The storm has moved on beyond our borders, joining forces east of here with others like itself to form a long continental band of winter weather. Here, it remains unseasonably warm, enough that the day’s chief characteristic thus far is fog.
Our small world is gray, and the very qualities that make it comfortable in the moment fill the future with foreboding.
In these days, hope is hard-won, when it’s won at all.
Still, the sun has just broken through the fog, and while I’m fond of cloudy, stormy days, I recognize its value to the outside world as metaphor. For most people, an emergent sun is hope and promise entwined: In this place, like the waters, a message for a world aborning and assured.
Sun or water, there is truth in the imagery. We focus much on the notion of an earth dying, when in fact it is only its capacity to support our own small existences that teeters on the precipice. The earth herself will, absent the impact of a stray space rock of sufficient size, far outlast all of our ideas of eternity. The question is whether humanity’s future lasts with it — or, indeed, whether we have a future at all.
For that, there can be no promise; humanity itself, in colonial form, is too determined to risk its own annihilation.
And still, the Earth holds out the possibility of hope and healing, and she sends her messengers to remind us that a future is possible.
Today’s featured works, Wings’s newest set of complementary pieces, embody both messenger and message. They are the very manifestation of hope and healing, spirits of the summer yet to come with a message from the waters of possibility and promise. We begin with the necklace, wought in the shapes and shades of transformation. From its description in the Necklaces Gallery here on the site:
Messenger of Hope Necklace
In the dark of winter, in the depths of drought, our world needs a messenger of hope. Wings summons one in the shape of the small medicine spirits of summer, this one wrought in silver and stone, here to share the promise of warmer winds and a world reborn. It’s Dragonfly, in the shapes and shades of the flowing waters and flowering earth of summer, body, wings, and antennae all cut freehand from sterling silver and hand-stamped to capture the light. The stampwork, like the body it adorns, evokes a spirit of transformation, wings spread in Art Nouveau’s gracefully flowing lines, body tall and strong in the angular geometry of the Art Deco period to follow. Beneath the head rests an inverted stylized heart; above it, two arched antennae. The head itself is a bright banded cabochon of malachite, the shades of a lush and fertile earth. A small flared bail hand-stamped in a repeating motif of the Sacred Directions holds the pendant securely to a strand of beads consisting of brilliantly banded malachite cubes alternating with short segments of translucent blue-violet iolite, anchored at either end by tiny doughnut rondels of electric blue azurite in malachite. The pendant is 2-1/8″ long, including bail, by 3″ across at the widest point; the malachite cabochon is 1/4″ across; the bead strand is 20″ long (dimensions approximate). Necklace coordinates with Medicine Spirits earrings, here. Full view shown at top.
Sterling silver; malachite; iolite; azurite in malachite
$1,075 + shipping, handling, and insurance
The necklace stands strong on its own, a hovering spirit of hope. But paired with its complementary work, a pair of earrings manifest in the form and shape of the same spirit, all three pieces assume an animating power made possible by their collaboration. Where the necklaces focuses mostly on an earth in harmony, the earrings channel the spirit of the waters. From their description in the Earrings Gallery here on the site:
Medicine Spirits Earrings
Medicine spirits fulfill their role as a messenger of hope, here to deliver healing to world wounded by darkness and drought. Wings invokes their shapes and shades with these Earrings, small incarnations of Dragonfly in the colors of water and light. Each wingéd messenger is cut freehand from sterling silver with articulated wings, body, and antennae; the stampwork is the flowing imagery of Art Nouveau wedded to the soaring geometry of the Art Deco period, a moment in art history as transitional and transformational as the dragonflies’ annual metamorphosis. The head of each small spirit is set with a single round cabochon of translucent blue-violet iolite, the shade of the waters atop the arc of the silver summer light. Each hangs from sterling silver wires. Earrings are 1-3/44″ long, excluding wires, by 2-1/8″ across at the widest point; iolite cabochons are 3/16″ across. Earrings coordinate with Messenger of Hope necklace, here.
Sterling silver; iolite
$725 + shipping, handling, and insurance
Our peoples have needed neither colonial incursions nor popular culture to show us the centrality of water to existence: We have always known that it is the First Medicine, the one in which all life begins, and the one that sustains its being. For Dragonfly, this is no mere metaphor; he is born beneath its surface and spends much of his days upon it. Here, his presence is synonymous with its healing power, for he comes only when the water comes.
It makes his very being a gift of medicine, a marker of healing.
Today, as the sun shows itself only intermittently and the fog still clings to snow-studded peaks, the world feels wet, and yet the threat off drought hangs over us all, tangible, heavy, and impossibly dry. We see the changes, the transformations that so many earth-bound spirits cannot survive. And still, the earth speaks to us of transcendence: of the possibility, the potential, the promise of the future, if only we are willing to work for it.
But it is promise with a warning’s sharp serrated edge.
For the moment, prophecy remains unfulfilled. There is still a chance — of a world with us in it, of a future, healed and whole. We have been granted a message from the waters; it is up to us to heed it.
~ 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.
