daykeeperとは 意味・読み方・使い方

A daykeeper was the name for a diviner in the pre-Columbian Maya culture. The Mayans are renowned for their advanced skills in the fields of mathematics and astronomy, and had come up with a complex system of tracking days. The Maya calendar actually consisted of three individual calendars, the most sacred of the three being the Tzolkin or divinatory calendar. It was a daykeeper's task to keep count of the days with coral seeds according to this sacred calendar, as well as to perform divination rituals based upon the dates of the sacred calendar. In this respect, their role was not unlike that of a modern astrologer, in that they attempted to use the day of a person's birth to divine certain traits they would inherit as a result of that day, as well as what might befall them in the future. Daykeepers, unlike astrologers, would not take into account the position of the stars.