Had I taken this series in the normal course of things, this would have been the final entry, the one corresponding to emergence: out of the darkness, into the light. The symbolism is unmistakable, particularly with stones the color of the dawn sky.
But I have taken this series in a seemingly random order, highlighting each piece as it happens to speak to me in turn. And today, for more than one reason, this is the one that speaks most insistently.
I should point out up front that this piece is not actually even available; it has just sold. No matter; it still has something to say. And, of course, it’s the sort of piece that’s easily “duplicated” — not exactly, of course, since Wings creates every piece as something unique. But for someone who finds meaning in the stones used, or in the symbolism attached, a personal version can easily be made.
But on this day, it is this piece that seems to me to capture the spirit of the moment.
I’ve been up since four, unable to sleep. The temperatures warmed up here substantially, thanks to cloud cover; the Weather Service was reporting heavy snow nearby, which means the mountains at whose feet we sit. Overhead, we got only thunder. The early glow of the yet-sleeping sun lights the edges of the dawn sky, pale rose peeking from behind a blue-black cloudbank that still hides the peaks.
We have made it through yet another Halloween, not something part of our own traditions, yet brought from without an imposed upon us, now merged and melded with harvest rituals and converted into something itself unique. Today is All Souls’ here, when the people mark the passing of loved ones and honor ancestors long since walked on. It’s the day of the year when any member can go into the church at the village and ring the bell. It will toll all day, single peals, in honor and memory of those no longer walking with their loved ones. It makes today an emergence of another kind, a marking, in a way, of yet another year.
And so today, in light of the adaptation of tradition here, different from my own ways but still with the ring of the familiar, using a word more associated with the Church doesn’t seem out of place. And the word itself, of course, has meaning wholly independent of any associations with the Church, but it’s rare to hear outside of that context anymore.
Transfiguration.
It’s a concept, a metaphor, an act common to cultures the world over. In some, the transfiguring force comes from without; in others, from within. But it’s more than mere transformation: It is, as the secondary definition puts it, an exaltation.
In emergence stories of traditional peoples, that can be seen very literally: up from the depths, emerging into the light, whether atop a mountain peak or Grandmother Turtle’s shell. It’s a physical placement that puts us higher than we were before, in very real terms.
But the tangible is merely an expression of the spiritual, and its the emergence within that gives the one without its meaning. To borrow another term now associated with Christianity, it’s very near a form of transubstantiation: taking what we carry, what we are, tempering it with the heat and pressure of experience, reforming and reshaping it into something new and better. In some Asian cultures, it’s the forging lessons of karma; in other, the endless cycle of birth and rebirth.
For our peoples, it’s merely life’s journey, the sacred hoop: here, glowing softly silver and studded with chips of the new dawn sky.
And now that that dawn is here, it’s time for morning prayers.
~ Aji
Transfiguration bangle bracelet: Sterling silver; rose quartz. $375 + shipping, handling, and insurance. SOLD.
