It’s another brilliantly sunny day, not a cloud in the sky on any side. The mercury has already reached fifty degrees, which is far too high for the season, although a slight but steady wind makes it feel colder, reminding us that however much it seems like spring, winter’s remnants are still very much here. The blanket of snow on the ground is growing more threadbare by the day, and the visible earth is mostly mud.
We are in for an early spring, and probably a long one. The one saving grace thus far is that that season’s trickster winds have not already begun to batter the land, and all of us upon it. In recent years, what was once confined to March and April has extended on either side, rendering virtually the whole first half of the year a season of hardship, and it has been worse lately as the drought has deepened.
Perhaps the winds’ failure to appear this early is a good omen for the months to come.
Spirit knows we need some good omens now; need some good results, as well.
This is a place where the hardest season is not the one marked by deep snows and deeper cold, nor is renewal here the function of spring. It’s true that our world grows from the heart of the earth, but the conditions that make such growth possible are not those of warmer winds: No, here in this place, the warm season is the world born of winter’s heart.
Today’s featured work embodies earth, heart, sufficient conditions, and necessary spirits in one — a necklace to honor elemental powers and their emissaries. From its description in the Necklaces Gallery here on the site:
From the Heart of the Earth Necklace
From the heart of the earth our whole world grows. Wings pays tribute to this evolutionary process with this necklace, a cross that is not a cross, but the embodiment of elemental forces and nurturing spirits. The pendant’s form is a very old design, one that circumvented colonial insistence on Christianity by appearing to adopt its four-spoked shape — and then adding an extra bar and a curving end to produce the form of a much older spirit: that of Dragonfly, a pollinator, a messenger, a symbol of romantic love and life’s abundance. Here, Wings has honored another old adaptation of the style, turning the curved tail at the base of the lowest spoke into a stylized heart. Above the heart, the pendant extends upward and outward to the Four Sacred Directions, each of the remaining five spokes stamped with a single thunderhead symbol pointing inward toward the center, a sign of the rain that keeps our Earth herself alive. Above the top spoke, the hand-made bail flowers into a lush green peridot; at the base in the center of the heart, the place of emergence, two tiny hand-stamped flowers are wedded into the form of a butterfly, a small spirit rising from its own place of emergence to continue the processes of pollination and prosperity. The cross is made of solid fourteen-gauge silver, and hangs 2-5/8″, the bail 3/4″ (the pendant is 3-3/8″ in total length; 1-1/8″ across at the widest point); the stone is 3/8″ long; the pendant hangs from an 18″ sterling silver snake chain (dimensions approximate).
Sterling silver; peridot
$1,150 + shipping, handling, and insurance
This is an old traditional design, one of protection hidden in plain sight. Here, Wings has allowed the ancient Dragonfly motif access to the power of the rains, and of the heart. But at the center of the dancing heart that forms its tail is another small spirit of warmer winds, formed of two others: two flowering medicine plants, paired to evoke the shape of Butterfly. And rising from the whole, at the very top? An emergent green, translucent, touched by the light . . . the gifts of the warm season, the world born of winter’s heart.
There will be too much warmth today, not enough winter underneath it. But the extended forecasts suggests a decent chance of snow at mid-week — not enough to return us to any kid of normalcy, but perhaps just enough to keep our world alive enough to grow.
On a day like this, in a world like ours has become? For now, it’s enough.
~ Aji
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