Yesterday was glorious. Mid-February, and yet the mercury rose past sixty, the air so still in the early part of the day that it felt easily seventy-five.
This morning is much colder.
It will likely reach similar highs again today, albeit with more wind, but the edge on the morning air reminds me that spring is still playing hide-and-seek with the shadows of winter. It is a fickle season, coy and hard to get, unwilling to commit until the the last possible moment before the choice is taken from its hands by the inevitability of time and Father Sun.
Still, the appearance of the warmth yesterday has propelled our thoughts, unbidden, toward the spirits of summer. We came across some unused seeds yesterday, two of the Three Sisters, and already our minds have turned to the subconscious making of lists, of seeds still needed and a rough schedule for planting. The old corn stalks were cleared from the big garden yesterday, making room for heir eventual replacement with new kernels placed carefully in the earth. At day’s end, dinner last night consisted of buffalo and a grilled mix of white sweet potato, squash, green onion, and corn, all tossed with herbs, and it was another reminder of how welcome the fruits of the summer season will once again be.
Here, we have spent the week just past contemplating the gifts of the spirits in our way of life: our own founding fathers and the familial and otherwise familiar spirits who sustained our ancestors and will in turn sustain the generations to come. Our exploration has included everything from earth and sky, trees and mountains, to our own individual ancestors and beings that are made of nothing like the substance of this world, to spirits of multiple identities and manifestations. Yesterday, we came around squarely to those in the last category: a pair of beings of the other world who nonetheless have found ways to enter and bless our own, who manifest themselves in personified dress and in the earth’s own abundance.
Today, our spirit is singular — and yet, she contains multitudes. From her description in the Necklaces Gallery here on the site:
Indian Corn Spirit Necklace
Wings has reimagined the Corn Maidens in a whole new yet wholly traditional way: No metaphorical Mona Lisa, this; this is Maiden as the very embodiment of the Indian Corn that sustains our peoples. A large single ear of a corn is hand-cut from sterling silver and set with fifteen tiny jeweled kernels in an array of brilliantly intense hues. At the stem, a single oval cabochon of agatized onyx, black with delicate white bands, forms the Maiden’s face; an overlay of hand-wrought, hand-stamped corn husks caught by the wind flow around her face like long locks set fee from their traditional bun. She hangs from a hand-made sterling silver bail suspended from a strand of old turquoise doughnut-style rondel beads interspersed with segments of highly polished sterling silver rondels; toward the each end, a series of round sterling silver beads in a Florentine finish alternate with four small round onyx beads. Bead strand hangs 18″ long; the pendant, including bail, is 3.5″ long by 2-1/8″ across at the widest point (dimensions approximate). Close-up view of the pendant shown below.
Pendant head: Sterling silver; agatized onyx
Corn kernels: Lapis lazuli, denim lapis, blue turquoise, green turquoise, gaspeite, jade, onyx, garnet, moonstone
Bead strand: Sterling silver; Florentine-finish sterling silver; green turquoise; onyx
$2,000 + shipping, handling, and insurance
As we close out a week devoted to familiar and familial spirits, it’s hard to find one that better sustains the traditional spirit of the people than the First Sister, arrayed in the colorful dress of Indian corn.
~ Aji
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