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The Ritual Practice of Structuring Divine Linear Time and the Symbolic Temporal Status of the 260-day Calendar

Time of the Long Count calendar had both political and religious value but apparently not necessarily for all solid strata of classic Maya society. The aristocratic elite presumably exclusively employed the Long Count calendar. I argue that there must be a common rationale, not only political and sociological, of why time came to be such an essential religious-political constituent of classic Maya philosophy and why certain intervals of time in a linear calendar were emphasised ritually.

I propose two interrelated theories explicating classic Maya ritual practice of various time intervals of the Long Count calendar. Firstly, this constituted a chronovisionary methodology of structuring and thereby venerating interval deified linear time. Secondly, it was a ceremonial celebration honouring the extraordinary status and role of the sacred time station Ajaw of the fundamental 260-day calendar in combination with zero dates at various “period-endings” of time intervals integrated within the temporal system of the Long Count calendar. Let us first consider the hypothesis about creating order and structure of deified linear time.

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The Ritual Symbolic Temporal Importance of the 260-day Calendar
I argue that among the numerous Mesoamerican calendars there is one predominant calendar. This is the 260-day calendar, which mathematically and religiously has a particular significance in Mesoamerican temporal philosophy and practices. In addition, in various manners it is intimately related to and...
(The Ritual Practice of Time: Philosophy and Sociopolitics of Mesoamerican Calendars)
Order (Structure) Versus Disorder (.Anti-Structure): A Ritual Organising of Interval Deified Linear Time
That time was considered to be deified seems to have been the reason why the lords and some members of the elite celebrated temporal rituals as public political manifestations legitimating their claim to authority and power. The sovereign and the high nobility (i.e. the dynastic lineage and allies of...
(The Ritual Practice of Time: Philosophy and Sociopolitics of Mesoamerican Calendars)
The Ritual Practice of the Quadripartite Interval Sequence of the Four Burner Periods (65-days) of 260-days
The Burner rituals constitute a structural interval but not necessarily a calendar-ending ritual since a beginning and ending date of 260-days are not known. We cannot therefore know whether the Burner ceremonies started and ended the postclassic Yucatec 260-day calendar or just a 260- day period. The...
(The Ritual Practice of Time: Philosophy and Sociopolitics of Mesoamerican Calendars)
The Philosophy and Religious Ritual Practices of Linear Divine Time
In this section, I argue that that it is not a quantitative but the qualitative experience of time, which contribute to explain the religious ritual temporal practice. Since it was ritualised, time conceivably held, apart from the socio-political function, a deeper philosophical quality or religious...
(The Ritual Practice of Time: Philosophy and Sociopolitics of Mesoamerican Calendars)
An Ordering and Structuring of Deified Calendar Time in Polymorphous, Poly-semantic and Poly-functional Ritual Practices
The limited extant data indicates that a culture did not only observe time ritually of simply one but of several co-exisiting calendars. Hence a poly- chroni of ritual practices of calendar time could be conducted within a cultural context. The Long Count calendar of the classic lowland Maya is signified...
(The Ritual Practice of Time: Philosophy and Sociopolitics of Mesoamerican Calendars)
Ritual Practice of Time as an Analytic Theoretical Concept
What constitutes and how can the concept “ritual (practice) of time” be defined? An enormous literature has been produced about the notions of “ritual” and “time”, which cannot be given simple definitions.12 A substantial disagreement exists among scholars concerning the meaning and function...
(The Ritual Practice of Time: Philosophy and Sociopolitics of Mesoamerican Calendars)
Comparative Methodology of a History of Religions Explication of Ritual Practice of Time
Due to the limited access to pre-European/pre-Christian primary and secondary sources to the ritual practices of calendar time, I intend to explicate the ritual practices of the noted four major calendars—The Long Count calendar, the 260-day calendar, the 365-day calendar and the 52-year calendar—of...
(The Ritual Practice of Time: Philosophy and Sociopolitics of Mesoamerican Calendars)
Cosmogony and Ritual Practice of Time
Rituals can be authorised and be given meaning through stories about past events, which can be ceremonially imitated and/or commemorated (Dumezil 1935-1936: 242-243). The ritual practices of time might therefore be associated with actions of the remote past when the time of the calendar was initiated...
(The Ritual Practice of Time: Philosophy and Sociopolitics of Mesoamerican Calendars)
Cosmology (Space) and Ritual Practice of Time
The cosmology is outlined at the creation of the world, which explains the primordial ordering of time and space. Time may be associated with space in some calendars. In the chronovision and cosmovision of Mesoamerican philosophy it is important to consider whether the various categories of time were...
(The Ritual Practice of Time: Philosophy and Sociopolitics of Mesoamerican Calendars)