Teaching Stories, part 22

"Life Is a Dance"

Udated Gichimanidoo-giizis (Great Spirit Moon; January 26, 2022)

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Boozhoo, biindigen, hello, welcome!

Welcome back to my Storytelling Lodge where legends and teaching stories are told. This blog story is the 22th in a series titled “Teaching Stories.”

The series features my jewelry and works of art, occasionally along with images of paintings by kindred artists. The stories thematically connect the jewelry and artwork displayed with the Seven Grandfather teachings of the Ojibwe Anishinaabe People.

Today's story features two outline drawings on paper as well as three sets of storytelling rings made by hand in my studio. The rings are not available for purchase. 

 

Dancing seeds of Energy

The concept of mino-bimaadiziwin, or Good Life (“how to live a good life”), which is the central theme of the Anishinaabe worldview, reflects our journey on Earth and our connection to all Creation. The drawings and the ring sets shown in today's story, featuring outlined dancing suns or “spirit seeds" rich with movement and vibrant colors, celebrate the versatility and colorfulness of Life itself. The illustrations and the rings graphically illustrate the - often invisible -  spiritual energy that seems to dance through the atmosphere infusing and surrounding all living things in nature. They are symbols of a very old tradition and of the most sacred art - as practiced for thousands of years by the Anishinaabeg and Ininewak (Cree) Peoples from the northern woods of the Turtle Island (North American) continent.

What is this spiritual energy, these dancing seeds whose presence is best seen with our eyes closed? How do we attain it when at its highest vibration? It is certainly not drugs or alcohol that will do the trick - in fact, alcohol and drugs have a low vibrational rate. A decrease in physical energy caused by an increasing age has no influence on it either - getting older only means your spiritual energy heightens.

The best way to truly sense it is by stopping in your tracks, and to listen. Tune inward. Listen to your intuition. Your intuition will never misguide or deceive you. And tune outward, into the energy that is in all natural things within the Universe. Listen to the animals and the trees and the rocks and the waters that flow in the rivers and lakes and the wells beneath the earth's surface. They all have high spiritual energy and they always speak the truth. Listen to the stars in the night sky, to the voices of our ancestors who dwell up there. Our ancestors are totally enveloped in, and entirely made up of, spiritual energy and they never lie to us.

Bimaadiziwin Niimiwin ("Life Is a Dance").

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MariJo Moore, a Cherokee/Dutch poet, once wrote the following, breathtaking words:

“I hope you dance
to dance is to pray, 
to pray is to heal,
to heal is to give,
to give is to live,
to live is to dance.”

I think these words perfectly match the overlay, multicolor gold wedding rings shown above. The set is titled Bimaadiziwin Niimiwin (“Life is a Dance”). The ring on the left consists of red gold on the outside and yellow gold on the inside; the “spirit seeds"- inlay is made of yellow, red, and white gold. The ring on the right I made of white gold (outside) and red gold (inside); the spirit seeds are red gold.

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Dancing Spirits

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The ring sets shown above and beneath are constructed in combinations of red, yellow, and white gold. Like the “Life Is a Dance” rings, they are rich with movement and warmly contrasting colors and feature fluid, wavy “spirit lines” connected by four inlaid “spirit suns” or“spirit seed” designs. The flowing lines express the belief that the world is a dynamic universe filled with positive as well as negative energy that, like a river, flows through it like a spring flows clearly through the heart of mother earth.

The orb-like symbols, which are connected by these spirit lines, refer to the inner journey of two companions on the Path of Life, looking for the heart of mother earth, searching for the essence of life and the love that binds them.

The ring set, made of 14K red gold (the exteriors) and 14K yellow gold (the interiors) and yellow gold sun inlays, is titled Giizisoog Niimi'idiwag (“Sun Spirits Are Dancing”).

My spirit flows free like a river

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These rings rings consist of 14K red gold (the left ring) and 14K white gold (the right ring). The title of the ring set is Ninjichaag Babaamibizo (“My Spirit Moves Freely”).

The title, the stylized design as well as the colors of these overlay wedding rings are a metaphor for our spirit which, despite all “rational” constraints and limitations we tend to create for ourselves, is essentially as free as the flight of a bird – or the course of a river. 

The sun designs of the rings, which stand for concentrated, tightly clenched energy, are inlaid with smaller gold orbs ("seeds") of different colors; one of these inlaid designs (see the ring to the left) consists of two halves of contrasting gold colors. This “unity symbol” represents the sharp contrasts and paradoxical dualities that exist in nature. It expresses the notion that everything is made up of two elements that at first sight seem to contradict each other but in reality complement each other.

The inlaid seed symbols connected by means of a free-flowing "spirit" line, symbolize illumination and enlightenment. Naturally, these  symbols (orbs) also have a meaning that goes far beyond the corporeal and the obvious.

The flowing “spirit line” design, which resembles a free-flowing river, coupled with the word babaamibizo (fly about), refers to a place beyond language, like a Spiritual realm, or a ceremony. It also implies the movement of Spiritual energy, which, in a Midewiwin context, is ritualized in certain secret ceremonies.

All three ring sets that you see in this blog story - Life Is a Dance, Sun Spirits Are Dancing, and My Spirit Moves Freely - belong to the ring line “Nibwaakawin” (Wisdom). Wisdom is one of seven ring lines I designed; Grandfathers as I like to call them. The other six Grandfathers are Love,Respect, Courage, Uprightness, Humility, and Truth

Let's all try to live according these lessons...

 Read the next episode in the Teaching Stories series: We Are All Related.

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About the author and his sources of inspiration:

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My name is Zhaawano Giizhik. 

As an American artist and  (non-commercial) jewelry designer currently living in the Netherlands. I like to draw on the oral and pictorial traditions of my Ojibwe Anishinaabe ancestors from the American Great Lakes area. For this I call on my manidoo-minjimandamowin, or "Spirit Memory"; which means I try to remember the knowledge and the lessons of my ancestors. The MAZINAAJIMOWINAN or ‘‘pictorial spirit writings’’ - which are rich with  symbolism and have been painted throughout history on rocks and etched on other sacred items such as copper and slate, birch bark and animal hide - were a form of spiritual as well as educational communication that gave structure and meaning to the cosmos. Many of these sacred pictographs or petroforms – some of which are many, many  generations old - hide in sacred locations where the manidoog (spirits) reside, particularly in those mystic places near the coastline where the sky, the earth, the water, the underground and the underwater meet.

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