The Trecena of 1 Cimi / Kame

Cimi, or Kame in K’iche’ Maya, means “death” and “rebirth”; grammatically, kame is the present tense of “the eternal Now.”  Cimi represents Xib’alb’a, the Underworld of Mayan mythology, and embodies the eternal flow and cycle of death, rebirth and transformation.  The Maya did, and still do believe in reincarnation; Cimi is the day sign that embodies this transcendental spiritual state.  It carries a special connection to the world of the ancestors, and is embued with plentiful feminine energy, which render Cimi days excellent for resolving marital conflict.  Cimi also signifies fortitude; humility and obedience; scorn, contempt, and clumsiness.  Cimi’s animal totem is the owl.  In the Classical Maya tradition, it is associated with the cardinal direction North and the color white.  In the tradition of modern-day K’iche’ Maya, it is South and the color yellow. 

On Cimi days, the Maya pray for long life, for the delay or removal of death, and for rest and peace for those departing this world.  It is a special day to contact our ancestors, communicate with higher beings or other dimensions, and access spiritual knowledge.  Cimi is also a good day for healing, especially serious illnesses, protecting travelers, preventing accidents, and washing away negative energies.

In the Western/Northern mind, death is typically associated with the tragic end of a life, something most of us generally fear; it has therefore become a profoundly frightening concept.  This is one of the primary reasons we worship youth and neglect our elders; our focus is on the fruit-producing flowers of our society.  For the Maya however, death is a part of and complements life.  It carries positive, beneficent energy that brings us peace and harmony, and allows the spirit to regenerate and return again to life.  It is, in a word, transformational.  Death transcends Life so that Life may transcend Death.  This is the perpetual dance of intertwined duality that mirrors the everpresent cyclical nature of all things. Virtually every aspect of existence has its yin and its yang: the one cannot be without the other.  

In the Mayan worldview, the nature of Time is cyclical rather than linear, organic rather than structured, multidimensional rather than single-tracked.  As scholar Martin Prechtel explains, the Present is the world center, the axis mundi.  The Past, which embodies all that which has been, and the Future, which embodies all that is yet to come, are anchored to the center tree of the Eternal Now.  This is the reason why so many spiritual teachings focus on the “now” moment—the present already envelops the past and future. 

All that we do in our lives, all of the thoughts we think, the emotions we feel, the words we speak, the actions we take, feed our future Past and generate the legacy we leave to our families, the rest of humanity and our civilization’s history.  This is why Cimi, and our resonance with its energy, is so critical to our individual and collective futures.  We transform the energies of our ancestors and our parents into new actions and new experiences that become our lives and our memories, and our children in turn transform our energies into their own lives.

This trecena, open up to the possibility of change, of transformation. Release the asphyxiating chains of fear, anxiety, and uncertainty, and slip into the warm energetic pool of your soul’s true promise and potential.  Cimi is so potent that it can bring wildly different energies into people’s lives on the same day; how it manifests, in what specific form or in what specific outcome, will depend on your individual path and mindset.  This is true of all the day signs in the Tzolk’in, but particularly so with Cimi.  This is why it is so important to stay open and free, and not to suffocate any aspect of your life with worries, fears, or any other toxic emotions or thoughts.  Embrace, instead, the changes and transitions in your life, be they changes in lifestyle, work, relationships, moving to a new place, or simply entering a new decade.  Kiss the past with a goodbye of gratitude and embrace the future with the excitement of a child.

Indeed... as the Maya might say if they spoke Latin: carpe diem!  Seize the day (sign)!

Join us on the daily journeys of each Trecena, online at Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

(Text by Birgitte Rasine.  If you'd like to repost the Trecena texts, please copy the above text in its entirety and credit Birgitte Rasine/The Mayan Calendar Portal with a link to www.maya-portal.net, and email us with a link to your site so we can reciprocate.)