Another brilliant morning, another day of warming winds.
This is spring at its best here, and our small world shows it: turquoise skies, albeit today softened with a thin veil of high clouds; the earth newly carpeted in green. The butterflies are here in force already, as well as the occasional honeybee. Larger creatures are abroad now, too, although they mostly confine themselves to times and spaces removed from human habitation.
And all day long, the birds sing — in a time of upheaval and not a little danger to us all, a song of strength and renewal.
I wanted, in fact, to title this post differently, although my own tradition that has developed over the last nearly six years now dictates that I keep, as much as possible, to one or two themes for each week. Nonetheless, I wanted to call it A Ballad of Bear and Butterfly, a reference to the song of this season and, if you look at the image above, to this week’s featured throwback work itself.
No matter; I’ve managed to work it into the text anyway.
Ironically, it was a piece created a year and a half ago, at this season’s opposite: well into autumn, one part of a multi-piece commission from a friend, each piece a gift for a friend and supporter during a hard-fought campaign.
Of that commissioned group of works, three were belt buckles, each intended for a different person. This was one of the three, and in its way perhaps the most elaborate. All were of similar size, small and simple enough to be worn with dress trousers in a professional setting. Wings had to guess, to some degree, with regard to each eventual recipient’s personality, preferences, and perhaps needs in terms of what each design should embody and represent . . . and apparently chose well.
And while I loved all of the pieces in that order, I am especially fond of the symbolism connected with the two spirits represented here.
The guidelines for each buckle consisted of general size (small) and simple shape (rectangular), and each was to be set at the center with a small round blue turquoise cabochon. Beyond that, the design elements were left mostly to Wings’s discretion, and this one incorporated some powerful imagery.
I wrote yesterday of illuminating skies, and this piece embodies that concept in miniature: a central sun-like orb in the shade of the sky, radiating silvered light via sixteen hand-scored lines that extended outward from the cabochon’s bezel. At the open end of each paired set of lines, Wings connected them with stamped symbols: the six on each side (for a total of twelve) linked by way of tiny mountain-like motifs, radiant symbols that often stand in for the Indigenous understanding of a lodge — i.e., both shelter and ceremony, protection from the elements and a deeper, healing guardianship of the spirit. For the two each at top and bottom (a total of four), he connected them by way of a small flowering plant symbol, its petals reaching upward and outward. All sixteen symbols were further connected to the lines that flanked them by placement, in between each, of a tiny sacred hoop, a symbol of life itself.
It was, in its way, especially fitting for the season in which it was made, with winter already in sight. It’s equally fitting now, when we need shelter and protection of a different sort, even as we anticipate the renewal the spring and summer seasons bring despite what risks both elemental forces and human failures may hold.
But Wings wasn’t done. Aesthetically, there was too much negative space on the outside of the stampwork, particularly in the corners, and symbolically, it seemed incomplete. The flowering motifs at top and bottom were fine; their petals stretched upward to the edges above them, filling the space as needed.
The same could not be said for the space above the lodge symbols, nor each corner, and so he began by selecting a simple geometric motif that was itself a symbol of renewal: a tiny messenger spirit of outsized power, otherwise known as Butterfly. He placed one at the apex of each lodge symbol, as though the small spirit were hovering over it, perhaps waiting to deliver whatever message the spirits chose to impart in ceremony.
Next, he chose a symbol that could fairly be said to represent Butterfly’s very opposite: a pawprint representing Bear. Earth and air alike are warm enough that the bears have emerged from their long winter’s rest, and while in this area they rarely venture into spaces near human habitation (at least not generally until October or so), we know that they are not far off, even now. In the early hours of the morning, just before the darkness begins to give way to the dawn, I suspect that they occasionally put in an appearance here; the dogs certainly warn us of something’s presence at that hour near-daily now. And while Bear is frankly enormous and Butterfly tiny by comparison, the former possessed of fierce physical power while the latter is undeniably fragile, both share a commonality in strength of spirit and purpose.
Where Butterfly traverses wind and light, fluttering between us and the spirit realm, Bear is firmly grounded with us here on the earth’s surface. He is a protector, a guardian, a sheltering spirit of a physical sort, but also of a spiritual type, too. In many traditions, Bear symbolizes medicine, healing, particularly by way of his powerful paws, used to dig for roots and plants as needed.
And it is this symbol that Wings chose to place in the corners — at the ordinal points of the buckle’s own small cosmos.
Taken together, the imagery created a powerful motif of protection, of strength, of renewal, of illumination and guidance too. And it did so with the blue of the season’s illuminating skies (and, as is the old story in this place, of the rain itself), with the silver of its light, with the spirits of Bear and Butterfly . . . and with their ballad, sung by the birds of spring.
~ 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.
