New Mexico’s nickname has long been The Land of Enchantment, a label bestowed by a colonizing population and swiftly subsumed into the machinery of officialdom. It fits, in its way: It implies a land of magic and mystery, one unlike any other, sufficient to take one’s breath away.
The region now drawn by invisible lines into this state is certainly all of those things, at least for those inclined to appreciate its particular brand of beauty. In truth, it’s not so much one land as many, with landscapes and climates as diverse as its peoples and cultures. And I suppose it’s true that for those coming from a European-influenced environment, its underlying indigenity seems both mysterious and magical, although for those to whom these lands were given in the first place, it’s simply life.
But occasionally, the earth here produces its own mysteries: not casting spells, but nonetheless creating its own tangible magic.
Today’s featured work conjures such unlikely possibilities into being.
It all comes about through the auspices of the stone around which the work is built: a staurolite. It’s a type of stone found in only a few places on earth, one of which happens to be lands that were once the province of the people indigenous to this place, lands now known as Taos Pueblo. Invasion and colonization have shrunk their borders, of course, and have allowed the spread and encroachment of non-Native populations. The specific bits of earth where today’s bit of alchemy are found are no longer “tribal,” in the restricted sense, but they are the people’s lands nonetheless.
I’ve written about staurolite here before, and rather than rephrase myself repeatedly, I’ll simply quote my earlier passages. I noted then that staurolite is a silicate:
Most often, the base rock in which staurolites form is aluminum iron silicate, with magnesium often present, as well. Occasionally, lithium and/or zinc may be found. It’s a metamorphic rock, and is often found in other metamorphic host rock, such as schist, a flat-grained rock that tends to occur in a sheet-like pattern called “foliation” (think mica, which occurs naturally here), or gneiss, a formerly sedimentary or igneous rock metamorphosed into a sheet-like structure that appears in the rock as alternating bands. it also often occurs along with almandine garnet, one of several types of garnet we covered last weekend.
Metamorphic rock, of course, is one of the three major forms of rock, and its nature is transformative: Each ultimately began its existence as sedimentary or igneous rock (although metamorphic rock can further “morph” into other forms of metamorphic rock). Subjected by natural forces to extreme heat (ranging from 150 to 200 degrees Celsius) and extreme pressure (at least 1,500 “bars“), the structure of the rock itself is altered, changed into a new form.
In the right geologic and mineralogical environment, with sufficient heat, pressure, and time, one such “new form” is staurolite:
In some cases, the heat and force that come to bear upon a particular section of rock are so concentrated that they produce what are known as penetrative twins: solidified crystalline bars that bisect each other to form the shape of a cross. Sometimes the cross pattern appears embedded wholly in the host rock, giving it a veneer-like look, a bit like the patterning on a sand dollar. Often, the crosses are fully formed, either extruding from the host rock or pushed out of it entirely. These crosses may develop at somewhat oblique angles, but very often, they appear in perfectly perpendicular form, like the one shown above.
Indeed, these powerful elemental forces are so intrinsic, so immanent to what staurolite is that it is actually used by geologists as a benchmark, a measuring device known as an index mineral: The presence of such a mineral is a reliable indicator of the degree to which metamorphosis has occurred in a given deposit of host rock. Its presence can be used to measure the degree of pressure brought to bear on the rock over time, the temperatures to which it was subjected, an even what the host rock’s original nature was like.
Calling staurolite an index mineral feels a bit like saying “X marks the spot” of a mystery note or treasure map: both a teller of a long, multi-layered story and an end in itself; process and product; history and result. Because the process that produces staurolite does indeed create an “X” — a cross, and crossing, of a very specific sort. As I said here a few years ago:
And about that name: Thanks to the stone’s shape, people often assume (automatically and perhaps entirely naturally) that the associations are celestial, but they’re actually very different, rooted instead in wood and stone. As I wrote here last year:
The name comes from a Greek word, “stauros.” Despite what you might think, it doesn’t mean “star,” although the stone has distinctive star-like qualities. It means “cross,” and it’s apt. The stones are bits of metamorphic rock that, under intense geological heat and pressure, crystallize into iconic “twinned” forms, often perpendicular to each other, creating the shape of a cross.
The word stake comes from the same ancient Greek root, and the meaning is similar, if with a tendency toward the bloody rather than simply as a wooden tool: Think crucifixion trees, not the wooden stakes of my own culture that were used to anchor hides for use as shelter in tipi form.
However, the cruciform nature of the word took on different connotations as it spread geographically and culturally:
Because of its mysteriously, seemingly magical origins, staurolite has long been held by cultures and traditions the world over to have equally magical properties and healing powers. In some European traditions, they are known as “faerie crosses” (fairy crosses) or “faerie stones” (fairy stones). Patrick County, Virginia, hosts Fairy Stone State Park, named for the staurolites that occur naturally in that area. It’s a planetary phenomenon: Staurolites are found in parts of Europe, including France, Portugal, Switzerland, and Russia; in parts of Australia; in Madagascar; in Brazil; and in the U.S., in Georgia, Maine, New Hampshire, and one other state. That state is New Mexico, and they have been found only in one very limited area: in the greater environs of what were once Taos Pueblo lands, long since appropriated and now renamed the Hondo Canyon area. Here, the natural twinned form shown above occurs regularly, but so does a much rarer form, known in mineralogical terms as a sixling: crystals that occur in a repeated “twinning” pattern around an axis, creating six separate axes or three “twins.”
