Sometimes it feels like the fire is all there is, or at least the smoke from it. It’s a toxic, oppressive miasma, one that doesn’t clear out with the rising wind, only spirals in closer.
And in official [colonial] terms, summer isn’t even here yet.
On days like these, it takes a different kind of fire to make it through.
It’s the fire that fueled our own existence, that burned in the hearts of our ancestors, of the elders and the prophets, that stoked their spirits and heightened their powers and gave the strength and courage to ensure our own survival.
In some colonial traditions, “fire” is explicitly bound up with invasive, forcible conversion — but then, so are all their ideas of spirit. Our ways are not divorced from the rest of our lives, not compartmentalized into performance on a certain day in order to be able to violate our most closely held ideals with impunity the rest of the time. for us, our spiritual traditions are simply a part of who we are, inextricable from our bodies and spirits and from the land that surrounds us or our larger cosmos.
It’s true of plenty of Indigenous cultures the world over. And sometimes, in small ways, aspects of those traditions get shared — neither given away by the holder nor stolen by the other party, but simply finding recognition, acknowledgment, common ground in the flames of heart and spirit.
This week’s featured #TBT work, a throwback only to the latter half of March, is an example.
There are some Indigenous aspects to this piece, despite the fact that it’s a symbol from a culture half a world away. It could hardly be otherwise, given that Wings himself created it, but in point of fact, those aspects were specifically requested as a part of its commission. But before I explain, I should identify the symbol and how it came to be that a man of Red Willow created it.
This was commissioned, originally, by a very dear friend — or, to be strictly accurate, by her son, with her as intermediary. Her son had converted to the Sikh faith, and was undergoing the learning process necessary to all such teachings. One of the primary symbols of that tradition is what’s known as a Khanda, a symbol that, on its own, is rather flame-like in design, but in fact represents the combining four pieces consisting of three traditional Sikh weapons: the khanda itself, which is the ancient double-edged sword at the center; a chakram, which is the ring around it, itself a defensive weapon; and two of the single-edged curved sword called a kirpan, crossed at the base and curving up the sides.
Wings agreed, subject to two caveats, to create the work: First, he had to ask whether it was appropriate for him, a non-Sikh, to create such an item, and he was assured that it was; second, because it was a spiritual item, he insisted on making it a gift. Those conditions satisfied, he roped me into the process and we set to work.
I had to do some background reading, because we both had very little specific knowledge of the Sikh faith. Our impression had always been one of a tradition dedicated to peace, but how to reconcile that with a signifier consisting of weapons? [I should add here that we were not making a value judgment, because we know the dangers of colonial binaries; it was simply that realized how little we knew at all. In our traditions, the notion of warrior is (deliberately) “mistaken” by the colonial world as a synonym for its own invasive, colonizing, imperialist killing machinery, and so we know that trying to define any culture’s ways using such a lens in bound to be wrong.]
Because this is not my tradition, I’ll give only the briefest, most superficial explanation here, calling upon what has long since been put into the public domain. The double-edged khanda symbolizes the sword of truth; the chakram, defense (particularly of the sacred, in the form of turban and head); and the kirpans are ceremonial swords the represent the synthesizing of secular and spiritual worlds into one, which is how one’s life is properly ordered. I realize that all of this is a gross oversimplification, but it was enough to give Wings the means of finding traditional common ground, so to speak.
There is no flexibility, as I understand it, with regard to the shape and proportions of the Khanda symbol: It always looks exactly like this. But it is apparently acceptable within the tradition for its adherent to adorn a Khanda as they see fit; there are many offered for sale or simply on display made of different metals, precious and otherwise, some adorned with patterns or jewels and others plain. That was a subsidiary question that Wings had: Would it be permissible for him to create on within the specific parameters that our friend’s son had requested.
And those parameters came into play in the design. First, what was it to be? A cuff, a buckle, a necklace, a pin? Our friend felt that a combination pendant and pin would be preferable, so that he could wear it either way. But he had two other specifications: He wanted to honor the natural world of the lands where he was born and raised; and he wanted t honor the Indigenous peoples of those lands in some way.
Which meant more research.
The lands in question were North Texas and Arkansas. Both are areas rich in natural beauty, and both have equally rich histories (and presents) of Indigenous cultures and communities. But neither of us has lived in those areas, and so we were only vaguely familiar with either aspect. Without getting too specific as to regions, we settled on the Caddo and the Dhegiha (known to the colonial world as Qapaw), among others. And among their origin stories and the natural features of their homelands were symbologies that included rivers, and a concept related to braiding. That settled Wings’s first design decision: After sketching the outline of the Khanda onto sheet silver of a remarkably heavy gauge for a necklace, he hand-milled the sheet in a pattern originally designed to evoke the whorls and bands of an ancient Earth. It did that, but it also called to mind the imagery of rivers running across and through the Earth’s surface like veins, like ribbons of water braided together as medicine.
Wings chose to mill both the pendant and the bail in the same pattern, to keep it all of a piece symbolically and aesthetically. Then came to the saw-work, which was considerable: Lots of sharp curves and tight spaces and tiny hard corners, and he cut it out freehand, all in one go, always moving forward, never backtracking.
Next came the bezels. He had decided that he would set the three circles of the swords’ crossed hilts with jewels that would naturally be found in the areas in question, which sent me back to researching the sorts of gemstones indigenous to those lands.
There were several possibilities, but the two that stood out were garnet and opal, both of them naturally occurring in both places (if, perhaps, with a lot less frequency now than a couple of centuries ago). He had some tiny opals in his inventory, perfect for the smaller circles that formed the end of the kirpans’ hilts; he also had garnet in several sizes, including a round cabochon that was slightly larger and perfectly proportioned to be set in the hilt of the khanda itself.
Before setting the stones, a few tasks remained.
First, his hallmark; then attaching the bail; and finally, attaching the pin assembly. Once those were complete, he oxidized the entire piece, and buffed it to a medium-high polish — not a mirror finish, which would have detracted from the raised appearance and texture of the millwork, but glossy enough to glow. [Incidentally, on the top shots of the front of the pendant, you’ll notice a little black stippling on the upper left. That is not in fact unpolished oxidation; it’s a distorted reflection of the black casing around his studio lights, and no amount of shifting angles would make it disappear.]
Once the buffing was complete, he set the stones: a fiery, blood-red garnet flanked on either side by glowing opals, perfectly refracting a rainbow of light. Then he blessed it traditionally and we sent it on its way.
Alas, Louis DeJoy’s wanton pillage of the post office struck again: It was supposed to be there in time for his birthday, but even shipping it more than a week in advance, Priority, to be delivered only some three states away was not enough; it sat in a local post office on the recipient’s end for enough days to make its arrival one day late.
Still, it’s there now, and has taken its place in the tradition of our friend’s son. And it gave Wings a chance, one he described at once as humbling and a great honor: to be part, momentarily, of another tradition, finding common ground in the flames of heart and spirit.
~ Aji
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