It’s a beautiful day today: clear turquoise skies lightly webbed with white clouds, a mercury in the middle of the “comfortable” zone, brilliant sun, and a breeze that carries with it the tiniest breath of autumn.
It’s beginning to feel as though summer is over, although of course we will have much more of it, likely into October — and just as likely interspersed with early snows. The consensus is already in on what winter holds for us this year, and it’s expected to hit early and hard.
Our lows are already plunging into the forties; most mornings require a fire in the woodstove now. Tonight will be similarly clear and cold, crystalline stars beading a deep dark sky. We know that harder days are imminent, shorter light and longer night and dangerous cold no farther than around the next corner. It’s an intimidating time, and a worrying one, too, as our small world wonders whether we’ll be ready when the night falls early and the first snow flies.
But there is much to appreciate about the longer dark hours, too — the cozy contrast of proper shelter, the natural tendency toward longer sleep . . . and with the latter, the greater chance of dreaming.
In our way, dreaming is an active pursuit, even as we know that it is also a gift of the spirits. It’s one that need not be undertaken only within the confines of ordinary sleep, either; there are ways to seek a vision that are not bound by time or season or absence of light. Still, they perhaps come most readily in the night hours, the dreams of the dark lit by a medicine light.
Today’s featured work captures the web of dreams, the light that makes them clear to us, and the medicine that infuses both act and result. From its description in the relevant section of the Bracelets Gallery here on the site:
Dream Medicine Cuff Bracelet
Dream medicine heals the spirit, illuminating our worldly path by means of a link to the forces of other worlds. Wings evokes healing powers and visionary experiences with this cuff, wrought of heavy-gauge sterling silver triangle wire. On each angled side of the band’s surface, graceful, flowing lines link bearpaw prints, traditional symbols of protection and medicine. Directly on top of the triangle’s apex, he has stamped scores of tiny crescents in a meticulous, consistent repeating pattern. The stampwork is bold, deep, and clean; the ends of the band are rounded and filed smooth for comfort. At the very center of the band’s surface, in a scalloped bezel trimmed with twisted silver, rests a freeform oval cabochon of ultra-high-grade Black Web Kingman turquoise, an electric sky blue tightly spiderwebbed with an inky black matrix and shimmering flashes of pyrite. The spectacular center cabochon is flanked on either side by richly textured moon-like orbs, a pair of highly domed, faceted cabochons of rainbow moonstone set in plain, low-profile bezels. The stones suggest the luminous web of visions and dreams, holding within it the illuminating powers of Medicine. Cuff is 6″ long by 3/8″ across at the triangle’s “base”; turquoise cabochon is 3/4″ long by 3/8″ across at the widest point; rainbow moonstone cabochons are 3/8″ across (dimensions approximate). Other views shown below.
Sterling silver; ultra-high-grade Black-Web Kingman turquoise; rainbow moonstone
$2,000 + shipping, handling, and insurance
Among Wings’s current inventory of bracelets, this is one of my favorites. The focal stone itself is a phenomenon, one of a small parcel of spectacularly ultra-high-grade turquoise he acquired a few years ago, the metaphorical royalty from a mine whose specimens now are mostly inexpensive and lacking in much color depth or matrix. The faceted moonstones that flank it set off the indigo and the inky black web perfectly even as they refract the silver from the band. And the band itself, manifest in symbols of medicine, is all substance.
But it’s the way these elements are brought together that make the piece. That in itself required vision, the gift of an image in a dream, whether of night or day. And this work embodies that medicine light, the one that illuminates our dreams and visions, even in the deepest, longest dark.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2019; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.
