13 SERPENT
There are three day signs which relate to the archetype of Feathered Serpent. One of them is Iq’, which is Feathered Serpent as the wind god, the primal creator spirit who appears in the first few pages of the Pop Wuj. The day sign Aj is the K’iche’ equivalent of the Aztec Acatl (Reed), and relates to the historical Toltec spiritual teacher called Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl.
Kan (Yucatec: Chicchan) simply means “snake” in K’iche’ and symbolizes Feathered Serpent as a manifestation of the energy within the body which is called koyopa.
Koyopa literally means “lightning.” If you are speaking to a campesino with no interest in costumbre (the ancient ways), he is probably referring to actual lightning in the sky. But if you are speaking to a daykeeper, he’s probably talking about the “inner lightning.”
This inner lightning is perceived as a serpent. Bolts of lightning are “serpents in the sky.” This inner lightning or koyopa is a feminine power. My friend Doña Maria told me that when she was a young girl her elders (people born near the beginning of the 20th century) always told her that girls ought not to stare at the lightning, because the affinity between women and lightning was so intense that overly sensitive individuals could easily fall out of balance.
The koyopa is also a messenger. It sends us signals by causing a trembling in one of the 13 major joints in the body. Often, this trembling comes to daykeepers as they perform the divination ritual, and it means that a special message is coming to them from the ancient gods.
