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Ak'bal (Aq'ab'al): The Night Day, Third Sign of the Maya Calendar

Prepared by the Mayan Astrology Calculator editors · Sources below · Reviewed 10 October 2026 · Calculation: gmt584283-proleptic-gregorian-v1

Quick answer. Ak'bal is the third of the 20 day signs in the 260-day Maya calendar. In K'iche' it is Aq'ab'al. The name belongs to a family of Mayan words for "night" and "darkness"; the sign AK'AB, "night", appears on an early Maya monument at Lamanai, Belize. For K'iche' daykeepers the same word evokes the moment night turns to day, so they place Aq'ab'al in the east, at dawn. Dreamspell calls this slot "Blue Night". [1][3][5][6]

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Ak'bal at a glance
Position in the 20-day cycle 3 of 20 [1]
How often it returns Every 20 days; a pairing such as 3 Ak'bal returns every 260 days [2]
Yucatec name Ak'bal (16th-century spelling Akbal) [1]
Possible Classic-period reading Ak'ab? (tentative) [1]
Highland Guatemala (K'iche') Aq'ab'al; Aεbal, Akbal, Acbal, Bacbal in colonial calendars [3]
Other names Votan (Uotan, Watan) in some Chiapas and Guatemalan lists [4]
Meaning "Night, darkness"; in K'iche', also "early morning, dawn" [1][5][6]
Central Mexican counterpart Calli, "house" [4]
Haab' days it can share Only day 1, 6, 11 or 16 of a Haab' month [1]
How we calculate it GMT correlation 584283, proleptic Gregorian dates [7]
Dreamspell alias (modern, José & Lloydine Argüelles, from 1987) "Blue Night", seal 3; a separate system with a different count [8][9]

Your day sign is only half of your birth signature. The number from 1 to 13 is the other half.

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Where Ak'bal sits in the 260-day count

Ak'bal comes after Ik' and before K'an. Numbers and names advance together, so 2 Ik' is followed by 3 Ak'bal, and Ak'bal meets each of the 13 numbers once in 260 days. [1][2] In the 365-day Haab', Ak'bal can only fall on day 1, 6, 11 or 16 of a month; Kettunen and Helmke list the same positions for Lamat, Ben and Etz'nab. [1]

What the name means

The day name sits inside a well-attested word family. Thompson collected the forms in 1950: akbal is "night" in western Ch'ol, akab in Yucatec and eastern Ch'ol, with related words in Tojolab'al, Tzeltal, Jakaltek and Yokot'an. He concluded that "there can be no doubt that these names mean night or darkness". [4] Kettunen and Helmke's dictionary glosses Classic Maya ahk'ab as "night, darkness". [1]

In K'iche', Christenson's dictionary gives aq'äb as "night; early morning" and aq'abil as "at dawn", adding that dawn is the traditional time of marriage proposals. [5] That second sense matters for how the day is placed today (see below).

Ak'bal is one of the oldest Maya signs on record. Among the early texts Kettunen and Helmke list, a masonry mask from Lamanai, Structure N9-56, in Belize, "bears the glyph for AK'AB (night / darkness) on its cheek". [1]

The glyph and the "Votan" tradition

The day sign shows looped lines around hooks above an undulating line. Thompson noted that the upper element also appears on heads of animals linked to the underworld, such as the leaf-nosed bat and the dog, and that jaguar glyphs sometimes carry an Ak'bal shield. [4] He suggested the whole sign might represent the interior of the earth, but called that identification "highly speculative". [4]

In several lists from Chiapas and western Guatemala the third day is called Votan (Uotan, Watan) instead of Ak'bal. Thompson summarized the colonial bishop Núñez de la Vega, who described Votan as an ancestor who kept a treasure in a dark house identified with a cave, and as lord of the hollow wooden drum. [4] Drawing on these threads and on Central Mexican parallels, Thompson argued that the third day belonged to "the jaguar god of the dark interior of the earth". [4] That is his mid-20th-century synthesis; the secure part is the meaning "night, darkness".

Aq'ab'al in highland tradition

The 260-day count is still kept in highland Guatemala by the Ajq'ijab' (daykeepers). [2] Published records of Aq'ab'al are not uniform:

  • 1854 manuscript. Vicente Hernández Spina's calendar calls Aq'ab'al a "bad day" on which daykeepers visit shrines against their enemies. [3]
  • 20th-century fieldwork. Weeks, Sachse and Prager, summarizing Bunzel (1952) and Tedlock (1992), describe it as "the day of slanderers": 8 Aq'ab'al is a time to ask protection against slander, while 12 and 13 Aq'ab'al were described as "strong" days. [3]
  • Dawn and the east. In Estrada Peña's fieldwork, K'iche' daykeepers placed Aq'ab'al in the east "because in K'iche' the name of this day means 'aurora'". [6]

These records show how specific communities used the day. They are not forecasts for people born on Ak'bal. We are not daykeepers; our reports use the night-and-dawn imagery as modern reflective writing, asking what begins for you in the dark before it is visible.

Traditional Ak'bal vs Dreamspell "Blue Night"

"Blue Night" is seal 3 in the Dreamspell, a modern system that José and Lloydine Argüelles began in 1987 and published as a kit in 1990. [9] Dreamspell gives it the keywords Abundance, Dreams and Intuition. [8] These are modern Dreamspell meanings, not Maya ones.

