The day 10 K’at can be seen as an excellent day for a community gathering. 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.

Venus at Superior Conjunction

Today, from our point of view, Venus is exactly behind the Sun. This is the exact midpoint between its Morning planet phase and its evening planet phase. It went into this period of invisibility from the morning planet phase on 1 Ajmak (19th November 2025). It will reappear as the evening planet on 13 Kame (17th February 2026). Today you could more-or-less draw a straight line from the Earth through the Sun to Venus. It is a true alignment, and just the beginning of something bigger over the next few days.

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.

In early January 2026, there will be a very interesting alignment in our skies, although it will not be visible to us. Nonetheless, I feel may have a powerful effect.

Pop culture or “Facebook” astronomy has flooded the internet with disinformation and I find that rather sad. It creates an unrealistic expectation, and misunderstandings. “Once in a lifetime” “alignments” are popularised encouraging people to go out and look at the skies, which is a great thing; I feel we should all spend more time watching the wonders of our night sky. However, often they return disappointed.

Headlines like “7 planets visible in the sky” really require some caveats. For a start, even I, as an amateur astronomer with a telescope, have never seen Uranus or Neptune. Maybe I haven’t tried hard enough, but they are exceptionally difficult to spot, especially with the naked eye. If you are in an area with very dark skies, something which is becoming rarer by the day, you might have a chance. However, in general, you will see Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. If you are lucky, and particularly if you are at lower latitudes like Guatemala, you will see Mercury too. The inclination of the ecliptic at 15 degrees North means that there is a greater separation between the planet and the horizon. The rather flat inclination of the ecliptic in higher latitudes makes Mercury difficult to spot.

“The planets will be in a line in the sky”  they said.

A misconception was made early in 2025 regarding an event. It was widely published as being an alignment, before being reworded as a “planetary parade”. Unfortunately, sensationalist internet sites had propagated the misinformation so that many people believed it was an alignment of some kind.  The planets do form (or follow) a line in the sky, but it’s not actually rare. The planets roughly follow the line of the ecliptic, the path of the Sun through the sky. It is the plane of the solar system. To simplify the understanding of this we could think of balls on a plate. From our viewpoint on Earth they might appear to be in a line in the sky, but the reality of their positions within the solar system was a bit more like the diagram below.

It becomes very apparent that this probably is not much of an alignment! Looking up from East to West it was certainly possible to see Mars, then Jupiter (almost overhead), then Venus with Saturn and Mercury close to the horizon at sunset. It was great to see so many planets visible but not really what I would call an alignment. You had to really look from one side of the sky to the other to see it.

Why mention it now?

On January 6th 2026 Venus will be at superior conjunction. Venus and Mercury orbit the Sun within the orbit of the Earth. This means that they can pass between the Earth and the Sun (inferior conjunction) and behind the Sun from the point of view from Earth (superior conjunction).

Mars can pass behind the Sun (conjunction) or put the Earth directly between it and the Sun (opposition, sort of like a full moon).

Approximately every 584 days, Venus will be at superior conjunction. Mars will be at (superior) conjunction every 789 days. In January 2026 these will happen at nearly the same moment. Both Venus and Mars will be “behind” the Sun from our point of view here on Earth. This could be seen very much as an alignment, with the planets coming very close to an exact line extending from the Earth through the Sun.

Interestingly, Jupiter will be at opposition on January 10th 2026, extending that alignment. It is not exact, but it is very close to being a true alignment, with Earth being the filling of the sandwich.

I don’t have an answer for what it all means, but I would suggest this alignment would have a greater effect than the planetary parade of 2025.