Some days, nothing goes right.
When it’s also a day when the cold slices bone-deep, when the snow has turned to ice and the wind chases the clouds from the clearing dusk, it’s hard to return to ordinary tasks and push through them. It’s doubly hard when it’s a day that has served as a reminder of grief and loss, of a void in our world here that now cannot be filled.
Indeed, loss is perhaps the one human emotion that sits most in opposition to the virtues — or, more accurately, the fear of loss. After all, it is this fear that underlies everything from simple resentment to the layered complexities of racism and other bigotries: the fear that, somehow, some way, if [X] occurs, we will lose . . . something. Money, job, status, respect . . . or those deeper forms of loss that find form and shape in the fears for one’s own family, children, loved ones.
If it takes bravery to live a life of resistance, it also takes bravery to live a life uncorrupted by fear of loss. So, too, do both require generosity, in spirit and in deed. This date marks the eighth anniversary of the day that a man we loved dearly walked on, crossing a threshold and entering a world where we cannot follow, a world in which he was nonetheless able to walk up his beloved mountain some three full weeks later, his ascent witnessed by an old friend unaware that he had already traded this world for another.
We feel him, sometimes: in the soft sigh of the wind, in the angled glow of the light, in the sudden rush of a hawk’s wings, in the smoke spiraling skyward on the icy air of dawn.
He was a man of medicine and power and a mighty spirit, and I think that, while I was not able to feature what I had planned for this day, perhaps that was purposeful on the part of the fates. Because the work featured here instead is one that he would have appreciated deeply.
It’s one that Wings was inspired to create several months ago, a medicine wheel in wearable form, but one that incorporated the sacred imagery of the eagle feather. I’ve written about medicine wheels here in some detail before, including the fact that they have only become a pan-Native symbol of sorts in recent decades; the literal medicine wheels are an aspect of the cultures of specific nations of the Northern Plains, and are not indigenous to the traditions of most of the rest of us. The eagle feather, on the other hand, is very much a part of our ways, with symbolic significance as a token of honor and respect, but also as one of the tools of the sacred, of prayer.
These motifs came together in today’s featured work in an exceptionally beautiful, powerful way. From its description in the Bracelets Gallery here on the site:
A Medicine Prayer Cuff Bracelet
The medicine wheel summons the powers of the four directions to our healing, while the eagle’s feather sends our prayers to Spirit. Wings brings their collective forces together in this breathtaking cuff bracelet, connecting the four winds to earth and sky, linking the place of our emergence with the place in the heavens where the spirits dwell. The cuff’s band is wrought in in the shape of twinned eagle feathers, all hand-cut of a single piece. Each barb of the feathers is created by way of hundreds of tiny individually hand-scored lines angles downward on either side of the quill, while delicate freehand ajouré cutwork forms the natural separations in the barbs. The dots that naturally adorn eagle feathers are formed via small stamped sacred hoops, and the ends of the cuff have been lightly oxidized to bring the patterns out into beautiful relief. A delicate strand of sterling silver half-round wire, hand-stamped with dozens of chased cloud patterns symbolizing imminent abundance, form the quill shaft. At the center of the band sits a hand-wrought medicine wheel in an elevated setting, with small round cabochons placed at each of the cardinal points in the traditional colors: a white rainbow moonstone to the North; yellow amber to the East; red coral to the South; and blue lapis to the West. At the center lies a larger cabochon of rutilated clear quartz, an elemental stone that carries within it an earthy, fiery collection of shiny black schorl and gold- and silver-hued rutile. Hand-stamped directional arrows point inward from each cardinal point to the center’s vortex of power, while broken arrows between the points represent the irregularity of the path. The band measures 5/8″ of an inch across at its widest point; the wheel setting is 1.25″ across; the center cabochon is 9/16″ across (dimensions approximate). Side view shown at top.
Sterling silver; rutilated quartz; rainbow moonstone; amber; coral; lapis lazuli
$1,500 + shipping, handling, and insurance
I love this cuff for all that it represents. Medicine wheels may not be specific to our own respective cultures, but the idea of life as a sacred hoop certainly is, and it is that imagery that speaks to me: a sacred hoop held up, quite literally, by prayer.
Wings’s father was, as I said, a powerful man. He understood prayer. He also understood that there is a time to be generous and a time to fight, and that sometimes the two are one and the same. He may no longer be with us in person, but he has left us a spiritual legacy of extraordinary value — indeed, of incalculable value, in times such as these.
That legacy, and the inspired and inspirited work of his son, remind me that, on such a day as this, we can yet find in prayer the strength that we need to live the lives with which we are charged, to leave legacies of similar value to future generations. The true path around the hoop, one marked by bravery and generosity of spirit and a life of active resistance, is one set firmly on a foundation of prayer and the sacred.
It’s a reminder of legacies, of how to live and what we leave behind.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2016; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owners.
