The day 10 K’at can be seen as an excellent day to gather your community together. Whether it is a town meeting or a social event this would be a perfect day for it. This could result in abundance for all.
There is a certain image that comes with this combination of number and nawal for me. That is a community coming together to bring in the harvest. It is time to reap and leaving the crop in the field could cause wastage. Bringing together a task force of your friends to help you complete this work could benefit all. This is a day to ask for help from those around you to finish a project. Equally, lending a hand to help friends and family complete a task bring an unexpected bonus. This is a day to fulfil your commitments to your community.
However, it is important to know when to break away too, before it holds you back from progress. K’at is the nawal of the burden. Here we can see it in combination with the number which represents society. Whilst fulfilling the commitments you have made to your community, you may find yourself over burdened. This could leave you with little time or energy to for your own or your family’s needs.
This could also be a day to take a look at where you have become trapped by the expectations of society. Are there certain parts of your community that hold you back from achieving what you could? K’at helps to highlight these issues It shows us where the net which entangles us is, and helps us to break free if we choose. This is the day to ask for help to be released from that within society which holds you back from fulfilling your true potential.
The Nawal K’at
K’at signifies a net and represents gathering together or bundling. In the Western Highlands of Guatemala, to this day many crops are harvested and carried in nets – oranges, lemons, avocados to name but a few. Through this we see one of the positive meanings of this nawal, that of abundance and harvest. K’at is a great day to draw things together. This could mean gathering your harvest, collecting ideas for your projects, or inviting people to a social event. It is a day of prosperity and the bounty which comes from the Earth, a day of gardeners, but also of merchants.
However, K’at also has its more challenging side. An abundant crop will fill the net, but it will also slow you down. K’at is also the nawal of prisons and burdens, as the net which gathers, can also ensnare us. When candles are purchased for the fire ceremonies, they come in bundles held together by little strings. When the nawal K’at is addressed during the fire ceremony, these strings are put in to the fire, with offerings, to ask K’at to help us release ourselves from our burdens, from the ties which bind us. These ties can also be seen as excessive attachment to material things.
The Nawal K’at and Ix K’ik
The nawal K’at is associated with Ixk’ik, Blood Moon, who was magically impregnated in Xibalba (the underworld) by the spirit of Jun Junajpu. Jun Junajpu and his brother Wucub Junajpu were summoned by the Lords of Death to Xibalba to face the challenges after they disturbed the Lords by playing the ball game too noisily. Unfortunately this first pair of heroes went unprepared and were tricked and sacrificed by the Lords of Death. After their deaths, the head of Jun Junajpu was hung in a calabash tree, where it eventually blended in with the wizened fruit on the tree. However, it was known to speak and the news of this dis-incarnate voice in the tree reached Blood Moon.
She decided to go an visit the tree where she was asked to hold out her hand. The head spat into her hand and she became impregnated with the Hero Twins, Junajpu and Xbalamque. She was banished from Xibalba and went to meet the mother of Jun Junajpu and Wucub Junajpu, Ixmucane. At first Ixmucane did not accept that Blood Moon was carrying her grandchildren, and set a task to fill a net with corn from the garden. When Blood Moon arrived, there was only one stalk, but by pulling the corn silk, the plant magically produced an abundant harvest and Blood Moon was accepted as telling the truth.
The Number Ten
The number 10 is another number which demonstrates the connection between the sacred calendar and the human body. As five represents one hand, ten represents two hands coming together. This can be seen as the shaking of hands creating agreement between people. Ten is seen as a good number, a number of community and the laws of society, of acting in harmony.
