The Three Sisters Earrings

Orion has been recognised as a constellation across an extraordinary range of cultures. Sumerian, Egyptian, Greek, Hindu, Maori, Yoruba. The Egyptians associated the belt with Osiris, lord of the dead, and aligned three of the Giza pyramids with its line. The Greeks read it as the giant hunter Orion, killed by Artemis (or by a scorpion sent by Hera, depending on the source) and placed in the sky as memorial.

Indigenous American agricultural traditions, Haudenosaunee, Wabanaki, and others, use "Three Sisters" to describe the planting of corn, beans, and squash together. The corn provides a stalk for the beans to climb. The beans fix nitrogen for the soil. The squash leaves shade out weeds. Three crops, one system. The earring carries both meanings, the celestial and the agricultural, in the same form.

Orion's Belt. Alnitak. Alnilam. Mintaka. The Three Sisters. The constellation triad.

The three stars that form Orion's Belt are Alnitak, Alnilam, and Mintaka. All Arabic names from the medieval star catalogues, each meaning roughly "the belt". Together they form the most consistent visual line in the human night sky, used for navigation in cultures from the Greek to the Maori.

The earrings carry that triad, set as three small stones in line.

For the trios. The sister you grew up with. The friends who became sisters. The three parts of yourself you keep in conversation. The Three Sisters always read as plural. They refuse to be single.

For the night sky readers. Orion's Belt is the most recognisable line of stars in the night sky for most of the inhabited Earth. To wear them is to wear a constellation almost everyone you meet has also looked up at.

For the systems thinkers. The Three Sisters of indigenous American agriculture. Corn, beans, squash, planted together so each supports the others. The same metaphor in a different register. The piece carries both readings.