Junajpu
Junajpu, Ajaw in the Yucatec form: the twentieth and last day sign, the lord and the sun. This page is the reference for the sign the tradition reads as the hero.
What the daykeepers say
The daykeepers read Junajpu as the sun and the lord: the hero twins of the Popol Vuh, the hunter, the ancestors as lords, and the completion of the count. A person born under it is read as noble, artistic and brave, a leader and a hunter, with a talent for seeing things through to their end and a warmth that people follow. It is the sign on which the daykeepers honour the ancestors as lords.
The honest shadow is the sun's pride: arrogance, a need to be the hero, and a difficulty with the ordinary days between triumphs. The tradition says Junajpu closes the count and must be willing to begin it again.
The meaning, as the site reads it
The Sun and the ancestors, spiritual warriors, completion and return
Born under it
Leaders, confident, connected to the ancestors, strong-willed
The shadow: Arrogance, isolation, domination
The trecena
Every 260 days the sign opens a trecena, a run of thirteen days that carries its name: the next 1 Junajpu is 18 November 2026. A birth on any day of the count is read with its number as the strength and its sign as the character, and the number is read from one, low and beginning, to thirteen, high and complete.
The two counts, stated honestly
Two apps can give one birthday two different day signs, and only one of them is this count.
This page follows the living highland count, kept without a break in the K'iche' and Kaqchikel communities of Guatemala and correlated to the Long Count by the GMT constant, 584283. Dreamspell, the count most apps use, was invented in 1990: it borrows the 260 day shape, renames the signs, skips leap days and runs about forty-four days apart, so the same person is a different sign in it. Neither app is wrong about its own arithmetic; they are counting different things, and only one of them is the count the daykeepers keep. We say which we use, and today is 11 Tijax in it.
The day turns at dawn for most highland daykeepers, not at midnight, so a birth in the small hours is flagged rather than silently assigned; the calculator does that, and it names the correlation it used.
About 60 seconds · needs only your date of birth · a birth before dawn is flagged
Questions people ask
What is my day sign?
The sign of your birth date in the 260 day count, worked out by arithmetic from the Julian Day Number rather than read off a table. The calculator gives the K'iche' and Yucatec names, the number, the direction, and the Mayan cross as one lineage reads it.
Why does another app give me a different sign?
Because it is probably Dreamspell, a count invented in 1990 that shares the 260 day shape and nothing else with the highland count: different names, no leap days, and a count about forty-four days apart. Both are consistent; only one is traditional, and this page says which it uses.
Is Junajpu a good day sign?
The daykeepers do not rank the twenty. Each carries a capacity and a shadow, both on this page, and the number it is paired with is read as its strength.
We read charts for pattern and coherence, not prediction. Nothing here tells you what will happen, and nothing here tells you who you are; it shows a structure and leaves the judgement with you.