Dreamspell also runs its own count: it fixes 26 July 1987 as "Kin 34, White Galactic Wizard" and skips 29 February. [9][10] 12 Oct 2026 is 3 Ak'bal in the traditional count; Dreamspell calls it Kin 47, Blue Galactic Hand. The next Dreamspell "Blue Night" day, 28 Oct 2026 (Kin 63, Blue Spectral Night), is 6 Kawak in the traditional count. [Link: Dreamspell vs traditional converter → /dreamspell-vs-traditional-maya-calendar]

Colors, directions and "elements"

Ak'bal is a good example of why a single "direction" field can mislead:

  • Prehispanic pattern: west. Mesoamerican calendars assigned the days to east, north, west and south in turn, which puts the third day in the west. Estrada Peña, citing López Austin, gives exactly this placement for Aq'ab'al. [6]
  • Contemporary K'iche' practice: east. Today the K'iche' assign Aq'ab'al to the east because of its link with dawn. [6] Both are documented; they belong to different periods.
  • Color. In colonial Yucatec texts the west is black. [11] Dreamspell colors this seal blue instead. [8] Earlier versions of this site showed "Blue", which is the Dreamspell color.
  • Element. Some charts give Ak'bal the element "earth". We found no traditional source assigning Greek-style elements to day signs; on this site it appears only as a labeled modern convention.

Upcoming Ak'bal days

Calculated with the GMT 584283 correlation, the same method as our calculator, as of 10 October 2026: [7]

Gregorian date Tzolk'in (traditional) Haab' Dreamspell, for comparison only
12 Oct 2026 3 Ak'bal 16 Yax Kin 47, Blue Galactic Hand
1 Nov 2026 10 Ak'bal 16 Sak' Kin 67, Blue Lunar Hand
21 Nov 2026 4 Ak'bal 16 Keh Kin 87, Blue Solar Hand
11 Dec 2026 11 Ak'bal 16 Mak Kin 107, Blue Electric Hand
31 Dec 2026 5 Ak'bal 16 K'ank'in Kin 127, Blue Planetary Hand
20 Jan 2027 12 Ak'bal 16 Muwan Kin 147, Blue Self-Existing Hand
9 Feb 2027 6 Ak'bal 16 Pax Kin 167, Blue Spectral Hand

The date tables use your local date when JavaScript is available. Without it, they stay at the 10 October 2026 snapshot.

Each falls on day 16 of its Haab' month, one of the four positions (1, 6, 11, 16) open to Ak'bal. [1]

Ak'bal with each of the 13 numbers

Each number links to its page; the anchors let number pages link back here.

Ak'bal and relationships

Our compatibility tool compares two full birth signatures with a modern reflective method, not a documented historical Maya formula. [Compare two birth dates → /compatibility]

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FAQ

Are Ak'bal, Akbal and Aq'ab'al the same day? Yes. Akbal is the colonial Yucatec spelling, Ak'bal the revised spelling, and Aq'ab'al the K'iche' name. [1][3]

Does Ak'bal mean night or dawn? Both, depending on the language. Classic Maya and Yucatec forms mean "night, darkness"; K'iche' aq'äb covers night and early morning. [1][4][5]

Is "Blue Night" the same as Ak'bal? It occupies the same slot in Dreamspell's list, but Dreamspell's count is different, so a "Blue Night" birthday is usually not an Ak'bal day. [8][9]

Which direction belongs to Ak'bal? West in the prehispanic sequence; east in contemporary K'iche' practice. [6]

Why does another calculator give me a different day sign? It may use the Dreamspell count, or a correlation constant other than 584283, which shifts results by a day or two. [7][12]

Is Ak'bal a zodiac sign? No. It names a day that recurs every 20 days, not a month. → How we calculate

Sources

  1. Kettunen, Harri, and Christophe Helmke. Introduction to Maya Hieroglyphs, 17th rev. ed. Wayeb, 2020, pp. 12, 49, 51, 56, 98. https://www.mesoweb.org/resources/handbook/IMH2020.pdf
  2. Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian. "The Calendar System." Living Maya Time. https://maya.nmai.si.edu/calendar/calendar-system
  3. Weeks, John M., Frauke Sachse, and Christian M. Prager. Maya Daykeeping: Three Calendars from Highland Guatemala. University Press of Colorado, 2009, pp. 3 (Table 1.1), 13. https://www.upcolorado.com/media/acfupload/9780870819969.pdf
  4. Thompson, J. Eric S. Maya Hieroglyphic Writing: An Introduction. Carnegie Institution of Washington, 1950, pp. 73–75.
  5. Christenson, Allen J. K'iche'–English Dictionary. FAMSI, s.v. "aq'äb", "Aq'abal", "aq'abil". https://www.famsi.org/mayawriting/dictionary/christenson/quidic_complete.pdf
  6. Estrada Peña, Canek. "Anima' ri cho, anima' ri plo: Imox y el agua entre los k'iche'." Estudios de Cultura Maya 45 (2015): 191–224, pp. 202–203. https://www.redalyc.org/pdf/2813/281336894007.pdf
  7. Mayan Astrology Calculator. "Calculation Methodology and Cultural Scope." https://mayanastrologycalculator.com/methodology
  8. Foundation for the Law of Time. "Learning the 13 Galactic Tones and 20 Solar Seals." https://lawoftime.org/infobooth/sealsandtones.html
  9. "Dreamspell." Wikipedia (citing Argüelles & Argüelles, Dreamspell kit, 1990). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreamspell
  10. Argüelles, José. Rinri Project Newsletter II.2.1. Foundation for the Law of Time. https://www.lawoftime.org/pdfs/Rinri-II-2.1.pdf
  11. Stuart, David. "Day Sign Notes: Imix / Imox." Maya Decipherment, 14 Aug 2025 (on the colors of the imix che' world trees). https://mayadecipherment.com/2025/08/14/day-sign-notes-imix-imox/
  12. Van Stone, Mark. "2012 FAQ." FAMSI. https://www.famsi.org/research/vanstone/2012/faq.html

Reviewed: 10 October 2026 · Calculation: gmt584283-proleptic-gregorian-v1 · Corrections: contact us