November first. Halloween is behind us; today, in some traditions, is All Saints’ Day, followed by All Souls’ tomorrow. Locally, such observances are braided into far older traditions, making these days markers of the spiritual and the sacred in multiple ways.
It’s a bit warmer today, although the overnight hours were bitterly cold and crystal clear. In the daylight, scattered threads of clouds are dancing with the days’ inversion layer of local smoke, and have begun to weave themselves into something a little more substantial, but still sheer — nothing that will themselves hold any weather, but a herald of what’s to come.
Because if the forecast proves accurate, we are in for a wintry change next week.
It will be welcome, no question; we need the cold and we certainly need the snow. But it’s been an abrupt shift: from seventy-five degrees to near twenty, in the space of few hours, and our aging bodies do not adjust as rapidly as they once did. Of course, it’s not just us; the animals seem equally confused, and some insects, too, unsure whether to stay or go now.
As I write, the web-work of white clouds has grown and stretched, each strand reaching for the next, weaving a veil now going pale gray. It’s wide enough now to shield the sun occasionally, and beneath its shadow, the temperature drops immediately. Still, the eerie, ethereal shimmer of the autumn light shines through, warming the land even as it illuminates for ever-shorter periods of time.
This week’s Friday Feature consists of a quartet of works that embody this eerieness, this ethereality, and this medicine that is one of fall’s compensations for a deepening cold and dark. It’s four pairs of earrings, all created in recent weeks, all wrought entirely freehand in the same Art Deco-infused traditional style, all at the same lower price point than most of Wings’s work. All four are found in the Earrings Gallery here on the site. We begin with the pair that embodies the atmospheric magic of natural processes that still hold even in the colder months, cycles of precipitation and evaporation and precipitation’s return. From its description:
Atmospheric Magic Earrings
Our world is filled with an atmospheric magic, the very breath of life rising to the skies, then returning as the First Medicine of the rain. With these earrings, Wings summons the spirits of water and light, animated by the spirit of a traditional Art Deco design. Each dangling drop is a simple tab earring, a long, slender rectangle saw-cut freehand, corners rounded and edges filed smooth. Borders are scored freehand down either side of each tab, and between line and edge, Wings has stamped a repeating pattern of arrow points, bold, deep triangles with open based chased deeply into the silver, both sides pointing upward. The center part of each tab is hammered by hand using a medium-sized divot-end stamp, creating the appearance of bubbles of air and water alike, all limned by the silvery shimmer of sun and storm. Tiny sterling silver jump rings are soldered to the top center of each earring, and are threaded with sterling silver coil-and-ball-bead French wires. Earrings hang 1-1/4″ long, excluding wires, by 9/16″ wide (dimensions approximate).
Sterling silver
$325 + shipping, handling, and insurance
It’s not “magic” at all, of course; it’s a perfectly natural process. But in these days of twelve-hundred-year drought, when wildfire remains a constant and immediate risk, and at this season most marked by incredible aridity, it seems like magic now.
It is, however, medicine, in a land where the first medicines are water and light.
And speaking of that light, the second pair evokes its healing, sustaining powers: warmth and breath and the glowing beauty of Father Sun’s journey, from dawn to dusk and all the hours of shimmering light in between. From its description:
Father Sun’s Journey Earrings
Father Sun’s journey is one of circles and cycles, a motion of orbital resonances far longer than those of our own earth, yet capable of ensuring our world’s survival. With these earrings, Wings evokes that orbital path of the light, rising and falling via imagery infused with a distinctly traditional Art Deco sensibility. Each dangling drop is a simple tab earring, a long, slender rectangle saw-cut freehand, corners rounded and edges filed smooth. Borders are scored freehand down either side of each tab, and between line and edge, Wings has stamped a repeating pattern of wide-angled points, open-based triangles richly textured and chased deeply into the silver, one side ascending with the dawn, the other embodying dusk’s descent. The center part of each tab is hammered by hand using a small divot-end stamp, a rippling, shimmering daytime sky filled with silvery light. Tiny sterling silver jump rings are soldered to the top center of each earring, and are threaded with sterling silver coil-and-ball-bead French wires. Earrings hang 1-1/4″ long, excluding wires, by 9/16″ wide (dimensions approximate).
