There is a feeling of abeyance about this day — of an unsettled waiting, as though our small world here hangs suspended between two realities. A scarlet dawn foreshadowed the present version, unreal as it seems: unseasonal high temperatures and more than a hint of spring upon the air. Meanwhile, clouds more typical of midwinter gather to the west, ready to begin their slow journey to deliver a snowstorm late tomorrow.
Tomorrow may be a day of hearts and [cut] flowers, but this day is still one of fresh blades of grass newly visible upon an earth thawing too early.
We think of red as the color of love, hearts and roses and the lifeblood of existence, but in our world, love is at least as often green.
Such is the way of it when our lives are bound up with the land, threads of history and ancestry and identity braided together with culture and language, life and spirit. Our ways are the ways of a love rooted in the Earth: ours for her and hers for us.
It’s also the very essence of the spirit of today’s featured work. From its description in the Necklaces Gallery here on the site:
From the Heart of the Earth Necklace
From the heart of the earth our whole world grows. Wings pays tribute to this evolutionary process with this necklace, a cross that is not a cross, but the embodiment of elemental forces and nurturing spirits. The pendant’s form is a very old design, one that circumvented colonial insistence on Christianity by appearing to adopt its four-spoked shape — and then adding an extra bar and a curving end to produce the form of a much older spirit: that of Dragonfly, a pollinator, a messenger, a symbol of romantic love and life’s abundance. Here, Wings has honored another old adaptation of the style, turning the curved tail at the base of the lowest spoke into a stylized heart. Above the heart, the pendant extends upward and outward to the Four Sacred Directions, each of the remaining five spokes stamped with a single thunderhead symbol pointing inward toward the center, a sign of the rain that keeps our Earth herself alive. Above the top spoke, the hand-made bail flowers into a lush green peridot; at the base in the center of the heart, the place of emergence, two tiny hand-stamped flowers are wedded into the form of a butterfly, a small spirit rising from its own place of emergence to continue the processes of pollination and prosperity. The cross is made of solid fourteen-gauge silver, and hangs 2-5/8″, the bail 3/4″ (the pendant is 3-3/8″ in total length; 1-1/8″ across at the widest point); the stone is 3/8″ long; the pendant hangs from an 18″ sterling silver snake chain (dimensions approximate).
Sterling silver; peridot
$1,150 + shipping, handling, and insurance
This work is many things at once: heart, dragonfly, signifier of the sacred directions, survival itself. On the downward slope of midwinter, it is the very promise of spring, holding the greening heart of the earth and the small spirits of warmer winds in balance with the power of the storm.
Tomorrow is the dominant culture’s day to celebrate “love.” In our world, it is a part of our every day, the earth’s heart bound up with our own.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2019; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.
