An hour after dawn, the temperature here is an even zero. Not nearly as cold as the last couple of days, yet still a danger to exposed skin and extended limbs. They say we will reach a high of near forty today, and exceed that tomorrow and over the week to come, but wind chills blunt any warming effects.
Still, the Father Sun shines freely these days, no veil of clouds to cover his face, and that permits him to do his work for the hours when he travels directly overhead. Despite yesterday’s bitter cold, the surface of the snow has already begun its deep-winter daily cycle of melt and freeze, melt and freeze, and the areas that Wings has plowed will soon be a patchwork, white snow webbed with a dark earthy matrix. Much like the spiderweb alabaster of Tuesday’s Spirit Bears.
Or like the snowflake obsidian of Wednesday’s featured work . . . and today’s.
We’ve looked at the mineralogical and other properties of snowflake obsidian here before:
Snowflake obsidian is only one of many forms of the class of rock called “obsidian“: glass, but one that occurs naturally — more accurately, “volcanic glass.” It originates in a particular type of lava, known as “felsic lava.” The lava is, of course, boiling hot when it extrudes through fissures in the earth, but in some regions, the air temperature cools it so rapidly that virtually no crystals have time to form. This creates the “glass” effect: smooth, clear, slick, and mostly without inclusions of any sort. Think about what happens when making some types of candy: The crystalline sugar is melted over high heat, then the pan is plunged into icy water; the candy begins to set immediately, producing a glossy, shiny surface. The effect is a bit like that.
The glassy properties of obsidian have long made it useful as a tool, and our peoples did indeed make use of it, for arrowheads and spear points, for knife blades, and for decorative purposes. One drawback, however, is that, like commercial glass, it is brittle; it fractures easily, and thus could be expensive, in terms of materials and labor, for use in traditional weaponry. When carefully turned into a point or blade, however, it is exceedingly sharp, and scalpel-like in its effectiveness. Indeed, some contemporary medical-equipment manufacturers and surgical professionals still experiment with its utility as a surgical scalpel blade, but as far as I know, no one has found it way to make it sufficiently sturdy, safe, and cost-effective for that purpose. Today, Indian artisans still make arrowheads of obsidian that are actually used in hunting, and Native artists continue to use it for ornamental arrowheads and jewelry cabochons.
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And finally, there is snowflake obsidian, of the sort used in the pieces pictured above and below. The obsidian itself appears to be translucent black, or occasionally, a very, very dark brown. But in some areas, the lava is shot with inclusions of a mineral called cristobalite: white, almost fluffy-looking crystals that occur in small clusters, like snowflakes. They harden on the surface of the cooling lava, creating the effect you see here. It’s a beautiful look, and symbolically powerful: fierce elemental powers, clashing and bonding and melding together into something more than the sum of their parts. The inclusions make snowflake obsidian unworkable for weaponry, but they make it a brilliantly symbolic choice for art, which is perhaps war’s polar opposite.
Another “opposite” of war, at least so it’s popularly held, is that ephemeral concept we call “love.” It’s a word much in use thee days, in this week leading up to the holiday known as Valentine’s Day. It’s named, of course, for St. Valentine, but as is so often the case with history, scholars cannot even agree on which St. Valentine (one or the other? both? neither?) served as the inspiration for what was once an early-Christian holy day and is now commonly regarded as a “Hallmark holiday.” The stories of both Saints Valentine, just like any realistic evaluation of the meaning of the word “love,” give the lie to the notion that love is war’s opposite: After all, love is not merely an emotion, but an act, and within the context of the human experience, both emotions and acts are fraught with all sorts of violence in the service what we convince ourselves are higher purposes. And it should be lost on no one that both Valentines for whom scholars believe the holiday to have been named were martyred for their faith, or at least for their acts in pursuit of it.
At any rate, Valentine’s Day is now inextricably intertwined with notions of romantic love — and in the broader culture, that means that it’s linked to the notion of gifts to one’s beloved. This society tends to prize, as a gesture of romantic love, one gift above all others, at least in collectively symbolic terms: Jewelry. And while jewelry in any and all forms may serve, there is one form that retains pride of place as a Valentine’s gift.
The ring.
The idea, of course, is proposal, engagement, marriage: that lifetime commitment that grows out of romantic love, binding two people together for eternity. The reality, of course, is always and has always been much more complex (and often much harsher), but Western culture is nothing if not wedded to romantic ideals in all their forms. Today, that has come to mean a diamond in the form of a solitaire, and generally, the larger and more expensive the better, but it was not always so. And even now, some couples are declining to be forced into the rigidity and expense of diamond rings, preferring instead to choose more colorful, and often more personally symbolic, stones and designs.
Someone in search of such a ring to mark one’s love for another might do well with such a solitaire as the one featured here today. From its description in the Rings Gallery here on the site:
In the interstices between worlds, the spirits and elemental forces afford us an occasional glimpse but do not admit us entry, lest we be consumed by their power. Yet Spirit catalyzes fire and ice, as in this solitaire, where earth and flame join to create a stone named for water frozen by the winter air. Conjoined lodge symbols trace the length of the band; the snowflake obsidian cabochon rests in a scalloped bezel. Side view shown at top. Companion piece to the Fire and Ice cuff bracelet in the Bracelets Gallery.
Sterling silver; snowflake obsidian
$325 + shipping, handling, and insurance
It’s a ring of great symbolism even without the associations romantic love brings to it, but considered within such a context? It’s very nearly perfect: A stone of elemental passions, fire and ice brought together in a single gem, tempered by the pressures of time into something solid and stable and yet ethereally beautiful. It sits in the embrace of a scalloped bezel, arising like a flower blooming in the warmth of the sun. And the band? Paired lodge symbols, a sign of protection and healing, of shelter from life’s storms, an expression of all the best that romantic love offers as it grows.
It was not designed as an engagement ring, but then again, it was not designed not to be one, either. Wings simply allowed Spirit to guide his hands, to create something powerful and elemental, something that embodies spirit and passion and, yes, even love.
In a season as cold as this, one marked by a day that symbolizes the warmth of the human heart, it’s a beautiful melding of the season’s motifs into something more.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2016; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owners.
