Cold air has given way to a temporary warming trend, one that will last only until tonight. For tomorrow, the forecast predicts snow once again — not, apparently, our more usual snows whipped up from rains in the Pacific, but one driving down from due north on 40-mile-an-hour winds.
Here, the trickster winds of early winter come from all directions.
That is no bad thing, although the degree to which we have seen directional changes in our seasonal weather of late hints at something more ominous. Climate change alters even the subtlest of dynamics, and while it’s unlikely that most people even noticed, the changes last year were abundantly clear for anyone who chose to notice.
Over the latter months of last winter, circumstances forced us to drive to Santa Fe and Albuquerque on numerous occasions, mostly in the throes of the small amount of wintry weather the drought granted us. And each time, we noticed one primary change from all other years: The snow was invariable on the “wrong” side of each slope and peak. In this part of our world, winter storms tend mostly to drive in from the southwest, following a track similar to those of our monsoonal rains of summer and our gale-force winds of spring. It means that, for the most part, we see bare or lightly-covered slopes on our trips southward, and only see snow blanketing their visible land area on our northward way back home.
Last winter, the trend was exactly reversed for virtually the whole of the season.
This is not to say that we do not get snow from the north in winter; in an ordinary year, we will have a few nor’easters, and a few that bear down from due north, as well. They are powerful, but usually brief; like the whirlwind changes in direction during the monsoon season, they arrive amid sound and fury, but their impact is characteristically short-term.
No longer.
In some traditions, the storms that arrive on northerly winds herald other dangers, as well, particularly as night begins to extend its hold on the day. Now, as we head into the week of All Souls’, we face the possibility of not one but two such storms — one destined to coincide, in part and if it indeed materializes, with the early hours of All Souls’ Eve.
Trickster winds for trickster spirits.
And yet, the winds and the Sacred Directions are also here for our benefit; their placement and assigned tasks keep our world spinning properly on its axis, which in ensures, at some level, survival and even safety. The key, as always, is balance, harmony . . . and for a world now so badly out of balance due to human transgression, what better time to renew our efforts to restore her to harmony that this week of ancestral memories and spirits?
Today’s featured work embodies both these gifts and our obligations to them, a reminder that the power of elemental forces is less a representation of things positive or negative than it is a gauge of our response to them, and of our complicity in such harms as altered them in the first place. It’s a pair of earrings of extraordinary simplicity and inherent power, imagery sacred and elemental and grounding all at once. From their description in the Earrings Gallery here on the site:
From All Directions Earrings
Sometimes we need protection from the winds that seem to buffet us from all directions. Sometimes, great gifts and blessings arrive on those same winds. Wings captures the dichotomous nature of our journey around the hoop with these earrings, jet-black onyx and silver polished so highly it’s nearly white, that embody the power of the winds and the sacred directions: gifts simultaneously of wild unharnessed power and of shelter from the storm. The settings are representations of the Sacred Directions, those reaches of our world guarded by the winds, that here encompass both cardinal and ordinal points. Each is cut freehand from sterling silver, with the spoke at each cardinal point gently curved on the end to imply the arcing shape of the hoop and impart a sense of motion around it. At the center of each, the vortex: a large round onyx cabochon, like a pool of liquid jet, resting gently in a scalloped bezel and trimmed with twisted silver. Settings are 1.75″ high by 1.75″ across; cabochons are .75″ across (dimensions approximate). Earrings are a companion work to Dance of the Whirlwind Spirits, in the Necklaces Gallery.
Sterling silver; onyx
$725 + shipping, handling, and insurance
This pair has always been one of my favorites. It’s an old traditional design, given a new and forward-looking spirit: a tribute to the Sacred Directions and the winds that guard them, an acknowledgment of their essential and awe-inspiring power, and an honoring of the contributions they make to our survival. These are pieces of substance and solidity, both physical and spiritual.
We can use such blessings in the days to come. This will be a difficult week for many, a constant reminder of loved ones walked on, a time of remembrance that can easily become an avalanche of grief and loss if we are not careful. It is also a time of heightened risk; not all spirits who walk are benign, and not all tricksters are bent only on simple mischief. Evil exists; patient and deliberate, it seeks a home with those not strong enough in heart or spirit to turn away from the easy gratification and quick harm that it promises. It walks the land year-round, but it is strongest now and in the bitter cold of the winter to come.
In this, the twentieth year of what the dominant culture calls the “twenty-first century,” it’s easy to dismiss such phenomena as “superstition,” as silly or ignorant humbuggery. But our peoples have survived, and in thrived in spite of and in the face of a determined campaign of genocide, in part because we still recognize the existence of forces more powerful than our own capabilities, of spirits ready to give, or to take advantage to destroy. And we know that the latter are most closely tied to our own behaviors.
Talismans are objects of scorn in most quarters these days, but we know, too, the value of such reminders. Whether one believes they are inspirited, infused with power that exceeds humanity’s, is perhaps irrelevant for practical purposes. More to the point is their ability, by their very presence, to keep us in good heart and mind and spirit, meeting our own obligations.
These earrings represent shelter from the storm, storms that are indeed coming now. They are talismans against trickster winds for trickster spirits, protection for ourselves, and for our world.
~ 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.
