Kib (Ajmaq): The Sixteenth 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. Kib is the sixteenth of the 20 day signs in the 260-day Maya calendar; in K'iche' it is Ajmaq. The Yucatec name means "wax", and Ajmaq is usually translated "sinner". In highland Guatemala it is a day of the ancestors and of penitence. Its oldest meaning is unclear, and the English label "Owl", common online, has no source we could find. Dreamspell calls this slot "Yellow Warrior". [1][3][5][6]

Kib at a glance

Position in the 20-day cycle	16 of 20 [1]
How often it returns	Every 20 days; a pairing such as 8 Kib returns every 260 days [2]
Yucatec name	Kib (16th-century spelling Cib) [1]
Classic-period reading	Unknown [1]
Highland Guatemala (K'iche')	Ajmaq; Ahmak, Ahmac in colonial calendars [3]
Other names	Chabin (Chiapas) [5]
Meaning of the names	Yucatec kib, "wax"; K'iche' ajmak, "one who is guilty; sinner" [5][6]
What the glyph depicts	Uncertain; Thompson saw a section of a shell [5]
Central Mexican counterpart	Cozcaquauhtli, "king vulture" [5]
Haab' days it can share	Only day 4, 9, 14 or 19 of a Haab' month [1]
How we calculate it	GMT correlation 584283, proleptic Gregorian dates [7]
Dreamspell alias (modern, José & Lloydine Argüelles, from 1987)	"Yellow Warrior", seal 16; 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.

Where Kib sits in the 260-day count

Kib follows Men and precedes Kaban; 2 Men is followed by 3 Kib. [1] In the 365-day Haab' Kib can only fall on positions 4, 9, 14 or 19 of a month, the same set as Imix, Kimi and Chuwen. [1]

The names: wax, sinner, insect

Kib has several names, and they do not obviously agree. Thompson wrote in 1950 that "Cib means wax; Ah Mac is said to signify sinner", and that a third name, Chabin, survives in Hun Chabin, "1 Cib", the name of a pyramid near Comitán in Chiapas. [5]

• Kib, "wax". A colonial Yucatec creation story in the Book of Chilam Balam of Chumayel says that "on 6 Cib the first candle was made". Thompson pointed out that candles were a post-Columbian introduction, so this cannot be the day's original sense. [5]
• Ajmaq, "sinner". Christenson's K'iche' dictionary lists Ajmak as a day in the sacred calendar and ajmak as "one who is guilty; sinner". [6]
• Ajmaq, an insect. The ethnographer Leonhard Schultze Jena, working in Chichicastenango, recorded that "the real meaning of this word is associated with an insect, which the Indians call ahmak", which agrees with the fact that on this day people make offerings to the souls of their ancestors, who are imagined "in the form of this insect which is smaller than a fly". An aged informant told him that Ajmaq meant "flying insect". [5]

Where does "Owl" come from?

Many websites, including earlier versions of this one, label Kib "Owl". We have not found a published source for it. The names above give wax, sinner and insect; the central Mexican day is the king vulture; and one colonial Yucatec list, the Kaua manuscript, connects the day with the deer god. [5] Until a source turns up, we do not use "Owl" as a meaning of Kib.

The glyph

The Kib glyph has an abstract "symbolic" form and a rarer head form. Thompson thought the symbolic form was "almost surely a section of a univalve shell", and noted that a head variant on Yaxchilan Lintel 48 has the features of the jaguar god of the number 7. [5]

From these and the codex pages that pair Kib with offerings to insects (Madrid 103–106), Thompson built a long hypothesis linking the day to the Bakabs, sky-bearers and patrons of beekeeping, and to the souls of the dead returning as insects. He himself wrote: "The case is not proved." [5] We report it as a 1950 hypothesis, not a settled reading. Kettunen and Helmke leave the Classic reading of Kib blank. [1]

Ajmaq in highland tradition

The 260-day count is still kept in highland Guatemala by Ajq'ijab' (daykeepers). [2] Ajmaq is tied to the dead and to moral reflection:

• 1854 manuscript. Vicente Hernández Spina's calendar calls Ajmaq "also a most excellent day", "especially consecrated to the spirits presiding over good health". [3]
• 20th-century fieldwork. Weeks, Sachse and Prager, summarizing Bunzel (1952) and Tedlock (1992), describe it as "a day without defined character but symbolic of the moral forces as embodied in penitential rituals". 7 Tz'ikin, 8 Ajmaq and 9 No'j "are days in which to pray for protection". [3]
• Ancestors. Thompson cites the anthropologist Sol Tax, who reported that at Chichicastenango the day is that of ancestral spirits. [5]

The "sinner" gloss is a dictionary meaning of the word. These records describe how communities used the day; they say nothing about the character of people born on it, and neither do we. We are not daykeepers. Our reports use Kib's themes of memory, forgiveness and ancestry as modern reflective writing.

