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Manik' (Kej): The Deer Day, Seventh 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. Manik' is the seventh of the 20 day signs in the 260-day Maya calendar. In K'iche' it is Kej, the word for "deer", and across Mesoamerica the matching day is "Deer". Yet the usual Maya glyph is a hand. David Stuart suggests the hand began as a deer's antler that scribes later reinterpreted. The oldest securely dated Maya calendar record, from San Bartolo (300–200 BCE), is 7 Manik' written with a deer's head. Dreamspell calls this slot "Blue Hand". [1][3][5][6]

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Manik' at a glance
Position in the 20-day cycle 7 of 20 [1]
How often it returns Every 20 days; a pairing such as 7 Manik' returns every 260 days [2]
Yucatec name Manik' (16th-century spelling Manik) [1]
Possible Classic-period reading Chij? (tentative; chij is "deer") [1]
Highland Guatemala (K'iche') Kej (also Keej, Kiej); Quieh, Queh, Quiej in colonial calendars [3]
Other names Manich' (Ch'olan), Moxik (Tzeltalan) [5]
Meaning Deer, in highland names and across Mesoamerica [5][7]
Central Mexican counterpart Mazatl, "deer" [7]
What the glyph depicts Usually a hand; sometimes a deer's head [5]
Haab' days it can share Only day 0, 5, 10 or 15 of a Haab' month [1]
Highland role Year bearer; "first ranked Mam" [3][4]
How we calculate it GMT correlation 584283, proleptic Gregorian dates [9]
Dreamspell alias (modern, José & Lloydine Argüelles, from 1987) "Blue Hand", seal 7; a separate system with a different count [10][11]

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Where Manik' sits in the 260-day count

Manik' follows Kimi and precedes Lamat; 6 Kimi is followed by 7 Manik'. [1] Over 260 days Manik' meets every number once. [2] In the 365-day Haab' it can only fall on positions 0, 5, 10 or 15 of a month, like Ik', Eb and Kaban. [1] By name, those four are the four K'iche' year bearers: Iq', Kej, E and No'j. [3]

The name: deer in the highlands, a puzzle in the lowlands

In the highlands the meaning is plain. Stuart notes that highland Mayan languages consistently use keej or a close cognate, the general word for "deer". [5] The Aztec day in this position is Mazatl, "deer", and the matching signs in Zapotec, Isthmian and other scripts show deer. [5][7] Kettunen and Helmke give Chij?, from chij, "deer", as a tentative Classic reading. [1]

The lowland names are harder. Stuart writes that "the Yukatek name Manik' is of obscure origin". A Ch'olan form, Manich', survives in baptismal records from Chiapas, where day names were used as personal names, and Tzeltalan languages had Moxik, also of unknown origin. [5] He agrees with linguist Terrence Kaufman that these names may originally have referred to a deer god or a deified patron of hunting, rather than simply "deer". [5]

In modern K'iche', Christenson's dictionary glosses kej as "horse". [4] His Popol Vuh notes still treat kej as "deer" when discussing the name of the hero Xbalanque. [8]

Why is a deer day written with a hand?

J. Eric S. Thompson called Manik' "one of the most puzzling of all days". The name and the glyph, "a hand, shown sideways", seemed to have nothing to do with deer. [7] He proposed that the hand stood for the tail of a scorpion, which in Maya art sometimes ends in a hand, and linked the day to a god of hunting. [7]

Stuart's 2024 study answers part of the puzzle. Thompson did not know that Maya scribes "also occasionally employed a deer's head to represent Manik", and that "the hand and the deer head are interchangeable". [5] The same pair of signs is also used for the syllable chi and for the word chij, "deer". Stuart then proposes that the hand began as a deer's antler, a part standing for the whole, as the antler does for the day Deer at Cacaxtla and in Nahua writing. Over time scribes came to see it as a hand. [5] He is careful to add that "there is no known archaic form of the day Manik that displays an antler" and calls his proposal "a speculative extrapolation". [5]

The earliest known Maya date

In 2022 Stuart and colleagues published painted mural fragments from San Bartolo, Guatemala, recording the day "7 Deer", that is, 7 Manik'. Sealed in an early phase of the Las Pinturas pyramid, they date to between 300 and 200 BCE, and the authors call it "the earliest securely dated example of the Maya calendar". [6] The day sign there is a deer's head, "its neck gracefully bent". [5]

On later Classic monuments, Manik' is a common day. Thompson counted 32 occurrences in his 1950 sample of non-period-ending dates, among the six most frequent. [7]

Kej in highland tradition

The 260-day count is still kept in highland Guatemala by Ajq'ijab' (daykeepers). [2] Kej stands out in the records:

  • Year bearer. Kej is one of the four days that begin and name a K'iche' year. [3] Christenson's dictionary calls it the "first ranked Mam (Year Bearer)". [4]
  • 1854 manuscript. Vicente Hernández Spina calls Kej a "good day, on which beneficial things are asked for the supplicant". [3]
  • 20th-century fieldwork. Weeks, Sachse and Prager, summarizing Bunzel (1952) and Tedlock (1992), call it "a good day above all others for requesting favors", tied to the ancestors; 8 Kej is the day of commemoration of the ancestors. [3]
  • Ixil Chajul, 1913. Robert Burkitt recorded Txéh among the four "lucky days". [3]
  • Personal experience. A woman from Santa Cruz del Quiché told Estrada Peña that on Kiej days she felt strong and agile, "because the corresponding animal was the deer". [12]

These records describe practice in particular communities. They are not forecasts for people born on Manik'. We are not daykeepers. Our reports use the deer's alertness and the hunter's patience as modern reflective imagery.

