Yesterday’s wind brought with it a sense of foreboding, a seeming harbinger of troubled times ahead.
Today, the wind is just as strong, and yet it feels utterly different: It feels both clean and cleansing, as though it is sweeping out the dust and detritus of early spring to make way for warm air and bright blue skies.
Here in this place, the wind is a bit of an anomaly. It behaves differently here, particularly on our particular small plot of land — and, indeed, it is not really an it at all, but many, for in our way, the wind is many spirits, and they have many names. In my own tradition, there is a wind for — or, perhaps better expressed, from — each of the four sacred directions, and each has its own powers and purposes, some benign, others less so. There are stories and words and names for the different winds, not only those who belong to the cardinal points but those whose identities are less tethered to this world, more connected to the places of the spirits. There are winds whose very existence is the vortex, with all the power and force that that implies; there are winds that, in very literal terms, have an end.
But here, spring is the season of the wind, and it assumes many forms, often changing direction in less than the beat of a bird’s wing, managing to circumnavigate the points of the compass without every coalescing into a cyclonic form . . . or spinning and spiraling into a whirlwind, from tiny trickster dust devil to, increasingly, a full-scale tornado. The wind here is a living, breathing thing, one that pulses and moves and dances; in spring, the only question is the scope of its force (and the scale of its destruction, should it choose to swell itself to its full height and breadth).
And then there are the winds of the spectrum. Some indigenous cultures assign colors to specific winds, whether by direction, scope, or effect. In some traditions, the colors of the wind are said to respond to other aspects of the sacred (i.e., where the colors so assigned also have inherent symbolic and sacred meaning in other ways, as well), or to specific aspects of the culture’s origin stories. The Diné people are said to have four: blue, yellow, white, and black (often represented as “dark”). In this regard, the entire concept shares symbolism similar to those of the medicine wheel or medicine shield found in other Native cultures.
For myself, growing up in a culturally-mixed environment, the notion of wind as spirit seemed entirely reasonable. More, as a child with synesthesia, one whose mind automatically assigned color and gender to all manner of concepts, thinking of the natural elements in color terms was second nature, even apart from any traditional teachings. And so, to me, color has always been an inherent part of the identities of the directions and the seasons and the elements . . . and the winds. And on the best days, whether they are days of brilliant sun and warm air or days of wild and uninhibited storms, to me, the wind is blue.
All these motifs fit today’s featured work: simultaneously wheel and shield, the sacred directions and the whirlwind itself. From its description in the Necklaces Gallery here on the site:
Dance of the Whirlwind Spirits Necklace
When the winds come from the Four Directions to meet at the center of all that is, they summon the spirit of the whirlwind to dance in the vortex of the storm. Wings summons all of the spirits in this work, a large, heavy talismanic medallion of solid sterling silver, hammered by hand and lightly domed in repoussé fashion. A symbol of the Four Sacred Direction in a flaring stylized cross shape rests atop the medallion as an overlay. Each spoke is marked with a single cabochon of cobalt-blue lapis lazuli, the color of the rain; they spin inward toward the vortex at the center, embodied in a large round onyx cabochon of mysteriously glossy depths. The hand-made bail is accented with tiny hand-stamped hoops, the shape of the spiraling wind itself. The pendant hangs from an alternating strand of round sterling silver and lapis lazuli beads, with small square lapis and round onyx beads stretching toward either end of the strand, each end terminating in two tiny Florentine-finish silver beads. Pendant is 2-1/8 inches long (including bail) by 2-1/4 inches across; beads are 19 inches long (dimensions approximate). Other views shown at top and at the link.
Sterling silver; onyx; lapis lazuli
$1,500 + shipping, handling, and insurance
The center is, appropriately enough, the color of the void, black, but surrounded with silvery-white light . . . but in this instance, all the winds are blue, regardless of direction or name. In the outside world, that might seem a grim omen, a harbinger of sadness and grief and troubled times to come.
But for us, a blue wind is a good wind, regardless of form or shape, weather or season. It’s a spiraling vortex of purification and cleansing, of power and medicine, a sign of better days to come.
~ Aji
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