Golden spiraling wands
The threads of my past are remembering. Maybe these wands are enchanting me once again to this season.
Sunshine
There is more morning sunlight coming through my south facing studio window this winter. It also beams through our kitchen windows, alighting the space for hours. The sun, low on the horizon as it arcs slightly from east to west, casts a warm golden light through the winter chill.
As I hold the strands of golden silk thread between my fingers it feels ethereal and wistful, its delicate and luminous fibers seeming to glide in the air. Sunshine helped make this, I thought, as did the earth and water and cocooned silk worms and mulberry leaves. This hand-spun and natural hand-dyed silk was made in Laos by women who are master spinners, dyers, and weavers, some of whom I’ve met over the years. Caressing the smooth silk in my hands I recalled how silk is a deep part of their culture and their elaborate silk textiles are beyond exquisite. They hold the sun in their traditions.
I know why it’s different this winter. Two trees came down in neighbors’ back yards earlier in the year. I had known the white blossoming cherry tree next door for a decade, and cried as I saw her sawed down limb by limb. She had become diseased and died. I didn’t know the other tree, but it was much larger, towering from the next street over, and it took all day to take it down. My heart ached for him, too.
What they left behind, and left me, was golden sunshine in their absence.
Spiraling
Sometimes my imagination visualizes this golden sunshine as light spiraling down on glistening filaments, as energy for life on earth.
This image came to me again when I was doing QiGong recently in my studio, in a movement called spiraling tea cups. It’s a graceful flow, spiraling my hand from outstretched to coming to my side, then spiraling around and across my face, to over my head and out stretched again, palm up the whole time and hips moving rhythmically from side to side. During the movement I heard my teacher say “golden threads spiraling” and it was just like that!
Taking one thread of golden silk, I began to wrap it around the pale yellow cotton swatch that had been rolled onto a long bendy stem. I had to go slow, holding the thread between my thumb and forefinger, spiraling around and coming back, then outstretching and spiraling around and coming back again. The long bendy stem moved rhythmically from side to side as I did this.
Continuing the QiGong spiraling tea cups movement, I looked to the right and what caught my attention were the wands I had made earlier in the year. They were so fun and simple, I thought, I want to do that project again.
Now turning the other way, my eyes landed on the bag of silk threads I had sourced from Laos, some of them golden threads. And behind me in the closet I remembered I had plain yellow and natural handwoven cotton fabric from Laos. Looking upward again as the movement continued, on my top shelf were long thin bendy stems bundled together.
I stopped what I was doing right then, gathered it all, and put it on my desk. Everything was ready to make golden spiraling wands.
Light
Wands conjure up the idea of magic and enchantment (I wrote about that and more in a blog post last year, “Wands, words, wonder, and wanderings”). Especially this time of year, and in this season of light, everything glistens, sparkles, and shimmers. A beacon of hope to pass through the darkness of the longest night and shortest day during the Winter Solstice.
I was introduced to the children’s book, The Shortest Day, written by Susan Cooper and illustrated by Carson Ellis this year, which “captures the magic behind the returning of seasonal light, the yearning for rituals that connect us with the generations that have gone before...”
There was a time long long ago, when likely among my ancestors of Northern Europe too, where they had the tradition of keeping the winter night alight — with candles in yule trees and from warming bonfires; of bringing the life of evergreens near with decorated garlands and wreaths; and of festivity together with song, dance, and merriment waiting for the morning sun to rise again. And it did, and still does, always.
With each turn of the golden threads, I continued to make the wands, spiraling around the cotton fabric over and over. Maybe I was decorating the long bendy stems with light I mused. My hands were being warmed as they worked, and my mood lifted listening to music in the background. As the cold days passed, and the afternoons felt darker outside, I kept the days alight spiraling golden threads by making wands.
The sun has started its ascent higher in the skies, bringing with it a little bit more light in our days, as the earth continues its cycles around the sun, shifting every so slightly along the way. We follow the same passage of time, season after season, yet it’s never the same too, never in the exact same path. It’s different, as it always is.
This time of year is different from other years. The threads of my past are remembering. Golden light filaments of sunshine are reconnecting as they spiral closer to me again. Maybe these wands are enchanting me once again to this season.
✻
LouLou
“Golden spiraling wands” was originally published as an exclusive post to my Ko-fi supporters in December 2022. Now it is public to you, too!
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