I watched this morning as the waning winter moon drifted downward to its rest: a giant white balloon bereft of just enough air to deprive it of roundness, and allowing it to descend softly behind the bare branches arrayed against a slate-blue western sky. It seemed a gentle start to the day, one that held out the hope of a little peace — perhaps a mere lack of wind, perhaps a respite from the uneasy restlessness of recent skies and weather.
Two weeks into the new calendar year, and the world is already weary. Peace is welcome, even in the simplest, most ordinary of contexts.
Seasonal holidays behind us, we are now solidly down to the business of winter, with — if we are lucky — many long weeks, even months, of cold and snow ahead of us. It is the latter that is the gift, but the former is required for its appearance, and thus too many warm days are cause for apprehensiveness, if not outright alarm. There is work yet to be done, the labor of birthing a new world for the year, and the new life of spring arrives not in the rush and gush of warmth but in the freezing natal waters of ice and snow.
Here at Red Willow, winter is a time of work. It is not merely a question of getting through the cold season, although there is that, too. But the latter weeks of winter and the early ones of spring are transected by the ceremonial season, and for all involved, it is indeed a time of labor, of dedication and commitment. Cold and snow are merely complicating factors, along with the continued shortness of the light.
But a season of ceremony is a season of prayer, and there is no denying that our whole world needs it now.
The first of today’s featured works is one of prayer itself, of the ceremonies of the spirits, of the medicine of the winds and the sacred directions. From its description in the relevant section of 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 below.
Sterling silver; rutilated quartz; rainbow moonstone; amber; coral; lapis lazuli
$1,500 + shipping, handling, and insurance
In this hemisphere, the moon travels the east-to-west track of the southern sky; north is the one place it never appears to us on this Indigenous land mass. And still, it’s fitting, I think, that the moonstone in this piece should be set at due north: the direction of winter, of that moment when death meets birth. It’s a cardinal point of mystery and magic and medicine, all captured, symbolically, in the light of a winter’s night.
And while autumn here is generally regarded as the time of the Harvest Moon — big, round, hanging low, gold with hints of red — the fact of the matter is that so-called Harvest Moons can manifest throughout the year, and in some years, the whole of fall passes without one. By the same token, in this place, it is the winter moons that seem most to be the light of the spirits, a thought which casts my soul back to the ways of my northerly people and our names for the moons of December and January.
The moons in the images featured here today were those of winter, too, although, as I recall, the latter weeks of that season now close on a decade past. These, too, were waxing moons, a journey through a new moon’s early phases before reaching its full midpoint. That point passed us last week, and the pale white balloon I watched drift downward from the sky this morning showed itself on the wane, fuller side to my left instead of my right. And as I watched, it vanished behind the treeline to the west, a mix of skeletal old cottonwoods punctuated here and there by a lush evergreen arrayed against the pale blue of morning.
In that regard, it brought to mind the second of today’s featured silverwork pieces, one wrought with the holidays just past clearly in mind, but more fundamentally a tribute to the evergreen world of winter here. From its description in the Pins Gallery:
Icicled Juniper Tree Pin
An icicled juniper shines with tinsel made of snow and light. Wings honors the shades of winter green and the power of the light with this tiny tree, cut freehand of sterling silver with upturned boughs and and flared trunk. The small but steady rays of the winter sun garland its branches as the scattered blossoms of remnant berries, hand-stamped, peek through; a winter butterfly, a bit of holiday magic, floats past beneath the twinkling star at its top. The icy tinsel shimmers in a single moonstone, while the jade and turquoise of the evergreen shows through above, all by way of small round bezel-set cabochons. Tree stands 1-1/2″ high by 1-3/8″ across at the widest point; cabochons are 1/8″ across (dimensions approximate).
Sterling silver; jade; blue turquoise; moonstone
$325 + shipping, handling, and insurance
If the first of today’s works, above, was an homage to the wheel of the world and the sacred directions, this one honors the fertility and life they nurture year-round. This is an evergreen land, not merely by way of the great firs and the soldier pines, the juniper and cedar and fat piñon, but also the humbler high-desert plants, the mesquite and chamisa and sage that never quite lose their whole color even in the cold season. This one is wrought in the shades of a descending moon, bypassing now the line of demarcation between the turquoise skies of day and the deep onyx of the night. It reminds us that even the low light off winter is enough for life: the land’s, and our own.
And so we come to the image most like today’s, albeit in reverse: a three-quarter moon, perhaps a bit more; enough to retain some of the bold mystique of Grandmother in full face, even as she begins the process of turning that face away from us to engage in the private rites of her own renewal.
Technological advances have given us the ability now to see her up close and very personal, almost invasively so. It reminds me of the story from my own tradition, in which the spirits visited the people on this plane, to bestow the gifts of identity, teaching, and home. Of the seven, one’s countenance was so spiritually powerful that for a mere mortal to look upon it meant death in the moment . . . and so it withdrew, covering its face so that mere mortals might survive to accept the gifts that were being given.
That account comes to my mind sometimes, when I see how brazenly humankind now thinks to approach the elemental powers and their animating spirits. The lessons of hubris come hard, and we are all paying the price for colonialism’s fundamental lack of respect for the cosmos now. It reminds me, too, never to take power for granted, whatever its form. Some gifts are too costly for us to meet them head-on; they are here, in part, to teach us humility and respect. By the same token, the very force that drives certain human cultures and identities toward ever-grater and more dangerous hubris is the one that allows, even encourages them to dismiss sources of power that they perceive as “lesser.”
That, too, is a grave mistake.
It’s an error whose price we are all paying now, as the small spirits, the honeybees and butterflies, find their numbers endangered — and with it, pollination and a healthy fertility for our world. It’s the same tendency that elevates sun over moon, day over night, aggression and violence over the immanent power of peaceful existence.
There are spirits to teach us these lessons, too, embodied here by the third of today’s featured works, butterflies wrought in the moon’s own silvery light, adrift upon the clouds of a winter’s night. From their description in the Earrings Gallery:
Moondrift Earrings
Warm nights are lit by moondrift, a soft cool glow floating gently overhead on wings of silvered stardust. With these butterfly earrings, Wings invokes the illuminating light of a translucent moon, set across the sky on the crystalline arc of night. Each earring dances in place, three-dimensional wings flared and defined to refract the silvery light. At the center of each sits a small round rainbow moonstone, surface domed and center infused with faint shades of blue and gray, resting serenely in the embrace of a plain low-profile bezel. Earrings hang 1-3/8″ long by 1″ across at the widest point; moonstone cabochons are 3/16″ across (dimensions approximate).
Sterling silver; rainbow moonstone
$525 + shipping, handling, and insurance
And so, in the way of today’s particular images, we come full-circle, in a sense: a very literal way of regarding the illuminating grandmother spirit of the night. Like the central orbs carried on the butterfly wings above, it is the moon at her fullest, facing squarely this world she guards with her light.
In these long hours of darkness, when the mercury descends to single digits and below, when storms arise newly and late, when clouds drift across a darkening sky, veiling her face for a moment or a night, she remains constant.
Visible or not, the moon is always a gift. We may not see her in full, may in fact see her mostly in outline or not at all, but she is there, a guardian, a protector, a guide to illuminate our darkened path: the light of a winter’s night.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2020; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.
