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Calendar Ending / Calendar Inaugurating Rituals of the 260-day Calendar, the 365-day Calendar and the 52-year Calendar

Cyclical systems of time constitute calendar ending and calendar inaugurating rituals. Rituals celebrated at the termination of the 260-day calendar, the 365-day calendar and the 52-year calendar entail an ending of the old and the introduction of a new calendar period.

Rituals could both be performed within a short cycle (the 260-day calendar and the 365-day calendar) and at the end of a cycle (the 260-day and 365-day calendar) of a calendar system, whereas there was only a ritual conclusion of the 52-year calendar and temporal intervals of the Long Count calendar.

The Burner ceremonies constituted ritual structural intervals but not necessarily a calendar-ending ritual since a termination and an initial date of 260-days are not known. Thus, we cannot be sure whether the Burner ceremonies started and completed the postclassic Yucatec 260-day calendar or simply a 260-day period.

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Interval Rituals of the 260-day Calendar In Mesoamerica
The so-called Burner period 65-day intervals of the cyclical 260-day calendar are only acknowledged from Yucatec sources and therefore believed to represent an exclusive Yucatecian tradition (Taube 1988: 178). This ritual may, however, not be purely Yucatecian. Barbara Tedlock asserts that contemporary...
(The Ritual Practice of Time: Philosophy and Sociopolitics of Mesoamerican Calendars)
The Cyclic Calendar Ending and Calendar Inaugurating Ritual
The traditional Mesoamerican 365-day calendar incorporates eighteen units of time of twenty days each (Sp. “veintena”). The 365-day year ends, however, with a period of only five days. Thus the Mesoamerican 365-day calendar embodies 19 time components. Eighteen multiplied with twenty plus five amounts...
(The Ritual Practice of Time: Philosophy and Sociopolitics of Mesoamerican Calendars)
The Structure of Time: Interval and Calendar Ending/ Calendar Inaugurating Rituals
There are two elementary categories of the ritual practice of time. The ritual practice of time can either celebrate a termination and an inauguration of the calendar or just a sequence (interval) of time within the calendar system. Being either organised in a linear or in a cyclic manner fundamentally...
(The Ritual Practice of Time: Philosophy and Sociopolitics of Mesoamerican Calendars)
THE RITUAL PRACTICE OF TIME OF THE 365-DAY CALENDAR OF THE POSTCLASSIC YUCATEC CIVILISATION
Contemporary ethnography has documented New Year rituals of both the traditional Mesoamerican 365-day calendar and the Catholic 365-day calendar of various Indigenous cultures. It is, however, the postclassic Yucatec civilisation, which provides extant unsurpassed sources to the pre-Euro- pean/pre-Christian...
(The Ritual Practice of Time: Philosophy and Sociopolitics of Mesoamerican Calendars)
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)
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,...
(The Ritual Practice of Time: Philosophy and Sociopolitics of Mesoamerican Calendars)
The Ritual Temporal Symbolism of the Ajaw Station of the 260-day Calendar
I put forward the hypothesis that linear Long Count calendar time was symbolically governed by the cyclical 260-day calendar. This is manifested by a ritually celebration of the station Ajaw of the 260-day calendar intimately combined with zero dates of specific time periods, so-called “period-endings”,...
(The Ritual Practice of Time: Philosophy and Sociopolitics of Mesoamerican Calendars)
THE RITUAL PRACTICE OF TIME OF THE 260-DAY CALENDAR AND THE 365-DAY CALENDAR OF THE POSTCLASSIC YUCATEC CIVILISATION
The 260-day calendar The Mixtecs employed a sacred language for the day signs and day numbers in theirmanuscripts. Michael W. Swanton and G. Bas van Doesburg (1996) has noted that not onlythe Mixtec but also the Chocho-Popoloca, which 260-days calendar have in general different day-names from the Mixtec...
(The Ritual Practice of Time: Philosophy and Sociopolitics of Mesoamerican Calendars)
THE RITUAL PRACTICE OF TIME OF THE 260-DAY CALENDAR OF THE POSTCLASSIC YUCATEC CIVILISATION: THE BURNER CEREMONIES OF QUADRIPARTITE 65-DAY INTERVALS
Rituals celebrating a symbolic termination and re-beginning of the cyclical Mesoamerican 260-day calendar is known from ethnographic data as for instance from the contemporary Ch’orti’ culture (Girard 1949; 1966). Conversely, there are a few extant sources from the early colonial period of Mesoamerican...
(The Ritual Practice of Time: Philosophy and Sociopolitics of Mesoamerican Calendars)