A few days ago, I wrote about the arrival of spring on the year’s new winds.
It’s a marker here, a touchstone, an annual rite of passage and endurance for everyone who lives here: Freeing life from the bonds of winter’s harsh weather, ushering in season of warmth and growth, requires surviving a temporary climate of arbitrary irregularity, of capricious days marked by the random appearances of mercurial and unsettled spirits. No ancestral spirits these, oh, no: They are far older, more elemental, more powerful. It’s not so much that they ride the winds.
They are the winds.
This is not a bad thing, although it does require an understanding of the sort of power at play here. But for those from other parts of the country and the world, the spring winds can be irritating, intimidating, even frightening. And rightly so.
Change does not come easily, without discomfort, without a riffling and ruffling of complacency, whether born of comfort or of simple resignation. But winter’s end, resignation is perhaps paramount; where I come from, we even call it the Broken Snowshoe Moon, a wry recognition that well before the winds prepare to midwife spring’s birth, all of our own mortal preparations for winter survival have already begun to break down.
Along, too often, with our spirits.
And so when the time for change nears, embracing it fully requires us to make room in our lives. It’s true of any major alteration in life’s journey, whether it manifests in the form of juncture, crossroads, turnstile, or watershed, whether it requires a change of actual place or merely a remapping of the geography of the mind. The dust and detritus of the last stage and season must be cleared away, surfaces and crevices alike cleaned of ancient residue.
How better to accomplish that than with a strong and healing wind?
Its directions change, ebbing, flowing, whirling, eddying, until the winds of all of the cardinal directions, of that above and below, within and without, all have had their say. On some days this time of year, the directional changes are modest and mild, moving body and spirit gently this way and that until a slight yet seminal alteration has been achieved.
Other days, they buffet you so hard and fast, so insistently, that your world is reduced to its one small cyclone.
It’s a stage, a process, sometimes an ordeal, but it brings with it, in the end, the blessings of warmth and light, of growth and abundance.
It’s a process and path embodied in this piece.
I wrote about it last fall, when Wings first created it. Then, it was the autumn winds, ushering in winter’s harsh beauty. In autumn, they are milder by far, perhaps because the normal order of things dictates that the snows merely blanket the growth rapidly going dormant. But this time of year, as the earth awakens from hibernation, it needs more powerful help to clear out the undergrowth so that it may once again be turned and tilled and cultivated.
The differences, though, are ones of degree rather than kind; what I wrote then holds true today, if perhaps with greater intensity. As I said then, in an attempt to explain part of the role the winds play for our peoples:
It is, perhaps, why so many of our peoples find meaning in the directions, in the elements. Earth, air, fire, water; in some traditions, wood and wind. The wind is the one element that can carry all the others — and it is the one element that, in some cultures, exists in multiple forms, each with its home in a different cardinal direction.
Perhaps it’s also why the wingéd ones carry such significance for so many traditional peoples. They are the ones who ride the winds in tangible form; the ones who carry the spirits’ messages to the people, and the people’s prayers back again; the ones midwife the openings between worlds and mediate access thereto.
It is no surprise to me that such themes figure prominently in Wings’s work. Given his name, his essential identity, it would be a surprise if they did not. His art is a living tribute to, its own inspiriting of, the themes and images that give form and shape and meaning to — that animate — our existence.
At the time, I also wrote of the significance of animation, as concept and as label. It still holds, but it’s not my focus today. Today, I’m more interested in the interplay between the elements of this piece and the elements that play on the currents of this threshold season, elements I also described then:
The lapis lazuli oval at the bottom of the pendant: the color of the waters, taken from the earth’s own soil.
The three-pointed rosarita at the top of the pendant: taken from the earth as metal, as gold, tempered by fire to create the flame-red stone.
The sterling silver medallion that join the two stones: also given up by the earth, also tempered by fire, bearing a pair of wings to ride the winds.
The heishi-style jet beads: not wholly a stone, but fossilized wood, a living element translated by time into something else entirely.
The green turquoise spacer beads that hold strand to pendant: the Skystone itself, the embodiment of the elements — water, wrapped in rain’s blanket, tossed by the winds of the air down to earth, where her own fiery heat hardens it into precious stone.
The constituent elements, coupled with his own imprimatur inscribed thereon:
On the top, inward and outward, above and below: directional arrows emerging from the center vortex.
On the bottom, all of the sacred directions: the kiva steps leading to and from the sacred space, at the cardinal points, at the ordinal points, creating a whole of emergence.
At the center, connecting it all: the hundreds of overlapping, interlocking sacred hoops that make up the whole of life.
In a season like this, we often need to be reminded of that overlapping and interlocking, of that whole. In unsettled and unsettling times, it’s easy to lose sight of the fact that even ordeals have their place: Discomfort, even hardship, have their own lessons to teach us, and they provide the balance that permits us to appreciate all that is good in life.
And so, Wings’s piece has become a work for all seasons, a compelling reminder of elemental dichotomies. From its description in the Necklaces Gallery here on the site:
Nature’s elemental powers assume tangible form in stone and silver. A fiery rosarita cabochon, precious gold given new form, sits atop a gigantic lapis oval, connected by a pair of hand-stamped silvery wings. All three interconnected pieces reveal more of their identities on the reverse in a tribute to the sacredness of the directions and their role in our emergence, in the sacred hoop of our very existence. The pendant hangs from a strand of graduated heishi-style jet beads strung over fine sterling silver chain, its bail flanked by two green Skystones with delicate black spiderweb matrices, its findings edged by a pair of silver and copper-colored trade-style beads on either side. Rosarita cabochon, 1-3/8″ high by 1″ across at widest point; lapis cabochon, 1.5″ wide by 1.25″ high; strand of beads, 19″ long; pendant including bail, 4″ long (dimensions approximate).
Sterling silver, rosarita (gold slag), lapis lazuli, green turquoise, jet, trade-style beads
$1,850 + shipping, handling, and insurance.
It is, without question, one of the most powerful pieces he has ever created. In person, it’s impossible to look at it without sensing it; put it on, and its energies infuse your being.
I know. I’ve tried it.
~ 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.
