Some buttons jumped out at me from a ratty kind of basket in the secondhand shop on Saturday; rummaging through plastic-pretending-to-be-important and trademarked ugly things, these ivory traditional buttons leapt into my hands... I couldn't believe my luck, as this was not the first basket of packs of buttons I'd rummaged through lately - and I was readying to resign myself to keeping the original 'boring' buttons on my lovely big purple coat.
Buttons like this do not often appear for 2.5o Euros... They are evidently undervalued, but I noticed immediately their depth and meaning, and despite being unable to find anything online to identify them (what a load of shite the internet is now, where any search for any specific item seems to only pull up advertising hooks and mainstream commercial sites repeating images in not-even-superficial-pretence of offering 'choice'! - roll on web3!) I could hazard some guesses as to where they may have originated.
They appear to be actual ivory - whether land or sea mammal I don't know - they contain various marks that suggest indigenous wisdom, sacred geometry and natural law. They evidently are handmade with significant skill. They don0t appear to be conventionally commercial, but they convey (to me) a more deeply-rooted representation of value.
They are in several pairs, which is so beautifully perfect for my coat. The pairs seem more than just matching clothing type of arrangement: they feel almost like runes or divination tools. The holes handcut and the lines engraved, the forms and division of each face into areas - all this suggest symbolic significance and transmission of metaphor, sacred geometry, truth, nature....
Suffice to say, I was blissed-out over them: cleaning and polishing, using a stitch-unpicker to dig out ditritus from inside the holes and markings, scrubbing enthusiastically to remove years of muck... turning them over and over and feeling their weight, reading them and intuiting where they had been over their lifetimes... Listening to their stories.
the above photo and those following, are of removing the old buttons from my purple wool coat and replacing with the new, magical, ones!
It is such a powerful 'inheritance' to receive a gift like this, across seas and continents, across generations and lifepaths: a converging of synchrony, a lining up of serendipity and coincidence - arriving to meet with my call for 'really special buttons please, universe!' When we live in harmony and synthesis, magical items like this can pop into our lives with no effort, and we can just meet them, be super grateful, and then insert them neatly into where they fit so divinely.
These buttons make me think of how the original clothing we dressed in was profoundly more meaningful, special, rich and expressive. All fastenings would have had multiple purpose - NOT JUST to fasten; to fasten beautifully - and to give protection metaphorically and symbolically - magically.
As a carrier of Vision and a conveyor of Truth, I relish gifts like this, which give me the opportunity to use my channelling and radiating capacities - I can re-enliven these small treasures and bring them back into the community, as it were. I can carry them into the day and onto the road, where they will expose their blessings and gifts to whoever I come into contact with.
I imagine too, that no matter how unhelpful t'internet is, the buttons will continue to unveil their stories to me... I already got some clues looking books of my own about indigenous traditional dress and ornament. In a sense, the details of precisely where and when they are from are less important than where they go are be from here...and path
LOVE and blessings to all in this new cycle of our co-creative spiralling upwards!
www.claregaiasophia.com
@drrune you might find this an interesting read ;^)
Thanks for tagging me in this awesome post! Congratulations, @clareartista, for this wonderful find, they clearly come to you as elements of empowerment. Ivory is the material of dreams and fantasies, and I wish you great success in manifesting both now that you've put these buttons to good use! Happy New Year!
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Ahhh, thank you for your beautiful blessings, dear @drrune ! Yes: the power radiates from them, and you help affirm my intuition calling me to such brilliant wee objects... I love a life full of such things - and yes indeed: this year I am reaping treasure from particular dreams I have been holding for decades
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They look amazing and were clearly meant to end up in your hands and on your clothes :^)
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Awww, thanks so much dear Vincent! Yes: it blows me away when special things like this come so easily into our lives... really mystical! :-D I am so enjoying walking around with the magic buttons exuding an aura of protection!
Great! I could use some protective buttons myself!
Those ivory traditional buttons look so cute and very unique. They surely add beauty to your coat. 😍
Thank you so much for saying so, dear @jonalyn2020 ! It feels wonderful to walk about in such a magnificent coat, yes! :-D
It's always best to have magical buttons on our coats 😍
A lovely story, I love finding treasures like that. I have a button box full of buttons I have collected from old garments, some from jumble sales. I like searching through for the one I need 🙂
!CTP
Oooh, I miss jumble sales, dear @shanibeer ! So many happy memories, from rummaging about in village halls for hours as a child!! Isn't it glorious, just running hands through acres of fabrics and hunting out the best buys? And then building up a good supply of things like buttons... I now have a lot of woollen items to work with, and am beginning to buy more things for buttons, cuffs, fastenings, etc :-D Thanks so much for joining my joy here! x
Love the idea of multipurpose buttons. Most of the buttons on my clothes are designed to be invisible. Some shirts even have flaps to hide the buttons completely. I much prefer your bold mystical magical buttons with stories to tell.
I thought a lot too, about how buttons and beads are related to coins and money - how they might have been traded and swapped as folks travelled about the world... Thanks for your great comment here, dearest @exoexplorer!
Oohh, it feels so good when you find some treasures like these and at a good price. I like to think that when this happens it's because those things were waiting for us... Because they knew the value that we would give them (I buy in a lot of thrift stores so I think about this very often 😅).
Your jacket is beautiful with these new buttons, they were really waiting to be part of a beautiful project like this.
Happy New Year! ❣️✨
Happy New Year too, dearest @lauramica ! And YEs, absolutely - I like to hone my senses into what is 'waiting' for me! And then the immersion in the delicate work of attaching them to an old coat, to transform it... heaven! Happy days to you and thank you for sharing your beautiful work always - it is such a joy and inspiration to see your details and forms unfolding - 😍
Oh no the buttons are so beautiful ... I want to copy them from my screen as a big button fan!
Great job and enjoy wearing the jacket!!
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Oh my, they really gave a very nice look to your coat.
I like the facts that these ornaments could contains some significant meaning, so glad you came across them.
Good luck shopping good items dear @clareartista 💖🎉🎊
Thanks lovely @monica-ene !! I hope your New Year is beginning very beautifully, and I really appreciate you connecting here! 😍💝
Yes dear, am still resting and enjoying the new days, thank you ❤