Ik' (Iq'): The Wind Day, Second 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. Ik' is the second of the 20 day signs in the 260-day Maya calendar. In K'iche' it is Iq'. It is one of the few day names whose meaning is not in doubt: the same T-shaped glyph writes the word ik', "wind, air, breath", in Classic Maya inscriptions. In highland Guatemala Iq' is one of the four year bearers. The modern Dreamspell system calls this slot "White Wind". [1][3][5]

Ik' at a glance

Position in the 20-day cycle	2 of 20 [1]
How often it returns	Every 20 days; a pairing such as 2 Ik' returns every 260 days [2]
Yucatec name	Ik' (16th-century spelling Ik) [1]
Classic-period reading	Ik' [1]
Highland Guatemala (K'iche')	Iq'; written Yε, Yc in colonial calendars [3]
Meaning	"Wind, air, breath" [1][5]
Central Mexican counterpart	Ehecatl, the wind god's day [4]
What the glyph depicts	A T-shaped sign, the logogram for ik' [1][4]
Haab' days it can share	Only day 0, 5, 10 or 15 of a Haab' month [1]
Highland role	One of the four year bearers (with Kej, E and No'j) [3]
How we calculate it	GMT correlation 584283, proleptic Gregorian dates [7]
Dreamspell alias (modern, José & Lloydine Argüelles, from 1987)	"White Wind", seal 2; 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.

Our full sample report happens to be an Ik' report: 1 January 2000 was 11 Ik' in the traditional count. [2]

Where Ik' sits in the 260-day count

Ik' follows Imix and precedes Ak'bal. Because the 13 numbers and 20 names advance together, the day after 1 Imix is 2 Ik', and Ik' meets every number once in 260 days. [1][2] In the Haab', the 365-day calendar that ran alongside, an Ik' day can only fall on positions 0, 5, 10 or 15 of a month. [1] Kettunen and Helmke list the same coefficients for Manik', Eb and Kaban. Those four are, by name, exactly the four days that serve as year bearers in the K'iche' calendar: Iq', Kej, E and No'j. [1][3]

What the name means

Ik' is the clearest of the twenty names. In Classic Maya script the logogram IK' is read ik' and glossed "air, wind, breath" in Kettunen and Helmke's sign list, and the same sign is used as the day name. [1] The K'iche' word iq' also means "wind", and Iq' is the K'iche' day name. [5] J. Eric S. Thompson noted in 1950 that "almost all sources agree" on the meaning and that the Aztec day in the same position was Ehecatl, the wind god. [4]

Breath carries the idea of life. Thompson wrote that Ik' and its highland equivalent "mean not only wind but breath and by extension life itself". [4] Classic texts used the same sign in a metaphor for death. On Yaxchilan Lintel 27, the deaths of a king and his mother are written as the withering of "his/her white wind/breath" (sak ik'il). [1]

The glyph

The day sign is a simple T shape inside the day cartouche. Thompson pointed out that the same T appears in the name glyph of Schellhas' "God B", a rain deity. [4] In the Madrid Codex the young maize god carries Ik' signs in a section about the growing maize crop, and other gods hold Ik' signs from which plants sprout. Thompson read this as germination, "of coming to life". [4] He concluded that the day belonged to a rain deity and to life and fruitfulness in general.

That interpretation is Thompson's. Later scholarship has not overturned the reading ik', "wind/breath", which is the secure part. The theological identification with God B remains his mid-20th-century view.

Iq' as a year bearer

In the K'iche' calendar each 365-day year is named after the day that begins it, and only four days can do so: No'j, Iq', Kej and E. [3] These are the year bearers. Christenson's K'iche' dictionary describes Iq' as the "fourth ranked Mam", the term for the year-bearer lords. [5]

The four days had a similar standing among the Ixil Maya of Chajul. In a note dated 30 August 1913, Robert Burkitt recorded: "Éh, Noh, Iq, and Txéh, are the lucky days. The other 16 indifferent. Everybody knows these days." [3]

How Iq' is understood in highland tradition

The 260-day count is still kept in highland Guatemala by Ajq'ijab' (daykeepers). [2] Records of Iq' vary:

• 1854 manuscript. Vicente Hernández Spina's calendar lists Iq' as a "bad day", following Imox. [3]
• 20th-century fieldwork. Weeks, Sachse and Prager, summarizing Bunzel (1952) and Tedlock (1992), describe Iq' as a day associated with destructive forces embodied in stone idols, which are honored with offerings of incense, aguardiente, roses, pine needles and candles. [3]
• Year bearer. Chajul's "lucky days" note above, written in 1913, gives a different picture from the 1854 list. [3]

These sources describe what calendar specialists recorded in specific places and times. They are not predictions for people born on Ik'. We are not daykeepers. Our reports use the wind and breath imagery above as modern reflective writing, not traditional teaching.