Sterling silver
$325 + shipping, handling, and insurance
And yes, we know that our Earth moves around the sun and not the reverse, but aside from how it appears to us? The sun does actually move, like the other stars in the sky. Aside form orbiting the center of the Milky Way galaxy, our own, it also moves along its own oscillating path. And our own perception of its path from here on Earth is what gives rise to the old stories that tell of our need to pray and sing Father Sun across the sky each day, never more than now, in the cold season, as the hours of daylight grow ever shorter.
Hours increasingly limited, yes, but no less beautiful, no less healing, no crucial to our existence for that. When the nights grow long, and the darkness cold and deep, it is then that we come to appreciate the true gifts of the daylight. And so this third pair echoes this same beauty of the radiant hours, in a more overtly Art Deco form. From its description:
The Radiant Hours Earrings
Daylight delivers to us the gift of the radiant hours, increasingly valuable as the days shorten now. With these earrings, Wings evokes the bold arcs of the rising and setting suns and the shimmer of the light in the hours between them, all in a traditional, almost architectural Art Deco design. Each dangling drop is a simple tab earring, a long, slender rectangle saw-cut freehand, corners rounded and edges filed smooth. Borders are scored freehand down either side of each tab, and between line and edge, Wings has stamped a repeating pattern of radiant arcs, the rays geometric and bold inside each crescent, with one side pointing upward and the other down. The center part of each tab is hammered by hand using an exceptionally tiny divot-end stamp, creating a rich aged texture and a surface that shimmers with light. Earrings hang 1-1/4″ long, excluding wires, by 9/16″ wide (dimensions approximate).
Sterling silver
$325 + shipping, handling, and insurance
There is medicine in the light; medicine in the rain and the snow, too. They are what keep this land alive, midwife its rebirth every winter, enable its renewal in spring and summer before these days of fall decline to its rest come around once more. Next week, along with the more naturally short hours of illumination, is supposed to bring us more naturally seasonal precipitation, too.
And that will be a gift.
A gift manifest in our fourth and final pair, my own personal favorite of this quartet. It’s another pair with an overtly Art Deco animating spirit, but here, fused with a Modernist sensibility, reminding us what happens to what goes up in a world bound by the laws of gravity. From its description:
What Goes Up Earrings
It is an essential truth in our world that what goes up must come down, but in these lands, that means more than simple gravity: It’s evaporation and precipitation, the cycle of the water that keeps our world alive. With these earrings, Wings pays tribute to the cycles of the First Medicine and the beauty of water and light, all in a beautifully traditional Art Deco design. Each dangling drop is a simple tab earring, a long, slender rectangle saw-cut freehand, corners rounded and edges filed smooth. Borders are scored freehand down either side of each tab, and between line and edge, Wings has stamped a repeating pattern of arrow points, geometric and decidedly directional solid triangles chased deeply into the silver, one side pointing upward and the other down. The center part of each tab is hammered by hand using a large divot-end stamp, creating the appearance of a curtain of rain in the light. Tiny sterling silver jump rings are soldered to the top center of each earring, and are threaded with sterling silver coil-and-ball-bead French wires. Earrings hang 1-1/4″ long, excluding wires, by 9/16″ wide (dimensions approximate).
Sterling silver
$325 + shipping, handling, and insurance
There is precious little moisture in the air to evaporate now, but the clouds today herald a definitive change in the weather to come. It’s not a guarantee, of course, that rain [or better yet, snow] will actually materialize, at least not down here at the feet of the peaks.
But our chances now look much better than they did yesterday.
In theory, the days of hauntings are behind us for another year, but we know that these worlds, both this plane and those less tangibly apparent to us, are not bound by any calendar constructed by human minds or hands. There is plenty of time yet for the spirits to walk; indeed, as the cold deepens and the dark encroaches, they are likely to find much more opportunity — in the spaces between planes of existence, and in those of memory.
But our world remains illuminated by the eerie, ethereal shimmer of the autumn light, and it warms and sustains and protects us, too.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2024; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.
