Mayan Astrology Calculator LogoMayan Astrology CalculatorDiscover Your Ancient Wisdom

Chikchan (Kan): The Serpent Day, Fifth 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. Chikchan is the fifth of the 20 day signs in the 260-day Maya calendar. In K'iche' the same day is called Kan. Both names are tied to snakes: Chikchan is the Ch'orti' Maya name for a group of serpent beings who send rain, and the K'iche' and Ixil take the day to mean "snake". The glyph's crosshatched element reproduces snake markings. Its Classic-period name is not yet known. In Dreamspell the slot is called "Red Serpent". [1][3][4]

Is Chikchan your day sign? Enter your birth date

Chikchan at a glance
Position in the 20-day cycle 5 of 20 [1]
How often it returns Every 20 days; a pairing such as 5 Chikchan returns every 260 days [2]
Yucatec name Chikchan (16th-century spelling Chicchan) [1]
Classic-period reading Unknown [1]
Highland Guatemala (K'iche') Kan; Can in colonial calendars [3]
Meaning Serpent, in K'iche', Ixil and Ch'orti' usage [4]
Central Mexican counterpart Coatl, "snake" [4]
What the glyph depicts A crosshatched element representing snake markings; head variants show a serpent [4]
Haab' days it can share Only day 3, 8, 13 or 18 of a Haab' month [1]
How we calculate it GMT correlation 584283, proleptic Gregorian dates [6]
Dreamspell alias (modern, José & Lloydine Argüelles, from 1987) "Red Serpent", seal 5; a separate system with a different count [7][8]

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

Calculate my Maya signatureSee a full sample report first →

Where Chikchan sits in the 260-day count

Chikchan comes after K'an and before Kimi; 4 K'an is followed by 5 Chikchan. [1] In 260 days Chikchan meets each number once. [2] In the 365-day Haab' it can only fall on positions 3, 8, 13 or 18 of a month, a set it shares with Ok, Men and Ajaw. [1]

What the name means

The name is a living term among the Ch'orti' Maya. J. Eric S. Thompson, drawing on Charles Wisdom's 1940 ethnography of the Ch'orti' Maya, explained that "Chicchan is the Chorti name for an important group of ophidian deities". [4] In Wisdom's account, four principal Chicchans live in the sky at the four directions and send the rain; thunder is one Chicchan shouting to another; others live inside mountains, lakes and streams. [4]

The highland name points to the same animal. Thompson noted that chan is the Ch'orti' word for snake and corresponds to Yucatec and K'iche' can, and that both the Ixil and the K'iche' give the meaning "snake" to this day. [4] The corresponding Aztec day is Coatl, "snake". [4] Among the twenty day signs, this is one of the cases where lowland, highland and Central Mexican names agree.

What the Classic Maya called the day is another matter. Kettunen and Helmke's table leaves the Classic reading of Chikchan blank. [1]

The glyph

In the codices, the main element of the Chikchan sign is a crosshatched infix. Following Eduard Seler, Thompson took it to represent the markings of a snake. [4] The same crosshatching is the attribute of Schellhas' "God H", whom Thompson called the Chikchan god, and the head of the god of the number 9 can stand in for related signs. Thompson concluded: "The fifth day, therefore, without question is the day of the snake deities who send the rains." [4]

That conclusion reflects Thompson's 1950 synthesis. The snake association is supported by names in several languages; the identification of particular gods (God H, the god of number 9) is his interpretation and would need checking against more recent iconographic work before being treated as settled.

Chikchan on the monuments

Thompson tallied dates on Classic monuments other than major period endings. He found Chikchan rare compared with Ajaw, the day with which it shares Haab' positions, and warned against reading too much into that: "the rare occurrences of Chicchan on the monuments may not indicate that that was an unfavorable day, but merely that Ahau was luckier for such purposes." [4] Scribes choosing dates for calendar calculations often had several options, and the Ajaw day was preferred.

Kan in highland tradition

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

  • 1854 manuscript. Vicente Hernández Spina's calendar lists Kan as a "bad day", like the two days before it. [3]
  • 20th-century fieldwork. Weeks, Sachse and Prager, summarizing Bunzel (1952) and Tedlock (1992), describe Kan as a day "that brings sickness and is symbolic of the arbitrary cruelness of the universe". [3]
  • Colonial spelling. The day appears as "Can" in the 1685 and 1722 calendars and "Kan" in 1854. [3]

The Ch'orti' material gives a contrasting picture of serpents as rain-bringers. [4] Both belong to the record; neither is a forecast for people born on Chikchan. We are not daykeepers. Our reports use the serpent and rain imagery as modern reflective writing, asking what in your life moves quietly and then arrives all at once. Some modern websites attach ideas from other spiritual traditions to this day; we found no Maya source for them and do not use them.