Traditional Ik' vs Dreamspell "White Wind"

Here the two systems use the same English word, which makes confusion more likely. "White Wind" is seal 2 in the Dreamspell, a modern system begun by José and Lloydine Argüelles in 1987 and published as a kit in 1990. [9] Dreamspell gives it the keywords Spirit, Communicates and Breath. [8] These are modern Dreamspell meanings.

The day count is different. Dreamspell fixes 26 July 1987 as "Kin 34, White Galactic Wizard" and skips 29 February. [9][10] So a "White Wind" day is usually not an Ik' day. 11 Oct 2026 is 2 Ik' in the traditional count; Dreamspell calls it Kin 46, White Resonant World-Bridger. The next Dreamspell "White Wind" day, 27 Oct 2026 (Kin 62, White Planetary Wind), is 5 Etz'nab in the traditional count. [Link: Dreamspell vs traditional converter → /dreamspell-vs-traditional-maya-calendar]

Colors, directions and "elements"

• Direction. Prehispanic Mesoamerican calendars assigned the days to east, north, west and south in turn. That places Ik', the second day, in the north. [6] Contemporary K'iche' practice assigns only four nawales to the directions (Aq'ab'al, Imox, Kame, Q'anil), and Iq' is not one of them. [6]
• Color. "White" follows from the north–white pairing in colonial Yucatec texts; assigning it to a single day is a modern reconstruction. Dreamspell also colors this seal white. [8]
• Element. Some charts, including earlier versions of this site, give Ik' the element "air". That is an understandable modern gloss on "wind", but no traditional source we found assigns Greek-style elements to day signs. It is shown on this site only as a labeled modern convention.

Upcoming Ik' 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
11 Oct 2026	2 Ik'	15 Yax	Kin 46, White Resonant World-Bridger
31 Oct 2026	9 Ik'	15 Sak'	Kin 66, White Magnetic World-Bridger
20 Nov 2026	3 Ik'	15 Keh	Kin 86, White Galactic World-Bridger
10 Dec 2026	10 Ik'	15 Mak	Kin 106, White Lunar World-Bridger
30 Dec 2026	4 Ik'	15 K'ank'in	Kin 126, White Solar World-Bridger
19 Jan 2027	11 Ik'	15 Muwan	Kin 146, White Electric World-Bridger
8 Feb 2027	5 Ik'	15 Pax	Kin 166, White Planetary World-Bridger

All of these fall on day 15 of their Haab' month, one of the four positions (0, 5, 10, 15) open to Ik'. [1]

Ik' with each of the 13 numbers

• 1 Ik' · next: 19 May 2027
• 2 Ik' · next: 11 Oct 2026
• 3 Ik' · next: 20 Nov 2026
• 4 Ik' · next: 30 Dec 2026
• 5 Ik' · next: 8 Feb 2027
• 6 Ik' · next: 20 Mar 2027
• 7 Ik' · next: 29 Apr 2027
• 8 Ik' · next: 8 Jun 2027
• 9 Ik' · next: 31 Oct 2026
• 10 Ik' · next: 10 Dec 2026
• 11 Ik' · next: 19 Jan 2027
• 12 Ik' · next: 28 Feb 2027
• 13 Ik' · next: 9 Apr 2027

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

Ik' 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. The sample shows a complete 11 Ik' report.

FAQ

Is Ik' the same as Iq'? Yes. Ik' is the Yucatec spelling and Iq' the K'iche' spelling of the same day. Older books write Ik. [1][3]

Does Ik' really mean wind? Yes. The glyph writes the word ik', "wind, air, breath", in Classic Maya texts, and the meaning is shared by Yucatec and K'iche'. [1][5]

Is "White Wind" the same as Ik'? Same name, different calendar. Dreamspell runs its own count, so a Dreamspell "White Wind" birthday is usually not an Ik' day. [8][9]

What is a year bearer? In the K'iche' calendar, a day that can begin and name a 365-day year. Iq' is one of four, with Kej, E and No'j. [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. [7][11]

Is Ik' a zodiac sign? No. It names a day, not a month or star sign. It recurs every 20 days. → How we calculate

Sources

1. Kettunen, Harri, and Christophe Helmke. Introduction to Maya Hieroglyphs, 17th rev. ed. Wayeb, 2020, pp. 17, 20, 49, 51, 56, 82. 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. 2, 3 (Table 1.1), 5, 13. https://www.upcolorado.com/media/acfupload/9780870819969.pdf
4. Thompson, J. Eric S. Maya Hieroglyphic Writing: An Introduction. Carnegie Institution of Washington, 1950, p. 73.
5. Christenson, Allen J. K'iche'–English Dictionary. FAMSI, s.v. "Iq'", "iq'". 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. 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