When the deep purple falls over sleepy garden walls
And the stars begin to twinkle in the sky . . . .
No, the title doesn’t refer to the old song, nor to the iconic English rock band formed in ’68 that, in a nod to irony, took its name from that same old song.
But the lyrics tell me that I’m far from the only one who associates the purple of amethyst with the colors and shades of twilight.
It’s perhaps not as easy to see the association in the crystal formation shown above; after all, the photo was taken in the brilliant sunlight of a high desert day. But in this land especially, the sunset skies are particularly prone to donning robes in varying shades of violet in those last moments before Father Sun retires to his own blankets for the night.
It’s a function of the clouds themselves: This is, after all, thunderhead country, and even in the middle of the day, they will often take on a purpled hue, especially at the base where the water waits (and weights) to fall upon the earth below. Sometimes, they join the sun’s dance of ascendance at dawn, too, but their real time to shine is dusk, in the waning minutes before the light leaves the sky. Where I’m from, twilight would descend softly, slowly, as though some celestial spirit pulled a shade over the light. Here, it performs a flamboyant dance, the regalia every bit as central as the steps themselves.
It’s a metaphor perhaps most visible, among the pieces shown here today, in the ring below:
A stone like a perfect ripened plum, set into a band dotted with full moons dancing in their own silvery light, the twisted wire in which it rests evoking the clockwise orbit of celestial bodies.
The ring (like most of the pieces shown here today) is not for sale; it was a piece commissioned by and made to order for a dear friend. All but a couple of the pieces shown here today (and the crystal at the top of this post, which is the only item still available for sale) are a part of her personal collection of Wings’s work. She has a gift for identifying imagery that is important to her life’s path, and trusts Wings to bring that imagery to life in a way that she can wear on her person as she goes about her daily journey.
When she chose amethyst for a series of pieces, she chose a stone with a rich history.
Amethyst is actually a form of quartz; the color comes from the presence of iron in the mineral. Some people refer to it simply as “purple quartz” (or, occasionally, “mauve quartz”), but it exists along a spectrum of colors that range from a deep midnight shade of violet, like the central cabochon in the bracelet shown immediately above, to shades with a significant amount of blue to clear archetypal “purple” to paler lilac hues. When exposed to high heat, the purple color can metamorphose into something else: green, red, brown, but most often an orangey-yellow shade, at which point it becomes a mineral known as citrine. There is a naturally-occurring example of this phenomenon within the amethyst family of minerals, known as ametrine. Exposed to natural sources of heat over long periods of time, the stone begins to change in color (and therefore, in identity), but is mined before the process is complete: It creates a beautiful crystalline stone that is purple on one end and slowly morphs through a clear center into a deep golden, ambery tone at the opposite end.
Amethyst is a clear stone, translucent, although you sometimes find inclusions known as rutiles within it. It’s one of those stones that takes well to faceting and cabbing alike, and so you will find it used both in ordinary dominant-culture jewelry styles, especially rings, and in Native work, as well.
Wings often uses it as an accent stone, as in this necklace made with a very, very old black-on-white pottery sherd:
In this instance, the amethyst was ever so slightly larger than the turquoise cabochon below. It was an aesthetic choice, one designed to provide a little extra color and spirit to mostly monochromatic piece.
Sometimes, of course, he uses amethyst as the focal point of a piece. Such was the case with the larger stones in the ring and cuff shown above, but amethyst has enough presence that the stone doesn’t always need to be big. One of his most popular pieces used a tiny cabochon, one as small as the accent stone immediately above, as the focal point of a hand-twisted cuff:
When I say “one of his most popular pieces,” I mean exactly that. When he made the piece shown above, it was snapped up almost immediately — and additional orders for custom-made versions ensued, each with the same type of stone.
Amethyst is not a terribly expensive stone in cabochon form; substantial deposits exist around the world, and it’s relatively easy to get. Larger cabochons (and raw amethyst in cluster and crystal formations) tend to be pricier in relative terms. Good-quality cut stone tends to run in the lower double figures per carat — generally speaking, more than $10 but less than $30. However, the highest quality stones tend to be darkest in color, and to be relatively free of inclusions; these can run upwards of $100 per carat. And while $10 per carat doesn’t sound like much, carats count up fast. Compared to many cheaper, lesser-grade stones, a piece made with even one amethyst can be fairly costly to produce. [Clusters and crystals, of course, are a whole other matter, and can run to extraordinary prices, depending on size and quality. As I write this, large clusters are being offered for sale on e-Bay in excess of $5,000.]
