Tianquiztli Earrings

Tianquiztli earrings carry the night sky of ancient Mesoamerica upon their face, and the story they tell is nothing less than the story of the world’s survival.

Tianquiztli is the Aztec name for the seven stars of the Pleiades constellation. The name means “a gathering”, and sometimes “a marketplace”, and the importance attached to it is indicated by the fact that the Aztec new year itself began with the asterism’s heliacal rising in the east, immediately before the sun’s dawn. These were not merely stars to the Aztec people. They were the clock by which civilization measured its own continuation.

Time was measured by movements of the stars and the sun, and the Aztec calendar was based upon a fifty-two year cycle. The crossing of the meridian by the Pleiades signaled that the cosmos did not interrupt their movement, and the world would not end, that another fifty-two years were safe from the apocalypse, from demons of darkness descending to earth. This also ensured that the sun was reborn.

Every half-century, the entire empire held its breath. The preparation for the New Fire Ceremony began by extinguishing all fires across the land. The streets were swept, old clothes and cooking utensils were discarded, and the images of the deities were bathed. Outside Tenochtitlan, the Aztec capital, priests gathered atop the sacred volcanic mountain of Mt. Uixachtecatl until midnight, waiting for the rising of Tianquiztli. If the stars appeared as foretold, the world would live. A new fire would be kindled. The darkness would be defeated once more.

When the Tianquiztli reached their zenith and the star Yohualtecuhtli shone brightly at the very center of the night sky, the ceremony could begin. Fire was lit and carried from the mountain’s summit down to the great Temple of the Sun, and from there to every hearth in every home across the empire. The light spread outward from a single point, just as the constellation spread its stars across the dark field of the sky, until the whole world was illuminated again.

It is this moment, the stars gathered at their zenith, the world poised between extinction and renewal, light about to be reborn from darkness, that the Tianquiztli earrings hold within them. The oval disc of 18k gold Tianquiztli earrings, its matte surface alive with radiating constellations of raised gold dots, is not merely decorative. It is a star map. Each point of light placed with the same deliberate intention that the Aztec priests brought to their reading of the heavens, every dot a star, every line a ray of the new fire spreading outward into the night.

To wear Tianquiztli earrings is to carry the gathering place upon you. It is to wear the moment when humanity looked up, held its breath, and found that the stars had kept their promise.

Tianquiztli Earrings are available in yellow gold, rose gold, and white gold, three expressions of the same ancient light, each one a sky of its own.