It is the Feast of All Souls.
Today, people will gather in their homes, surrounded by relatives, to enjoy the fruits of the harvest to date, to feed their families, to honor those who have already walked on. They will feed those spirits, too, setting out food and drink for them: an acknowledgment, a blessing, an offering, a thanksgiving.
The music of the day will be the tolling bell, swinging heavily to and fro in the tower of the mission church. On this day, any member of the people may enter and toll the bell once each for loved ones walked on, a single thunderous rolling song per spirit.
This year, it’s difficult to make the feel of the day mesh with the somber spiritual nature of it. The whole world here is gold: aspens and willows alike aflame in shades of yellow tipped with copper, the sun’s sharp angle as it cuts through the clear air turning the grass to molten bronze. Not a cloud interrupts the bright turquoise sky, and it is far too warm for the season. Even the butterflies are loathe to leave this place: Both yesterday and today, a small mimic dressed in a monarch’s costume, in Halloween colors of bright orange and black and white, danced across my path; today, a young mourning cloak spiraled around my head in a flutter of maroon and ivory.
They are not, of course, the only ones who dance.
There are spirits similarly loathe to leave this place behind permanently, and indeed, there is no need; they return as ancestor spirits, as katsinam, again and again and again. They bring the rains, a good planting season, fruitful crops, an abundant harvest. They bring less tangible gifts, too, the reassurance that exists in culture and identity, the security of continued survival.
Wings honors these spirits in all of his work — indeed, by the very work itself. Every piece is a prayer, an expression reverence for tradition and thanksgiving for all that these beings provide. For him, offerings to Spirit are a part of his customary practice, including offerings of the very materials with which he works daily.
It is also customary for him to give credit to the spirits for the success of his work. He often says that, especially with particular pieces, Spirit guides his hands in design and execution, and he does his best to follow where the path leads. Sometimes, that means that a given work turns out very differently from how he first envisioned it; other times, initial visualization and final result are virtually identical.
And sometimes, it means that the spirit itself assumes corporeal form beneath his hands, giving it an opportunity to dance, in a very tangible sense, in this world once more.
So it was with today’s featured work, the perfect one — the only one, really — to embody the meaning of this day. From its description in the Collectibles Gallery here on the site:
Kachina Mixed-Media Figure
He’s an elder among elders, a dancer, a long-haired spirit being. This figurative piece combines multiple natural elements with an inspiriting sense of motion to create a single dynamic, unifying form. Head and upper body are hand-crafted of sterling silver bearing images of power: His head bears the forces of the sacred directions; his body, elemental forces meeting in the sacred space. His lower body is a single very old piece of deer antler that diverges naturally into the two prongs that form his dancing legs. His traditional long hair is made of genuine horse hair, restored to him in the spirit world now full and dark. Like his namesakes in the spirit world, he wears an “eagle” feather at the back of his head (in this case, produced by one of our Barred Rock chickens and carried by the winds directly into Wings’s hands), accented by the brilliant blue and orange macaw feather used traditionally here. Both feathers and a rainbow-hued strand of old-style beads hang from the crown of his headdress, an old copper tube bead; he stands atop a cedar wood base. Entire piece stands 9.5″ high; figure alone, 5″ high excluding feather and base; feather adds another 3.5″ in height; base stands 2″ high by 3-3/8″ wide by 2-1/8″ deep (all dimensions approximate). Close-up and back view shown below.
Sterling silver; horse hair; deer antler; cedar
$2,200 + shipping, handling, and insurance
Fragility requires special handling; extra shipping charges apply
He is a spirit among spirits, a soul among souls — one of the many who walks, who dances, in this world on this day. He is one who has perhaps made the journey more successfully than most, finding a means of permanent personification, a way to dance every day, should he choose to do so.
I like to think that this elder visits on this day, and perhaps on certain others — a soul who comes not to make mischief, nor to hang onto a plane of existence that is no longer his own milieu, but simply to celebrate his love for this place that is wholly a part of him, to bring blessings in more tangible form to those he loves, to remind the people that he is with them always . . . in spirit.
~ 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 owner.
