Yesterday, we began looking at a common motif in Southwestern Native art: Dragonfly. For a being so tiny, he’s a powerful little spirit, bearing the weight of multiple associations and tasks on sheer silvery wings. Today, he serves as a valuable reminder that power comes in all forms, shapes, and sizes.
Yesterday’s post was devoted to more practical aspects: what a dragonfly (or damselfly) actually is; its association with water and the symbolism that grows out of that; and the historical role it served in protecting the people while saving their spiritual traditions. Today, I want to look at two other, deeper aspects of this being’s symbolism: its significance as an embodiment of love; and its role as a messenger of the spirits. We’ll do that in part through the lens of some of Wings’s past work.
SYMBOLS OF LOVE
Perhaps Dragonfly’s most popular symbolic association in Native traditions is as a signifier of love — global, universal love, as for humankind, true, but especially as a symbol of romantic love.
The link probably lies, in part, with the same connotations involved in its connection to water: Desert peoples possess a profound appreciation of and respect for water and the role it plays in ensuring the growth of crops and a good harvest. Water is life. Water is thus, naturally, linked to concepts of fertility: it keeps the soil fallow, allowing seeds to take root; it nourishes the seedlings, helping them grow into adult plants; it ensures an abundant harvest, which in turn ensures that the people will survive another winter. More children will be conceived and born, and with each generation, the cycle of planting and tending and harvesting, and feeding will begin anew.
And thus the people survive.
Romantic love is essential to that survival; it’s something to be honored.
Dragonfly does that.
It may also have something to do with observing Dragonfly’s own mating habits. Wings captured the image at the beginning of this piece last summer, on our pond, two symbols of love joining their bodies, and in so
doing, creating their own larger image of a heart. Look closely at that photo. The turquoise one is holding onto the blade of grass for balance, but it’s the way he holds it that interests me: like a Native man holding a traditional flute. And, indeed, the flute carries both romantic significance and fertility symbolism in multiple Native cultures: the courting flutes of the Northern Plains peoples (and many years ago, I gave Wings a Sioux-style sandhill crane flute, handcrafted by a Comanche master flute-maker, as a gift); the flute-player imagery associated with planting, fertility, and romance among Southwestern peoples, embodied in the now iconic image appropriated by American pop culture, Ko’ko’pe’li. Flute imager appears on ancient petroglyphs and pictures in stone all over New Mexico. Wings himself plays the Native flute expertly.
Over the years, Wings has created dragonflies in many different shapes and styles; I highlighted a few of them yesterday. A half-dozen years ago, he did a series of large pins like the one shown immediately above (and the one in the section below), each with a different stone representing a different aspect of Dragonfly’s being.
The one above was made with a fire agate cabochon, and in some traditions, fire agate is considered a stone of fiery, passionate romantic love. The lighting in this photo shows only its subtler side — warm rose shades with dark burgundy inclusions, something soft, like a welcoming embrace. But in the sunlight, that stone revealed hidden depths, flashes of fire and flame that captured the eye and held it fast.
We took it into the gallery one summer’s day in 2008. It was sold before noon.
MESSENGERS OF THE SPIRITS
At a deeper level yet, Dragonfly performs an important spiritual function: He’s a messenger.
For some peoples, he’s a messenger of the spirits, or sometimes the Spirit, the Creator, the Universal. For those whose traditions meld with those of the Native American Church, he’s (perhaps also, rather than instead of) a messenger to the Vortex.
Again, the associations with water no doubt play a significant role, but I think it’s also likely that his unique physical qualities provide the major link. Remember our discussion in yesterday’s post of Dragonfly’s singular flight abilities? He can fly, under his own power, in six separate directions: forward, backward, upward, downward, sideward to the left, sideward to the right. This is not, as is forced upon us mammals, an example of backpedaling or sidestepping; it’s an ability to fly straight and directly in those directions. And the fast and powerful beating of his wings permit him, like his cousin Hummingbird (also a messenger), to hover.
Who better to receive and carry Spirit’s messages to the people — and carry back their prayers and thanks in return — than a fast and powerful being who can hover in one place long enough to receive and deliver the message?
The piece shown above is an example of this aspect of Dragonfly’s role. In making it, Wings chose a cabochon that has particular resonance: White Buffalo magnesite. [Note: There is indeed such a thing as Sacred White Buffalo turquoise, as discussed previously. It’s a very, very pale turquoise with a spiderweb matrix, found only in one small area of the country. The bright white stone with black or brown inclusions in a slab- or fleck-like pattern, however, is not turquoise; it’s magnesite, and draws its name from the color of the stone.]
We’ve covered the significance of the Sacred White Buffalo to Indian peoples here previously. It’s a motif that evokes strength and courage and power, spiritual wisdom, and existential stability and survival. it’s an expression of The Sacred, and whatever form it takes, it now plays a major role in art and culture generally for peoples all over Indian Country.
Because of those associations, it makes its placement within a dragonfly setting both especially poignant and especially powerful. It evokes love, yes, the sort of universal love for one another that enables a people’s survival. And it evokes the power of Spirit in helping ensure that survival.
This one was made shortly after the fire agate version shown in the section above. It was purchased by a woman visiting the Pueblo for the first time. She was in town to see a relative who lived here, and who worked at a local café (since closed) called . . . Dragonfly.
MELDING LOVE AND SPIRIT
Yesterday, we explored Dragonfly’s more practical and historical associations; today, we’ve been looking at symbolism of a deeper sort. As the previous sections make clear, these symbolic associations — love and spirit — are, for our peoples, inseparable.
Which brings me to today’s featured piece, and Wings’s latest masterwork.
Sometimes, a piece of art transcends its intended purpose, becoming so much more than its basic function and the sum of its parts that it qualifies as a masterwork, a perfect melding of symbol and spirit. So it is with this necklace, a manifestation of Dragonfly: water spirit, protector, symbol of love, messenger of the spirits. Handcrafted of finely stamped sterling silver half-round wire, his shimmery wings textured by countless strikes of a tiny jeweler’s hammer, he arrives dressed in the colors of the Pueblo dawn. His body is formed from delicate rose quartz cabochons: seven of them, a number sacred to many peoples, and stones that some other traditions regard as the mineral embodiment of the qualities of peace and universal love. His amber eyes blaze with the fiery glow of the rising sun; he carries a glowing copper serpent on his back, traversing his wings (image shown below). He hangs from a hand-strung necklace of square-cut leopard-skin jasper beads in warm shades of rose and brick red and taupe and gray, tying all the hues together. The strand is backed by a series of copper-colored trade-style beads and terminating in a small series of old natural green turquoise “doughnut” beads with their own copper matrix. The dragonfly pendant is 2-5/8″ long from antennae to base and 2-7/16″ wide across the wingspan; the strand of beads is 17″ (dimensions approximate).
Sterling silver; rose quartz; amber; copper; leopard-skin jasper beads;
trade-style beads; green turquoise beads
$1,500 + shipping, handling, and insurance
It’s days like today when writing posts like this is sheer joy. It gives me the opportunity to highlight incredible Native art, made all the more meaningful because it’s created by Wings. But more, it allows me to place his work in a broader, deeper context of cultural and spiritual significance for our peoples.
Art synthesizes symbol and spirit in ways that perhaps nothing else can. When it also honors history and tradition, and our peoples’ survival, our very existence . . . that’s something very special indeed.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2015; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owners.