Of course, some of these associations are equally bloody, directly embodying the violence of colonialism and forced conversion. These are not, of course, the associations the stone holds for us. I wrote about this dichotomy last year, too, a divergence that has special resonance for our cultures today:
Contemporary New Age practices have adopted staurolite symbology from European Pagan traditions, claiming “elemental energies” as properties of the stone. Allegedly, it was also a talisman carried and worn by those participating in the Crusades, as an exemplar of the Cross, with a capital “C,” for which they supposedly fought (and invaded, and colonized, and raped and tortured and slaughtered). Some indigenous peoples no doubt have particular symbolic uses and associations related to the stone, but any such associations are unlikely to be for the consumption of outsiders. Today, many people, Indians included, use them for more prosaic purposes: wearing them in the form of jewelry, simply as beautiful natural adornment; or perhaps carrying one for good luck of a sort, in appreciation of the complex and serendipitous properties and processes necessary to form the stone as if by magic.
It is that last link that informs Wings’s use of them —serendipity and synchronicity, and appreciation of and respect for the power of elemental forces combining over time on an epic (and epochal) scale to create something entirely unique and beautiful.
Think of all the factors that must come together just so to create this accident of earthy geometry: an enchanted crossing of circumstances and materials, producing an enchanted crossing of stone and shimmer.
For staurolites, at least these from our area, are infused with the same mica that makes our indigenous clay glow like the sun. The sheen is subtle, but if you look closely, unmistakable, and it makes these tiny crosses even more mysteriously, ethereally beautiful.
It should comes as no surprise to anyone, then, that Wings sometimes chooses to build a work around one. And in this instance, he kept to the themes of medicine and mystery with a few simple patterns brought together to create a very complex design.
If memory serves (it’s been about nine years), the design began, overall, with the staurolite always as the intended focal point, but the execution started with the silver. Wings cut a length of sheet silver of a substantial yet still relatively lightweight gauge, of sufficient strength and flexibility to hold the proper curvature for a cuff. He hand-scored two lines down its full length, each about a quarter of an inch inward from the edge, leaving a broader expanse of about an inch between the two. This created a band with a border at either edge.
Next, he chose a pair of stamps of similar but not identical design to create the pattern for each border: both lodge-like symbols, one with a single point and scalloped base, the other a triangle with multiple “poles” stretching from top to bottom between its two edges. These he alternated in a positive/negative pattern along the band’s entire length on each edge. The first stamp, of the plain triangle with the scalloped base, he repeated down its with the base along each outer edge. This produced a “negative” area of blank space in the shape of an inverted triangle, repeating itself between each point and the hand-scored line that formed each border. He filled this negative space with the other lodge symbol, the one with multiple visible “poles,” again chasing the pattern between either edge and its border line. Together, these two symbols produced the complex edging shown in the photo above.
This left a blank expanse in the center. The cuff would have been beautiful had he stopped there, but he felt the open center expanse needed something simple to accent the whole. He chose a single stamp again, in a lodge pattern; this one was a triangle-like image with three poles extending downward from the point to an open base. These he combined, facing them to each other and conjoining their bases at the open edge, thus creating a wholly new geometric symbol: a diamond, formed by the joining of the outer angles with the center “pole” creating a twinned spoke down the center, much like the effect of a cat’s eye.
And in that moment, what were symbols of shelter and ceremony became something more: a symbol of wisdom, of medicine, of the great mysteries mostly denied to us mere mortals but over which the Eye of Spirit presides.
Once the stampwork was complete and the cuff shaped gently around a mandrel, Wings needed to create a bezel for the stone. He had chosen one of the most spectacular of his staurolite specimens for this particular cuff, with eight perfect angles around four axes, and an unusually smooth surface that showed, in natural light, the faint shimmer of the mica within to powerful effect. For stones such as staurolites, there is no question of a ready-made bezel; each must be made by hand to fit that precise specimen. He chose to use a strip of silver of somewhat greater thickness than usual for such bezels, working carefully into the proper the four-spoked shape, with a low enough profile to show off the stone’s geometry and texture properly while till holding it securely in place. Once he had formed the bezel, he soldered it into place, then oxidized the entire piece and buffed it to a high polish.
Once set, the stone formed a powerful accent to the stampwork — not colorful, not gaudy nor even especially bright, but an enchanted crossing of heat and pressure, minerals and time, combining to form its own cross with the silver, rising above its surface in three full dimensions.
In a land of enchantment, it’s the earth’s own magic.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2018; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.
