It’s International Women’s Day.
Had I been thinking, I would have saved last Wednesday’s featured item for today; with Wings’s work, it’s hard to get more salient on such topics than his Warrior Woman. But it fit Wednesday’s mood, too, and perhaps that was ultimately where it belonged.
Today, we continue our March series covering Wings’s work: new items on Wednesdays, showpieces on the weekends, all with a running theme or themes. Wednesday’s and Saturday’s entries embodied the imagery of the winds, whirling and eddying, cyclonic heralds of spring coming from all directions, ushering us across that seasonal threshold from winter into warmer times.
Today’s piece is not oriented with the winds, but it does pick up a strand of the same web — the one that explores thresholds. And it does so embodied in a distinctly female spirit: Spider Woman.
We’ve looked at Spider Woman here before, in various cultural incarnations. For some of our peoples, she’s Grandmother Spider, and a largely benevolent spirit. In other cultures, the spider being is not female at all, or not only female: Iktomi (sometimes spelled Inktomi) is distinctly male, sly and conniving, a trickster and a clown and sometimes simply a bumbling fool (although in many stories, he has a spider wife, and she is far less bumbling). Among some of the peoples of the Southwest, Spider Woman is a powerful being, but not always a nurturing one, and her role as gatekeeper at some thresholds can be quite frightening.
The one undercurrent they all share is a sense of power. (Yes, even Iktomi, whose power is counterintuitive; the lessons are ones of mortal frailty and imperfection.) In the dominant culture, notions of power have become distorted into something that is actually simply a lexical stand-in for authority and control, externalities of force that have little or nothing to do with what our cultures traditionally regard as inherent, immanent power, a gift of the spirits.
The Spider Woman of this area’s ancient peoples is a being of power, although that power is often cloaked in deceptively ordinary form. To some, she gave the gift of patience, of knowing when to wait instead of plunging headlong into needless activity. To others, she gave the gift of weaving, and the people are now widely regarded as some of the most talented textile artisans in the world. And to peoples from my own lands, she gave the gift of her web — its uses varied, but it was, of course, nothing less than the gift of survival. In our story, she became, in a sense, the gatekeeper of the threshold between this world and the world of dreams, her web providing the barrier between all that was bad int hat world, while allowing entry to what was good.
And so, today’s piece does in fact honor women’s spirits and recognize their power, as embodied in this ancient female being from the spirit world. From her description in our Bracelets Gallery here on the site:
Spider Woman
Our dreams are the threshold between our contemporary existence and ways much older than memory. In many traditions, Spider Woman is the gatekeeper of such thresholds, and today, we still use the gift of her web to protect our dreams. Here, her ancient power is embodied in this spectacular cuff, hand-formed from a single piece of sterling silver and adorned with stones of protection and power. Her eight legs, texturized by hand-stamping extend from the dazzling oval lapis cabochon that forms her body. Hand-cut, hand-stamped pincers and silver spacer beads accent the protective Skystone of Sleeping Beauty turquoise that forms her head.
Sterling silver, lapis lazuli, and Sleeping Beauty turquoise
$1,200 + shipping, handling, and insurance
She is the second such spirit cuff that Wings has created. The first was similar in shape, but with a plum-colored crazy lace agate stone for her head and a body of apple coral. All distinctly feminine, all colors of fire and flame, of the sunrise and sunset skies. But this version is more suited to the Spider Woman of the dreamcatcher legacy, more clearly one whose legs weave a web across and through the extremes of the day. AS I said when I wrote about her before:
It wasn’t until sometime later that he felt moved to create a new version, and I’ve often wondered whether the dreamcatcher story was at work subconsciously as he chose the design: a Skystone the color of the heavens at midday for her head; a lapis so deep and dark it’s nearly purple, the color of night, for her body; silver spacer beads as round sun-like orbs; crescent moons stamped along the length of all eight legs. What better for she who mediates between day and night, between waking and dreams, between this world and another, more shadowy one?
She is a powerful being, and his rendering of her here is likewise powerful: not heavy, but substantial; the sort of piece that melds to your wrist, the sensation vanishing physically, but that never lets you forget her great spiritual and protective presence.
We carry those thresholds with us and within us, every day. Sometimes, it’s good to have the gatekeeper with us, too.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2015; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owners.
