Today was one of those perfect autumn days — this despite the fact that the calendar still stubbornly insists that it is summer. Here, Mother Earth has long had other ideas, turning the air she breathes chill and clear save for those hours through the middle of the day, handing out glowing golden robes to the tree spirits, beckoning to the winter birds and other creatures to join us and make ready for the winter.
This dawn was our first fiery sunrise of the season, the eastern sky aflame in shades of coral and rose and crimson. As Father Sun sent the last of the clouds on their way, the air turned gold and silver, our whole small world limned with light. By full sunrise, the sky was clear and entirely cloudless and so it would remain the whole day through.
Today was a travel day for us, circumstances sending us down to Santa Fe to place an order and make a delivery. We made the journey beneath skies the color of the stone that bears its name: cornflower in the morning; turquoise at midday; indigo at twilight. And beneath those skies, the light both followed us and led the way, enfolding us in the clear glowing embrace of the sun all along the way.
It was, in other words, a day that perfect exemplified the spirits inherent in today’s featured work — a work, I might add, already long scheduled for this day, its posting delayed by circumstance until evening. Because it is a work light and lines and paths to take, of talismanic blues and the silver spokes of the stars, of the guidance and protection of the Four Sacred Directions. 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
Today was, in some ways, a difficult day: For a variety of reasons, it was physically strenuous, and it was one that required an early detour. But along the way we were blessed by visitations from the flickers and the hawks, and they were our guides along the wending lines of mountainous dirt road and blockaded highway, running along either side of the now-shallow winding ribbon of the Rio Grande. The trip itself was a success in multiple ways, and we were fortunate in both directions to be the final vehicle to be waved through the one-lane construction zone before traffic was halted for miles.
We are home now, and the dawn hawk was waiting for us once again, startled out of its perch by a flock of noisy magpies greeting our return. As the skies turn now from indigo to the teal green of the pendant’s stone, a product of the rose-gold backlighting of twilight, we find ourselves, as always, with a renewed sense of gratitude for the lines, and the light, that guide us home.
~ Aji
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