We are looking this week at roads and trails, stones and skies.
I choose our topics and themes based largely on what is happening in our small world here: climate, season, weather, the actions and activities that accompany each. At some points during the year, it’s absolutely straightforward: ditching, irrigation, planting, harvest; feast days and holidays, here and in the outside world alike.
At times like this, the tenor of a day can change in the beat of a bird’s wing, and it’s harder to pin down any sort of atmospheric “identity.”
The calendar tells us it’s still winter. The mercury mostly says it’s long since spring. And each day shuffles and slides between the two, with temperatures that swing forty degrees in either direction and wind chills that extend farther yet. I often say this is an unsettled time, a threshold season — neither here nor there, this nor that. Nothing is constant, not sun nor air nor shade of sky, but they are what we have, and we perforce must learn to find our way with them as they are.
And so, as the gale blows, whipping the dust from a dry winter’s earth, our task is find ourselves, our own center, at the center of the storm, to find the light behind the veil of dirt and haze, to find the guiding blue that links earth and sky and navigate accordingly.
And so today we turn to one of Wings’s more recent works, one that is eminently traditional even as it seems to embody imagery from outside of our more ancient world. It’s also one of my favorites, an oddity for me, since I’m not particularly fond of crosses; I’ve amassed a decent collection of traditional jewelry over the years, but not a single piece of it takes the form of a cross.
This, though, is a cross of a different sort — directional talisman and navigational guide, embodiment of more elemental forces and manifestation of more ancient powers than any piece of religious iconography from half a world away. From its description in the Pendants Gallery here on the site:
In the Light of the Four Directions Pendant
In Native cultures, the cross is traditionally a symbol of the Four Sacred Directions, one that has been adopted and adapted in the face of invasion and colonization in ways that secure the future even as they honor the past. Wings reconceives the traditional Southwestern-style Native cross with this big bold pendant. Hand-cut of heavy fourteen-gauge sterling silver, the cross bears an inner edgeline scored freehand. At the center of the cross lies a square bezel-set cabochon of teal green turquoise webbed with a delicate inky black matrix aswirl beneath floating bits of translucent shimmering pale shades that hint at opalescence. The stone serves as the center of a hand-stamped Guiding Star, each of its own long, pointed spokes hand-scored on the individual spokes of the cross itself. The entire cross is edged in hand-stamped “rays,” flowing line patterns that open like a flower, or like the rays of a polar star. The pendant hangs from a pair of bails: the first is simple open wire to permit suspension from the larger bail. The second bail is hand-wrought of heavy silver, wide enough at the center to accommodate sizeable beads and lightly tapered at the conjoined ends, hand-stamped with matched thunderhead symbols that form the sacred space whose boundaries point to cardinal and ordinal points. On the reverse, Wings echoes the star motif on the front with a pair of nested stars: The inner one, within a larger diamond-shaped Eye of Spirit, holds his hallmark, while simultaneously serving as the center of a four-pointed polar star incorporating the same ray pattern as the one on the cross’s front. The entire pendant, including both bails, hangs 3-13/16″ long; the larger bail is 5/8″ long; excluding the bails, the cross is 3″ long by 2-7/8″ wide; the turquoise cabochon is 1/2″ high by 1/2″ wide (all dimensions approximate). Other views shown above and at the link.
Sterling silver; teal-green turquoise (most likely Royston)
$1,250 + shipping, handling, and insurance
It is stone, sky, and Skystone all in one, and more: the track of the winds and trail of the storm, all brought together in one powerful center. It is touchstone and compass, a navigator’s guide from the heavens brought down to earth and held close even in the spiraling force of the gale.
While colonial cultures in this country revere the cross as symbol of sacrifice and salvation, of martyrdom and hope for future worlds, for us, it is something very different: It is a way of placing ourselves within our world, of finding the power that resides naturally in it, of guiding us along the road around the hoop, steps sure and steady even when buffeted from all directions.
In these threshold days when even Mother Earth seems unsure of who she is, it’s a way of returning to the center, of always knowing who we are and where we need to go. That’s guidance for any season.
~ 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.
