The air here is deeply, bitterly cold, as it so often is during this time that encompasses the holidays and straddles the threshold between old year and new. It is as though our world itself is plunged into its own state of quasi-hibernation: not fully asleep, yet neither willing nor able to rouse itself to activity. Even the birds are conserving their energies, few but the smallest, able to occupy the feeder, choosing to lift themselves onto the icy currents.
Still, yesterday we were visited by greater beings than these: sky spirits who take their names from Father Sun, who spawns them by casting off his own reflection into the icy air, and from the much more ordinary earthbound being we call the dog. One sundog appeared at dawn with the sunrise, a fiery column rising from the ridgeline. It stayed for more than an hour, at play in the atmospheric currents, growing and shifting and eventually showing its true colors, the entire spectrum, before making its escaps behind a curtain of snowclouds. It returned in the afternoon, with two brothers, following the same orbital track as their father from south to west: three sundogs, one clinging to the sun itself, extending high above and below the orb; one each on either side, freer beings, better able to leap and dance in rising eddy of color and flame.
That we should have connected these beings with dogs is, perhaps, a bit odd: In spirit, they more closely resemble the birds with whom they share the skies — aloft in the heavens, able to harness the wind and the light to their own purposes. They remind me of stories from other cultures of the Phoenix, a wingéd creature of the fire who rises from the ashes. There’s a bit of Thunderbird about them, too, a powerful spirit of the sky who unfolds the power of the storm from within its wings and holds fire in the form of lightning in its talons.
Such ruminations on winter’s fire and light led my mind around a path perhaps not unlike a spiral to the work featured here today. At the beginning of a new year, the symbolism it embodies seems especially apt. From its description in the Bracelets Gallery here on the site:
Some call it the phoenix; others, the firebird; still others, a being with no given name. It is a symbol of metamorphosis, of rebirth, of freedom of spirit. Wings captures it here and then sets it free, spiraling upward into the air on a coil of earth and fire. Four small faceted garnet beads refract the light from either end; rectangular beads of earthy and colorful jasper, named for the great land-bound cat, alternate with nuggets of fiery iron pyrite. At the center, the small wingéd spirit, summoned from polished elk antler with inlaid eyes of jet, takes flight to soar above the world. Joint design by Wings and Aji.
Stainless steel; garnet; leopard-skin jasper; iron pyrite; elk antler
$225 + shipping, handling, and insurance
It is the season of resolutions and rebirth, of yet one more opportunity to remake our lives and our world into something better, more consonant with our dreams and desires most deeply held. We all fail, of course, for such is the lot of humanity: In a twist on the old saying, our reach will always exceed our grasp. But it is likewise humanity’s lot to continue to try . . . and, once in a while, to succeed.
Like the Phoenix, we rise from the ashes to spread our wings anew; like the sundog, we grow and expand and reach for the light of the sun itself.
And occasionally, it is given to us to catch our dreams, to feel them coil around us like a whole new spirit.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2016; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owners.
