In yesterday’s post, I promised a companion piece for today, both in the post itself and in the piece featured. It’s here, in a simple, spare design, understated in execution and modestly-priced.
We talked a bit about Serpent yesterday, as we have in previous posts. For some peoples in this part of the country, wearing a ring like this would be unthinkable; for them, snakes embody powerful cultural taboos. The same injunctions do not apply to those outside their particular people, of course, and some of their indigenous neighbors have no such restrictions on serpents and related imagery. Culturally, however, it would be inappropriate for any outsider to visit the home or lands of those for whom they are taboo while wearing clothing or carrying objects made of snakeskin or containing snake-related imagery.
Balance.
Again.
It’s always something to consider. Leaving aside the fact that tribal nations are just that — nations, and therefore sovereign— it’s simple decency, the most fundamental in common courtesy, to behave politely as a guest.
Sometimes, what can represent a malign force is nonetheless a symbol of good in other ways. An example is our story of the Water Serpent, and how copper came to the people. Another example is found in the very title given to our most powerful medicine persons, which comes from the word for rattlesnake. The reptile’s rattles have been used since time immemorial by many indigenous peoples ceremonially, as medicine rattles. If you ever attend a powwow or ceremonial, listen closely to the voice of the rattles; often, they will sing in Rattlesnake’s own telltale rhythm.
Balance.
Its a recognition of — more, a respect for — power. It’s the understanding that much power that is found in the world around us is neutral in its identity, but often relentless in its impact. It’s in how we choose to use it that it becomes a force for good, or for something else. It’s the ability to tell the difference between the two, and to choose to walk the sometimes very fine line that separates them. And it’s the recognition that we must always be on guard against trying to co-opt power for its own sake, an act that is, by definition, out of balance with the world.
In actuality, the repeating pattern around the ring, like those forming the embrasure of yesterday’s earrings, are simply scales. They can belong to Snake, yes, or to the Water Serpent, but in this part of the country, they might just as easily be found on any of a number of reptiles, from the quick and darting desert lizard ubiquitous to the region to the gecko that has now entered the pop-culture mainstream to the massive and powerful Gila, who plays his own role in the ways of the Diné.
More stories.
More medicine.
More balance.
From its description in the Rings Gallery here on the site:
Wings tries to capture the stories that form the base of our cultures in the ancient symbols and patterns that give shape to his silverwork. The great lessons of the spirits, writ small on a slender silver band, bring the universal to the individual. In traditional cultures, Serpent plays many roles: sometimes a bringer of prosperity; sometimes a trickster; sometimes a source of fierce strength and awesome power; but always, a reminder of the need for balance in all things. Rendered here in sterling silver, his scales form a pattern that reminds the wearer of each of these roles and lessons, and as the pattern chases the length of the band in repetitions of four, it provides its own balance in the form of the sacred number.
Sterling silver
$225 + shipping, handling, and insurance
It’s powerful symbolism, literally at your fingertips.
There is, perhaps, a reason why this imagery attracts me now. Part of it is the season: the drastic changes in the natural world as Mother Earth readies herself for winter; the unsettled feeling that accompanies the eddying leaves dancing like little ghosts after their own death; the feeling that the wall between the worlds is unusually thin at this time, a feeling reinforced by the artifacts of the dominant culture’s religion and its attempts to force assimilation upon us.
Part of it is personal to me: This day is an anniversary — a dark marker of loss visited by a single act of purely destructive power, an act wrought by someone entirely out of balance, in the throes of soul sickness taken to its most violent extreme.
On days like this, I feel uneasy. The world itself feels ephemeral, unstable, ready to alter or vanish altogether in the blink of an eye. It’s a struggle to find the light on this day, to wrest its associations from power’s dark side and transform it into something good. And so I turn to the old ways, the old markers of our path, given to us in the days before time itself.
And there, I find balance.
~ Aji
