Book excerpt: So begins The Birth of a Universe, a profound exegesis by Apabyan Tew, a K'iche Maya midwife and daykeeper. We are bound to the ancient 260-day Maya calendar just as we are bound to the planets that gave birth to that divinatory calendar, our conception, growth, and destiny guided by nawales, the spirits of the days. This system, where everything in intertwined and shapes the nature of the soul and consciousness, is the essence of Maya science. Westerners may divide indigenous science into various disciplines such as physics and astronomy. The vital details of the parents' circumstances and emotions at the moment of conception some would call psychology, a psychology that takes into account every intense mood and feeling-the very atmosphere-from the sexual act to the miraculous birth of the child. Others would call the daykeeper's acute analysis of consciousness, spirit, gender, and material status a new (though age-old) philosophy. Like all well-wrought philosophies, this one is intricate and complex. In fact, it reflects a rational world grounded in earth and sky, basic human emotions and urges, as well as invisible forces.This wise, sometimes esoteric volume is an antidote to chaos, presenting a Unified Theory of Birth that opens a pathway to the fates and to the eternal.