The day after Christmas, and change is already in the air. I had to step outside this morning just at the moment of dawn in this place, that split second when the winter sun transcends the ridgeline at its southern slope, leaving behind the last obstacle to sharing its light with a world still blanketed by deep cold.
Before sunrise, the clouds above and between the peaks shifted rapidly through an array of fiery shades, crimson and coral and amber and peach. In the final moments prior to full dawn here, Father Sun’s rays are already visible across the northeast and southwest reaches of the land, and on this day, skies marbled by a webwork of silvery clouds, the blues seemed bluer than should be possible, the land more gold in the cascading light.
The outside world makes much of spring as the season of rebirth and renewal, but this is the same world that reckons time by a colonial calendar rooted in a religion of empire from half a world away. Our much older ways of understanding its passage mean that we have already celebrated our “new year,” and that we understand this as the true season of renewal and rebirth. Now, each day dawns beneath the wings of a chrysalis sun, wings that open over the land like the radiant wings of a new-born butterfly. It is a season of transformation and transcendence, a metamorphosis that is the renewed gift of every winter, an old sun reborn with a new light.
It’s a process embodied in today’s featured work, a pair of earrings in the form and shape of tiny suns and winter butterflies. From their description in the Earrings Gallery here on the site:
Chrysalis Sun Earrings
Dawn takes flight on silver wings, bearing the orb of a chrysalis sun. Wings summons the sun and the transformative spirit of the day with these butterfly earrings, newly emerged from the cocoon of night. Each drop drifts gently from side to side, its flared top and bottom adance in sharp relief. At the center of the wings sits a tiny amber orb, each cabochon as timeless as the light and glowing with its own cosmic fire, each set in the cool, secure embrace of a plain, low-profile bezel. Earrings hang 1-3/8″ long by 1″ across at the widest point; amber cabochons are 3/16″ across (dimensions approximate).
Sterling silver; amber
$525 + shipping, handling, and insurance
These are one entry in an occasional series by Wings of butterfly-concha earrings, each unique by virtue of the gemstone that sits at their center (or, in one case, no gemstone at all). They do indeed resemble butterflies, particularly when viewed sideways . . . but more than that, they evoke the look and feel and movement of butterfly emergent: freeing itself of its cocoon, wings spread, radiant and fully alive in the light. Of the remaining pairs in inventory, this has always been my personal favorite, because the amber cabochons are so intense, so deep and mysterious and positively otherworldly that they truly do appear like chrysalis suns.
We know that our Father Sun is impossibly old, an ancient spirit of an age with time itself. And yet, he is renewed every winter, rays growing and flourishing in the cold. There is something reassuring about this steady consistency, this knowledge that he is always there, always the same, and yet always renewed and renewing too.
We live now in a world that is cold, yes, but fresh, too, clean and calm and just as impossibly beautiful — a world warmed by an old sun reborn with a new light.
~ 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.
