The first full day of official summer, and at long last, the air is clear. There are clouds, of course, bands of white trailing to horizon on all sides, but the sky is finally blue again instead of shrouded in a red-brown haze of smoke.
Summer, and we have awakened to a glittering world once again.
It’s not, of course, that the fires are contained; far from it. If the wind rises in any significant way, we shall see the mountains veiled again as early as this afternoon, a fiery sky at sunset. But for this moment, the clarity of air and sky are are a welcome respite from spring’s last days of choking, suffocating haze.
A day such as this is medicine for wounded spirits, and a wounded earth besides.
In this intensifying drought, you wouldn’t know it, but summer in this place is most often a lush, rich, abundant affair: daily monsoonal rains, quick and heavy and oft-repeated, coax the corn from the soil and blanket the land with green. We have had precious little of that this season, but the forecasts insists that Tuesday will bring us rain, and with it, some small measure of healing.
For now, we return to the medicine of prayer and primary colors: blue skies adrift with white clouds, red earth and golden light.
It’s a medicine that finds expression in today’s featured work, one of my favorites in its category. From its description in the relevant section of the Bracelets Gallery here on the site:
A Medicine Prayer Cuff Bracelet
The medicine wheel summons the powers of the four directions to our healing, while the eagle’s feather sends our prayers to Spirit. Wings brings their collective forces together in this breathtaking cuff bracelet, connecting the four winds to earth and sky, linking the place of our emergence with the place in the heavens where the spirits dwell. The cuff’s band is wrought in in the shape of twinned eagle feathers, all hand-cut of a single piece. Each barb of the feathers is created by way of hundreds of tiny individually hand-scored lines angles downward on either side of the quill, while delicate freehand ajouré cutwork forms the natural separations in the barbs. The dots that naturally adorn eagle feathers are formed via small stamped sacred hoops, and the ends of the cuff have been lightly oxidized to bring the patterns out into beautiful relief. A delicate strand of sterling silver half-round wire, hand-stamped with dozens of chased cloud patterns symbolizing imminent abundance, form the quill shaft. At the center of the band sits a hand-wrought medicine wheel in an elevated setting, with small round cabochons placed at each of the cardinal points in the traditional colors: a white rainbow moonstone to the North; yellow amber to the East; red coral to the South; and blue lapis to the West. At the center lies a larger cabochon of rutilated clear quartz, an elemental stone that carries within it an earthy, fiery collection of shiny black schorl and gold- and silver-hued rutile. Hand-stamped directional arrows point inward from each cardinal point to the center’s vortex of power, while broken arrows between the points represent the irregularity of the path. The band measures 5/8″ of an inch across at its widest point; the wheel setting is 1.25″ across; the center cabochon is 9/16″ across (dimensions approximate). Side view shown below.
Sterling silver; rutilated quartz; rainbow moonstone; amber; coral; lapis lazuli
$1,500 + shipping, handling, and insurance
The colors of this work, of course, stand in for more than just the elemental powers: the winds and the sacred directions, the seasons, the gifts of the spirits, so much more. The silverwork, too, is heavy with symbolism — the eagle feather, prayer, offerings and markers of honor. But today, it feels as though it represents a return to less esoteric, more fundamental things, to the gifts and the promise of our natural world in summer.
Today. it feels like hope, like healing: a medicine of blue skies and white clouds, of red earth and golden light.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2020; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.