Traditional Kib vs Dreamspell "Yellow Warrior"

"Yellow Warrior" is seal 16 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 Intelligence, Questions and Fearlessness. [8] "Warrior" is Dreamspell's own name; it does not translate Kib or Ajmaq.

The counts also differ: Dreamspell fixes 26 July 1987 as "Kin 34, White Galactic Wizard" and skips 29 February. [9][10] 25 Oct 2026 is 3 Kib in the traditional count; Dreamspell calls it Kin 60, Yellow Galactic Sun. The next Dreamspell "Yellow Warrior" day, 21 Oct 2026 (Kin 56, Yellow Self-Existing Warrior), is 12 Eb in the traditional count. [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 sixteenth day in the south. [4] Contemporary K'iche' practice gives the south to Q'anil instead. [4]
• Color. The south is yellow in colonial Yucatec texts; assigning that color to one day is a modern reconstruction. [11] Dreamspell also colors this seal yellow. [8]
• Element. Some charts, including earlier versions of this site, give Kib the element "water". We found no traditional source for Greek-style elements on day signs; on this site it appears only as a labeled modern convention.

Upcoming Kib 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
25 Oct 2026	3 Kib	9 Sak'	Kin 60, Yellow Galactic Sun
14 Nov 2026	10 Kib	9 Keh	Kin 80, Yellow Lunar Sun
4 Dec 2026	4 Kib	9 Mak	Kin 100, Yellow Solar Sun
24 Dec 2026	11 Kib	9 K'ank'in	Kin 120, Yellow Electric Sun
13 Jan 2027	5 Kib	9 Muwan	Kin 140, Yellow Planetary Sun
2 Feb 2027	12 Kib	9 Pax	Kin 160, Yellow Self-Existing Sun
22 Feb 2027	6 Kib	9 K'ayab	Kin 180, Yellow Spectral Sun

Each falls on day 9 of its Haab' month, one of the four positions (4, 9, 14, 19) open to Kib. [1]

Kib with each of the 13 numbers

• 1 Kib · next: 23 Apr 2027
• 2 Kib · next: 2 Jun 2027
• 3 Kib · next: 25 Oct 2026
• 4 Kib · next: 4 Dec 2026
• 5 Kib · next: 13 Jan 2027
• 6 Kib · next: 22 Feb 2027
• 7 Kib · next: 3 Apr 2027
• 8 Kib · next: 13 May 2027
• 9 Kib · next: 22 Jun 2027
• 10 Kib · next: 14 Nov 2026
• 11 Kib · next: 24 Dec 2026
• 12 Kib · next: 2 Feb 2027
• 13 Kib · next: 14 Mar 2027

Each number links to its page. 8 Kib (8 Ajmaq) is the middle day of the highland run of protection days; 6 Kib is the Chumayel "first candle" day. [3][5]

Kib 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 Kib, Cib and Ajmaq the same day? Yes. Kib (Cib in older spelling) is the Yucatec name and Ajmaq the K'iche' name for the sixteenth day. [1][3]

Does Kib mean "owl"? Not in any source we found. The names mean "wax" (Yucatec) and "sinner" (K'iche'); the central Mexican day is the king vulture. [5][6]

Does being born on Ajmaq mean someone is a "sinner"? No. That is a dictionary meaning of the word. Highland records describe it as a day for penitence and for the ancestors. [3][6]

Is "Yellow Warrior" the same as Kib? It fills the same slot in Dreamspell's list, but Dreamspell's count differs, so a "Yellow Warrior" birthday is usually not a Kib day. [8][9]

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 Kib 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, 57. 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), 15. https://www.upcolorado.com/media/acfupload/9780870819969.pdf
4. 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
5. Thompson, J. Eric S. Maya Hieroglyphic Writing: An Introduction. Carnegie Institution of Washington, 1950, pp. 84–86, 90 (citing Schultze Jena, Tax, and the Chumayel manuscript).
6. Christenson, Allen J. K'iche'–English Dictionary. FAMSI, s.v. "Ajmak", "ajmak". https://www.famsi.org/mayawriting/dictionary/christenson/quidic_complete.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