We awakened this morning to a world covered with snow: two or three inches here, just a dusting there, all depending on location. Our small space, a tiny valley within a valley that possesses its own microclimate, attracted a little more than some of the areas adjacent to it.
It was all gone by noon, of course.
Such is the case in these threshold times when winter drifts momentarily into fall, then retreats once more to await an opportunity closer to the season named and numbered as its own.
In the meantime, we have much ground to cover, physically, temporally, spiritually. There are markers to observe, losses to navigate, memories to manage, and, yes, joyrs to celebrate. But accordioned as they are into a three-month space, they all seem out of proportion: outsized, imposing, roads meeting and rising toward summits too high and steep to scale, never mind see.
And yet, we do it anyway, year after year, with varying degrees of success. Of course, part of that depends upon how we define success: Does it have mostly to with happiness, with prosperity, with simple survival? Or is it something at once higher and deeper, where the point of the task is less about acquisition or completion than it is about understanding and engaging with the work?
We know all too well how easy it is to get swept along by the demands of the former approach; this is, after all, our busiest seasoon of the year, and it’s one rife with other markers and obligations as well. But we try, in the midst of the fall and winter flurry, to make time each day to stop and look and think: about where we are, about what needs doing, about what we can build for the world to come, about what gifts, what medicines we have been granted to help us along the way. It is a season of crossroads and circles, of whole worlds merging and melding and spirits dancing between, across, through. It’s a time of prophecy, a time for visions and dreams, and a time to be open to traversing the angles and scaling the peaks of this entire cosmic collision.
This week’s Friday Feature comprises two works, seemingly matched but each possessed of its own unique identity and spirit, that embody process and prophecy simultaneously. Both are cuff bracelets with solid bands and meticulous freehand stampwork; both are adorned with single gems, that local and naturally-occurring rarity known as the staurolite. Both are found in the Cuffs and Links and Bangles section of the Bracelets Gallery here on the site. We begin with the first-created, which is also the larger of the two; from its description:
At the Crossroads of the Stars Cuff Bracelet
Our world sits at the crossroads of the stars, a cosmic map of the skies scribing lines and paths upon the earth below. With this cuff, Wings honors that greatest of stars in our solar system, the sun, tracing a band that falls from a jewel of a cross indigenous to this land, formed and shaped by Mother Earth and her elemental sibling spirits. The band, wrought of solid nine-gauge sterling silver, is stamped freehand in a repeating motif of a triangular radiant sun emergent from behind the clouds; Wings has created mirror images paired at their open bases to form spectacularly illuminating Eyes of Spirit, then chased the twinned motif all the way down the band’s outer surface. In between each set of angles, the band is bordered with lodge symbols stamped deeply along each edge. The inner band is chased with more spare and slender Eyes of Spirit formed of paired long and short points, and the ends are gently shaped and filed smooth. At the very center, set into a bezel elevated minutely above the band and edged in twisted silver, sits a a natural earthy crossroads: a perfect natural staurolite drawn from the very soil of this region, a three-dimensional, non-cruciform cross created over time on a geologic scale by heat and pressure, infused with metallic flecks of local mica and — invisible on the surface, but plain on the saw-cut underside seated in the bezel — shimmering inclusions of garnet chips that glow like red glass. Band is 6″ long by just over 3/8″ across; the bezel is 1-1/16″ long by 7/8″ wide; the staurolite gem is 7/8″ long by 7/8″ wide and rises 3/8″ high from base seated in bezel to its highest point (all dimensions approximate). Other views shown above and at the link.
Sterling silver; staurolite
$1,375 + shipping, handling, and insurance
The word staurolite derives not from that which is related to the stars, as its name might seem to suggest; rather, it shares a root with a Greek word that means cross (and you can read about the stone, and its physical and less tangible aspects, here).
It’s not, of course, a cross as the dominant colonial culture envisions that word, although cultures across the world have coopted the stones shape and mystery for such purposes. Rather, it’s a somehow-perfect meeting, and union, of natural elements, of earth and heat and pressure and time, all of which combine over time and geologic scale to create a shimmering index mineral by which the very earth that surrounds it may be measured in multiple ways.
The second of today’s featured works is smaller, but still centered by this same extraordinary and mysterious material. From its description:
Where Worlds Meet Cuff Bracelet
In the circle where the spirits join the dance is the place where worlds meet. With this cuff, Wings opens a glimpse of the spaces between them, the thresholds and crossroads of past and future, of a tangible present and the mysteries of prophecy and dreams, and all the power and potential they hold for us. The band is a slender strand of heavy nine-gauge sterling silver, stamped freehand in a repeating pattern of figurative images, like spirit beings dancing down its length. The inner band is bordered at either edge by hand-stamped crescent moons linked by tiny hoops, creating a scalloped effect. Ends are rounded and filed smooth for comfort, and at the center, high and bold, sits a single small staurolite, that rare and extraordinary gift of the local earth. A low-profile scalloped bezel holds its sclpted edges and surface in place. The band is 6″ long by 5/16″ across; the staurolite focal 11/16″ across by 9/16″ deep by 7/16″ high in its bezel setting, measured to the highest point (all dimensions approximate). Other views shown at the link.
Sterling silver; staurolite
$1,175 + shipping, handling, and insurance
Wings has a small personal collection of staurolites. These are two outstanding specimens, perfectly formed and shaped, with their own peaks and angles rising in sharp, smooth relief. They do not, in our represent crosses as the colonial culture defines them, but in a place that has been a trade center for centuries, with well-traveled paths intersecting across these mountainous lands, envisioning them as a crossroads is another matter entirely.
Then, too, they embody the shapes of some of our peoples’ oldest symbols: eight points, eight spokes, tributes to the winds and the sacred directions, manifest in the shapes of guiding stars. That, too, is fitting, given the mica that is part of the very dust of the earth here; in staurolites, it produces a stardust shimmer that hints at other words, other possibilities and potentialities beyond those of the ancient soil upon which we walk.
In a season when the earth is sending itself to sleep, when we can soon expect it to be covered by a blanket of snow taht will not vanish in a matter of hours, it’s an inspiring thought: that we are still linked to sky as much as soil, to past and future as much as present, to the power of prophecy and its fulfillment even as we put in the work. Yes, the work involves traversing the angles and scaling the peaks, and it is not easy most of the time . . . but it is is very, very worth it.
And it is our gift to the earth . . . and to a better world.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2022; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.
