The calendar tells us that today is the first day of autumn, but here, it’s all Indian Summer: a warm steady breeze driving white clouds across the sky, bright sun catching the turning leaves, turning the landscape into a rainbow of green and gold and harvest flame.
Despite our cold nights and unseasonal rains, more of which is promised late today, the spirits of summer remain on the land here. Yesterday, a giant dragonfly danced across my field of vision, taking a spiraling path toward the banks of late-season sunflowers.
In a week devoted to the role Native dance plays in our indigenous arts, Dragonfly is a suitable representative spirit.
Such thoughts put me in mind of a collection of necklaces Wings created between 2008 and 2012 or so: his Dancer series. Each necklace took the form of a dragonfly pendant hung on sterling silver chain. Generally speaking, they all followed a specific pattern, with only a couple of exceptions. Most had bodies formed of solid sterling silver triangle wire, hand-scored about two-thirds of the way down to suggest segmentation; gemstone eyes soldered at the top beneath a bail; and dual pairs of wings hand-cut, hand-stamped, and soldered to the body as an underlay. Each was given the name of a dancer: Star Dancer, Moon Dancer, Fire Dancer, etc., as its individual identity emerged via stone choice and stampwork.
The exceptions were fairly limited; two in the series were summoned from bodies of half-round wire, less angular, and their wings were formed of twinned pairs of more slender half-round wire spread at gently curving angles. These two had gemstone eyes (amethyst in each instance, as it turns out) set into the sides of the head, rather than atop it. And then, of course, there was the one featured in Tuesday’s post, similar to most in the series in all respects save one: instead of gemstone eyes, its eyes were formed from a pair of hand-made sterling silver ingot beads.
Of the many entries in this series, to which Wings added new versions on an occasional basis over a period of five years or so, one in particular spoke to me today: Lightning Dancer.
If you’ve ever watched dragonflies in flight, you’ll understand why he conceived of them as dancers: They dart, zoom, wheel, and turn on the tiniest of points. I’ve written here before about Dragonfly, and about the special gifts he possesses that enable his ability to dance upon the winds:
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.
The one featured here today is perhaps a messenger, too. But to me, he is emblematic of a motif deeply personal to me and close to my own heart: the ability to dance upon, and in, the storm.
As I noted above, his name was Lightning Dancer. His name arose in part out of his physical form: dozens of tiny zig-zagging bolts of lightning that formed the delicately fibrous network of his wings. One meaning of my own traditional name translates to Thunderbird, or Thunder Being, and I have always felt more at home in the storm than in the sun. This dancer’s wings do enable him to do as my namesake does, and carry the lightning with him.
But it was more than just the lightning: This dancer held the storm in his eyes. They were formed of two small round cabochons of lapis lazuli in a shade that could only be described as blue violet: darker, smokier, more mysterious than any clear sky, these were stones of the thunder and the wind.
It’s difficult for me to choose a favorite among Wings’s Dancer series; many of them speak to me for very different reasons, symbolic and aesthetic alike. But for any and every reason, this one hovers — one might even say dances — near the top of every such list.
For some, the storm is cause for fear or sorrow. For me, it’s cause for joy. Any spirit that dances in the flash of the lightning and the drumbeat of the thunder dances with me.
~ Aji
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