I mentioned that amethyst deposits exist world-wide. It’s a stone that’s found on nearly every continent: in North and South America, in Asia, in Africa, in eastern Europe, in Australia. Only Antarctica is missing from the list, and it would not surprise me to learn that amethyst deposits are buried in the formations beneath the tundra there, as well. Closer to home, however, amethyst has reportedly been found in areas of the South (Georgia, North Carolina); in the Pacific Northwest (Oregon); and in the Southwest (Arizona and across the border into Mexico). The crystal formation shown at the top comes from this area, although the specific source is unclear after all these years: I thought it was mined in Mexico; Wings remembers it having come from Arizona. Either way, it’s a large and beautiful specimen; what’s not visible in the photo are the agate-like bands on the side and the deep purple-rose whorls strewn throughout the uncut putty-colored uncut on the back.
Amethyst has a long history of symbolic importance that cuts across multiple cultural lines. It is, oddly enough, a stone of sobriety: Its very name comes from the Greek amethystos — literally, “not intoxicated.” The association with drunkenness, or, perhaps more accurately, with protection therefrom, is likely rooted in the stories of the ancient Greek gods. A virtuous young maiden named Amethyste, so the story goes, caught the eye of Bacchus, the god of wine (and of drunkenness and debauchery, from whose name the word bacchanal comes). Unused to being denied, Bacchus pursued her relentlessly, but Amethyste sought to protect her virtue and her chastity, and prayed to the gods for help. Diana, the Huntress who was herself eternally virginal, heard her prayers and answered them by turning her into a stone, white in color. Bacchus, distraught, poured out his wine over Amethyste’s body, now in stone form, turning it purple.
In ancient Israel, amethyst likewise held great spiritual sigificance. It was one of the twelve gems on the breastplate of the high priests, those permitted entry into the Holy of Holies. Amethyst is commonly reported to have been the final gem in the breastplate’s third row of stones, and appears to have incorporated the ancient Greek symbolism related to intoxication: its meaning has been recounted variously as protection from drunkenness and as a reference to strength, as in the relative strength of wine.
It is perhaps fitting, then, that Wings should have chosen amethyst to rest over the heart of one of his most recent iterations of the Warrior Woman:
We’ve discussed the Warrior Woman numerous times, her genesis and significance, the meanings of the symbols she bears and wears. I know that neither the Greek nor the Jewish stories were in Wings’s mind when he created the specific pin shown above; he was focused exclusively on Native imagery and meaning. But perhaps it says something about the universality of human experience, of human conceptualization of larger motifs, that he chose amethyst to help personify a distinctly female archetype, and to do so in the form of a jeweled breastplate of sorts.
In more recent centuries, amethyst was adopted by Christianity as a symbolically significant gem. Catholic tradition reportedly regards the stone as a mineralogical representation of purity,perhaps harking back to older notions of continence and protection from intoxication (of whatever form). Popes and priests have, throughout the centuries, worn rings (and perhaps other adornments) of amethyst, allegedly as a reminder of this particular meaning.
Through Christianity, it has also come to mean an expression of romantic love, although via a distinctly unromantic route: St. Valentine. We’ve looked at that historical figure before, and his subsequent associations with love and romance. Although people tend to think of red as the color of Valentine’s Day (and more, of romantic love generally), purple has always been a part of that symbolic equation, too. According to some accounts, we have St.Valentine himself to thank for that; so the story goes, he wore a ring containing an amethyst stone carved into the shape of Cupid to emphasize the importance of fidelity in love. It’s probably apocryphal at best, but it does tie together stone, color, spiritual significance, and again, symbolism related another form of continence, all in one tidy quasi-historical bow.
A running theme throughout all of these stories seems to be the great spiritual significance attached to the stone. Perhaps it has to do, in part, with the color, a color also regarded (at least by European cultures) as one belonging to royalty and leadership. Perhaps it’s simply something universal in the wiring of the human brain. But Wings himself has, on occasion, used amethyst to represent something of great spiritual significance to our own peoples:
The eagle feather.
It’s impossible to find a more obvious intertribal symbol. It’s also sacred to many, probably most (perhaps all) of our peoples today. For us, it’s a direct link to Spirit: the feather directs the smoke that carries our prayers, a metaphorical version of Eagle himself carrying our words skyward to Spirit directly.
That’s a deep purple (or any other color) of a different kind.
~ 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.
