Yesterday and today, the mercury has hovered around seventy in the afternoons. The nights, though, are another matter: The nights are cold; a warm fire and good blankets are necessary to ward off the chill. It is the time of year when the temperature can swing fifty degrees in the space of a single day, and it frequently does.
Although it’s easy to forget in the warmth and light of the afternoon sun, we are entering the time of year when we become, by definition and circumstance, more vulnerable. It’s important to weave warmth and protection around us now.
Some forms of such weaving are simple, obvious, easily recognized: a sturdy blanket, as a barrier against the cold; an equally sturdy web in the dreamcatcher, as a barrier against bad dreams. One keeps the body warm, the other, the spirit; both protect in their own ways.
But Grandmother Spider, who in some traditions gave the people the gift of weaving in the first place, and who in others used the gift to banish nightmares, has more to teach us of her ways. For Spider Woman knows what few others ever learn: how to weave her own world.
The spider’s world, after all, is bounded by her web; it is where she lives, where she rests, where she finds the food that sustains her. It is at once barrier and portal, her means of ingress and egress, of engagement with the outer world at large. She weaves it to her own specifications, designs it to suit her own needs, her own survival.
We could learn from her wisdom.
We humans live, of course, in a world far more circumscribed than hers. On Turtle Island, it is now quite literally impossible to live, even to exist, without at least some interaction with the larger society, without engaging with some barriers and boundaries not of our setting. Even the most dedicated hermit perforce has some connection to the culture beyond his isolated hermitage, even if only to acquire the materials, by whatever means, that he uses to build it.
Still, most of us pay too little attention to our immediate worlds, those susceptible to our influence and of our own making. Our gaze is both too broad and too limited simultaneously, missing both the big picture and the detail that makes it our own. By the same token, we seek out needless, heedless conflict, even as we ignore the battles that justice demands that we fight.
We could do worse than to emulate Grandmother Spider occasionally, focusing on the small world that is ours, that keeps and sustains us, paying attention to those barriers and portals, those places of ingress and egress — and to who and what traverse them, and where they lead or what they foreclose.
We would do well to pay attention to the worlds of our dreams.
In our way, dreams are Medicine: vision and wisdom, prophecy and destiny. It is in dreams that we seek knowledge, and if the spirits look upon our offerings with favor, they send their answers by way of such altered states. Dreams tell us when it is time to make peace, and when it is time to fight; dreams show us the road to our own salvation and survival. Those who walk the roads of the dream world go to war to protect this world, even as they learn the means to weave other, better worlds into being.
It is this visionary spirit — dream weaver, dream warrior — that today’s featured work embodies. From its description in the Accessories Gallery here on the site:
Dream Warrior Bow Guard
Some of our fiercest battles are fought in and over dreams. Wings invokes the dream warrior and and the warrior’s art in this old traditional-style bow guard. It begins with a solitary concha from one of his old belts, a piece that has spent decades in his private collection: multiple layers of solid, heavy sterling silver hand-cut into ovals of ascending size, the base layer scalloped gracefully around its edge, all stacked atop each other in an overlay pattern. Each layer is edged with hand-stamped chased images in traditional designs — the force of the lightning, the shelter of the lodge, the power of the rising sun. The center oval is domed, repoussé-fashion, and the entire finished concha is domed yet again to trace the line of the wrist. A small sturdy column of sterling silver arises from its center to hold the bezel of the central stone securely in place. The stone itself is an extraordinary giant cabochon of high-grade Cloud Mountain turquoise from China’s Hubei District, bright teal blue and webbed in inky indigo as tightly and thoroughly as Grandmother Spider’s dreamcatcher, set into a saw-toothed bezel and trimmed with bold twisted silver. Flanking the center concha are a pair of tiny round conchas whose stampwork repeat the lodge motif around diminutive round blue-green center stones. The conchas are screwed into a band of warm golden-hued moosehide, thick, sturdy and velvety to the touch. The band extends outward three inches beyond each small concha to allow for custom cutting and lacing to fit the wearer. In its current from, prior to sizing to suit, the full band extends 11.25″ long by 2.25″ high; the small conchas are 2-7/8″ across and their cabochons are 1/4″ across; the center concha is 3/5/8″ high by 2.75″ across, and the focal cabochon is 2″ high by 1-3/8″ across at the widest point (dimensions approximate). Other views shown at the link.
Sterling silver; high-grade Cloud Mountain turquoise; old blue-green turquoise; moosehide
$2,500 + shipping, handling, and insurance
Such a stone was not made by Mother Earth for any ordinary purpose; it requires a setting and a spirit suited to its outsized presence and extraordinary beauty. Because it manifests the spirit of Grandmother Spider’s web in its own likeness, it was perhaps foregone that it would be a visionary stone, a portal and protector of dreams.
But its setting is also a reminder that we can both fight for our world and work to weave a better one at the same time.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2017; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owners.
