 88-day cycle of Mercury turns out to be exactly 8 times the 33-day mental biorhythm. Biorhythms are astrology in disguise. Further, they have much in common with the kind of astrology that was developed in ancient Mesoamerican and is still in use today.
The ancient Maya kept track of a 65-day rhythm which, as we shall see, seems to be a kind of collective biorhythm. This rhythm repeated four times within the context of the 260-day Mesoamerican astrological calendar (4 x 65 = 260). These four "burner" days, spaced at 65-day intervals, were so named because of the rituals associated with them. Prior to the arrival of these key dates, the ancient Maya made preparations and performed rituals that involved fire-related activities. Some researchers have suggested that such fire rituals involved a fire-walking ceremony that is still performed in some Maya communities. (1)
After studying these dates for over 10 years, I have concluded that the burner dates could be more than just an obscure ritual of an ancient civilization. Using the GMT calendar correlation,(2) I found that important world events almost always occur or reach a crescendo near these days. The evidence strongly suggests that the burner dates are crisis points during which a collective ventilation of suppressed energies, or a kind of reconciliation with the past, occurs.
The four burner dates in the 260-day astrological calendar are the Mayan days 4-Oc, 4-Men, 4-Ahau, and 4-Chicchan. The corresponding Aztec days are 4-Itzcuintli, 4-Cuauhtli, 4-Xochitl, and 4-Coatl. In English these names translate to Dog, Eagle, Lord/Flower, and Serpent, and they correspond respectively to the directions north, west, south, and east. The four directions in Mesoamerican astrology are much like the four elements in Western astrology - they designate fundamental qualities. The correspondences are East/fire, north/earth, west/air, and south/water. Because burner dates occur every 65 days, they cycle independently of the year and don't occur on the same calendar date each year.
Before getting into some technicalities about this cycle, let's look at what occurred on or within a few days of the burner dates during recent years.
12.31.1994 4-Men: Russia attacked Grozny, capital of Chechnya on 12/30. A gunman opened fire at two abortion clinics in Boston on the same day.
3.6.1995 4-Ahau: The United Nations operation in Somalia ended on 3/3. The US dollar plunged to a new low on 3/7.
5.10.1995 4-Chicchan: French president Chirac was elected to a 7-year term on 5/7. A Clinton/Yeltsin summit was held on 5/10.
7.14.1995 4-Oc: The US opened full diplomatic ties with Vietnam on 7/11. French president Chirac admitted French responsibility for the deportation of thousands of Jews to Nazi camps during WW II on 7/6.
9.17.1995 4-Men: On this day the Serbs pulled back their heavy guns in Bosnia after days of NATO bombing.
11.21.1995 4-Ahau: Balkan presidents reached a Bosnian peace accord on 11/21.
1.25.1996 4-Chicchan: US Senate ratified the Start II agreement with the Russians on 1/25. Hillary Clinton testified before a grand jury in Washington D.C. on this day concerning the Whitewater investigation.
3.30.1996 4-Oc: Congress finally passed the line-item veto on 3/28.
6.3.1996 4-Men: Netanyahu was elected prime minister in Israel on 5/29 and gave a victory speech on 6/2. NATO reached an agreement on combined, joint task forces on 6/3.
8.7.1996 4-Ahau: NASA held a news conference to report old evidence for life on Mars on this day. Separatist rebels attacked the Chechnyan capital on 8/6.
10.11.1996 4-Chicchan: Clinton and Dole held their first debate on 10/6.
12.15.1996 4-Oc: 400 foreign and Peruvian dignitaries were taken hostage by rebels in Lima on 12/17.
2.18.1997 4-Men: Deng Xiaoping, last of China's Mao-era leaders, died at age 92 on 2/19.
4.24.1997 4-Ahau: Peruvian commandos stormed Japanese ambassadors residence in Lima on 4/22, releasing hostages and killing all 14 rebels.
6.28.1997 4-Chicchan: Great Britain officially handed Hong Kong over to China on 6/30 for re-integration with that country. Boxer Tyson bit his opponents ear during a title fight, putting boxing promoters into an apologetic stance for the sport.
In addition to the fact that all of these dates "produced" significant news events, the events themselves share certain features. Many of the events coincided with a national frenzy of some sort. There were two elections, a significant pre-election debate, and the death of a major leader. There were some critical points reached in violent wars and a major hostage taking which was motivated by that nation's chronic unjust treatment of an indigenous population. National purgings or cleansing occurred, such as Hillary Clinton appearing in court and France admitting its Jewish guilt occurred. The Peruvian hostage crisis began and ended near burner dates. This year in China these dates coincided with the death of Deng and the annexation of Hong Kong. Interestingly, the arrest of O.J. Simpson happened two days before the burner date of June 19, 1994. His trial became a national soap opera in which racial tensions were driven daily into the conscious part of the collective mind. It does appear as if these dates have something to do with large groups of people and the ventilation and coming to terms with emotionally-charged issues that are necessary for group integration.
