This week, we’ve been exploring the ways in which some of the spirits of the natural world link us to other realms: to the spaces that are part of our own cosmos, yet out of reach of mortal hands, and to the spaces that exist beyond our physical abilities to perceive them. The trees are some of these mediating spirits, vertical bridges connecting us from earth to sky, beings that sustain our very existence by purifying the air we breathe. But the elemental powers they touch, that they absorb and transform and release, mediate on our behalf, as well.
Trees exist, in a very tangible way, in the interstices of this world and between it and others. So, too, do the elements that sustain them: the earth from which they emerge, the air the cleanse and circulate back to us, the water that nurtures their growth . . . even the fire that consumes some, which in turn allows others to thrive. The tangible forms that these elemental spirits assume possess their own interstitial natures, as well.
This was a recurring theme in Wings’s one-man show a couple of years ago, this meditation on the nature of Nature, of its essential power and our mortal need for its mediation. Our world, raw and uncontrolled, is a vortex of forces that would consume us whole were it not for the powers that intercede on our behalf, that transform and ameliorate, that soften their edges and blunt their force. It’s a form of metamorphosis, one that catalyzes raw power into something that sustains rather than annihilates.
This notion of Nature as existential chrysalis is one that finds expression in a collection in miniature from that show — two works that, like the elements, are not a matched set, but rather, complementary forces. One is a cuff; the other, a ring. Each embodies the synthesis and symbiosis of dichotomous forces, of how oppositional elements work together in service of a greater whole.
We begin with the cuff. From its description in the Bracelets Gallery here on the site:
In the interstices inhabited by the elemental powers, Spirit catalyzes fire and ice, bringing them to life in our world, their full strength and power yet held back: a reminder that if we are careful, we may use their gifts rather than be consumed by them. Here, Spirit’s Eye traces the length of the band of this heavy-gauge cuff, accented on all sides by traditional symbols. At the center, two fiery garnet cabochons flank three larger oval stones: snowflake obsidian, representations of ice born naturally of the union of earth and heat and flame. Companion piece to the Fire and Ice solitaire ring in the Rings Gallery.
Sterling silver; snowflake obsidian; garnet
$725 + shipping, handling, and insurance
It’s the black and white of earth and water, flanked by red fire, at rest upon silvered air — and all mediated by Spirit’s own eye, a gaze that holds us fast within a guiding, protective embrace.
The ring that formed the collection’s other piece is, as I’ve noted already, not “matching,” but complementary. It calls upon the elements in ways similar and yet uniquely its own, manifest in the imagery of the lodge, a place of shelter, healing, and ceremony. From its description in the Rings Gallery:
In the interstices between worlds, the spirits and elemental forces afford us an occasional glimpse but do not admit us entry, lest we be consumed by their power. Yet Spirit catalyzes fire and ice, as in this solitaire, where earth and flame join to create a stone named for water frozen by the winter air. Conjoined lodge symbols trace the length of the band; the snowflake obsidian cabochon rests in a scalloped bezel. Top view shown below. Companion piece to the Fire and Ice cuff bracelet in the Bracelets Gallery.
Sterling silver; snowflake obsidian
$325 + shipping, handling, and insurance
In this season when scorching heat gives way in a moment to the icy hail of a monsoonal storm, when the mercury swings daily over a span of fifty degrees, this pattern reminds us that even within a world of extremes, we remain within the protective shelter of Spirit, and of the lesser spirits who mediate the forces and spaces between our world and theirs.
~ Aji
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