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Another important calendar for Mayas was the Venus cycle. Mayas added the cycle of Venus to the Tzolk’in and Haab, and Venus is the Great Star whose cycles of visibility and invisibility gave timing to warfare and ballgames at the Place of Sacrifice and rituals of bloodletting.
Venus cycle was especially important for Mayas, because it was associated with war and they used it to divine good times for war and coronations. For example; when Venus rose, Mayas planned for wars to begin.
Viewed from earth, since the planet rises at the same place in the Earth’s sky every 584 days, even though its actual orbit is just under 225 days, the Venus Cycle is 584 days long. It never appears to be more than about 45 degrees from the solar disk closely linked with the sun. Before dawn as the herald of the sun, Venus appears as the morning star for about 9 months in the East. Venus disappears from view for about 50 days then reappears as the evening star in the West, rising for 9 months after the Sun has set. Before it reappears again, in the East before dawn, at the latitude of Yucatan, it then disappears from view for from 3 to 16 days.
Venus also cycles through 5 distinct patterns of movement as viewed from Earth while it moves through these four positions, from evening to morning with 2 periods of invisibility in between. Because of this Mayas devoted 5 pages in the “Dresden Codex to Venus” (one of the Mayas codices) and each page has 13 lines showing 584 days and so for a total of 37.960 days. This is the time which takes the Tzolk’in to correlate to the cycles of Venus and the Sun.
Total 37.960 days = 2x52 or 104 years = 146x260 (Tzolk’in) = 65x584 (Venus) = 104x365 (Sun)
Mayas calculated these five Venus years equal solar years:
5x584 (Venus) = 8x365 (Sun) = Total 2.920 days
Cycle of 2.920 days correlates with 99 lunar months which mean 39, 5 days and 13 sidereal which means 225 days Venus orbits.
Mayas also tracked other planets’ movements not just Venus, including those of Mars, Jupiter and Mercury.
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Venus Cycle -
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