Day has dawned under cover of low blue-violet clouds, a soft rain gently cleansing the world as we begin another week. The light is pale, bits of peach and gold and silvery gray peering hesitantly around the dark bank of thunderheads that has descended over the peaks.
It is strange weather for October in this place, but welcome, too: a gift of those spirits who guard the waters and occasionally release a bit of their flow to give life to the arid soil here.
It’s fitting, on this day when we are featuring the fourth and final in this iteration of Wings’s new series, his collection in miniature of coil bracelets made of sterling silver “memory wire” and the jewels and gems that are gifts of the earth.
This series has been singularly elemental in nature: drawing on the forces of earth, air, fire, water; on the spirits that inhabit and protect them and withhold or bestow their gifts. Some are spectacularly ancient, transformed form once-living beings into whole new forms and identities; others were never animated by the breath of life that mortals share, but have always been imbued by spirit nonetheless.
Today’s featured work combines both sorts of materials, its body formed of lapis lazuli in deepest indigo, a gift of the earth in the color of the waters, accented at head and tail by iron-gray hematite formed through fiery heat and by delicate bits of palest shell that once protected the body of a wholly-live spirit. Together, they combine to assume the form of the Water Serpent, a spirit found in many of our peoples’ traditions: a powerful and often capricious being who makes his home in the deepest waters and guards them and their gifts with astonishing power. From its description in the Bracelets Gallery here on the site:
In our way, water is life. The waters have their own guardians, spirits who inhabit them, protect them, bestow their blessings upon the earth . . . but whose power, once uncoiled, can unleash a flood upon unwary mortals. Wings honors that power with this coil bracelet, sterling silver strung with square beads of lapis lazuli: the deep indigo color of the most sacred lake, veiled here and there with mysterious wisps of white matrix like clouds reflected on the water’s surface. At either end, the coil terminates in segments of pale gray-white olivella-shell heishi bisected by a length of four tiny hematite rondel beads — horns and tail made not of the copper of the great lakes’ own water serpent, but of a facsimile of the rattles of its land-bound cousins, whose tails are used as medicine and give some medicine men their names. The four coils hold their shape even as they expand to fit nearly any wrist. Joint design by Wings and Aji.
Sterling silver; lapis lazuli; olivella-shell heishi, hematite
$225 + shipping, handling, and insurance
I’ve written about the Water Serpent here before. He manifests in many forms, showing his face to and sharing his power with many peoples across Turtle Island. In my part of this world, he gave copper to the people, if only by accident, when a brave little girl saved herself and her grandfather as the serpent lashed their canoe in the stormy seas of a great lake by cutting off his copper tail. Here in this land, he is known by many names: Avanyu to some of the other Pueblo peoples some distance south and west; Kolowisi among the Zuni who live still farther in the direction of the setting sun. He has other names, as well, names that are not spoken among outsiders — a wise choice, since those names that have been spoken have been stolen many times over by non-Natives in the pursuit of raw profit.
As with the other coils we’ve featured over the last week, Wings drafted me to help with choosing among his abundant supply of unused beads, winnowing them down to specific collections of colors and shapes and materials to be combined into wholes greater than the sum of their parts. But it was not until I photographed this piece, whole and complete, that I realized what he had created: a spiraled indigo serpent, a creature of the waters and the earth; ends a combination of a glowing mineral-metal and the shell spirits most closely identified with this place, strung together in a pattern that looks for all the world like the rattles that warn of Rattlesnake’s presence. In my way, it is his rattles that were historically used as Medicine rattles, and it is that serpent’s identity that names the medicine persons whose bundles include them.
It’s a beautiful summoning of a being of great power, a spiral spirit of indigo waters whose manifestation evokes fear on one hand and gratitude on the other. It’s also a tribute to its dichotomous elemental power: the gift of life that, unchecked or approached with reckless abandon, can nonetheless unleash life’s opposite.
It is, as always, a reminder of the need for balance, of the harmony of a life well lived along the proper path, of the coiled power that resides within the hoop.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2015; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owners.
