And so we begin our journey. There is much to discover and much to learn about the Sacred Calendar. By the end of this chapter we will have covered a lot of ground, and I will be sharing some advanced ideas. In an effort to make this accessible to the beginner, we should try to get a firm understanding of the basic mechanics of several different cycles and how they relate. And don't worry, a lot of the basics covered here will be repeated when necessary throughout this chapter. I'll try to keep this introduction short and simple. The full meaning of these interlocking cycles will be explored in later sections.

There are two types of Mayan time keeping: 1) the Venus Round system, consisting of the tzolkin, haab and the Venus cycle, and 2) the Long Count. Let's start where it all begins, with the tzolkin.