The almost consistent coincidence of the burner dates with specific kinds of world events suggests to me that the Maya discovered something very important. Having found the burner dates to be crisis points, the Maya deliberately orchestrated their society through planned rituals. They vented their tensions ritually in conformity with a natural cycle, a 65-day collective biorhythm, and maintained a high level of group integrity.
The actual Maya ritual for the burner dates was complex. For each of the four dates in the 260-day cycle there was a date for "the burner" to take the fire, one to begin the fire, one to let it run and give it scope, and finally, one to put out the fire. The actual Mayan ritual ran roughly as follows. Twenty days prior to the arrival of each burner date leaders would draw attention to the coming date by lighting ritual fires. On or near the actual burner date some sort of group ritual, perhaps fire-walking or a giant bonfire, was held, bringing the entire community together. Rituals twenty days afterward would provide a re-acclimation to "regular" life. In this way the Maya vented tensions and kept the group psychically intact at the same time. I'm reminded of an episode from the TV series MASH when frustrations in the camp rose so high that the doctors and enlisted men spontaneously started a bonfire, throwing furniture and everything else into it. The group then stood around this night fire in total silence watching the flames. Everyone was "better" after this event. Anyone who has gone camping knows the power of a group campfire to bring people together and share feelings.
To fully understand astronomical mechanics behind the burner dates, we must turn to the 260-day astrological calendar. At the center of Mesoamerican astrology (the astrology of the ancient Maya, Toltecs and Aztecs) is a count of 260 days called the tzolkin (Maya) or Tonalpouhalli (Aztec). This count of days functions very much like a zodiac. It is a zodiac of time, however, not a zodiac of space like the one used in Western astrology. In this 260-day zodiac of time are 20 "signs" of 13 days. The 260-day astrological count has nothing to do with the seasons, it cycles independent of the year. Each of the 260 days has a name that is preceded by a number which shows its exact position within the 260-day period. (3)
Consider the division of the Western zodiac by four which yields the Cardinal points, or first degrees of Aries, Cancer, Libra and Capricorn. Dividing the 260-day astrological count by 4, the number of the four directions and physical manifestation, produces four 65-day burner periods. If we begin this division with what is usually considered the first day of the 260-day count, 1-Imix (Crocodile), then the next point, 65 days later, will be 1-Cimi (Death), then 1-Chuen (Monkey), and finally 1-Cib (Vulture). But the ancient Mayan tradition of the burner dates does not start with the first date of the 260-day count, it begins with the 160th, the day 4-Ahau (Lord/Flower). Why? No one knows for sure, but 5,111 years ago this was the day that the Long Count (the Mayan Calendar) "rested" and a new age began. Intervals of 65 days from this point in the 260-day count give 4-Chicchan (Serpent), 4-Oc (Dog) and 4-Men (Eagle) as the other three burner dates.(4)
The diagram of the 260-day astrological calendar presented here is set up with the first day of the count, 1-Imix, at the top of the circle. The count proceeds counter-clockwise through the 20 13-day signs (trecena), each one containing 13 days. (This is a lot like 12 signs each having 30 degrees). Notice that the burner days stand very close to the midpoints of each quadrant of the cycle. In fact, they are just 3 days off from being exactly at each quadrant's center. This attention to midpoints to similar to Western astrology's 15th degree of the fixed signs, the midpoints of the Cardinal points. Because four 65-day periods equals 260-days, the burner rhythm is a kind of spiking of equidistant points within the framework of a cycle that is the key to all of Mesoamerican astrology. Again, compare this to the arrival of the semi-cardinal points in the solar calendar year, the points that coincide with the ancient Celtic holidays Lammas, Beltane, Candlemas, and Samhain.
The linkage to the 260-day count, and its connection to astronomical cycles and phenomena (see footnote 3) makes the burner dates a kind of mundane astrology. One astronomical correlation I find very interesting is that 65 days almost exactly equals 1/9 of the Venus synodic cycle of 584 days. It is possible that we can understand these burner dates as a 9th harmonic function of the Venus/Sun relationship. This way of thinking is the essence to Mesoamerican astrology as I see it -- meaning is derived from the application of number and geometry to units of time, i.e. cycle length. Western astrology does the same thing with units of space.
