The weather is a warning.
It’s been warning us for a long time now: a harbinger of climate change’s lasting, drastic effects, of the damage we are doing to our Mother by ignoring it (and by perpetuating it).
We are seeing it all, Trickster weather and unseasonal temperatures and capricious storms, unfold here in real time now.
Monday was Indian summer, highs near 70; yesterday was snow. Today began brilliantly, all intense sunlight and turquoise skies, but it’s ending in premonitory fashion, a change in the weather apparently in the offing yet again. We are visited, too, and routinely now, by certain Trickster spirits and messengers, although the former is always also the latter, even if the reverse is not the case. Raven, Hawk, Flicker, all have put in appearances today, and others too, although the butterflies that appear on today’s featured work seem finally to have fled for warmer winds.
Butterflies are messengers, too.
They are, however, more suited to summer days, warm winds and full sun. This year, though, they remained as recently as this past weekend, remnant spirits of an extended Indian summer that returned again and again through the holiday and beyond. It’s fitting, then, that both they and the season within seasons should be a part of today’s work. From its description in the relevant section of the Bracelets Gallery here on the site:
Indian Summer Dreams Cuff Bracelet
Before the snow flies, spirits of earth and sky dream Indian Summer dreams. Wings honors these visions and the spirits who dream them with his newest masterwork, a piece conceived in the deep symbolism of tradition and executed with 21st-Century élan. The focal point is a large, beautifully spiderwebbed rectangular cabochon of ultra-high-grade Black-Web Kingman turquoise, a robin’s-egg Skystone tightly matrixed with complex black chert webbing. It rests in a saw-toothed bezel, elevated atop the center of an exceptional hand-made band, flanked on either side by three separate rows of hand-stamped arrowhead symbols pointing down either side of the cuff, each stamped individually via more than one hundred separate strikes of the jeweler’s hammer. This edging is flanked on either side by a pair of lodge symbols, their apices pointed toward paired inverted sunrise symbols motifs that form an embrasure down the remainder of each side of the band. In the center of these rays of silvery light are the dreams and dreamers: a trio of late-summer butterflies alternating with the flowing waters of seasonal rains, all cascading downward to paired blossoms holding a heart at their center. Together, they bring a reminder that summer returns, life renews, and love outlasts all. The band is 1-1/16″ across; the cabochon is 1″ long by 13/16″ of an inch across (dimensions approximate). Other views shown above and at the link.
Sterling silver; ultra-high-grade Black Web Kingman turquoise
$1,750 + shipping, handling, and insurance
Still, capriciousness has its place in life, although we dress it up in respectable regalia by calling it “spontaneity.” And perhaps that is the message to take from the appearance of such spirits at such a late date: We have long since passed a tipping a point for reversing climate change; now the best we can do is to work to ameliorate its effects going forward, to remediate and reclaim, to prevent further damage and correct that which yet remains correctable. And we must do so; it is our obligation to the Earth herself, to the ancestors, to future generations.
But things are different now, and some of them will never return to the way they once were. In some cases, it’s a tragedy, extinction events writ large and small. In others, it brings a new way of life or new beings into it, and it’s a reminder that when change is inevitable, our task is to embrace and adapt.
And sometimes, it’s a rare gift: A little extra warmth, extended days in the company of gentle spirits . . . and even a little Trickster weather to liven things up a bit.
The spirits of caprice are our teachers, too. It’s a time to listen, and to learn.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2017; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owners.
