We humans have an frankly silly tendency to magnify our own individual importance out of all proportion to reality. Sometimes it’s just amusing, as with that coworker who, no matter what new experience you’ve had, has always had it first and far better and will interrupt you two words in to make sure everyone recenters the story on him- or herself. Sometimes it’s toxic, as with the person whose narcissism demands complete deference, the one who insists on cult-like hero worship even as s/he treats others with abuse and contempt.
And sometimes, it’s world-threatening, as is the current case with this country’s dominant culture.
Our current state of geopolitical affairs on this land mass is one marked by the literal and complete absence of all of the gifts, as our ways refer to the fundamental virtues. There is no bravery, no generosity, no wisdom; no love, no humility, no respect; and certainly there is no truth. It is less an egocentric dynamic than one ruled completely by id, one that would relegate the whole world to flames in pursuit of authority and control and crass material wealth.
Left unchecked, the world will burn.
The secret lies in what is left when the fire subsides.
We have been here before, on a smaller scale, many times over. Our peoples, specifically, have been here too often in the last half-millennium-plus. Some did not survive to emerge from the ash. Those of us whose ancestors did have reason to work for the long view.
To do so, we must learn the lessons of the ancient ones, and learn them well.
We travel the roads of time every day, whether we realize it or not. Oh, the paths our ancestors trod may now be blanketed with blacktop, layered in asphalt and stacked high with skyscrapers and condos and parking garages and factories and pipelines and fracking towers. But beneath all of the artifice, the roads remain, ghost tracks of the ancestors that nonetheless live and breathe and whisper almost imperceptibly, ready to guide our footsteps if only we listen and heed their words.
Today’s featured work summons the spirits of the ancestors and the timeless roads they yet travel, in the form and shape of a truly ancient spirit, one driven, like too many of our cousins, to extinction. From its description in the Necklaces Gallery here on the site:
The Roads of Time Necklace
The roads of time are neither simple nor straight, but they all meet at intersections of history and spirit. Wings honors their existence, and their patterns, with this contemporary tribute to ancient beings. The pendant’s cabochon is a slab of fossilized mammoth tooth, thousands of years old, its pale natural color warmed by the earth in which it lay, its veins and capillaries now turned into a network of roads in glowing blues and grays: roads that intersect, bisect, run parallel, and overlap, connecting up with each other and linking epochs in time and even time itself. Wings sliced the fossil material from a larger piece, shaped it gently and polished it lightly, then set it in a hand-made bezel of sterling silver. The embrasure is a modified saw-toothed bezel, hand-cut and trimmed in twisted silver. On the reverse, the setting is centered around an ajouré Morning Star, hand-cut to expose the fossil and allow its earthy glow to shine through the star’s spokes as they stretch to the Four Sacred Directions. Around the perimeter of the reverse side, hand-stamped blossoms emerge from the ancient materials and images to flower anew. the pendant hangs from a strand of graduated disc beads made of traditional olivella-shell heishi in two colors, accented near the findings with twin segments of faceted copper barrel beads. Pendant (including bail) hangs 2-1/4″ long by 1-1/4″ across at the widest point; cabochon is 1-11/16″ long by 1-1/16″ across at the widest point; bead strand is 18″ long (dimensions approximate). Close-up views of pendant, front and reverse, shown at the link.
Sterling silver; fossilized mammoth tooth; olivella-shell heishi; copper
$975 + shipping, handling, and insurance
In days as dark and dangerous as these, it’s important — for our peoples, especially — to stay grounded, connected to the earth, in communion with this land that is our Mother and so much more. We could do far worse than to seek out the roads of time, those ancestral paths the spirits walk, dusty tracks that show us the way around the hoop.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2017; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owners.