Traditional Manik' vs Dreamspell "Blue Hand"

"Blue Hand" is seal 7 in the Dreamspell, a modern system begun by José and Lloydine Argüelles in 1987 and published as a kit in 1990. [11] Dreamspell gives it the keywords Accomplishment, Knows and Healing. [10] It takes its name from the shape of the glyph, not from the deer that the day names in Maya languages.

The counts also differ: Dreamspell fixes 26 July 1987 as "Kin 34, White Galactic Wizard" and skips 29 February. [11][13] 16 Oct 2026 is 7 Manik' in the traditional count; Dreamspell calls it Kin 51, Blue Crystal Monkey. The next Dreamspell "Blue Hand" day, 12 Oct 2026 (Kin 47, Blue Galactic Hand), is 3 Ak'bal 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 seventh day in the west. [12] Contemporary K'iche' practice ties the west to Kame instead. [12]
  • Color. Colonial Yucatec texts pair the west with black. [14] "Blue", shown on earlier versions of this site, is Dreamspell's color for this seal. [10]
  • Element. Some charts give Manik' the element "air". We found no traditional source for Greek-style elements on day signs; on this site it appears only as a labeled modern convention.

Upcoming Manik' days

Calculated with the GMT 584283 correlation, the same method as our calculator, as of 10 October 2026: [9]

Gregorian date Tzolk'in (traditional) Haab' Dreamspell, for comparison only
16 Oct 2026 7 Manik' 0 Sak' Kin 51, Blue Crystal Monkey
5 Nov 2026 1 Manik' 0 Keh Kin 71, Blue Rhythmic Monkey
25 Nov 2026 8 Manik' 0 Mak Kin 91, Blue Cosmic Monkey
15 Dec 2026 2 Manik' 0 K'ank'in Kin 111, Blue Resonant Monkey
4 Jan 2027 9 Manik' 0 Muwan Kin 131, Blue Magnetic Monkey
24 Jan 2027 3 Manik' 0 Pax Kin 151, Blue Galactic Monkey
13 Feb 2027 10 Manik' 0 K'ayab Kin 171, Blue Lunar Monkey

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 0 of its Haab' month, one of the four positions (0, 5, 10, 15) open to Manik'. Day 0 is the first day of a month. [1]

Manik' with each of the 13 numbers

Each number links to its page; the anchors let number pages link back here. 7 Manik' is the San Bartolo date, and 8 Kej the highland day of ancestors.

Manik' 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 Manik' and Kej the same day? Yes. Manik' (older spelling Manik) is the Yucatec name and Kej (Keej, Kiej) the K'iche' name for the seventh day. [1][3]

Is Manik' the deer sign? Yes. The highland name means deer, the matching Mesoamerican days are "Deer", and Classic scribes sometimes wrote the day with a deer's head. [5][7]

Why is the glyph a hand? The hand and deer head were interchangeable signs. Stuart proposes the hand began as a deer antler; he calls this speculative. [5]

Is "Blue Hand" the same as Manik'? It fills the same slot in Dreamspell's list, but Dreamspell's count differs, so a "Blue Hand" birthday is usually not a Manik' day. [10][11]

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. [9][15]

Is Manik' 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. 20, 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. 2, 3 (Table 1.1), 5, 14. https://www.upcolorado.com/media/acfupload/9780870819969.pdf
  4. Christenson, Allen J. K'iche'–English Dictionary. FAMSI, s.v. "Kej", "kej". https://www.famsi.org/mayawriting/dictionary/christenson/quidic_complete.pdf
  5. Stuart, David. "Day Sign Notes: Manik." Maya Decipherment, 2 Sep 2024. https://mayadecipherment.com/2024/09/02/day-sign-notes-manik/
  6. Stuart, David, Heather Hurst, Boris Beltrán, and William Saturno. "An early Maya calendar record from San Bartolo, Guatemala." Science Advances 8, no. 15 (2022): eabl9290. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abl9290
  7. Thompson, J. Eric S. Maya Hieroglyphic Writing: An Introduction. Carnegie Institution of Washington, 1950, pp. 76–77, 92 (Table 7).
  8. Christenson, Allen J. Popol Vuh: Sacred Book of the Quiché Maya People. Electronic edition, Mesoweb, 2007, p. 79, n. 164. https://www.mesoweb.com/publications/Christenson/PopolVuh.pdf
  9. Mayan Astrology Calculator. "Calculation Methodology and Cultural Scope." https://mayanastrologycalculator.com/methodology
  10. Foundation for the Law of Time. "Learning the 13 Galactic Tones and 20 Solar Seals." https://lawoftime.org/infobooth/sealsandtones.html
  11. "Dreamspell." Wikipedia (citing Argüelles & Argüelles, Dreamspell kit, 1990). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreamspell
  12. 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. 201 (n. 10), 202–203. https://www.redalyc.org/pdf/2813/281336894007.pdf
  13. Argüelles, José. Rinri Project Newsletter II.2.1. Foundation for the Law of Time. https://www.lawoftime.org/pdfs/Rinri-II-2.1.pdf
  14. 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/
  15. 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