Traditional Chikchan vs Dreamspell "Red Serpent"

"Red Serpent" is seal 5 in the Dreamspell, a modern system begun by José and Lloydine Argüelles in 1987 and published as a kit in 1990. [8] Dreamspell gives it the keywords Life Force, Survives and Instinct. [7] The animal matches the Maya day, but the keywords are modern Dreamspell meanings.

The two systems count differently: Dreamspell fixes 26 July 1987 as "Kin 34, White Galactic Wizard" and skips 29 February. [8][9] 14 Oct 2026 is 5 Chikchan in the traditional count; Dreamspell calls it Kin 49, Red Planetary Moon. The next Dreamspell "Red Serpent" day, 10 Oct 2026 (Kin 45, Red Rhythmic Serpent), is 1 Imix in the traditional count. Oddly, 10 October 2026 (1 Imix) is already a "Red Serpent" day in Dreamspell. [Link: Dreamspell vs traditional converter → /dreamspell-vs-traditional-maya-calendar]

Colors, directions and "elements"

  • Direction. Prehispanic calendars assigned the days to east, north, west and south in turn, which places the fifth day back in the east. [5] Contemporary K'iche' practice gives the east to Aq'ab'al, not to Kan. [5]
  • Color. "Red" follows the east–red pairing of colonial Yucatec texts; applying it to one day is a modern reconstruction. [10] Dreamspell also colors this seal red. [7]
  • Element. Some charts, including earlier versions of this site, give Chikchan the element "fire". We found no traditional source for Greek-style elements on day signs. It appears on this site only as a labeled modern convention.

Upcoming Chikchan days

Calculated with the GMT 584283 correlation, the same method as our calculator, as of 10 October 2026: [6]

Gregorian date Tzolk'in (traditional) Haab' Dreamspell, for comparison only
14 Oct 2026 5 Chikchan 18 Yax Kin 49, Red Planetary Moon
3 Nov 2026 12 Chikchan 18 Sak' Kin 69, Red Self-Existing Moon
23 Nov 2026 6 Chikchan 18 Keh Kin 89, Red Spectral Moon
13 Dec 2026 13 Chikchan 18 Mak Kin 109, Red Overtone Moon
2 Jan 2027 7 Chikchan 18 K'ank'in Kin 129, Red Crystal Moon
22 Jan 2027 1 Chikchan 18 Muwan Kin 149, Red Rhythmic Moon
11 Feb 2027 8 Chikchan 18 Pax Kin 169, Red Cosmic Moon

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 18 of its Haab' month, one of the four positions (3, 8, 13, 18) open to Chikchan. [1]

Chikchan with each of the 13 numbers

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

Chikchan 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]

Read your own signature in depth

Calculate your full signature free, with no sign-up. Under the result you can add an 11-page personal PDF report ($7, one-time) that reads your day sign and number together.

Calculate my Maya signatureSee a full sample report first →

Comparing two people? See the sample pair report →

FAQ

Are Chikchan, Chicchan and Kan the same day? Yes. Chicchan is the colonial Yucatec spelling, Chikchan the revised spelling, and Kan the K'iche' name. [1][3]

Does Chikchan mean serpent? Yes, in usage: Ch'orti' Chicchans are serpent rain beings, and the K'iche' and Ixil read the day as "snake". The ancient Classic name is still unknown. [1][4]

Is "Red Serpent" the same as Chikchan? Same slot and same animal, but Dreamspell's count differs, so a "Red Serpent" birthday is usually not a Chikchan day. [7][8]

Is Chikchan the same as K'an? No. K'an (Yucatec, 4th day) and Kan (K'iche', 5th day) look alike but are different days. K'iche' K'an is called K'at. [1][3]

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. [6][11]

Is Chikchan a zodiac sign? No. It names a day that recurs every 20 days. → How we calculate

Sources

  1. Kettunen, Harri, and Christophe Helmke. Introduction to Maya Hieroglyphs, 17th rev. ed. Wayeb, 2020, pp. 49, 51, 56. 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), 14. https://www.upcolorado.com/media/acfupload/9780870819969.pdf
  4. Thompson, J. Eric S. Maya Hieroglyphic Writing: An Introduction. Carnegie Institution of Washington, 1950, pp. 75, 92 (citing Wisdom 1940 and Schultze Jena 1946).
  5. 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
  6. Mayan Astrology Calculator. "Calculation Methodology and Cultural Scope." https://mayanastrologycalculator.com/methodology
  7. Foundation for the Law of Time. "Learning the 13 Galactic Tones and 20 Solar Seals." https://lawoftime.org/infobooth/sealsandtones.html
  8. "Dreamspell." Wikipedia (citing Argüelles & Argüelles, Dreamspell kit, 1990). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreamspell
  9. Argüelles, José. Rinri Project Newsletter II.2.1. Foundation for the Law of Time. https://www.lawoftime.org/pdfs/Rinri-II-2.1.pdf
  10. 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/
  11. 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