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In living highland practice, Kawoq is the community and the household — a large, crowded day. Ethnographic accounts and Guatemalan Maya organisations describe it as the day for family trouble and for collective trouble: quarrels between households, disputes that involve a whole village, the accumulated difficulties a group carries. It is also strongly associated with women's authority and with midwives, and with the vara or ceremonial bundle held on a community's behalf. The storm in the name is not decorative — the day is understood as bringing what has built up, which is destructive and is also what makes the year's growth possible. An ajq'ij born on Kawoq is spoken of as someone who ends up carrying other people's affairs, respected and rarely left alone. Petitions concern families, communities and childbirth. The particulars are taught inside the initiation lineage and are not set out here.

Kawak is one of the four year bearers in Landa's sixteenth-century Yucatec set — K'an, Muluk, Ix, Kawak — holding the west and the colour black, which is exactly what the four-direction rotation through the twenty predicts. That set governs the new-year pages of the Dresden Codex, pages 25 to 28, where each bearer is drawn with its direction and the rites for the year it opens. The highland Mam set in use today is a different one: Ik', Manik', Eb', Kab'an.

In the Classic and Postclassic record, the storm belongs to Chaahk, the rain god, who splits the earth open with a lightning axe — among the most frequently depicted deities in Maya art, in the codices and on painted vessels alike. The Dresden Codex page 74, the flood page, shows the sky crocodile disgorging water and an aged goddess pouring out a jar over the world: the storm at world scale. The Madrid Codex, dominated by 260-day working almanacs, threads rain augury through its agricultural sections, where the question of whether and when it will rain is the practical business of the whole book.

The Aztec cognate is Quiahuitl, rain, patron Tonatiuh. The Zapotec piyè and the Mixtec codices hold the same position, conventionally glossed Rain.

Date	Event
c. 600–500 BCE (contested)	Earliest 260-day count glyphs, Oaxaca — San José Mogote and Monte Albán. Zapotec, not Maya.
36 / 32 BCE	Chiapa de Corzo Stela 2 and Tres Zapotes Stela C, the earliest dated Long Counts. Both partly reconstructed.
c. 250–900 CE	Classic period: Chaahk with his lightning axe throughout the monuments and painted pottery.
11th–12th c. CE (debated)	The Dresden Codex copy — new-year pages 25–28 with the Kawak bearer, and the page 74 flood scene.
1562 / 1566	Landa burns the books at Maní, then records the twenty day names and the Yucatec year bearers.
1905–1935	The Goodman–Martínez–Thompson correlation, constant 584283. Mainstream, not unanimous.
11 Aug 3114 BCE	Long Count zero under GMT 584283 (6 Sep 3114 BCE Julian); the 584285 variant gives 13 August.
21 Dec 2012	13.0.0.0.0, 4 Ajaw 3 K'ank'in — the anchor this site counts from.
1995 / 1996	Guatemala's Peace Accords recognise Maya spirituality and access to sacred places.

Kawak returns every twenty days, and each return carries a coefficient seven higher than the last, because twenty leaves a remainder of seven on division by thirteen: 7, 1, 8, 2, 9, 3, 10, 4, 11, 5, 12, 6, 13. Thirteen appearances use every number once and take 260 days.

Upcoming in 2026, on the site's GMT anchor: 29 August (11 Kawak), 18 September (5 Kawak), 8 October (12 Kawak).

• Maya Tzolk'in — the system, the count, and what it is not.
• Etz'nab' — the day before.
• Ajaw — the day after, closing the twenty.
• World Zodiacs · Religion · Calendar