EL QUINTO SOL Playing Cards. A deck that opens the doors to the Mesoamerican cosmos
I have always found it fascinating how playing cards can become a vehicle for preserving and telling stories. Recently, Juan Erazo, the artist behind The Mythographer, contacted me. This Mexican designer and filmmaker shared a very interesting reflection with me: he had grown up surrounded by Mesoamerican pyramids, codices, and symbols, but he knew Greek or Norse myths much better than those of his own land. To change this, and after more than two years of deep research studying archaeology and Nahua traditions, he has launched his first playing card project: EL QUINTO SOL.
More than just a simple deck illustrated with gods, Juan wanted to design a sort of cosmological map. And he has done so with incredible care, working completely independently: from painting the original watercolors by hand to crafting the prototypes and taking the project photographs, without using absolutely any artificial intelligence. To encompass all this cultural richness, he offers us three different editions, with a very limited print run set at just 500 units per edition.
The Core Edition is the purest version. Its tuck box stands out with the use of green metallic foil and embossing, hiding inside a beautiful printed pattern of Quetzalcoatl (the Feathered Serpent) that the other versions also share. Alongside it, the Alebrije Edition goes for holographic details stamped directly on both the faces and the backs of the cards, presented in a tuck box with blue foil. For collectors looking for more exclusive finishes, there is the Mictlantecuhtli Edition, which darkens the design using black art with gold foil on the cards and tuck box, topped off with spectacular metallic orange edges (gilded).
If we look at the 56 cards that make up each deck, we see that nothing has been left to chance. The back is built from the Great Deer of Days extracted from the historic Codex Borgia.
In the court cards, European royalty disappears to make way for Mesoamerican gods.
The suits represent the cosmic directions, the aces the creative forces, and the numbered cards hide references to the tonalpohualli (the 260-day ritual calendar).
For their part, the jokers introduce a powerful and feared cosmic force into the deck: eclipses, thus completing a well-rounded visual narrative.
Although this is a fully functional deck for playing, the creator has also designed his own board game for these cards: A Game of Balance, Creation and Eclipse. In addition, for those who want to delve into the history of each card, the deck includes the Codex of the Fifth Sun, a digital booklet explaining what is behind each illustration. In fact, one of the campaign’s stretch goals is to print this codex as a physical book, along with other upgrades such as adding gilded edges to the Alebrije edition or even revealing a secret fourth edition.
Final production will be handled by KingStar, an absolute guarantee for precisely applying all those metallic foils, holographics, and embossing that such meticulous designs demand.
If you want to support this creator’s immense artisanal work and add a piece of Mesoamerican culture to your collection, visit the project website and raise your pledge.
Good luck!
