It’s a little warmer today, but still relentlessly clear: so clear, in fact, that someone took a hot-air balloon up this morning; I could see it hovering over the western horizon an hour or so ago. The wind is so faint you can’t really even see it moving the branches of the trees, which only adds to the feeling of unseasonal warmth.
And the forecast for snow that was supposed to materialize tomorrow and Sunday, already bumped to next Thursday, has now been pushed back even further, to the following Monday. It would come as no surprise, at this point, to find it pushed back continually until we are fully past spring, and all chance has been lost entirely.
As the calendar year draws down to its close, it feels like the end not just of a year but of an era: as though we are bidding farewell not merely to 2023, but to winter itself.
With the whole world in collapse around us in so many different ways now, it sometimes seems as though all we have left is prayer.
Even hope, stubborn as it is, seems marginal now. If prayer is all the remains, I suppose that falls into a category we might call faith, but it’s hard not to feel as though the world itself is drawing to a close, too.
And so we do what our ancestors did when times were apocalyptic: We return to the old ways, the traditions that kept them alive and as well as possible in the face of horrors that, as yet, we can only imagine . . . but that we can also witness on our screens from half a world away, and that we know will eventually reach us, too.
This week’s Friday Feature encompasses two works, both manifestations of those old ways, of prayer and its power, of ceremony, of the medicine of smoke and light. They come from two different categories, and were never intended to match, but they seem somehow, especially now, to belong together. We begin with the necklace, built around a pendant of simple but elegant beauty and power. From its description in the Necklaces Gallery here on the site:
Smoke and Light Necklace
Our prayers spiral heavenward on tendrils of smoke and light. With this necklace, Wings honors prayer’s practice and process, and the tools that make the hearing of them possible. The piece is built around an extraordinary cabochon of silver-sheen obsidian in a gorgeous trillion cut, three equidistant sides arranged point down, its domed and beveled surface rising from a simple scalloped bezel edged in twisted silver. The center back of the bezel is saw-cut, excising the silver in a pattern that follows the stone’s trillion shape, to allow the light to filter through from front and back alike and highlight the frosty appearance of the silver sheen that gives the stone its name. The bail is similarly spare, a wide loop of sterling silver edged on both sides with lodge motifs. It hangs from a strand of modestly-sized beads in a selection of stones and shell, white-lip mother-of-parl shell at center and and scattered in pairs throughout both sides; small round spheres of smoky quartz that capture the same smoky shade of the obsidian focal; and high-grade moonstone beads in two shapes: slender tubes of perfect chatoyant gray and faceted cubes in a shimmery mix of gray and peach, looking like tendrils of smoke rising in the light. The bead strand is 26″ long, excluding findings; the pendant with bail is 1-3/4″ long in total by 1-1/4″ across at the widest point; the pendant alone is 1-1/4″ long and the bail alone is 5/8″ long by 7/16″ across; the visible portion of the obsidian cabochon is 1″ long by 1″ across (all dimensions approximate). Other views shown above, below, and at the link.
Pendant: Sterling silver; silver-sheen obsidian;
Strand: Tri-ply foxtail plated with silver; sterling silver findings;
Beads: White-lip mother-of-pearl shell; smoky quartz; gray moonstone; faceted gray/peach moonstone;
$925 + shipping, handling, and insurance
It’s not visible here, but you can see hints of it in the first photo, above, or in the images at the link: the cutout on the reverse that allows the light to filter through the stone, as though to touch the skin of the wearer.
The beads seem to perform a similar function:
The smoky quartz rounds also seem a perfect match to the silver-sheen obsidian of the pendant; the moonstone tubes and faceted cubes link the deep translucence of them both to the luminous snowy white of the mother-of-pearl that punctuates the strand.
And the moonstone and mother-of-pearl conspire to echo the shapes and shades of the rainbow moonstone focals in the second of today’s featured works. From its description in the Rings Gallery:
Rising On the Smoke Spiral Ring
The Water Bird joins with our prayers in a transformative essence rising on the smoke of ceremony. With this new spiral ring, Wings summons these spirits of transfiguration to reenact these ancient steps in spare and beautiful form. First is the coiling spiral of the band, Water Serpent scaled with the image of the Spirit Bird who shares part of his name. His body is formed of heavy sterling silver half-round wire wrapped double on the bottom, single at the center of the top, with each end terminating in a fantastic cabochon of faceted rainbow moonstone, a pair of night orbs that refract cobalt blue in the light. The paired Water Birds stamped freehand down the entire coil’s convex surface are joined on its inner flat surface by two more motifs of metamorphosis and medicine: on one end, flowing-water symbols repeated down half its length; on the other, those transmogrifying messenger spirits we call Butterfly. Ring as currently shown is a size 13. The individual strand that forms the band is 3/16 across; doubled in parallel, the paired strands jointly measure 1/2″ across; the faceted rainbow moonstone cabochons are 7/16″ across (all dimensions approximate). Sizeable. Other views shown above, below, and at the link.
Sterling silver; rainbow moonstone
$775 + shipping, handling, and insurance
This is, in a sense, a wrap ring, but it differs substantially from those in Wings’s signature series of that type. This band wraps, but it is fused, not separated at the ends; instead, the ends wrap around in a spiral . . .
. . . much, in fact, like the tendrils of smoke to which the work’s name refers: an eternal and infinite spiral of the sacred, carrying our prayers to Spirit as it, and they, vanish from sound and sight.
To be mortal is to realize just how little control we have over the big things of this world (and many of the small ones, too). It is also to realize how very many of the small things are our responsibility — to ourselves, to each other, to our non-human relatives, to the world.
A world that needs us all now, all working in concert for its rescue, its healing, its renewal and rebirth.
It cannot end with prayer, but perhaps it starts there. For a new year, a new world: prayer, smoke, light, medicine.
If we follow where it leads, the healing will follow, too.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2023; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.
