Reply #22: So since

[Why Syzygy]

the long count Sixth Night ends on 10/28/2011, then that means First Day starts again at that point. Right? Or something else? What does the First Day hold?

(I enrolled in the course and will take it slow.)


ETA: Here's the page you were looking for.
http://www.calleman.com/content/articles/tzolkincount_or_dreamspell.htm

(snipped)

There was however a problem with the Dreamspell, namely that the Maya had never used the particular tzolkin count that it was linked to. Many of the followers of Dreamspell, mostly for lack of knowledge, simply presented Dreamspell as The Mayan Calendar. In practice the result of this was that many individuals have been deluded into thinking that the Galactic Signature they had been assigned also was the one that the Maya would have used. As this was discovered something called The True Count Debate raged on the Internet in 1995 where especially John Major Jenkins energetically asserted that Argüelles count was false, and that it had never been used by the Mayan people themselves. In addition, there still existed a tzolkin count, the Classical, which was used over the entire Mesoamerican region in Classical times and had survived until today in the Highlands of Guatemala and elsewhere among the Mayan day keepers.

Jenkins stated, and I think rightly so, that Argüelles' followers had no right to present the Dreamspell count as the Calendar of the Maya and that it was a kind of Cultural imperialism to ignore the "surviving" Sacred Calendar that was still in use among the Maya.

Argüelles response to this criticism seems to have passed through two different phases. His initial response was to say that he had received his calendar by divine revelation. Since he saw himself as an incarnation of Pacal Votan, a Mayan king who ruled in Palenque in the seventh century AD, everything he did was in accordance with the divine plan. To my knowledge he never responded in a direct way to the issues raised. It seems however that the attitude of the Argüelles' changed in 1998 and José became more open to the criticism. Following a meeting with Quiché elder Don Alejandro Cirilo Perez Oxlaj at Spring Equinox 1998 he declared that the Dreamspell and the Classical Maya tzolkin counts were equally valid and that no conflict existed between the two. Later, he claimed in an interview that Dreamspell was really not a Mayan calendar, although he still asserted its value.

And this later position is obviously perfectly legitimate. As long as it is not claimed that the Dreamspell count has been used by the Maya anyone is in his right to assert its possible value, if any. As we discuss a new calendar for the future, for the new age, I believe however that what is most important is to specify what is the purpose of this calendar and chronology. Unless we do so we may either run into the kind of pie throwing that was typical of the True Count Debate, or resign to a attitude that has become common today, to claim that "anything goes," that there really is no such thing as a True Count and that all there is are our individual truths (But then, if there is no True Count, what value would any particular tzolkin count really have?).