The 13 Moons calendar is not "the Mayan calendar" and does not align with the dates still kept by Mayan descendants in the Guatemalan highlands (let alone anthropologists with differing ideas).

It does not align very well with the rotation of the Earth around the sun, and the same kin appears two days in a row on leap days in the Gregorian (currently used) calendar (which, if they are different calendars, should not happen). More on that below.

It's detractive from mental expansion if when you're learning anything all you do is believe everything associated with it as true.

If you study medicine, keep an open mind! Don't think a certain pill will be good and useful for everyone. It's the same when you learn about history and tradition and the sacred: think about who's telling you what and why.

I'm not saying, "Piffle! Silly hippies!" Far from it. I am saying: There are sacred, magical things in this world. However, there are also flakey, contrived things out there. Do not confuse the two.

Sometimes when you open yourself so wide to the world that you realise the magic and wonder of simply being alive, it is easy to find meaning in otherwise flakey things. With all the horror, despair, and apathy in the world, it is also very comforting to find meaning in something promising galactic enlightenment.

So, what's physically wrong with the 13 Moons calendar itself?

1.) The 13 Moons calendar has 13 months of 28 days with an extra "day out of time" to make 365 days. This is problematic because a year is not simply 365 days. It takes about 365 days, five hours, 48 minutes, and 46.5 seconds for the Earth to make a full rotation around the sun.

What does this mean?

After four years, the roughly six hours add up to about one more day. In eight years, you're two days out. In three decades, it is a week.

On 13moon.com, you'll find the "Perpetual 13 Moon/28 Day One-Page Calendar" a "downloadable calendar that fits onto one page and can be used for any year." This means there is, for sure, no leap year or any other way to deal with the extra quarter day each full rotation of the Earth around the sun in the 13 Moons calendar.

It is like pie. If you buy 5 at a bakery, and an extra quarter of a pie is thrown in for free, you have not 5 pies by 5 and 1/4 pies. If this happens every day, in four days you have not 20 pies but 21 pies. In a little over three months, you have two dozen extra pies.

This can be a problem if you don't count the extra bits and are trying to work out why all the pies won't fit in your freezer after you only worked out that 5 even pies a day should fit.

Change 5 to 365, pies to days, freezer to calendar, and it's basically the same thing.

2.) Not everyone will have a kin assigned in the same way. Try to decode a date on tortuga.com ( www.tortuga.com/eng/decode/ ) and if you enter any leap day you'll find something odd.


Someone born February 28th, 1980, is a Blue Solar Monkey. Someone born the day after, on February 29th, 1980, is also a Blue Solar Monkey.

Someone born February 28th, 1981, is a Yellow Planetary Warrior. Someone born the day after, on March 1st, 1981, is Red Spectral Earth.


If the 13 Moons calendar is unrelated to the Gregorian Calendar, *why* does this cause two people born on days one after the other to have the same kin?

February 29th is *only* February 29th to those who call it February 29th, and is a day as mundane or magical as the day before or after.

- In the Hebrew calendar:
February 28th, 1980 = Adar 11, 5740
February 29th, 1980 = Adar 12, 5740
March 1st, 1980 = Adar 13, 5740

- In the Indian Civil calendar:
February 28th, 1980 = Phalguna 10, 1901
February 29th, 1980 = Phalguna 11, 1901
March 1st, 1980 = Phalguna 12, 1901

- In the Islamic calendar:
February 28th, 1980 = Rabi'ath-Thani 11, 1400
February 29th, 1980 = Rabi'ath-Thani 12, 1400
March 1st, 1980 = Rabi-ath-Thani 13, 1400

- In the Persian calendar:
February 28th, 1980 = Esfand 9, 1358
February 29th, 1980 = Esfand 10, 1358
March 1st, 1980 = Esfand 11, 1358

- In the Julian calendar:
February 28th, 1980 = February 15th 1980
February 29th ,1980 = February 16th 1980
March 1st, 1980 = February 17th 1980

- Kin in the 13 Moons Calendar
February 28th, 1980 = Blue Solar Monkey, Galactic Moon 22
February 29th, 1980 = Blue Solar Monkey, Galactic Moon 22
March 1st, 1980 = Yellow Planetary Human, Galactic Moon 23

If the 13 Moons calendar is its own system, why is it so tied into the Gregorian calendar? Even the Julian calendar (from which the Gregorian calendar is derived) is indepentant from it, and vice versa.

Why is 13 Moons unseperable from the very system its proponents want to discard?

(check out different dates on more calendars: www.fourmilab.ch/documents/calendar/ )

Much has been destroyed by colonialism, and to make up new ideas doesn't bring back any lost (or hidden) knowedge. I look at the Mayan cycles and try not to cloud what I learn with suppositions.

This isn't to say I think it could never be relevent to people, let alone the world- December 21, 2012, may indeed be a very, very important date, but I'm not going to make up prophecies by cobbling together information I find and guessing.

There is a fine line between being respectful and not calling what you see, and I feel saying nothing would be the latter. If your friend starts spending lots of money on food supliments you feel certain to be snake oil, shouldn't you at least say something?

I'm not writing this to put anyone down (I know quite a few out there into this calendar); I just want to point out certain things so they can be known, and it frustrates me when I see so many people blindly accepting 13 Moons.

I'm also not just dismissing this at a glace; I've read about 13 Moons and tried to learn something from it, but this is really all I see. Convince me it's not so, and I won't keep a closed mind simply to be right.


The main problems I've seen so far are:

1.) 13 Moons doesn't align with the rotation of the Earth
2.) Every four years 1 kin repeats over two days due to the workings of the Gregorian calendar (the very system the 13 Moons proponents want to replace!)


The math and design of the real Mayan cycles are beautiful, and more likely to have answers about the universe than the very recently created and somewhat flawed 13 Moons calendar.


Useful links:

I. Van Laningham's Mayan Calendar Tools - www.pauahtun.org/Calendar/tools.html (use the 584283 correlation constant, as it aligns with the dates still kept by those in the Guatemalan highlands)

Claus Tøndering's Frequently Asked Questions About Calendars - www.tondering.dk/claus/calendar.html

Calendar Converter (From/to Gregorian to/from Julian, Hebrew, Islamic, Persian, Mayan, Bahá'í, Indian Civil, French Republican, etc. )
www.fourmilab.ch/documents/calendar/

http://tribes.tribe.net/not13moons