Now that the solstice has come and gone, it feels as though it should finally be time to get down to the business of summer. On this first full day of the official season, our weather patterns are remarkably un-summerlike, our small world shrouded in gray-white cloud and a slow but steady rain falling since before dawn.
Don’t get me wrong: This is the most welcome development we could possibly get. But for all the professional (i.e., colonial) meteorologists talk of “monsoon,” “unusually early,” “unusually heavy,” this is nothing like the land’s usual seasonal patterns.
Time was, and only within the last half-decade, that the summer monsoon season followed a very specific track: morning sun, bright and hot; a buildup of thunderheads slowly from late morning to early afternoon; then an unleashing of short by heavy rains, one after another, until late afternoon; and finally, the wings of the sun emergent before dusk to envelop the land once more.
It’s useful to have such clearly-identifiable patterns, particularly in an environment as harsh and extreme as this. It makes it possible to plan, to plant, to cultivate, to ensure a harvest; it also makes it possible to care for the land properly in anticipation of times of drought.
No one anticipated this kind of drought — the kind in which even water fails to hydrate and heal.
Still. At the moment, the air is nearly still; it’s warm, but with a chill edge. Fog trails around the slopes on all sides as the clouds come down low to the ground. The light, veiled by their gossamer white, nonetheless still glows strong behind them, so that our world, while cloudy, remains bright.
And still the rain falls, gently, lovingly, pattering the ground as softly as a butterfly’s wings — as though it, too, wants nothing more than to heal the land so badly wounded by heat and wind and smoke and a twelve-hundred-year drought.
Today’s featured masterwork is the embodiment of the butterfly, the wings, the earth, the light — a small spirit with a message of love and light for the world. From its description in the Necklaces Gallery here on the site:
Wings of the Sun Necklace
The wings of the sun carry warmth and light to our whole world. Wings brings them to fluttering life with this necklace wrought freehand in the shape of that pollinating messenger of the spirits, Butterfly. Coaxed from sterling silver, her scalloped wings flare wide and graceful, veined with flowing arterial patterns scored freehand amid tiny sacred hoops and edged with images of the rising sun itself. Body and antennae are fully articulated, and at her heart rests a glowing near-orb of fabulously chatoyant tiger’s eye, a rich warm brown banded with fiery gold and nestled in a scalloped bezel. She sits atop flowers of her own via the slider-style bail on the reverse, hand-milled in a looping floral pattern and gently sculpted freehand. The pendant bears a velvety Florentine finish, and hangs from a strand of traditional sterling silver round beads, heavily oxidized and then buffed to a high polish. Pendant is 2.25″ across at the widest point by 2″ high at the highest point; tiger’s eye cabochon is 1/2″ high by 3/8″ across; bead strand hangs 21″ long (dimensions approximate). Coordinates with Solstice Light Butterfly Concha Belt [sold]. Close-up view shown below.
Sterling silver; tiger’s eye
$1,500 + shipping, handling, and insurance
That is, after all, the role that Butterfly plays in some traditions: a messenger of the spirits, those who love our world (and us) enough to illuminate our way. That is the work of wisdom, and of guidance, and proposition at once visionary and the work of a lifetime.
The current state of the world, our very small one here and the broader one beyond our reach, show how desperately that work is needed now — how necessary, too, the healing power of wisdom and the medicine of illumination when all is so very dark indeed.
Yesterday’s forecast came to nothing here, save of course, the clouds that all day loomed tantalizingly on all sides. But I did see a Western tiger swallowtail dance past the northeast windows, butterfly wings moving rapidly but gently through the air. She is no doubt sheltering from the rain now, but she is clearly still with us, and I have no doubt that her spirit has much more to share with us.
She is, after all, a small spirit with a message of love and light . . . and this day, with the rain, the First Medicine, to keep our world alive.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2022; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.