In Mesoamerican astrology Venus was the planet of the regulation of human desire, which is a prerequisite to the process of civilization. If the burner dates have something to do with Venus, then maybe we can say that these are dates when groups need to bring their anti-social feelings to the surface, a prerequisite to a higher order of collective integration.
When I think about the burner dates in Mayan astrology, I think about how well-regulated their society must have been. Their handling of the burner dates was similar to a teacher taking a classroom of kids to the bathroom all at the same time, rather than letting them go whenever they wanted. The Maya attuned themselves through ritual practices to a natural cycle based on astronomical realities. In our modern world of unchecked individualism, people go off the deep end every day of the year. We do have a few holidays when people collectively ventilate, like the 4th of July, St. Patrick's Day (the unofficial rite of spring), and Superbowl Sunday. But for the most part we are a weakly integrated society of individuals and, except for the sanitized rituals of officially sanctioned religions, we keep clear of collective events. Most of our holidays are family days, not community ritual days.
But what of the individual need to ventilate internal pressures? I've found that individuals have personal burner dates that function much like the collective ones describe in this article. Beginning with the date in the 260-day astrological calendar on which one was born, intervals of 65 days seem to correlate with a need for a personal release of an internal tensions.(5) I've found that the week or so preceding one of these points is a build-up and that something gives on, or a few days before the critical date. For myself, I usually plan an intense event of some sort to focus the energy building in me prior to these dates. For example, on one of my personal burner periods, I took a grueling hike in the mountains - and felt much better for it. Perhaps the world would be a safer place if we all could focus our personal tensions every 65 days in some constructive ritual.
Here's a list of the burner dates and corresponding events (that occurred either on or within a few days) that came up since this article was written for TMA, extending from to the time of this transfer of the text to the One Reed website (December 1999). Additional burner dates for 2000 are also included. Readers interested in locating previous or future burner dates may use the tables below, using one of the burner dates as a birthday. They are also easily calculated on Aztec/Maya Astro-Report software posted on this website. Simply enter any one of the dates below and specify critical dates for the time period you require.
4-Oc: 9/1/1997 (Princess Diana dies in accident)
4-Men: 11/5/1997 (surprise GOP victories in off-year election)
4-Ahau: 1/9/1998 (Unabomber pleads guilty, World Trade Center bomber sentenced to life in prison)
4-Chicchan: 3/15/1998 (Vatican regrets inaction during Holocaust)
4-Oc: 5/19/1998 (Suharto steps down in Indonesia)
4-Men: 7/23/1998 (Kenneth Star subpoenas Clinton)
4-Ahau: 9/26/1998 (Iran lifts death threat on Salmon Rushdie)
4-Chicchan: 11/30/1998 (House drafts on impeachment charges)
4-Oc: 2/3/1999 (Jordan's King Hussein dies)
4-Men: 4/9/1999 (Libya hands over Pan Am jet bomber suspects)
4-Ahau: 6/13/1999 (Nelson Mandela retires as present of S.Africa)
4-Chicchan: 8/17/1999 (quake in Turkey, Jane Reno discredited)
4-Oc: 10/21/1999 (Indonesia gets new president, UN helps E.Timor)
4-Men: 12/25/1999
4-Ahau: 2/28/2000
4-Chicchan: 5/3/2000
4-Oc: 7/7/2000
4-Men: 9/10/2000
4-Ahau: 11/14/2000
footnotes
(1) The burner periods are a relatively unknown part of Mayan calendar ritual and very little research has been done on them. The Dresden Codex shows the four burner periods in one of its arrangements of the 260-day calendar. Burner periods are mentioned in the various books of Chilam Balam including the Tizimin (see Makemsom, Maud W., "The Book of the Jaguar Priest: A Translation of the Book of Chilam Balam of Tizimin, with Commentary," NY: Henry Schuman, 1951, p. 75). Juan Rio Perez mentions the specific burner dates in his observations of 1841 and 1842, published in John L. Stephen's "Incidents of Travel in Yucatan," (vol. I, p. 292.) More recent sources generally ignore these periods except for J. Eric S. Thompson in "Maya Hieroglyphic Writing," (1960, pp. 99-101).
(2) The GMT (Goodman-Martinez-Thompson) correlation between the 260-day astrological calendar of Mesoamerica and the Western Christian calendar has come to be the most widely accepted correlation of the many proposed. It is based on an astronomical analysis of ancient writings and inscriptions by leading archaeologists and archaeoastronomers. It is also the same correlation that has been perpetuated by the oral tradition in remote sections of Mayan Guatemala. Other correlations, such as the one used by Jose Arguelles and his Dreamspell users, vary considerably from this one.
(3) The 260-day count runs continuously and is divided into 20 groupings, or signs, of 13 days. It is also divided into 13 repeats of a 20-day sequence of what are called tonalli, the day-signs. Each individual day in the 260-day count can be located in two ways; by its tonalli name and also by its location in one of the twenty 13-day groupings. (If this is confusing to you, consider the task of explaining the zodiac, the decans and the dwads to someone uninitiated in Western astrology.)
Like the Western Greco/Babylonian zodiac, these 20 signs were used to interpret births and also for mundane analysis. Why there are 260 days in this count is a good question. Although the answer is complex, the long and short of it is that 260 a kind of lowest common denominator for certain astronomical cycles including the appearance interval of Venus (average length of time as a morning or evening star) which is 263 days. The interval between eclipses averages 173.3 days. Three of these periods (520 days) is equal to two 260-day cycles. The synodic period of Mars is 780 days which equals three cycles of 260 days. Obviously, this count could be used to time these astronomical cycles for predictive purposes. Further, the number of days that the Sun stands south of the zenith at certain early sites in Mesoamerica is 260. Another explanation for the 260-day count is that it is the length of human gestation.
(4) The Harmonic Convergence of August 16, 1987 was set for what Jose Arguelles believes was the day 4-Men, one of the burner dates. He uses a calendar correlation which differed from the GMT correlation then by 95 days. Ironically, August 16, 1987 was 1-Imix, the first day of the 260-day count, according to the standard Goodman-Martinez-Thompson correlation. Since that time Arguelles has made some changes in his version of the correlation, bringing it down to 51 days in 1997. This is like pretending to have the authority to change the first degree of Aries to coincide with the 5th degree of Cancer. Dreamspell users, wake up!
(5) These dates can be generated for any time period using Astrolabe's
"Maya/Aztec Astro-Report," a computer program written by Dr. Barry Orr
and myself. They are found in the menu under Predictive Techniques and
Critical Days. Burner dates can also be determined using the tables in
"Day-Signs: Native American Astrology From Ancient Mexico," and "Signs
of Time: An Introduction to Mesoamerican Astrology" ($13.50 each or $25
for both postpaid from One Reed Publications, PO Box 561, Amherst MA 01004).
Table 2: Personal "burner" days
The table below allows you to locate personal "burner" dates (within a day or two). First, look up your age on the table. If you are over age 42, subtract 42. If the result is 42 or higher, subtract 42 again. Next, go to the second column and add or subtract the corresponding adjustment figure to your birthday. The third column indicates exactly where in the 260-day cycle this "burner" date is: a zero indicates the cycle is full or complete, the fractions indicate the specific quarter. Other burner dates can be determined by adding or subtracting blocks of 65 days either side of this date.
Example: President Bill Clinton, born 8.19.1946. In 1997 he is 51 years
old. First subtract 42 from 51 to get 9. Next, add 28 days to his birthday
(count the birthday as number 1) to arrive at September 15th as a burner
date, one that is 3/4 through the cycle. Add 65 days to reach his next
burner date, which in this case is the starting point of his cycle, on
November 19th.
| age | adjustment (in days) | quarter cycle |
| 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 1 | +25 | 1/2 |
| 2 | -15 | 3/4 |
| 3 | +10 | 1/4 |
| 4 | -31 | 1/2 |
| 5 | -6 | 0 |
| 6 | +19 | 1/2 |
| 7 | -22 | 3/4 |
| 8 | +3 | 1/4 |
| 9 | +28 | 3/4 |
| 10 | -12 | 0 |
| 11 | +13 | 1/2 |
| 12 | -28 | 0 |
| 13 | -4 | 1/4 |
| 14 | +22 | 3/4 |
| 15 | -18 | 0 |
| 16 | +6 | 1/2 |
| 17 | +31 | 0 |
| 18 | -9 | 1/4 |
| 19 | +16 | 3/4 |
| 20 | -25 | 0 |
| 21 | 0 | 1/2 |
| 22 | +25 | 0 |
| 23 | -15 | 1/4 |
| 24 | +10 | 3/4 |
| 25 | -31 | 0 |
| 26 | -6 | 1/2 |
| 27 | +19 | 0 |
| 28 | -22 | 1/4 |
| 29 | +3 | 3/4 |
| 30 | +28 | 1/4 |
| 31 | -12 | 1/2 |
| 32 | +13 | 0 |
| 33 | -28 | 1/2 |
| 34 | -4 | 3/4 |
| 35 | +22 | 1/4 |
| 36 | -18 | 1/2 |
| 37 | +6 | 0 |
| 38 | +31 | 1/2 |
| 39 | -9 | 3/4 |
| 40 | +16 | 1/4 |
| 41 | -25 | 1/2 |
| 42 | 0 | 0 |